Oranges & Advanced Writing

Seniors in Maya Kehr Yoder’s Advanced Writing class took some time outside to work on adding sensory detail to their writing. Students spent time observing the space around them and wrote descriptions of what they experienced using all five senses. Then, they slowly peeled and ate an orange and were asked to describe the experience as if this were their first time encountering an orange. We then shaped our favorite lines into a class poem (see below). In all of these writing exercises, the class also explored the idea of being present in your writing as a holy moment.

“For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them.” -C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters