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

As I mentioned in this post, I believe we each carry sacred stories. Stories that shape us. Stories that heal us. Stories that guide us. And just as these stories shape the teller, they also have the power to shape the listener; bringing those who have ears to hear companionship, drawing them closer to shalom.

Katrina sent me this story in response to the post “God Sticks and Shame Caves, which has moved many of you to tell your tales. She is someone I trust, whose wisdom is not theoretical but lived–hard won from experience and reflection. I’m grateful to Katrina for guest posting today, and feel confident that her story will give many of you hope and inspiration for the journey.

Sensuality Recovered
Guest Post: Katrina

I was staffing at a women’s retreat a few months ago, and a woman who had been an exotic dancer in a younger life and who was trained in various “tantric healing” techniques led us in some fascinating processes. She told us her own story of being lured into prostitution as a young girl, and of her escape, as well as her journey of fully embracing herself as a sexual, sensual woman who has truly freed herself from shame. She led us in a long exercise of breathingand meditation designed to cleanse us of our own shame, whether assigned to us by ourselves or others. We held hands and talked each other through a variety of memories: from the disquieting sensation “not feeling pretty enough” to the violence of rape and molestation.

After some tear-shedding and embracing, the energy in the room was lighter, freer. From that perspective, we moved into movement and dance, and eventually into sensual dance. Many of the women were overweight and/or middle-aged, and there was, at first, palpable resistance. The facilitator told us stories of how sensuality has been taught in other, older—surely wiser–cultures. It was the women, the elder-women, who had taught the younger women how to move, how to dance, how to be sexy, how to feel sensual. It was not the pressure of the media or the men, or the market forces felt by women to compete for scarce resources of desirable mates. We marveled at the thought… what if sensuality could be like treasured knowledge, passed down at the appropriate time from woman to woman, like sacred family recipes or heirlooms?

We were all instructed to get a chair. Yes, we were going to do “chair dancing.” (i.e., using chairs as a prop for dancing, see Cabaret or Flashdance for suggestions…) We began to use our new props with some hesitation and awkwardness. Thenthe facilitator did something brilliant. She instructed us to blindfold ourselves. With our self-consciousness visibly muted and with a little help from some encouraging music, we were transformed into smokin-hot middle-aged goddesses. Then the blindfolds came off, and we gathered in a circle and danced for each other. We danced individually, in pairs, in groups, with and without chairs, sarongs, and other props. We encouraged each other on to be as sexy as possible, sexier than we thought was possible, egging each other on with whoops and catcalls. Women who would barely dance an hour earlier were “shaking what their mommas gave ‘em” with joy and abandonment. The women who left that night were not the same women who came in. They had regained, or perhaps even discovered for the very first time, a treasure buried deep within themselves: their own sensuality. Not the crude sexuality of an X-rated film or the performance of a stripper seeking tips from bachelor party participants, but the sensuality that represents our true sacred, feminine, creative selves. Through our dancing, we had celebrated ourselves as women created in the image of the Divine, and declared this creation “good.”

Katrina has gracious agreed to write a follow up post with her thoughts on connecting the dots between this experience, what she was taught as a young person, and what she is teaching her teenage daughter. Check back next week, or follow me on Twitter and I’ll let you know when it has arrived. Thank you for your presence here. -Rachelle

Follow this Series:

This I Believe: Why I’m not Teaching My Kids Abstinence

Thoughts from the Comment Gallery: Abstinence, Kids, and Faith

God Sticks and Shame Caves

Beyond Fear, Encouraging Each Other Towards Escape

The Care and Keeping of Sacred Stories

There are things I believe in at bedrock level—ideas I cannot imagine myself without. The kind of stuff you feel like you might carry around in your genetic blueprint.

Yet as strong as my passion is for these ideas, I know the list could change – the list has changed. There are definitely fewer ideologies I feel confident of these days. But if anything, the ones that remain have become stronger, more distilled with age.

These are them, these are they. If I could wear them on a t-shirt I would.

In case you are interested. In case you’d like to know more.

*8 Things: I Believe

1. “You have to use art to preach”

2. “God does not have a penis.”

3. “Make dialogue, not debate, your primary language.”

4. “I heart pagans.”

5. “Gentlemen, kindly own your own shit.”

6. “Christianity is extending the loving hand of Christ to the world.”

7. “Jesus got ‘jacked.”

8. “I speak patriarchy, but it’s not my mother tongue.”

The energy and sunlight of Summer can wake up our creative spirit — or the the heat and presence of the Children can rob us of our energy and time. Either way, this set of books is a good fit.

If you’re feeling ready to make/write/create/do something, one of these will give you new ideas and encourage you on. If you don’t have time for your regular work of writing/painting/carving monuments out of marble, then these books will let you slip things in around the edges. Several of them work well across age groups and can be used for collaborative art with the young ones. Happy creating, and thanks for supporting Magpie Girl! (More reviews at here, if you’re curious…)

Click here to listen to this post!
editor’s note: the closing blessing in the audio version is attributed to clarrisa pinkola estes as below

Since I’ve let the cat out of the bag regarding what I truly believe about sexuality and faith (or at least some bits of it) women are finding me anyway they can. Through the comments and contact info on this site, via facebook and twitter, even in my flickr mail. Not to argue with me, or to tell me I’m wrong. But to give me the gift of their stories. Stories about receiving messages of shame regarding their bodies. Stories of regret regarding about not having sex, or feeling bad about it when they did. Stories of pain and loss and confusion. And best of all, stories of recovery and hope.

Dear ones, we must to do something about taking care of all these precious stories.

My soulsister Jen Lemen has embedded the importance of stories deep in my being. Like her, I am “helplessly in love with the idea that stories can change you and me forever.” Furthermore, this I believe: it is within our power to allow our stories to shape us for the good, to bring us healing, and to draw us towards shalom.

I am still relatively new to this world of stories and am I’m learning to harness their redemptive power. Still, I am sure, that together we can we can hold these stories “in all tenderness,” and let their power sing from the rooftops.

So here friends, is what I know right now about telling stories:

• Embody your stories. Write them in a journal; capture them in images torn from magazines and picture books; jot them in lines of poems; create them in smears of color; or distill them into lists of words. Just sit down with a pen, or a keyboard, or a paintbrush and say “I don’t know, I don’t know…” until the knowing comes and the story flows. The first step is acknowledging they are real, that you are real.

• Name your stories. Give them titles and subtitles. Let them have a one-word identifier. Line them up in a number system. Naming is powerful. When we name something we can better hold it in our hands. When you hold a story cupped in your palm you can decide to continue holding it like a treasure –or you can let it slide past your finger tips and release it: to let it guide others; or to let it companion other story holders who have otherwise felt alone; or to watch slide away past your finger tips, because you no longer need to carry it.

• Speak your stories outloud. Let your voice sound out into an empty room. Tell a friend over tea. Record yourself on you cell phone’s voice mail. Giving voice, literally giving voice to your stories can be in turns affirming, empowering, releasing, and healing.

There is more here, waiting to be formed into words and continued into practice. There’s something about what to do with painful stories. How to say “this really happened.” How to know “I am bigger than this story.” How to let your painful stories catapult you onto bigger, better tales. I can’t quite get it into words yet, but it’s marinating. In time—with your help, with your stories and comments and ideas and intuitive know-how—we will find it together. In time, it will come.

Will you do this work with me? Will you be brave –a little or a lot—and let your stories sing? Start writing. Start blogging. Start painting. Start giving birth to the poet on your tongue. Start making lists of words you do not understand, drawing lines–literally, on the page with a marker, drawing lines–between things you did not know were connected. Start commenting. (Use a pseudonym if you want. I’ll screen all the comments. I won’t let anyone yell at you. I’ll do my best to keep your story safe.) In the worlds of my soulsister, “Something healing this way comes.”

