One Single Spark

Noticing and sharing what’s igniting our imaginations

Hello Joy Risers,

Before I launched issue #1 here back in July, I noticed an idea for community connection tugging on my sleeve. I jotted it down in my notebook. I mentioned it in my first Chat thread here to celebrate having 100 of you here (thank you!). But this idea is still asking me for more space and air time to be its own thing. So, as I/we explore what the Chat function on Substack might become for The Joy Rise, it feels like the right time to give this idea its own air and see if it takes flight.

One Single Spark is the name of a Chat thread for paid subscribers on The Joy Rise where, starting today, I’m regularly going to invite you to pop in and share what you’re noticing is igniting your imagination, whatever that may be. Something grand, enormous, life-changing, sure. But equally and perhaps more likely for us all, something small that you notice purely because it catches fire in your heart and, in the chaotic blur and churn of our days, asks us to stop and pay attention.

Whatever you choose to share doesn’t need to be lengthy or comprehensive etc. It doesn’t need to be well-written or perfect - imperfection and mess is welcome. Your spark doesn’t need to have deep meaning or sense. Sometimes the things and moments that brings us awe, wonder, sustenance, fascination defy understanding.

This is an invitation to simply notice and share here something that caused a flare of light in your chest - one  single spark that’s caught your heart and whispered to your sense of creativity: pay attention, there may be kindling here. In the powerful and far-reaching words of William Blake, we become what we behold.

As a part of what I offer paid subscribers to The Joy Rise, my hope for this Chat thread is to create an interactive and engaging community nook on our phone / tablet / computer that is, unlike so much of what we might absorb through our screens, a collective refuge for our imaginations and creative thinking. With this invitation in mind, maybe  we’ll start to notice things that we haven’t before. Maybe paying attention to what sparks a flame inside will surprise us. Enliven us. Connect us. Kickstart a creative project that's calling to us. And, maybe most of all, enable us to experientially believe we each carry our own fire, and how it might illuminate in our lives if we tend it.

You cannot, you cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.

- AUDRE LORDE

To start, this is my One Single Spark from the last week: