When life rattles my timbers and storms down hurting so hard
that my peace gets swallowed up in mudslides of un-helpful thinking,
it’s become just shy of muscle memory, this practice,
that throws open the windows of my heart
and lets the bad air out.
It started years ago while driving down the road with my husband,
the silence between us thick with a heavy worry.
I squeezed hard on the wheel and breathed aloud “tell me something good.”
He laughed and offered something – I don’t remember what.
Then I dug in and hurled into the space another something true – something balm to my heart.
Out louder – back and forth – we lobbed truth until the atmosphere
shifted and our thoughts settled into a clearwater place.
It became a thing,
sprung up maybe from a practice I’d been cultivating
of having a sit with God over whatever was brewing in my brain.
I’d get quiet, drop down to that still place inside, and begin to write out
whatever bubbled up from the deep.
Sometimes what landed on the page felt like gift and gold;
going back over the pages years later still feels like superfood for my soul.
So I have a big love for this practice.
Most of what I write comes from this place.
(big distinction between this rivery process and toxic positivity,
which feels like death
and doesn’t seem to grow a thing.
Like malnourished dirt.)
Been growing up in my garden these past years
and feels ripe and ready to harvest.
I want to tell you something good,
to splash hope and healing all over bites of art soaked in love
and send them straight to the heart of you
where coals of hope may need breeze to flow brisk across the embers
until you’re standing up taller inside yourself,
and feeling more seen, more included,
more brave in your breathing
for the deepest and dearest that you dare to dream.
Oh how I want to acknowledge you,
to tap into the big and seeing Love that sings over you sweet
and let it pass through my paints and pens and poetry,
then pass you the love-note
across the great big wide.
To let it land in your box like a gift from your future
calling back that the view from up ahead
is something that you’re gonna want to see
so lean into the wind
and hold tight to
the Love –
that you’re held,
and valued
and seen.
To hold the door for you to feel it, bones and breath,
that this Love is looking and listening
to the faintest thought and thump of your heart;
that there’s no indifference to your place and pain.
To pass a note of warm embrace
and to hold space for the journey that is exactly and only yours.
With love and celebration.
(happy whisper)
Tell Me Something Good
– also the title of my book in the works
and looks to be available by Christmas.
“First I would write for you a poem
to be shouted into the teeth of a strong wind.”
– Carl Sandburg
I’m offering up these Tell Me Something Good bundles in my etsy shop,
and in a giveaway this week;
leave a comment and you’re in the hat:)
I’ll be sending a bundle out to Rebecca this week from last post’s drawing – geesh sorry it’s taken so long!
Always thanks for coming around and acknowledging.
I appreciate your presence here.
It’s the walls I hate the most
as we head deeper into the tangle of briars that is this season
of lines drawn hard and stories and hearts left unpacked in the corners
where we may polarize and hide
because it doesn’t feel safe right now to show our underbellies.
As if we weren’t already lonely enough.
All the sharp biting can make it feel too dangerous to be honest online,
and that fear can spill right across the table in real time where we actually gather.
As if connection may be easily severed.
Un-knowing each other so hard only grows our sense of isolation,
and when you feel unheard,
a deep lonely can set in strong.
I love the way Brene’ Brown describes this experience:
“I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve called Steve from the road and said,
‘I’ve got the lonely feeling.’ It’s not unusual for Ellen or Charlie to say,
‘I don’t like that restaurant. It gives me the lonely feeling,’ or ‘Can my friend spend the night here?
Her house gives me the lonely feeling.’
When the four of us tried to drill down on what the lonely feeling meant for our family,
we all agreed that we get the lonely feeling in places
that don’t feel alive with connection.“
My daughter used to call it the Sunday night feeling,
and I think as a nation we’re cultivating it like a well-worked orchard.
Miles of barbed wire and disconnect grow the now-thriving acres of lonesome.
How can we be love in all this crazy?
We work and pray for systemic change in the long game, yes,
but we bring healing into the fray every opportunity we get
during those moments when we find ourselves offended.
Right before the fight or flight kicks in,
each time our soul breaks out in hives
and we feel compelled to slam a door….
…in just that hair-trigger jolt,
before up come our defenses, our posturing, our pride,
we can (big breath)
go
low
and instead of rising up ready to battle or bolt
we choose to maybe e-a-s-e open some space to listen and better know
the human, the heart
and the hope.
We could be addicted to closure,
to feeling clear and correct and certain,
and we humans can make stuff up if necessary – whatever narrative we need to hold –
so that we feel like we’ve got this thing handled
on the moral high ground
and have wrangled into our journey some sense of control
on this huge spinning dizzying ball.
