When we gather, what do we do?
To bring together, to group, yes. Honestly, this is what I hope to be doing with these prompts and posts: to bring a community together, together.
Those of you seeing these prompts in your feed, maybe they provide some inspiration throughout the day, maybe you are writing because of them, using them to start to get unstuck. Maybe you’ll share something in the near future. Maybe not, no stress. The hope is that these prompts bring us together, on whatever level, to create some thing.
The goal is to gather ideas and energy from a collective group of people that were brought together by these prompts: I will constellate these future ideas and I hope you will do the same.
Why? Because this act builds a great deal of potential. Think of the dots we might connect, where we might wind up if we constellate together.
But also, I am reminded of a line from my favorite poet Jack Gilbert: “We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.”
We are not here to simply gather or connect dots. Yes the constellations we leave behind—and the stories we tell about their formation—are crucial. But we must also honor each star, each voice, each road and each stop along the way by telling that story first. That is where the meaning is found.
We are gathering, but the gathering is not the final act. The constellations are meant for more than simply gathering and navigating from one cluster to the next. When we are gathered, what do we do? When we have our cluster, what do we do with it, or for it?
As we constellate, we're meant to share, and listen, and connect. The single act of constellating makes so many other actions more meaningful.
So when we gather, what do we do? How do we celebrate the constellations? And honor the story of each star?