I’ve been trying to write a book, and to get it picked up by a publisher since 2005. There have been a couple of manuscript proposals with sample chapters, and some interest, and some more chapters, and some more interest, and another proposal, but alas, nothing definitive has come about.

When I realized it’s been three years since I started verbalizing “I am writing a book” and two since I finished my first real draft, I got discouraged. What was I doing really? Furthermore, what did I want to be doing really?

I’ve been swirling around in an eddy of repeated thoughts about my work as a writer/teacher/learner–most of which are diametrically opposed to one another—and I can’t seem to find the momentum or the release to get myself out of the cycle. So I hired a life coach. Someone I’ve been reading on line for quite some time, Jena Strong of Strong Coaching. (blog│coaching site) We’ve just started working together, but so far so good. I’ve given her permission to blow the “bullshit bullhorn” whenever I am clearly talking out of my ass, and she’s given me…assignments.

One of the first exercises Jena gave me was a Values Clarification exercise. Part of the procedure was to look at a list of values and narrow it down to ten. Then she helped me order those ten values from by drawing a set of concentric circles and putting the most central value in the middle, working my way out to the outer ring. Jena described the outer ring as the ‘container’ that provides the structure to hold all the others. It took a long time to narrow down the right word for some of the values I was trying to represent, and more than once Jena had to blow the bullshit bullhorn when I was trying to claim a noble word that was not really describing what I was getting after. In the end these were my ten — from inner ring to outer ring:

Integrity
Generosity
Attentiveness
Clarity
Guidance
Freedom
Integrity
Beauty
Props (as in “getting’ my props!”)
Security

For a long time I’ve felt really guilty about my high need for security – especially for financial security. I’ve felt pampered, spoiled, and weak when I couldn’t follow my brave and brazen friends in to a life of voluntary poverty and extreme adventure. But when Jena had me draw my values out in concentric rings, I realized that the security was the container that allowed everything else – the generosity, and the guidance, and the beauty – to thrive.

Because embodying emotional and spiritual thoughts into physical symbol is so powerful to me, Jena suggested that I find some way to physically represent my values. She mentioned that she’s always wanted someone to make a mobile of their values so they could see how they move in and out amongst one another. That wasn’t something I could engineer, but it did make me think of those collapsing water cups we used as kids – the type that were made of concentric plastic rings that collapsed down inside the lid of the cup for compact travel. Remember those? (I had an orange one that I kept by the sink as my tooth mug.) I decided to try to make one of those…which turned into a mobile…which looks suspiciously like the color scheme from Oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss…which I figure is all pretty much prophetic, don’t you think?

Even though while I was making it I kept thinking “Really? This is what grown adults do with their free time?” I’m finding it to be quite well worth it. It’s hanging in the corner of my studio by my writing desk, and somehow it’s helping me feel grounded and hopeful from time to time – like I’ve done something meaningful, like I’ve taken a good first step.
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What are your top ten values? How might you give them a concrete form? Make a little list, muck something up and show it to us in a photo, or blog about it and give us the link – the comments are open!

This is my dreamboard for August as I pray/wish/hope for shalom in my physical self.

Last month’s dream of curtains and spotlights is still alive and kicking. I’m still playing guitar, and I’m working with a life coach to figure out what that mysterious phrase might mean for me.

For more information about dreamboarding click here. Good shabbat to you!

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.

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

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

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

a small sketch from my travel journal

It’s the night of Summer solstice. At home in Seattle the sun is at its highest right now, and hopefully the skies are clear to give the locals some much-onged for warmth during this cold Summer on this, their most treasured day. Here in Copenhagen–which is not yet home—the sun is starting to set, though the light has barely ebbed. Well after ten o’clock I can still read easily in the twilight glow that’s stretching over our high city balcony.

John Mayer is in town, the poet whose blues have sustained me through these strange and wrenching times. I searched for tickets—begged, borrowed and threatened to steal in two languages—but alas, none were to be found. Instead I’m sneaking smokes and playing all the live songs I could download one after another too loudly through the open windows of the living room. Message in Bottle (which I once heard Sting perform on an awkward date in an enormous arena). My Stupid Mouth (The Blogger’s Lament.) 83 (whimsical. nostalgic.) And finally, Gravity, my touchstone, my anchor.

I have been dreading this day, alone and away from my community on one of our most holy days. Paul is at a work party. One which has a reputation for being a bit of an orgy. One to which spouses are not invited. The girls are asleep after what for me was an exhausting night of homemade pizza, sing-a-long movies, and reading aloud extraordinary long chapters of Harry Potter. The grand finale for mom was one of those long, drawn out bedtimes only clever children can create, and enough dishes to make a restaurateur cry. But now that I’m here, alone with the dog, listening to John and watching the swallows dart after invisible insects; I find that I am actually okay in with this solitude, watching the sun slip into sleep, being grateful for the light.

