On moving and writing and coming home.

Aug 11, 2014 | Writing

This week we moved from our house of the past 13 years to a condo. Well, to say “this past week” wouldn’t really be true. Months of preparing. Months of work. Days of hard labor that have felt more like years. Hardly a simple process. It pushed all three of us to our limits and still required more. Various states of disarray. Boxes. Everywhere. At first, flat and hidden, then tripping hazards, then assembled. Next – painfully and endlessly – filled, taped shut, and stacked to the ceiling. And into them, so many memories, so much of the past, and every bit of the future – yet unspoken, but imagined, anticipated, and hoped-for.

Questions swirl. What memories will yet be created in this new space? With whom will I have conversation? Over what will I laugh and cry, celebrate and grieve? What relationships will form? Which ones will end? What will I know and experience? What will I write?

Writing. Oh, that.

Every day – for days on end – has been so packed, so full, so exhausting that writing has felt like a distant memory; something I used to know and do, but can’t quite place. It’s been overcome by details, by movers, by conversations with my daughters about leaving the only home they really remember, by more trips to Target than I care to count, by “yes, let’s just order pizza…again,” by a wonky internet connection, by cables and cords, by muscles so sore that all I can do is fall into bed and barely get back out of it the next morning.

There’s been no writing.

It strikes me that it hardly takes a move for this to be my reality. I’ve struggled with it lately – not feeling at home. And because, frankly, it’s way easier, to not write, I haven’t. The similarities to moving abound: hardly a simple process, pushing me to my limits, still requiring more…

Writing calls forth my willingness to allow various states of disarray. Writing requires that I box up what no longer works and take it to the dump. Writing challenges me to make space, to start fresh, to invite beauty. Writing compels me to sort through stories, ideas, and words that ask to be unpacked, honored, and given their proper place. Writing is, in and of itself, hospitality: providing food, shelter, and rest for all that longs to be let in, welcomed, and hosted. Writing is home. And creating home takes work.

It’s no wonder that I’ve felt displaced. I’ve not wanted to do that work. To unpack the boxes that are piled ceiling-high in the attics and basements of my own mind and heart. To do the work of unwrapping everything protected. To not know if once unpacked, unwrapped, and exposed anything of value will be worth staying in and with. In order to write, to create, to be “at home” I have to be willing to move.

This is what I’m musing about even this morning as I finally sit down at a new desk and look through a new window.

Moving. Freeing all that’s been boxed to decorate and dance and inspire at will. Pulling up deeply entrenched roots and putting down others. Letting old stories be reimagined in new spaces and new ways; making room for those that are yet to be told (and lived). Welcoming my truest self, my very soul with hospitality. Coming home.

May it be so.

(Not) throwing the baby out . . .

Jul 7, 2014 | Sacred Stories, Spirituality, Writing

When you grow up steeped in religion, attending church every Sunday, knowing Bible stories better than fairytales and hymns better than pop songs, it is difficult to extract yourself from such. I find it nearly impossible to hear words like Sacred, Spiritual, even God (let alone the concept, recognition, and experience of such) in any ways other than how they’ve been taught. I find it nearly impossible to not feel twisted, pulled, and confused; so deep the current of doctrine and dogma that flows within my mind and heart.

More times than not I want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Though this example is probably too strong, it’s like having been a member of Jim Jones’ congregation, drinking the Kool-Aid, and surviving. From that point forward your radar is off the charts around beverages. You have a hard time trusting that any liquid poured is safe, not a trick, and holds no ulterior motive whatsoever. You know that was a particular period of time, a particular set of circumstances, a particular world from which you walked away; but still, it haunts you – so inherent the lessons learned, the beliefs swallowed. It’s made even more complicated by the fact that there is such goodness within. (I’m not talking about Jim Jones anymore.) Relationships. Community. Tenets and beliefs that actually do make a difference. And stories. So many stories. A sea of them in which to float, be supported and strengthened by, to trust. I dare not throw it all out.

But what is the baby and what is the bathwater? How do I sift through years and years of belief that feel as though they’re part of my genetic coding, keep what I love and let go of the rest?

Here’s just one tiny example. God. It is difficult to hear that word, no matter how much intellectual and academic work I’ve done, in any ways other than my earliest understandings.

You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? The white bearded man in the sky who is able to create the world, destroy the world, plague a nation, part the seas, walk on water, bring the dead back to life, and an infinite host of other things. You don’t want to mess with him. You want to keep him happy. You want to make sure that you are following all of his rules, keeping all of his commands, and staying ever in his favor because when you do you can be assured goodness in the here and now and the sweet by-and-by. When you don’t? Well, that isn’t what you want to talk about, is it?

Though this paragraph sounds caustic, I don’t mean it that way. These are centuries old understandings that have served generations.

