New Classes for the spring and summer

May and June 2011 Classes at Sacred Paths

Intermediate Tarot

This class is a further exploration into ways to interact with the rich symbolism of the Tarot. We’ll look at more reading spreads (including how to design your own spreads), as well as path working, using tarot cards in spell work and other ways to play with your deck. Familiarity with the meaning of the cards is recommended to get the most out of this class.

Six weeks        Thursday May 12^th – June 16^th                       7-9:30 pm

$120 or $20 per session                    

  taught by Nell Morningstar

Envisioning and Designing Your Dream Business

Have you always dreamed of starting your own business? Do you have a small business that needs redirection or clarity of purpose? Does writing a business plan seem overwhelming and uninteresting? Over the summer, meeting every other week, we’ll use creative and imaginative approaches to develop, map out and write our individual business plans. Using visual techniques, intuition and strategic planning tools, we’ll address how to turn passion and enthusiasm into actual business opportunities. Don’t miss this chance to embrace your most creative self and prepare for the entrepreneurial leap that can transform your dream into reality.

Alternating Saturdays:  June 4^th, 18^th, July 2^nd, 16^th, 30^th and August 13^th      1-4 pm.

$120 or $20 per session                     

taught by Nell Morningstar

The Ritual of Writing, Writing as Ritual

This workshop will explore how a writer creates their entry into the writing habit and life, finding a place that allows words to flow easily and the writer to access their creative center as well as dismissing their internal critic and the accompanying doubts and blocks.

We will also examine the idea of writing as a sacred action, looking at how to embrace this in our own writing practice. Open to all genres, beginning and more experienced writers interested in investigating their relationship to their writing. Bring notebook and pen to use during the workshop.

Saturday June 25^th                               1-4 pm

$20                                                      

 taught by Nell Morningstar

Making Portable Shrines

Using mixed media, we’ll fashion small portable shrines that can go anywhere with you. Bring any specific images or items you might wish to include in your shrine, and come have fun creating!

Sunday June 12^th                                 1-4 pm

$20                                                     

taught by Nell Morningstar

All classes held at Sacred Paths Center, 777 Raymond Avenue, St. Paul, 55114

preregistration required, call 651-644-3727.

Still Writing

I am still writing, working away at the novel I began in the novel class that I am now finishing up. 100 plus pages, and I am just beginning to feel like I might know where it is all going! But then, this is the kind of writing that I really enjoy, hold on to your seats and lets go for a wild ride kind of writing. When I know too much at the beginning, I am not likely to finish. It is too boring, heading toward and ending that I already know, that is too expected. With unknown elements still at work, I have something to look forward to each time I sit down to eek words out onto the paper. I like to be surprised, I like to be amused, I like to find myself in a new place (literally and metaphorically) and most of all, I like to see, hear, read, experience new things that are outside what I have already had the pleasure of enjoying. So, onward and upward, looking into a spring full of words and filled pages, and possibly some writing sessions out of doors eventually.

Writing the Novel

I am back writing again, this time for my class The Novel. It is enthralling, this process of watching how a novel is created from 'nothing'. I walked into class the first night with no idea at all of what I might be engaged in writing for the semester. By the time I had done the writing exercises in class, and continued to work on them that week outside of class, I found myself knee-deep in the 'dreaming' of what I now think of as 'my' novel. The characters, setting, theme, and yes, eventually plot are all unfolding themselves as I continue to explore, write, question and dream this still untitled novel. I am in a trance state much of the time as I wander around, half in the real world, and half in this world that I am just beginning to know. I still have to push myself to sit and write each day, and I am not always successful, each week I have a day or more that I don't quite get my butt in chair. But overall,  I have produced 10 to 15 pages each week, and I am deep in the birthing of a creative project that came from seemingly nowhere. I still have ten more weeks of class, so I hope to be sitting on somewhere between 150 and 200 pages of spanking fresh material. Not bad for a cold, snowy winter in the frozen tundra!