At Stonehenge this morning the sun crested over softly arching hills, struck the blue-hued Heelstone, and drove its light between the arches of the great trilithon. Hundreds were there in dreadlocks and druid robes, smelling of travel and patchouli, trying to name something unnamable, making it up as they go along. Isn’t that what we all do? Cobble something together from shards of history and intuitive pull? Look for the meeting point between what we know and what we hope to be true?

I was at Stonehenge not long ago, fresh from the opulence of Europe’s finest cathedrals, ready to be unimpressed by a ring of stones surrounded by security fencing. I was surprised to find such holiness there, walking in a round where people have paced for thousands of years; waiting for the shard of light to crack the sky; hoping for a life continued. I followed the tour and when I reached the Heelstone, paused to touch its side. As I felt the warmth of the sarsen stone under my hand, I noticed a young woman walking counter clockwise to the organized tour, her shoes in her hand, her feet on holy ground. Seeing her example, I wanted suddenly to sink to my knees. It was all I could to do still my voice, to not incant ‘Holy, Holy, Holy.’ But I was unaccustomed of being a stranger in a strange land for so many long months, worn down from always sticking out, from always being obvious. I did not have the confidence to kneel in front of so many tourists in windbreakers and cameras. (Who knew the bending of the knee could be an act requiring so much strength?) Iinstead I stayed my hand on the stone, leaned my weight into my palm, and let my soul pour out thanks. Gratitude for the light. Gratitude for continuance. Gratitude for all that we need to go on.

It was not, and this is not, the Solstice I have come to remember. It is not the riotous and ridiculous parade; the familiar and homespun pageant built with our own hands; the silly, colorful crowd of thousands. Instead it is a new lesson in holy moments—stumbled upon alone (yet with casts of thousands now past); a mishmash of vices and virtues, of new songs and old stones. I feel as though I am soaking somehow in this history, in this present, and in the sun—always our promise of a future. I am melted. I am melded, somehow, me in this chair alone. And I think—held in this mystery of solitude amidst the companionship of souls—I think as the sun now fades, “Dayenu, it is enough.”

Cate was yelling at me. Again.

Every day it’s the same story. I pick Cate up from school and she happily shows me the new trick she can do on the peddle car; the stone she dug up in the sand pit; how many times she can hop the jump rope on one foot. We find Eden and start the ten minute walk home. By minute seven Cate is screaming about something. Anything.

We started with sympathy, then moved on to time outs, and I’m sure at some point there’s been some yelling on my part as well. Clearly Cate was struggling with the transition between school and home. Clearly she was angry. And clearly whatever she was yelling about was not what was really bothering her.

Finally, I sat her down at the kitchen table and got down at eye level. I addressed her very calmly and very seriously, “Cate. This isn’t working. You’re having trouble moving between being at school and being at home. I can see that you are angry, right?”

“Yes! I. AM. ANGRY!” (also crying)

“It’s totally okay to be angry. But screaming at Mommy is not okay, right?”

“RIGHT! OKAY? OKAY? RIGHT! RIGHT! RIGHT!”

“Did you know anger is a cover-up emotion? It covers up some other emotion. Something else is hiding under there.”

“It is?” (now backing down to mere sniffles)

“Yes. And I need you to think about it and tell me what it is that’s hiding under there.”

With that, the floodgates broke open. She missed all the friends she left behind when we moved. She didn’t have any friends at school. And she missed BF Day (her old school.) And some of the kids said mean things. And she doesn’t know Danish yet. And her only friends who speak English live far, far away. And did she mention, she didn’t have any friends at school?

Well, I’d already addressed all of those things. We talked about how making friends was her superpower, but that it took time. I had reminded her that we had only been at the new school for 2 weeks. I had explained that it would take a little longer than usual because we don’t know Danish yet. But, I had assured her, friends would come.

Knowing I’d already said all of this, and having a not unsmall amount of parental wisdom, I did not go into this again. Instead I asked her a question of clarification, “Cate. Do you want Mommy to talk about all these problems with you, or do you just need someplace to put them all.”

“Like what place?”

“Like a shrine.”

“I could make a shrine?”

Sure could. I dove under my desk and came up with three or four odd little boxes and tins. Cate chose a tin that used to hold bandages – Jesus bandages to be exact. After asking for stickers, tape and some scratch paper, Cate went to work. Soon she had a bonafide Shrine for Hard Feelings. It consisted of the bandage tin, a sticker of a sacred heart Jesus, some fortune cookie sized strips of paper cello-taped to the side, and one of those tiny golf pencils. Cate wrote her hard feelings down on the pieces of paper and tucked them into the tin.