This God – believed in, known, and completely committed to – has offered and provided profound respite, perseverance, and strength. Miracles have occurred. People have changed. Worlds have changed. Truth-be-told, I have known miracles. I have been changed. My world has changed. You see? Baby and bathwater…

This is why I wrestle – endlessly and always. This is the tension. This is not merely my writing, my passion, my work; but my life’s journey. And there is no easy way out. Because even if I could let go of the God, I cannot let go of the women…

Or maybe it’s that they will not let go of me.

Eve. I become enraged, yet again, by shame’s hold. And I become profoundly determined, yet again, to pursue my desire no matter the risk or consequence.

Hagar. I become aware, yet again, of just want it costs to be a woman in a patriarchal world. And I am reminded, yet again, of what courage looks like, how the divine shows up, and that I will yet find water in my deserts.

The Woman at the Well. I become conscious, yet again, of how powerful shame’s hold can be. (Have I mentioned this?) And I am given carte blanche permission, even mandate, yet again, to honor my intellect, my wit, and the sacred (even god) who loves and honors this about me above all else.

The Woman in Revelation 12. I acknowledge, yet again, just how scary it is to create, to birth something/anything precious into this world, and to face the dragons (within and without) that threaten to consume and destroy. And I am reminded, yet again, of who I most truly am – even in the midst of my fear: powerful, regal, and magnificent – crowned with the sun, the moon at my feet.

And so many, many more…

These women, part of a text that is umbilically tied to (and tangled up with) religion, are the baby. I dare not throw them out. If it means I have to survive a little bathwater, I will.

More, the idea that these women and their stories do get thrown out (disregarded, ignored, misunderstood, misaligned), breaks my heart. I cannot bear it. I’ll drink the damn bathwater (and the Kool-Aid) if I must in order to help them remain alive, known, heard, valued.

It’s possible you’ve already thrown out the bathwater and the baby. You’ve deliberately, even defiantly walked away from the religion of your youth – or even adulthood. Or you’ve always sensed that the Kool-Aid was a ruse and have avoided it at all costs. I get this, believe me. And I respect you, deeply. So, it’s with great awareness of the dissonance created that I still and always invite you, even ask you to get wet. To trust that in even the most brackish of stuff there are stories worth saving. To believe that through the most unlikely of ways and the most unlikely of women that your story might be saved. And if nothing else, to believe me when I tell you that you are not alone.

Understand and experience it as you will, the fact remains that you are intimately companioned by the most amazing of women. Their blood flows in yours, their heart beats in yours, their voice is the one you hear within – that know-that-you know-that-you-know wisdom you dare not doubt, that sometimes whispers and often shouts. They are that real, that alive, and yes, that Sacred, that Spiritual, that Holy.

It is only when we reimagine and redeem the stories of women that we can reimagine and redeem our own. More, it’s the only way in which we can reimagine and redeem our world.

May it be so.

And come on in, the (bath)water’s fine. I promise.

Holding my Breath.

Jun 9, 2014 | Women's Voice & Power, Writing

I’ve been holding my breath lately. It’s a trying season as a mom. I feel heartache over a relationship’s end. And, not surprisingly, simultaneously, I struggle with my writing – with my very voice. (Isn’t that always the way of it?) Other voices do not, however, seem to struggle at all.

Instead, they seem to breed, proliferate, and increase in both intensity and volume. The ones who tell me I’m crazy for ever wanting or expecting anything else, any more, anything better, any goodness, grace, or love…I know they are ridiculous, of course, and I work to silence them. But they are persistent. Always attempting to pull me under.

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If you swim effortlessly in the deep oceans, ride the waves to and from the shore, if you can breathe under water and dine on the deep treasures of the seas; mark my words, those who dwell on the rocks carrying nets will try to reel you into their catch. The last thing they want is for you to thrive in your habitat because they stand in their atmosphere where they beg and gasp for some air.” ~ C. JoyBell C.

I remember reading one time that if you were ever caught in dangerous rapids and could not get yourself to shore, the best thing to do was to take yourself completely underwater. Apparently, underneath the surface, the water is smooth and calm. And once not being tossed about, you can swim more easily to a place of safety.

****************

I take a deep, deep breath: I’m going farther down, into the darkness. Dropping into the very things that attempt to hurt, frighten, threaten, overwhelm. Going way under the surface. Letting blessed darkness surround. Diving. Floating. Trusting the unknown. Trusting myself. And hanging out with mermaids.

This is where the Sacred Feminine abides,  where the Sacred Feminine shows up, where the Sacred Feminine resuscitates and restores. This is where I willingly, and yes, often counterintuitively descend. This is where I find what I have needed and longed for. This is where I can stop holding my breath.

For this is where I can breathe.

