Dear
Family and Friends,
It’s
David Gawlik, married priest from Wisconsin and owner of the small publishing
company, Caritas Communications, whom I blame or credit. Anticipating the
publication of Sing to Me and I Will Hear You – A Love Story (coming out
soon!), he proposed that I get my own website to promote this second book.
After
some scouting around, the person I chose to create the website is my editor,
Mike O’Connor’s own graphic designer – Nina K. Noble. Like Mike, she also lives
in Port Townsend, Washington state, on the Olympic Peninsula.
Nina
turned out to be just the right person, just as everyone “sent” to help
me with my writing imperative has been just the right person (like David and
Mike). I call those three my team. Nina is a Russian Orthodox Christian, and a
yoga practitioner, to boot. She’s even a student of Jung studies. So Nina and I
have become friends in the process of my sending her material, and her
“designing” the website.
Look
here to see the fruit of Nina’s work . . . outstanding work, I think you’ll
agree: www.elainemcgillicuddy.com
Initially,
it was a website focused on just that – promoting the first two books, the CD
of my reading the poems, and later, the third book in progress – Sing to Me
and I Will Hear You – The Uncollected Poems and Journals. But I found
myself drawn to make it also a site for collecting various memorabilia.
The
“memorabilia” that I most appreciate is the Portland Community Television’s
“The Second Act” interview with Francis and me, in 2005. We had to go to some
lengths to use it. I thank Lee Slater, my goddaughter Rowan’s dad who made a
“MOV” out of the only DVD I was given at the end of that interview in 2005. For
the 2012 interview with me by Bill Gregory, the TV station already had it
uploaded and available on their website. Nina just had to copy it from there.
But those earlier interviews were not uploaded then. But now, after
Lee’s work, emailed to Nina, you can see on my website that “Second Act”
interview conducted by Susan Hirsch with me and Francis.
I
realized after that, that I wanted to do even more with the website. I
thought that my hip problem and yoga-to-the-rescue story might be of help to
others. My annotated list of books on grief and death which helped me after
Francis died has already helped others, so why not share it more widely?
Spreading the word about permaculture (edible landscape) is needed in our
precarious times, and the chants which, at the end, helped Francis in facing
his death – (That’s what the “Sing to Me” is all about!) – those could inspire
people as they did us. So why not include those as well?
Now
viewers can see Francis and me (very briefly) in another video, a youtube video
showing Aramaic scholar, Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz leading us in the recitation
and chanting of the first line of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic. Of many Aramaic
prayer retreats Francis took with me, that one in the spring of 2009 was his
last– only months before he was hospitalized. There he is in that video, wearing
a blue top my mother had made for him.
With
that website work completed, I am ready now to work on the second half of the
third book. The prospect is a joyous one because I know by now that writing is
a work of discovery.
Just
last week, after a long supper conversation with my friends, Joe and Claire
Brannigan, I dropped off two books I’m loaning them – Old Age, Journey into
Simplicity, and Jung on Death edited by Jenny Yates. (Because of
Joe’s terminal condition, please keep them in mind and heart as they face
together what is approaching.) My loaning them the books occasioned a little
research on my part through which I came across this fitting quote by Helen
Luke.
"Wisdom consists in doing the next
thing that you have to do, doing it with your whole heart and finding delight
in it — and the delight is the sense of the sacred."
Yes, it fits me like a glove. From the poems that came
after Francis died, and through the telling of his story and mine, and now with
my own widow's story coming next – writing, at this time of my life – feels to
me like a calling. And people’s hearty response to my Maine Jung Center
presentation only seems to confirm it. For that I give thanks.
And with loving gratitude,
Elaine