I believe it’s possible to do this season from a more spacious place –
that we can hold our beliefs and opinions strong and with courage,
examined and curious and unashamed,
and also hold also brave space for connection.
That each time we feel the prickle of offense,
instead of throwing up walls,
we
can
lean
instead
into having an awkward sit in that uncomfortable place
of listen-and-slow-your-breath-down,
holding space for: “I don’t see or agree,
but will work to understand, to offer acceptance,
and hold space for where you land.
I won’t judge you, won’t fear you,
will acknowledge your value and worth.
I honor you as more than your affiliation.
You’re included, you’re welcome, you’re heard.
Oh God I want to not give my ego what it’s hungry for,
to un-satisfy it’s demand be large and in charge.
I want to choose an open heart, an uncertain path, and a big wide love lit bright.
Still baby-stepping and re-learning and willing to change
through the long of this hard day’s night.
“Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant.”
“You cannot shame or belittle people into
changing their behaviors.”
– Brene’ Brown
Pride assumes
Creativity wonders.”
– Stephen Roach
Congrats to Lisa Moreland – your name popped up in the giveaway this post;
I’ll be sending your print along to you – with a whole lot of love.
This week I want to give away a new handmade journal
Leave a comment and you’re in the hat!
Sometimes the grief sits so low in my voice
that I can only lift one finger slow to say thanks
and I must,
must let it twitch breath enough
into the heavy
until my heart starts to rise
to meet the moment
so that my life,
doesn’t close down
in a silence
that can
sink
me
if
I
don’t
grab hold the line
that the gratitude tosses me.
It’s in the thank you that the wind begins to fill me again,
gives me fresh eyes to see again the kind heart thumping grace into places grown thin.
Here I’ve landed tonight and I want to share this safe place I’ve pulled into for my soul to park
while healing prayers rise.
Feel free to share the space and rest here with me
giving thanks for
~ the big rip – the yanking off of this social band-aid
in not allowing us to cover over the wound any longer
with our hasty bandages,
grateful even for the howl of pain that shakes us to either look up and deal
or acknowledge that we choose to diminish
a bleeding human heart
(multitudes of them).
~ For leaders who get down on their knees
to scoop up the tears of the brokenhearted
and walk alongside to protect their voices,
even when those leaders must rise to protect the peaceful
in order that their voices not be
de-legitimized
by those who’ve gotten lost in the pain.
~ for voices that heal,
that respect our humanity even at our most broken.
Who refuse to demonize, to de-humanize – who hold fiery prayerful vigil in their hearts
for the right, for the left, for our leadership,
for people of color, for people who are white, for the oppressed
and for their oppressors.
For those who will not hate even though it cost them.
~ For those who keep a loving foot on each side of the political chasm.
For the bridge-builders,
the peace-makers
who perch that brave spot of tension
and reject assumption
in order to deeply listen.
Who are breaking up with being driven by agenda.
~ for
“I don’t know.”
“Help me understand.”
“Tell me more.”
” Keep talking. I’m not going anywhere. Still here. I’m listening.”
~ for every prayer rising
for leadership,
for solution,
for healing change.
~ For every heart that refuses to stop breathing hope
even when you lose it again and again.
God, it’s so brave to hope again.
To defy disappointment and
take on hope
like a boat going down
in a storm of mercy.
And while I’m grateful also for wildly green ferns carpeting the forest floor
and the first little cucumber sliced warm into my salad
I will keep this back right now in this space
and sit instead with my white heart open to listen and learn
what my privilege may have not let me see.
“Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men.
It is the refusal to defeat any individual.
When you rise up to the level of love, of it’s great beauty and power,
you seek only to defeat evil systems.
Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love,
but you seek to defeat the system
…..inject within the very structure of the universe the very strong and powerful element
of love.”
– Martin Luther King
(from his sermon “Loving your Enemies”)
Barbara Shallue, your name came up from the hat – big grin to send you some love.
One more giveaway this week – fresh new journal to share
Leave a comment and your name is in.
During these days of strange things
I’ve fallen deeper in love with creativity,
with that thing that draws us into collaboration with God,
for the way it goes like flutter and flight and drift and wings
that spirits through the fingers of strangling things,
to that free-at-last feeling of s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g out cramped ways
been folded up tight too long.
That there’s no bottom to this bucket,
no scarcity to this well,
that it’s endless flowing fountain
even when we’re blocked or can’t seem to tap in,
it’s worth wooing, worth investing in, worth cultivating wholehearted
until it bubbles up and breaks through as we lean in thirsty
and wait with open hands.
I’m learning more to be tender with my creativity, as if with a bird on my shoulder
that I’m mindful not to fluster or fritter away
on worry or numbing or energetic drains
but to respect, to steward like this amazing inheritance
that I dare not waste on catastrophizing or blame.
These are days to re-imagine,
to deep-dive to see what may could be
and I feel as if I’m turning the whole weight of my being into wooing
this costly friendship with Spirit
to go a little more weightless in that place where solution gets born
where unfettered things set their wings
and ride fierce and soft and surrendered
this sweet wild holy air.
“That cannot be.
Unless it could!”
– from Alice in Wonderland
Big grin to Gwen Lily that your name jumped up in the drawing;
go on over to my etsy shop (on sidebar) and pick out a journal and I’ll send it right out to you.
I want to give another away this week – these are turning out so much better now that I’ve
ironed out some glitches and I’m loving the making!
I hope the sparkle I felt while creating them lingers long on the pages:)
Leave a comment and you’re in the hat for next week.
(Every page, for me, is poetry and prayer
that solution gets born in fierce and freeing ways
in leadership for change in every nook and cranny of this world)
Just a little offering
because I want to show up
even thought my shaky places need to wait this week out
so that I have headspace enough for this stormy season with my Dad
who has been in and out of emergency rooms and surgery
in a heavy-hit city,
back and forth in his own crisis during these strange weeks and
I’ve felt vulnerable and exposed and scared to tears at times,
especially as we pick him up from hospital and lean in to support him at home.
So, no, I’m not eyes-wide-shut to the pain and stress happening
in hospitals and homes.
I have thoughts and will cobble together what’s stirring in my spirit
when I can sit slower in the light.
Just this. Still this: I believe in beauty more – in the powerful, life-giving
brave and badass glory of a bigger and heftier Hope.
That’s where my heart makes camp,
even when I feel fragile and fried.
I’ll be back next week with a bouquet of better words:)
“Hold tight the hand that reaches for yours in the storm.”
– I don’t know who originally wrote this.
I penned it in an old journal without quotation marks or name – maybe it’s mine?
My apologies to the author if it isn’t me:)
I’ll be sending a new handmade art journal and some handwritten love
and goodies to Candace Flanagan this week (i added comments from fb to the drawing).
She is dear to me and I’m excited to draw my friend’s name.
Gonna take a little break from the giveaway this week
until I feel less frazzled in the fray.
Love and sweet grace to you all.
Sharing some of the fresh doors dancing open
during a time when fear and grief rattle the windows.
Some pickings from my gratitude garden:
~ For the sweet taste of clean in the city air.
~ That it feels as if my life has stopped hemorrhaging busyness
and if Springtime has ever been this deeply beautiful before
I sure was zipping past some of the aroma.
~ For the re-think of every little thing I think I need from the store.
The resourceful stretch of that pause.
And also the thrill of need met – the absolute joy
of chives from the garden and that bar of soap from my camping bag.
~ The slow-down and re-center of
don’t lose yourself in the news,
be concerned but not consumed.
and listen deep for Truth instead of blindly buying what they’re selling.
~ Painted pages drying like prayer flags on the clothesline.
~ The sweetness of moms and dads in the forest
with their kids kicking rocks and stacking stones
and laughing with the river as she sings them her wild songs.
It does my heart good to see un-busy kids
soaking up their lessons.
And dear memories stirred of the childhood I gave my own.
(way imperfect but with stones and stories and moss and breezes – lots)
~ the re-visit to unpack and wield some of the tools
I gained while learning how to grieve well –
the holding of paradox with one wing stretched wide with the pain
and one wing stretched wide with celebration of the beauty,
the beauty that always pulses in every sorrow.
The fresh inspire to stretch wider those wings.
Because flying.
~ The fresh ache of love when we can’t be there to hold and help
my Dad in hospital,
the fresh courage mustered to pick him up and take him home,
again and again,
to settle and see to his care while all of us so exposed,
feeling so vulnerable to the dragon that breathes fire
and how sharp the aliveness becomes
when uncertainty looms so large.
~ For good-smelling things like cinnamon and cilantro and hamburgers on the grill.
(I shall hate the smell of Lysol until I die)
~ The bigger, slower chunks of time to build something new,
to brave new paths,
find fresh ways,
and see with clearer eyes.
To defy. To shatter. To dare in a new direction.
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life
and find that I lived just the length of it.
I want to have lived the width of it as well.”
– Diane Ackerman
Congratulations to Jeanie of Marmalade Gypsy – we drew your name for the giveaway this week!
I’ll be sending your package along post haste.
With well washed hands.
Offering up another giveaway this week – this time a cute little purse or backpack sized art journal;
these have become my favorites -so eclectic and inspiring
Leave a comment and I’ll plunk your name in the hat to draw next Wed for a little love bomb.
Be well and brave, friends.