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20110825-defragging-at-glen-westI’m a Mac user now, but back when I had PCs, I would occasionally run a utility called “disk defragmenter.” You’d click some options and after several grinding minutes you’d get a message like, “Your disk is 46% fragmented. Defragment?”

I doubt anyone really understood what it did. It was just something to try when your system got sluggish, crashed a lot, or generally acted overwhelmed and cranky. And it was fun to watch all the little squares of colors, representing your data, realign themselves into a solid block. No gaps, no disorder.

I recently returned from the Glen Workshop West, where I took the retreat option. Meaning: While other attendees participated in their morning classes, I’d be working on my own stuff.

My “own stuff,” in this case, was to be my current novel-in-progress, a good draft of which is due at the beginning of February. It’s been a busy summer, and I’d hoped to knock out, oh, say six or seven thousand decent words from the agreeable discomfort of my monk’s cell of a room on the St. John’s campus.

I’d also, somehow, get an assigned article done, do some research for an anthology proposal, keep up with my email. And, of course, attend all the wonderful readings and talks at the conference, enjoy meaningful interactions with old with friends, and have a spiritual epiphany or two.

“It’ll be just like a regular work week,” I told myself, trying to feel excited. “Only while on retreat! In Santa Fe!”

And for the first time in my eight years of attending the Glen, I wasn’t looking forward to it. The expectations I’d placed on myself felt daunting, impossible. I spent much of the week before our trip in or on the brink of tears. As if the anxieties about my work (and health, and soul) were not enough, I was certain the trip itself would be a disaster. We were going to fall asleep at the wheel on I-70, or run head-on into a semi loaded with jet fuel on winding Route 6—also known as “Utah’s Deadliest Highway.”

This was not a retreat. This was a sentence.

The Saturday night before departure, I wept semi-incoherently to my husband that I didn’t want to go. My system crashed. Blue screen of death.

He listened, comforted me, and on Sunday morning we left well before dawn, as planned.

We hit Utah’s Deadliest Highway right around sunrise. In the pink light on the canyon walls, lush from an unusually rainy June, it didn’t seem so deadly.

Just past the sweeping red rocks outside of Moab, we stopped for coffee. I drank it through the gorgeous desolation of the Spanish Valley—scrub and sand, land formed by violent shifts, water and ice.

Somewhere around the high desert plains of the Colorado border, a gentle voice I haven’t otherwise heard from much this year nudged cautiously through the anxieties. It said: You don’t have to.

What if, I thought, I didn’t work on my book while at the Glen? What if I didn’t answer my email? What if I didn’t spend an hour every day looking for a phone signal on campus, in case someone was trying to reach me? What if I didn’t go to all the faculty talks and presentations? What if I didn’t even go to all the meals? What if I embraced the full meaning of the word “retreat”?

I ran through all the worst-case scenarios associated with these what-ifs, and failed to come up with any disastrous consequences. Why hadn’t I been able to ask myself these questions, hear my need, before this moment?

The theme of the Glen Workshops was “Acts of Attention.” I love the idea of paying attention. I’m for it. I like to talk about it and write about it. Practicing it, however, is the difficult step I battle to take, when I even remember to try.

Life and its demands zoom at me, at us, in fragmented bits. I usually can’t hear what it is I’m supposed to be paying attention to. Not all of the bits can be stopped, not all of the noise silenced.

But, twelve hours in the car through the gloriously unfragmented southwest gave me time to realize: Some can. A lot can.

By the time we walked up to the Glen check-in table, anything resembling “plans” or “goals” for the week had been left on the road behind us.

As an achiever and a perfectionist, it made me uneasy to let my actual and proverbial hands fall at my sides, idle.

I adjusted.

I didn’t look at the schedule more than twice all week, but somehow managed to hear Bradford Winters remind us of our culture’s need for vision, and the attention that vision requires. I heard Jeffrey Overstreet playfully speak about play and its importance in our lives as creators.

At the first open mic night, I remembered that the point of creative work is not to please editors or increase your GoodReads star rating average or get a movie option, but to delight in: I made this. Let me share it with you.

Jeffrey, in his talk, pointed out that silence leads to reflection, and reflection to appreciation, and appreciation makes us look for someone to thank.

God is there, making so many offerings of all kinds, all the time. I made this. Let me share it with you.

I want to be present to receive those gifts.

“Acts of Attention” will be, I hope, my theme for the year. I pray that attention will transform from effort to habit. That, through attention, these fragments that make up my life will begin to be knit into a whole. We’ll see where I am with that when I return next August.

Hope to see you there.

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