Hello friends! I’m on holiday for a week. If you get lonely for me you can find me at BlogHer or maybe over at Minti for some parenting advice; or there’s always some nice archived pieces in my Top 7 of ‘07. See you when I get back!

A dreamboard with milagros from Artchix Studios and lyrics from The Decemberists The fortune cookie paper at the top says, “Your curiosity may mean your success.’

Over at Suzie’s Sacred Space, Miss Suze has once again invited people to make a Dreamboard. Using the Full Moon as a reason to focus, and images and colors as a means to communicate, people join Suzie every month to make their dreams a little more concrete and to offer them up to — well– to God/ess, The Universe, their own internal strength and Divinity…(It’s flexible…you get the idea.)

This is my first dreamboard, made on the only painfree afternoon I’ve had in a fortnight. Realistically, I should have made something envisioning health. But instead I followed The Muse deep into my six month obsession with the lyrics of a song–determined that, somehow, I Was Meant for the Stage.

I don’t know precisely what this means, but I am very curious. Is it as simple as my newfound longing to sing and play at some small open mic for my 40th birthday? Or is it more subtle — maybe something about teaching and preaching again someday? I’m not sure.

All I know is that when I watch Alanis impart wisdom to the crowds, I weep at the wonder of it. And when I speak into my microrecorder for some tiny podcast, my heart soars. And that in addition to my longing to write, and write, and write some more; another lover stands patiently in the shadows. He looks like a mic-stand and a stool, and the dimmed lights of a room full of listeners. And in my better moments, when the pain and strain of day to day life makes way for dreaming and vision, I know in that strange clear stillness, that “I was born to raise these hands with quite all around me.”

So here it is, for what it’s worth, for God and the Universe. Amen, may it be so.

What are you dreaming into reality? Write it in the comments below, or make a dreamboard and link us up to it. Watch for an interview with Suzie this Monday or next in my weekly column at BlogHer.com.

I know I’ve been on a bit of a depressive bent lately, but I’m a big fan of being in the moment, and this is the moment right now. Hang in there with me. We’ll turn the corner eventually.

If you are mourning some loss in your life — a loved one, your own youth, your health, a dream unfullfilled–these books could give you some companionship for the journey. And as always, please add your own good resources in the comments. Shalom.

The cover from my current journal, made with a postcard of Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist”–my personal icon of mourning.

I am coming to the realization that I have two functional weeks a month. Otherwise the pain level is too severe. I can’t write well when I’m this foggy.

For awhile there, for a beautiful hopeful season, I was in better remission and I had most of the month free and clear. But now, it’s back to just two weeks. If it gets worse, if it gets to be more than this, I’ll have to fly home and see my super special Dr. Woo-Woo and get back on top of this. You all have to hold me accountable to this okay? If I’m out of it more than two weeks a month you have to say, “Rachelle, it’s worth the money. Fly home. Spend a week or two on Dr. Lewis’ treatment table.”

Chronic pain is such a complex creature. It is a large part of your life, but it is not your life. It is a big part of you, but it is not who you are. Living within those paradoxical realities is challenging, perhaps as challenging as figuring out the physical bits and pieces of it–the medicines and the food allergies and the exercise and sleep needs and all the more attainable nuts and bolt-ness of it all.

I’ve wanted to write something about this for while. Something like Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Lament of a Son which not a self-help book, but the author’s story about the death of his son. The telling itself though, is helpful. The telling itself is the companionship for the journey.

In the beautiful children’s book Frida, the author says “she turned her pain into something beautiful.” I’d like to do that. I’d like to tell true things – stories that are also helpful.

I don’t know why I always leap to the idea of a book, when clearly articles and essays are my most natural length. (I just get so distracted by sparkly things, and without a real deadline I skip from project to project. This is not a boon to my agent.) At any rate, maybe an article would be more reasonable here….maybe something for The Sun. I have a couple little bits that might turn into something. This one for instance, or this artsy bit here, or here. Or maybe these more practical stories. And then there is what I wrote this morning, based on an image that came to me while I was doing Shavasana on the living room floor:

I offer this pain to you on a gilt platter.
No, held aloft in a silver bowl.
I give it to you coiled, or swirling and boiling.
A dark depth. An oily surface.

What will you do then,
with this pain that drains from the trinity of my eyes and the bridge of my nose?
What will you make of this dark offering?

Play us out Sister Alanis.

That’s my daughter in the water….

It’s been a long week folks: migraine, insomnia, a lack of writing time, homesickness. On weeks like this, hell, on just one day like this, I need a fistful of these tunes to keep me where the light is. You can watch them all in a row here (except for Hothouse Flowers, which I couldn’t find.) I hope one or two of them give you sustenance and joy this weekend.

Do you have a song that gets you through the tough spots? Got a list of *8 over at your place? Link ‘em in the comments, pretty please!

1) Gravity, John Mayer

2) These Streets, Paolo Nutini
(brought to me by Dreamer Girl)

3) Yahweh, U2

4) Strange and Beautiful, Aqualung

5) It Will Be Easier in the Morning, Hothouse Flowers

6) Light and Day, Polyphonic Spree

7) I Was Meant for the Stage, The Decemberists

8) We Crawl, Polyphonic Spree

Other *8: about, I Believe

This splash is dedicated to Miss Jenny, who’s holding grief and hope in the same small hand. Thank you Jenny, for reminding us all of the healing power of FUN!

