A room of our own
Read the main article, "Peer power"
The four of us women have a room of our own. One wall is all fireplace and mantle and built-in bookshelves, and another is fitted with clean glass panes overlooking rain falling on mossy woods. Behind me, the open floor plan puts our dirty breakfast dishes on display; to my left, a tapestry covers an impressive portion of the wood paneling. Each of us is curled on a couch with a book or a laptop. Two of us have babies in our laps, having mastered the art of rocking a child while typing a sermon.
Our clergy writing group has been meeting on a mostly monthly basis for the last year, and we are on retreat in a borrowed Lake Michigan cottage. We normally gather in church libraries and for the occasional family potluck, but this time we actually pulled off an overnight retreat—and we're delighted. Our elementary schoolchildren are home with their fathers, and our preschoolers are in another wing of the house being entertained by the babysitter we brought along. We have everything we might possibly require to write: a quiet space, plenty of food, a trustworthy nanny, a wireless connection and, perhaps most important, one another.
