"Everyone Has a Story" -Journaling Workshop January/February, 2003

On four Monday nights, from January 27th to February 17th, twelve wannabe writers gathered around the tables of the Upper Room in the Parish Center of St. Joan. With stick-on name tags emblazoned on their chests, they focused their attention on author, editor, book reviewer and creativity teacher, Leonard Lang. Leonard, who has taught lifework and journaling programs at St. Joan of Arc for five years was to be the instructor of this class on learning to write your memoirs, which might have been titled: Everyone Has A Story.

The first exercise of the night was the usual, "Let's go around the table and introduce ourselves and tell why you wanted to take this class?" In some circles, this exercise might be taken lightly, but to a room full of creative writers it was a heady experience, much like an artist putting the first globs of paints on his palette. Everyone listened raptly as each person revealed a little of themselves. It was immediately apparent the group consisted of varied backgrounds and experiences. There were retired male engineers, a young teacher preparing for her upcoming stint in the Peace Corp, an exuberant female secretary and several retired or semi-retired professional women as well as couple who were undergoing transitional experiences in their lives.

In the introductions, several students had expressed that as they are getting older they wanted to be able to pass some of the family stories down to the grandchildren and other family members and wanted to learn the techniques to do that. A few other participants wanted to hone their journaling skills, but this writer was just hungry to learn more about writing.

In my past desire to write I never believed, and this belief was shared by other class members, that our lives were hardly interesting enough to be the main topic of a story. That concept was soon to change.

As Leonard began to teach, he guided the class through the techniques published writers use to develop their stories. As we applied those same techniques to our thoughts, our own stories began to unfold in an interesting and readable format. By our last session we had each read a published book of memoirs, a first for this writer, and developed a desire to read more. We learned to critique and be critiqued, we learned the various processes for editing and we learned a concept called finishing (which is just what the term implies.)

Marlene Stewart is a neighborhood resident and a recent visitor to St. Joan's. Her most passionate interest is writing. She also devotes time to being a co-chairman of the 3rd Ave. Neighborhood Block Club and enjoys traveling, reading and making crafts.

The thoughts of this writer, and I think I speak for the rest of the class, is that we felt a communal spirit amongst ourselves and other new writers. But more than that, as a result of this class, we made a unique spiritual and authentic connection to ourselves and to others and can now more readily see that truly everyone does have a story.

Amie Rankin, a resident of the Regina Neighborhood, believes strongly in balancing "community solutions" and "individual responsibility ". She is passionately committed to the exposure and the expansion of Companion Animals in our society. Employed full time with Chicago Title Insurance Company, Amie has many interests; photography is just one of them. "Heart," "Spark," "Spirit," -- whatever word we use for the mysterious force that animated us, its full potential cannot be realized in isolation. (Paul Loeb- SOUL OF A CITIZEN)