I asked the women in the Writing Life circle, what’s in the middle? It was the first writing circle of a six-week series with the theme of “Piecing Our Stories from Life.” I had quilts in mind when I came up with the theme of “piecing” and quilts always start in the middle.

The women in the Writing Life circle have written together, in the past, for weeks and some for years. I wondered what  they thought was in the middle of the writing they had done in the past. What did they think was a recurring theme.

As I write along with the other writers, I thought of the “middle” of my own writing. It’s interesting to approach the question by answering it in the third person as then you can have some distance and some insight about this particular writer whose work you have read (who just happens to be you).

I wrote: Mary Ann Moore writes about peonies in her grandparents’ garden, her first grade school teacher, a fresh radish from the vegetable patch. It’s life’s ordinary pleasures that appear to bring her joy. Even while travelling in Greece or Turkey, Mary Ann notes the oregano on feta, a circle of women telling stories. There is a spiritual aspect – the muezzin’s call to prayer, the sanctity of the Hagia Sophia, the sarcophagus of the poet Rumi with its gold Arabic calligraphy. [Photo of crewel work by my mother, Billie, with cover of poem called “Women’s Hands.”]

Planting seeds in the field of a Turkish eco-farm takes her back to sitting by the cucumber patch with her grandfather, his cutting of a fresh cucumber slice with his pocket knife.

Mary Ann links the Ottawa Valley to Turkey and includes the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo at times perhaps for her determination to create despite the physical odds against her. Or it may have been her painting that kept Kahlo alive and Mary Ann reflects on the creativity of women with her grandmother’s quilt, her crocheted doilies and the work of other women whether in a traditional Greek cloth bag woven in patterns of red or a killim created by village women. [Photo of cloth bags made with images of  the Virgin of Guadalupe and Frida Kahlo.]

The fact that certain languages don’t have a word for “art” fascinates Mary Ann and is at the middle of her explorations.

The people of ancient Crete made pithos jars to hold olive oil, decorated them with carved flowers and leaves.

In a jam jar on the oil cloth covered kitchen table of her childhood was a bouquet of buttercups and daisies.

The beauty of everyday objects, her relationship with the plant world and to her ancestors, connects this writer to a magnificent spiritual system. [Photo of detail of Turkish, hand painted plate.]

Does the “spiritual system” have a name?

God?
Goddess?
Tea cup?
Peony?
Prayer?