“If I put these in here, Jesus will make the sad feelings go away.” she said.

“Well,” I fine tuned, “Jesus might not make them go all the way away, but at least he can hold them for a little while.”

Cate has been faithfully using the Shrine for Hard Feelings for a week now. Sometimes she’ll start ramping up into a yell-fest, but then you can see her sort of visibly pull up, and she’ll say “Wait a minute,” and go find her shrine. I’ll see her scribbling away, then tucking the paper into the tin and snapping it shut. A few minutes later she’ll be back with me, or her sister, or her dad, and the steam will have been vented.

Sometimes I wonder what all my ad hoc spirituality is teaching my children. I’m trying my best — but so did my parents, and my church, and my religious school — and I sure ended up with a bunch of crap mixed in there with the goodies. If I make up random sacraments, if my children spend their lives building Shrines for Hard Feelings and hurling plates at Anger Altars, will they regret it? I am not sure. But this I believe; my attempts, though small and flawed and most assuredly open for misinterpretation, these humble attempts at caring for these precious souls will teach them these true things

Your feelings are real.
Someone loves you enough to help in hard times.
God is big enough to handle your anger.
There is a place for you.

That seems like a good place to start.

Cross-posted at BlogHer with links to other great blogs about children’s spirituality.

We’ve had various kinds of celebrations for Spring over the years. But I have always hoped to have a gathering for May Day—or what the Celts call Beltane—in celebration of the good earth. In my dreamy gathering we could stand on some patch of soft ground and use our bodies to say ‘thank you’ to Mama and to give her some honor.

So far, this hasn’t come to pass. I tried once, and my children totally derailed me, moving the evening from a night of Om-ing barefoot in the grass, to a night of painting toenails for the upcoming sandal season. Apparently, when you are 4 and 6 it’s way more fun to welcome the Spring with flip-flops and pink polish than to follow your breath while holding a backbend.

Now that I’m here in Denmark and far away from all my friends of the feminine divine, this little dream isn’t likely to come to past anytime soon. But this morning while I was hanging out in Shavasana, it came into my monkey mind that I could get one step closer to this dream by writing the series down. (You know, instead of just holding it in my head and hoping someone will invite me to teach yoga.)

An hour later when I sat down to write my BlogHer editorial about Earth Day, I realized that if I posted said yoga series perhaps, in some small way, we might all be connected just by doing the same practice—even if it is in different times and different places. We are all standing on this same round earth, this big blue marble, right? We might as well call it a party.

So here is my short series of Yoga Poses for Mama, from me, the wannabe priestess, to you my sister friends. May they connect your spirit to the creative, nurturing energy of sand and soil, sea and sky, meadow and mountain. Namaste! Read the rest of this entry »

Eden, then five, sits pretty and pensive at our passover table.

This is the first time in eight years that we won’t be celebrating Pesach (Passover) with our community. Our dishes and haggadah (prayer books) have arrived, but we’ve yet to gather the kind of friends that would want to take part in a 4 hours meal with this electic goy girl. I’m treating my Passover jones by writing about how I got started celebrating with a Seder. You can find that story over in my weekly post at BlogHer. And here’s some pretty pictures, taken by my friend Emily Button, from our first Passover with Monkfish Abbey, back in 2004.

Anointing everyone at the table before going in to dinner.

On Passover, we eat reclining on a pillow to show that we are free. (Slaves weren’t allowed to eat reclining.)

A full glass is sign of joy. Here we diminish the wine in our glass to signify solidarity with those who suffer.

Paul serves up matzo ball soup to Catie. (3 yrs)

is it enough
this story,
this ideal,
this wistful thing—

the teacher speaking soft in the garden,
mouthing my name,
warm-blooded and real.

when I grow tired of picking,
sorting fact from fiction,
lies like stones among the lentils,
truths as yellow bulbs among the rocks,

when I tire of this painstaking plucking

i hold instead,
one smooth egg
one round stone
one child, with chocolate on her mouth and songs on her tongue.

he is wisen, comes the lisp
he is wisen indeed!

tell me true things, i whisper,
my face held close,
warm against her neck.

she sings to me
an edict, a lullaby,
ubi caritas, maman,
ubi caritas et amor
ubi caritas, deus ibi est.

where there is charity, there is love
where there is love
there god is.

enough, i think,
to hold this egg
this stone
this child
enough, to say ‘amen.’