The Muse pays a visit

It is always fascinating to me where ideas and inspiration comes from. The muse seems to find the most interesting times and places to show up. On
my last night visiting with my mother, I was taking a long, stress-reducing bath, enjoying a few moments of calm and the lavender scented bathwater. Suddenly, as I floated with my head partially submerged, listening to the sounds of the pipes and water flowing in other parts of the building I saw/felt/knew a story I needed to write. When an idea comes to me like that, suddenly and out of the blue, my first response is to stay as still as possible, when the channel is open, I want to make sure that I am getting all the information there is to receive. Staying as still and silent as possible seems to be the best way to do this.
For the last few days then, I have been writing, working on taking that glimpse of an idea, and making it into a story. It is fun, though as with all expressive art forms, challenging and work. I have the opportunity to take almost nothing, just a hint of an image and a ghost of a feeling, and make something from them. I feel lucky to have at least the occasional brush with that mysterious force I call the muse. Now, if I can just write a story that is even one one hundredth true to the original flash I experienced, I will be satisfied.

I've been writing alot recently. I am taking 2 writing classes, one in creative nonfiction and memoir, and the other called 'Writers as Readers". Both are fun, lots of reading and lots of writing. At times, the assignments begin to overlap a little. I've written several peices now about my childhood and growing up. It is astounding how the memories keep coming once I've tugged at the thread. I had never thought much about writing nonfiction and am now finding that I am really enjoying it. This is good, since I have another 2 months of classes left, and quite a bit more writing to do for them. This is a peice I wrote to describe my relationship with reading and writing.



The first book I remember
reading had a main character
named Nell.
She was a farm horse,
I was not amused.
I read everything I could get my hands on.
I read everywhere.
I read in the bathroom,
I read when I was supposed to be doing dishes,
I read hidden under my bed,
I took books out past the flowerbeds
into the wild plum brush and read.
Whatever I read,
I lived, breathed, played and dreamed.
Books were portals into other worlds
that I could escape into.
Books took me places that I had never
imagined existed.
Then, I began to write.
I wrote poems, stories, plays, books, newspapers
I wrote journals and diaries.
I wrote things that I could never say to anyone.
I wrote words that I didn’t know I knew.
I wrote about people I had never known
and places I had never been.
I wrote about worlds and art and love and living
and passion.
I wrote because I couldn’t NOT write.
Most of my childhood, my writing
and reading were seen as frivolous
and relatively unimportant by those
around me.
When I decided to be a writer
I felt as though I were staking my flag
on an undiscovered planet.
I also felt as though I had only a limited
amount of oxygen to survive.
In my early twenties,
a dream came true,
I began work at a small
publishing press.
I spent my days reading terrible
poetry sent in by 90 year old women
and ex-truck driving men.
I had to write back to them and tell them
we would not be publishing their
precious poems.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to tell them how
awful they were.
I spent my evenings trying to keep up with
alcoholic poets and writers twice my age
and tangled in the dysfunctional lives of
blocked artists.
I became a sounding board and a mirror.
I became a shadow self to diseased writers.
Eventually, I began to disappear.
During the peak of this craziness,
as I split up with my boyfriend and all
sanity fell away,
I announced to anyone who would listen that there was no future
for the printed word
and I quit my job and went to
film school.
I stopped writing.
I began to work and think and dream in visual images
and sound.
I felt as though I were swimming, submerged, drowning
and reborn.
I took photographs, made films and
created sound pieces.
I continued only to write in my notebooks.
Years passed,
I married,
had 2 children,
divorced, remarried, had 2 more children,
worked in the commercial film industry
and then
when the crossroads of Hollywood
and family appeared,
I chose my family.
I handed my camera to my husband
(who became a professional photographer in 6 months)
and juggled children and a job in a food co-op.
I stopped thinking of image making
as creative expression, it had
become a way to earn a living.
Eventually, I returned to the commercial photography
industry as a producer and stylist
and made more money than I had ever made before.
I spent this money
on books, notebooks and pens.
I began to lust after words, to yearn
for stories. I tried to write a novel
in a month,
and failed.
I tried again and failed again.
In between, I began to dabble in characters
and settings,
I began to imagine in words instead
of visual images.
I felt as though I were 75 years old
and trying to roller skate again. I could remember
the sensation of flying through a short story or poem,
of gliding through notebook after notebook of imaginative
writing,
but I needed to relearn
the craft, the effort, the work
involved in the process.
Now, I have managed to write
4 rough drafts of novels,
I have tacked a creative writing minor
onto the tail end of my filmmaking degree.
I am writing everyday.
I think my wings
are getting stronger.