They exist without permission.
They are hated, hunted and persecuted.
They live in quiet desperation amongst the filth.
And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilisations to their knees.

If you are dirty, insignificant and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.
-Banksy, Wall and Piece

Street rats are not pets. They are not white and fluffy. They do not purr. There is an evolutionary pecking order that says things that live in garbage heaps do not get to come indoors. We ascribe to this, most of us; we follow the wisdom of survival. We succeed.

The teacher I love says:

“Fuck it. Fuck the pecking order. Put it on its head. The first shall be last. The last shall be first. The street rats will reveal wisdom to the bichon frises.”

(It’s a loose translation.)

This is who we are supposed to be paying attention to—those who society views as rats—to the dirty and the disenfranchised, to the unwelcomed and the unwanted. We think we are called to be with these who live on the uncouth edges of our metropolis because they need us–because we of the 9-5 paycheck and the college degree have the method and the means to bring them out of the sewers and into the light.

But the truth is, we need them. The truth is, we need each other.

I have these friends Deborah and Ken. They are a generation ahead of me, wise elders with children my own age. Ken and Deborah have been pastors for years now, at least a decade, maybe two. When they started it was all about name-it-and-claim: church buildings the size of basketball stadiums and prosperity gospel paving their way with streets with gold. And they were good at it. Their kingdom had no rats.

Then one day, they left. They didn’t know where they were going, only that where they had been wasn’t it. Ken left his suits behind and shaved his head. Deborah started the nubs of dreadlocks. They moved to Portland. They fell in love. With whom? Homeless people – the kind of ragged corner dwellers most people consider to be just above street rats. Teens with ragged hoodies and holes in all their clothing. Kids with nicotine staining their fingers and rancid socks on their feet. Men who hadn’t had the chance to bathe in days, who lived in sub-basements they accessed by squeezing between boarded up holes.

Deborah and Ken didn’t sees street rats. They saw miracles. People who looked out for each other and tried to keep things safe. Kids who made art on scraps of cardboard, and the rough surface of the pavement. Souls which made music and wrote poetry. Individuals who were, undeniably, both tragic and beautiful.

Within the lives of Deborah and Ken, these rats have caused a revolution. There is no more mega-church, there are no three pieces suits. Instead there’s couple just getting by; a lack of insurance and retirement funds; and a group of people –with and without homes—trying to make sure everyone can get by. There are sandwiches, and coffee; blankets and art supplies; advocacy with the police and rides to the shelter–and there are two 50-something grown-ups ready to hand out parental-style love. Sometimes all of this is inside, and sometimes it is under a bridge, or on a street corner, or in an alley – but wherever it is, it is, in my opinion, Kingdom Come. The street rats have turned the kingdom on its head.

Could we live like this—as people who could learn from the invisibles–either because Jesus asked us to, or because our souls are asking us to? The next time we see a rat, could we avoid looking away? Could we avoid standing on the chair and wacking it with a broom? What if, together, we watched the rat instead, and saw where it went? What if we saw how hard it worked to survive, or how prolific it managed to be even in the midst of hardship and squalor? What if we ask him or her to teach us, to be patient with our ignorance, to show us a new way? Could we get a new perspective? Could we help ourselves and others? Could we have a rat as our role models?

Support Ken and Deborah’s “friends without homes” at Home.PDX. Learn more here. Visit the site. Donate!

a lovely dinner grace from last year’s mapgie girl summer zine.

Visit more Sacred Life bloggers or join the journey, click here.

A year has passed since Jen and I set up the Small is Beautiful revolution in the hopes of supporting small, passionate bloggers while they find their writing voice. Like the proverbial snowball rolling downhill, the list of people taking the pledge and adding the button swiftly grew to first dozens, then, to a hundred, and then more than I could track. New people join every day, and the blog roll which was once something I could update in ten minutes is now so large I’ve had to complete give it up! It’s amazing to know that so many storytellers are out there, trying to identify the meaningful in their lives and in the lives of others.

As BlogHer 08 in San Francisco rapidly approaches, it dawns on me how much I wanted to be there and a how I longed to serve as a sort of emotive chaplain, helping people embrace their call to write. But now I live in Denmark (Denmark!) and BlogHer is but a far away wish.

Still, many MANY of you will be there, sharing your ideas and your laughter with others who are bringing women’s voices to the forefront of the new journalism – blogging in all its wonderful pell-mell forms. I hope you will find each other, gather at round tables, and share the passions you have for writing down that which is wonderful.

Small is Beautiful is under severe disrepair right now. The html is broken; we can’t find a way to do an automated opt-in blog roll with categorization; we need those same folks to be able to opt-in to an email list–and I really don’t know what to do about any of it. I am, as they say, ‘in over my head.’

I still believe that small is powerful, and that a network of small bloggers can support one another in ways that no big name recognition can provide. So I appeal to you, our tiny community, for help and advice. If you have solutions, or willingness to do some cleanup work in the SIB garden, drop a note in the comments or email me or Jen. (Contact into here.)

In meantime, remember: Your story is important. May you sing it from the rooftops.

Yours in tininess,

Rachelle