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you and that you will work them, and water them, with your blood and tears and laughter ‘till they bloom, ‘till you yourself burst into bloom.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Now, for a limited time, random days of the week will become “8 Things” days, in which I will list 8 things on a themed list.

This week: “*8 Things I Believe.” See them first on Twitter, where they’ll run through the day. Follow me! (So free! So fun!)

If any of these make you go, “Hmmmm…” let me know and I’ll try to blog more about them.

Caution: This is an attempt by the management to quiten down her monkey mind. We shall see what happens….

Our solstice fire from last summer. Photo by madgiddy.

May light dominate your life in these coming days.
May the moments of darkness be far outnumbered by the presence of light.

When you next gather around the table in your homes may you remember light, and love, and the sun.

May these moments of holy time help us all to remember that the world spins, and the tide turns and the nights grow shorter – and regardless of our will or our work, the gift of Light Returning happens over and over and over again.

May the blessing of light be upon you –
Light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great fire,
So that stranger and friend may come and warm themselves at it.

-a traditional Celtic blessing

The front porch of our Seattle home.

Cate refuses to accept that summer is over last Labor Day.
Photo by MadGiddy.

Dear Catie,

I know Momma’s all over the world say this at nearly every birthday for nearly every child, but I cannot believe you are eight years old! You have such a sweet little voice, and the top of your head still smells like baby hair – so I often forget how much you have grown up!

The child development books say there are years of equilibrium and years of dis-equilibrium, and this has been an unbalanced year for you. You’ve done a great job, and worked hard at growing up, but it has been hard and sometimes you have been tired.

Seven has reminding me a lot of three, with my golden-haired baby suddenly errupting into ‘the rage mister.’ Daddy and I have tried to teach you that it’s okay to be angry. But that anger shouldn’t be thrown at other people. You’ve worked hard to get your anger into a reasonable level so that you don’t hurt the dog or your sissy with scary voices or mean words. I’m proud of you! And you are doing very VERY well at figuring out what emotion is hiding behind anger’s big noise. Did you know that a lot of grown-ups can’t even do that! You are so awesome!

This year we moved away from Seattle to Denmark. It was a HUMONGOUS change, and you are handling it really, really well. I know you are frustrated that you don’t speak Danish yet (especially because Sissy does.) But you understand SO much, and you are already making Danish friends. So don’t worry, you will speak it soon. And don’t worry about forgetting English either. I promise you will always remember your English words. You don’t have to trade one for the other.

Your superpower of Friendship has definitely been able to Shine this year! You made such close friends with sweet Claire before we left, and every kid in class wrote amazing things about you in your goodbye book. I’ll never forget you reading that book so tenderly, and not even wanting to share it with mommy at first, because you knew how precious all those words were. You cried a little and said, “Mommy, I wish I could just call all these friends and say ‘thank you’ because they said SUCH nice things about me!” And do you know what baby? They are all true! Just yesterday Daddy said that you have special aura about you that draws people to you. Everyone says they notice you because you have such cute hair, but Daddy thinks it is because of your superpower. People are drawn to you because you are such a good friend. I guess that’s why every kid on the street waves to me – even though I don’t know them—and then says to their Mom or the friend they are walking with, ‘Det er Cate’s Moa’ (That’s Cate’s Mom!) Everyone knows Cate because she is good friend!

You are going to get to do such amazing things this year! Go back to drum or piano lessons. Sail to an island in the Danish sea. And because sculpture is your favorite, we will go to Italy so you can see the very best sculpture in the whole world. I can’t wait to see you looking up at those amazing Michelangelo’s! By this time next year you will have a whole slew of new friends on your playdate schedule; a half dozen new pins on your ‘where I’ve been’ map; and maybe even a solo airplane flight to sail with Grandma and Grandpa on the Lady Penelope!

Thank you for being my younger (not little!) daughter, and for being the best cuddler in the whole wide world. I love you, ‘Baby’ Cate!

-Moa