****************

Maybe you can relate to this whole holding your-breath thing. Maybe you feel stuck creatively, vocationally, or relationally. And/or maybe, just maybe, like me, even in the midst of all this, you feel pulled, lured and enticed even, to the darkness; under the surface; into deep seas; where the water is warm, still, and safe; where the mermaids play.

Here’s why: You and I are not merely human. We are far, far more; able to breathe underwater. Let’s go there together. You’ll see. It’s home. I’m sure of it.

“Human?’ The girl cocked her head the other way. I caught a glimpse of pink gills under her chin. ‘My sisters told me stories of humans. They said they sometimes sing to them to lure them underwater.’ She grinned, showing off her sharp needle-teeth. ‘I’ve been practicing. Want to hear?” ~ Julie Kagawa

A letter to myself

May 9, 2014 | Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom, Writing

Dear Me:

Exhaustion. I see it. It’s down deep, far beneath the surface. A weariness that comes from holding on to your passions, your principles, your desires, though not without cost. Clinging to what often feels like mist and shadow – evading you at every turn; dust in the wind.

The wind. I hear it. A sometimes hollow, aching wail that echoes through your soul. It catches on the jagged edges of grief and one-too many unmet expectations. The longing for a gentle breeze instead of gale-forces. Respite wanted: a spring, a well, a stream, an ocean. 

The ocean. It carries you. A mysterious and fluid world that’s compelled by the darkest moon. Waves that shuttle you to shore and leave you adrift – at least for a time; raw, exposed. Rushing back, they shock you with their salty cold. Every sandcastle washed away. Carried far, far from anything you’ve ever known. But still you float, still you journey, still you survive. Because you can see the horizon ahead – blazing like fire. 

Fire. It’s what you know best. A burning that will not cease, on-the-edge of painful, ever-present. Flames licking at the internal editors who tell you to be quieter, tamer, more predictable, less. Scorching through every hindrance, every tie that binds, every page or precept or Book that has told you what you must and must not do, must and must not say, must and must not believe. It’s a bonfire. One that has singed and suffered your kin for their inherent magic, their inherent wisdom, their inherent power. It’s no wonder you are fevered, disoriented, and uncertain whether you are hot or cold, sick or well, crazy or sane. 

Sanity. It’s what you possess. The madness you feel is the strongest evidence that you have never before been more balanced, more cogent, more aligned. Hang on. Hold tight. Don’t give in. Let the wind blow. Ride the waves. Fuel the fire. And go ahead: let everyone think you’re crazy. You can handle all of this and then some. I promise. 

Love, 

Me 

Speak the language women speak.

Feb 10, 2014 | My sort-of Sermons, Women's Voice & Power, Writing

“We must learn to speak the language women speak when there is no one there to correct us.” ~ Helene Cixous

You know this native tongue – its dialect, accent, and pace. You feel it building in your heart, cascading in your brain, and maybe even lodged in the back of your throat – threatening hoping to escape into an expression that soars. You can picture the very words of the sentence-paragraph-speech-essay-novella-masterpiece you long to bring forth – its brilliance and white-hot-heat irradiating every corner of your world. You can see the faces of those who will finally hear, finally see, and at last understand; who will finally and at last understand you.

Then what happens?

Silence falls.

I woke up this morning to a blanket of snow. 3-4 inches of pristine whiteness covering everything. I can see it out the windows that surround my desk. And as I type, it strikes me that this is rich (though painfully chilly) metaphor for a woman’s silence. A thick, muffling weight that descends. Maybe even beautiful to look at – for a while. Covering over and, at least for time, disguising the verdant, green, life-force underneath that yet beats, endlessly survives, and waits…

Oh, eventually you speak – or you don’t. If you do, it’s in a language that’s common, learned, and acceptable; that ruffles no feathers and sustains the equilibrium. If you don’t, that too is common, learned, and acceptable. Life goes on. No one is the wiser.

That’s not actually true. You are the wiser.

The silence is only external, for within the volume goes up, the clatter is nearly unbearable, and the cacophony rages. You have SO much to say, to express, to feel, to be.

And this is what we fear: that if we were to finally speak, what would come forth would be more like a scream at the top of our lungs. That our words would invite wounds (ours and potentially others’) beyond repair. That what we sense, what we feel, what we KNOW will not be heard or understood.

Speak the language women speak.

Can it be spoken everywhere and instantly grasped, accepted, embraced? Sadly, no. But does that make it less true, less necessary, less vital? Absolutely not! To start, find safe places where it can be expressed…and heard; later, you will not care. And soon, with unswerving determination, you will be unstoppable.

This is your native tongue: the fluent language of your dreams, your pen on the page and fingers on the keyboard, your art, your dancing, your wildest fantasies, your late-into-the-night conversations with a few select friends, your deepest longings, your very pulse.

