Week 6. Day 7. Celebrate

If I could, I’d rock up with streamers and balloons and a marching band outside your window this morning, like a slightly annoying GIF. Because to me, nothing says celebration like a triumphant chorus outside your window at 6am. But you might not thank me for that....

Week 6. Day 6. Contract with yourself

At the end of each Immersion class, we take a moment to clarify how we want to be, or what we want to do in the week ahead. In the years that I lived in Scotland I spent a great deal of time hiking up mountains with my partner. We’d fill a backpack with food, water,...

Week 6. Day 5. Bring forth

No one knows much about the writer or writers of the Gospel of Thomas. Discovered (or rediscovered) in Egypt in 1945, the text was written anywhere between 60 and 250AD and purports to record the sayings of Jesus. One of the sayings contained in the text is surprising...

Week 6. Day 4. Find the gap

When I was 18, I waitressed for a catering company, and spent most weekends pouring champagne at swanky parties. One party, overlooking Sydney harbour, was a glamorous event attended by beautiful people of the kind I’d only ever seen on screen. At the end of the...

Week 6. Day 3. Allies and Enemies

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott tells a story of her own writerly jealousy during a period when a literary friend was doing really well. It was a particularly hard period for Lamott, and the acquaintance phoned frequently, saying things like, ‘I just don’t know why God...