Transforming Your Story (Part 2)

Feb 3, 2014 | My sort-of Sermons, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom

Did you miss Part 1? Click here.

Today, Part 2: Why would you want to Transform Your Story?

When I say “Transform Your Story” I don’t mean long for someone else’s. Nor do I mean that you apply massive (and usually unproductive) effort to somehow manufacture the plot, the setting, and even the tall-dark-and-handsome-stranger who sweeps you off your feet. (I’m right there with you…)

Here’s what I mean:

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.

So if that’s the “what,” we need a compelling “why.”

Consider Alice in Wonderland. She finds herself in a wacky, amazing world that we realize is actually a dream. But she’s awake within it – living it, engaged in it, actively taking part. And in such, even in such a fantastical place, her bigger story, her truer story is being transformed. In the recent movie version (which I love) she says this:

“From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole I’ve been told where I must go and who I must be. I’ve been shrunk, stretched, scratched, and stuffed into a teapot. I’ve been accused of being Alice and of not being Alice but this is my dream. I’ll decide where it goes from here.”

The “why” of Transforming Your Story is that you are not Alice in Wonderland, lost in an upside-down world (even if it feels like that at times).

The “why” of Transforming Your Story is that you are no longer willing to be shrunk, stretched, scratched, or stuffed anywhere, least of all a teapot!

The “why” of Transforming Your Story is because you can.

The “why” of Transforming Your Story is because no one can tell you you can’t.

The “why” of Transforming Your Story is that you have volition, will, agency, and straight-up decision-making ability about what’s going on in your own life!

The “why” of Transforming Your Story is that it is a self-empowerment tool beyond any other in existence. There is no stronger or more definitive way in which to step fully, boldly, and passionately into your life.

The “why” of Transforming Your Story is because it matters; because you matter. It’s yours for the writing, yours for the living, all yours, all the time.

I’d like to say this, as well: The “why” of Transforming Your Story is because I said so! But alas, what I say on this topic doesn’t ultimately matter. What you say does. And that’s the most important “why” – over and over and over again. All of this is up to you.

So perhaps the best way to say it is to tweak Alice’s words just the slightest bit: This is your story. You’ll decide where it goes from here.

May it be so.

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

Inspiration Incarnate

Feb 26, 2013 | Writing

I used to believe that the words, verses, chapters, and books of Scripture were composed by God – the writer’s hand merely the conduit for Divine Script.

All Scripture is God-breathed . . . ~ 2 Timothy 3:16a

Now I know them to be a human (albeit, inspired) attempt to sustain an oral tradition of signifocant narratives that defined a particular people within a particular culture within a particular time.

We write to remember our nows later. ~Terri Guillemets

Still, I wish I could return to my earlier belief. Maybe it’s the mystery. Maybe it’s the miraculous. Maybe it’s allowing for and trusting in something larger, something more powerful, Something, Someone, God.

And maybe, no, most definitely, it’s because I long for the same: I want my writing, my creativity, my articulated, expressed heart to be God-breathed.

Divine inspiration, please!

The work-work-work of writing can be tedious, to be sure, and often uninspired. In such times, the idea of a muse, a dæmon or genius, a creative sprite who inhabits me, even if only temporarily, and imbues me with mystery, miracle, and brilliant prose, sounds heavenly.

I ever wish for a Divine hand that can make sense of my jumbled thoughts, my tumbling heart, my endless hope, my cycling doubt. And to remind myself that I’m not crazy, I watch, yet again, Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on the elusive creative genius. Her words are like communion wine: exactly the warming libation I need to press on; to be reminded that it is in the act and art of writing that I am connected to something larger, something more powerful, Something, Someone, God.

No matter what I believe (or don’t), here’s what I know: I want to dwell-without fighting in the mystery and miracle of text – sacred and my own. I want to be Divinely touched, through its stories and the writing of my own. I want to feel the igniting spark of the Divine flow through me, onto the keyboard, into my computer, and out to the world.

I also know this: the battle is epic. There are more days than not in which my angels and demons are at war with one another, in brain and heart. And truth-be-told, the demons often have the edge. I am tempted to despair, to doubt that anything worthwhile will ever move from my oft’ tormented brain into form or function, meaning or manuscript.

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell whether he knows it or not. ~ Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

And then – mysteriously and miraculously – explainable as nothing other than God’s grace, I am reminded that I am not alone; that all creatives throughout all of time have fought the same fight and suffered the same wounds – maybe most certainly even those who wrote the Texts we now understand as the Divinely inspired Word of God. And that makes me feel a little bit better, breathe a little easier, and head back to the words imbued in that Text and the ones I form, create, collate, and offer.

Lastly (at least for now), I wonder if we are not, at least in part, that muse, that sprite, that hope and inspiration for one another. Because, of course, we are the carriers of the Divine Spark and the Divine Story. Our voices and hearts on behalf of one another are the very thing that remind us – whether writers or not – that our voices and our very selves matter.

We are inspiration incarnate.

Still and always a writer . . .

Feb 7, 2013 | Writing

Just one quick phone call and my entire week’s schedule unexpectedly, miraculously, and graciously cleared. Upon hanging up, the very first thought that went through my mind was, “Ahhhhhh, writing.”

And yet, I struggle. My mind looks for nearly any glimmer of resistance, any shiny object, any distraction it can possibly find. 

I am, at once, distracted, impassioned, committed, flighty, determined, insecure, prolific, stuck, compelled. I am a writer.

Elegance & Crudeness

Feb 4, 2013 | Spirituality, Writing

A quickly-composed and deeply-felt post in the middle of my day…

Despite all obstacles placed in my way, many of which I erected myself, I am writing today.

I am writing about the Divine Feminine.

My history in regards to such, misconceptions that abound, and ways in which She is experienced both within and without. I am writing about my own religious tradition and the ways in which even the uttering of Her name would have well been understood as heresy from the pit of hell. I am writing about the ways in which that has confused me for so many years. And I am writing about how my movement toward Her has invited me into expansiveness, empowerment, and faith beyond-compare.

As I write, I have been reflecting on words spoken by artist and activist Callahan McDonough:

“I look for that balance of elegance and crudeness in my work and the daily reference in the ‘doing’ of the work. My desire is for my work to be experienced out in the world, to make a difference that touches people’s lives.”

Yes, this.

There is a balance of both elegance and crudeness in writing. Even more, in life. When I allow for both, I then extend myself grace and forgiveness. When I allow for both, I am compelled to higher levels of creativity without incessant second guessing. When I allow for both, I find myself in a place where darkness does not overcome light, nor does shadow or resistance overwhelm.

I am writing today. About some of the hardest things: my own story, my own doubts, my own fears. But in each, allowing confidence and doubt, hope and despair, and yes, elegance and crudeness; the jumble of emotions, talents, insecurities, and stories that are me.

Oh, that we would live our lives in such a place: aware of the elegance and crudeness innate in us all – allowing for both and calling forth ever-more. What might we yet create? What might we yet imagine? What might we yet birth?

Yes, this: birth. The primary and original place in which elegance and crudeness coexist. The primary and original place in which women bring forth their innate and particular power. The primary and original place in which miracles occur and the Divine Feminine makes herself known. The primary and original place in which God is made manifest in the world. Elegant. Crude. Beautiful.

I’ll take more of that, please.