You know what you think, what you see, what you understand, what you feel.  Unedited. Unrestrained. Unbound. Unbelievable. Unlimited. Uncorrected. Understood. No translation required.

Speak the language women speak.

Not just for yourself (though that, in and of itself, is beautiful and a lifetime’s-worth of significance). Do it for the rest of us. Remind us of our Mother Tongue. Inspire us toward tongues-unloosed, unfettered, and free. Tell your truth so we can be emboldened to do the same. We need to hear you speaking out. We need to see you rising up, taking names, and blazing trails.

Outside my windows, the snow has already started to melt.

May it be so.

*******************************

Believe me, I am not consistently successful in speaking the language women speak. But oh, how I have grown. Step-by-step. Inch-by-inch. Sometimes even word-by-word. And oh, how thankful I am that this is so. As I look back over the years I see the particularly icy places where to speak felt (and was) dangerous, treacherous, and slippery. Still, slowly, tentatively, and over time I did it anyway – holding on to hands past and present who steady me, hold me up, and keep me warm. And miraculously I was (and am) able to stay standing. The more this happens, the more I am able to risk. Costs have come…and will yet be. But the old(er) I get, the more it feels like privilege, responsibility, and legacy to speak anyway; to be brave and dauntless in my use of our Mother Tongue; to bring to life the too-long silenced voices of other women, to stand strong and tall as their daughter, their lineage, their kin.

Transforming Your Story (Part 1)

Jan 6, 2014 | Women's Wisdom, Writing

A transformed story is what I want for you: that you would see your life as story, step into it with the same intent and curiosity, and even more, go about writing/living it with passionate intention, desire, honesty, and hope.

Not surprisingly, it’s what I want for me, too.

And so, this series. 

Today, Part 1: What does it mean to Transform Your Story?

Here’s the short answer: You acknowledge that you’re in one in the first place!

To know and believe this to be true, to have it as the over-arching context through which you view your life, then gives you both the ability and privilege of transforming it. The longer answer is, as you might imagine, the remainder of this post.

To transform your story means that you are awake to and aware of the book in which you find yourself and the pages you are writing.

The Book: The larger story within which you find yourself – determined by all kinds of things: family of origin, gender, race, ethnicity, age, location, culture, religious tradition, cultural norms/morals/events, socio-economic status, world events, etc. You do not choose these aspects of your story. They are a given. And the more aware you are of them, the better able you are to understand why you respond in certain ways, why you’re drawn toward (or  repulsed by) particular people, philosophies, or systems of belief, even why you look and sound the way you do.

“Yes, that’s so,” said Sam. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the= old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkein, The Fellowship of the Ring

The Pages: Yours to write, to develop, to fill, to love. (And sometimes to scribble on, take a Sharpie to, or edit profusely.) Sentences to craft. Characters to shape. Dialogue to determine. Plot to build. Emotions to have. Feelings to express. Memories to heal. Dreams to dare. Hopes to express. You choose these aspects of your story. They are all yours. And the more you are aware of just how much creative license you have; how much freedom you have to choose the very particular and precise, or broad and sweeping ways in which you will write them (and live them, of course), the better.

Every person is born into life as a blank page — and every person leaves life as a full book. Our lives are our story, and our story is our life. Story is the narrative thread of our experience — not what literally happens, but what we make out of what happens, what we tell each other and what we remember. This narrative determines much of what we do with the time given us between the opening of the blank page the day we are born and the closing of the book the day we die. ~ Christina Baldwin, Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story

A brief example.

My book. A white woman, born in the U.S. in 1960, and growing up in a middle-class, Presbyterian-church-going home with 2 siblings, 2 parents, and some occasional pets. WAY more between the lines, but just these elements, by their very nature – and undetermined by me – determine a whole bunch of the story that is mine.

My pages. How I view these particulars, how they have shaped me, how I allow them to continue to do so or the very specific ways in which I make different and distinct choices. My responses. My resentments. My growth. My change. The pages are what I determine; what I’m writing/living.

To ignore the parts of my story that were not by choice, is short-sighted. To think that every aspect of my life is up to me, is arrogant. I need a way to recognize, allow for, and most importantly accept my context, my givens: the book in which I find myself. But to stop here is dangerous. To believe that nothing is within my control and that I can only work with the cards I’ve been dealt is, of course, depressing if not fatalistic. What I do with my reality, my story is up to me: the pages on which I write.

In every story there is a fine line between chance and choice, will and destiny, deliberateness and the hand of the Divine. And this is the stuff of great story, beautiful story, passionate story; the kind of story we love.

The same is true in yours and for you. To know where each of these elements are present, to accept responsibility and allow for grace – this is the stuff of your great story, your beautiful story, your passionate story. A story you love.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that to go on living I have to tell stories, that stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world. ~ Dorothy Allison