☀️ Test your wings with this makeshop series!
A few seats still left!
This is a special announcement for The Raft, the online community of author Phyllis Cole-Dai.
☀️ Test your wings with this makeshop series!
Join me and other Rafters for “Conversing with the Birds,” a contemplative makeshop series inspired by Maria Popova’s Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days. Each card in Popova’s wondrous deck pairs a bird portrait with one of her own luminous poems “about love and friendship, about uncertainty and possibility, about fear and resistance and the capacity for change.” Each pairing of bird and text offers not answers but an invitation to make meaning.
At each gathering, we’ll draw a card from the deck, respond by contemplating and creating, then bear witness to one another’s making with curiosity and gratitude.
For more details, see “The Heart of Our Practice” below.
A sample card from the deck:
Read more about Almanac of Birds here. You don’t need to purchase the deck for our makeshop—though it’s so beautiful, you may want one. It’s available here, sometimes at a considerable discount.
☀️ Here’s the full scoop
WHAT: A makeshop series based on Maria Popova’s Almanac of Birds
FOR WHOM: Any Rafter who wants to “make” in any genre or medium, at any stage in their creative journey. Rafters must consent to the Makeshop Covenant below.
WHEN: Three-month series, meeting biweekly on Thursday, 7-8:30PM ET. Dates: 9/10, 9/24, 10/8, 10/22, 11/5, 11/19.
WHERE: Zoom. I’ll provide a single Zoom link to use for all gatherings and also send reminders.
REGISTRATION:
Limited to 12 Rafters. Seats available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Registration open until full.
Secure your spot now! Click the button below or follow this link.
YOUR CONTRIBUTION: $120. We tend to invest ourselves more seriously in what we pay for. If this amount is a hardship, contact me (phyllis@phylliscoledai.com). No refunds.
Raft patrons: enjoy 10% off the registration fee by entering code ILOVERAFTING at checkout.
To register on my website, click the button. Offer good until space fills.
☀️ The heart of our practice
This group won’t be a critique group or a craft class. We will make freely—not to improve, impress, or perform, but for the sheer joy of making. Along the way, we may be surprised by what the process reveals to us.
At each gathering, we’ll draw a card from Popova’s deck and respond contemplatively as a group. Then each of us will spend time creating in conversation with the bird image, Popova’s poem, or the resonance between them. We’ll work in whatever medium calls to us: writing poetry, journaling, collaging, painting, sketching, songwriting . . . Finally, we’ll share what we have created, honoring what emerges among us.
Sharing will always be optional. Whatever you share will be received as a gift.
We’ll also leave room for quiet, trusting that creativity often begins in and is nurtured by attentive silence.
Between gatherings, you may continue developing whatever you’ve begun, if you wish—not as homework, but simply to carry the conversation forward.
☀️ Our makeshop covenant
By registering for this series, we commit …
1. To showing up. In other words, we’re reasonably sure we can attend each gathering. We understand that life happens—major life events, illness, unavoidable appointments, and so on. But we will do our best to be present.
2. To being attentive, curious, and kind.
3. To listening more than we speak.
4. To refrain from offering feedback or advice, or from shifting attention away from another member’s making toward our own.
5. To expressing, as bravely as we’re able, whatever feels true for us.
6. To holding the disclosures of other members in full confidence.
☀️ My hope is that during this series,
our conversations with Popova’s birds and poems—
and with one another—
will deepen our practice of creative living.
☀️ I’d love to have you join me for this special makeshop series! Won’t you come?
