When I first came to BlogHer in 2007, I was completely overwhelmed. I’d go to the workshops,gulp a lot, and then head back to my hotel room and put my head between my knees.

At the time I was only half-aware that I was taking my last steps away from organized religion. Everything in my history was connected to church. It was the core of my family, my education, and my career. But my beliefs were changing, and with it, my life.

Just before going to that first BlogHer conference in ’07 I wrote this at my first blog, Urban Abbess: 

When my best self is present–when I am the most centered and most aware– my guiding voice says, “You know, your pastoring self is doing just fine. You shouldn’t be doing any of those religiousy things, not any more than you are anyway. Really. It’s just fine. Go pick up your paintbrush.” It’s a peculiar thing – that all the things I’ve been preaching over the years – ‘everything we do is worship’ and ‘art creates holy space’ and ‘conversation is prayer” —all of these things are actually becoming real–and my very silly self is having a hard time believing it. It’s as though I’d hoped Willy Wonka’s factory was real, and now that I’m in the midst of the multi-colored glory of it all I’m blinking my eyes and waiting for it to disappear.(Go ahead dear, you really can even eat the dishes.)

In 2006 I closed Urban Abbess and blogged exclusively at Magpie Girl, where my tagline at the time was “distracted by sparkly things.” I held creative challenges. I made cut-color-and-paste zines about seasonal celebrations. I sold vintage clothes. The whole time I was searching–sometimes with joyful abandoned, and sometimes with knee-knocking fear. My whole life was changing and I didn’t know why or how, or what was going to happen in the end.

I blogged my way through. 

It took a long time.

Four years later, and I’m at BlogHer once again.  Since my first year at BlogHer, I’ve blogged my way through a serious chronic illness. I blogged my way through life abroad in a difficult culture. I blogged my way into legitimacy as a writer, as a teacher, as a community builder.

Through the process of blogging, I found my Way.

For those who raise a skeptical eyebrow at blogging, I stand as a withness. The writing, and the story telling, and the commenting — the very process of blogging  itself, it changes lives. My life. The life of my family. The life of my readers.

You might be overwhelmed by the sheer size of BlogHer. (3,000 people) You might dislike the sponsorships. (McDonalds? Really?) You might feel small when your mom is your only reader.  All those things about BlogHer and blogging are true. It’s big, it’s corporate, it’s a little narcisstic and…

and it can change your life.

(Blogger, Beware.)

Yours in the Journey,

Rachelle Mee-Chapman
Proud Blogger since 2003

We believe stories are valuable, no matter how many people read them.
We believe following your passion is more important that watching your site meter.
We believe in the handmade, the first try, the small start, and the good effort.
We believe that small is beautiful.

The first Saturday of the Month I click through the over 700 blogs listed in our tiny revolution. I go through about 30 a month, picking out 5 that give me an intuitive pull. This month . Click around and see if you find someone to wonder with today.

Before I begin with this month’s link love, might I suggest that you join join our mailing list? New things are brewing here at Magpie Girl that will help a passionate blogger like yourself. So please, don’t miss out! And now, without further ado, your April Small and Passionate bloggers!

• Tiffany at Brooding Beautywas my first blog to open today and the first one to love. She’s got a post up about her live painting event. (I LOVE watching artists work.) And I dig her post-consumerism vibe. Stop by to check out her art work and tell her Magpie Girl sent ‘cha.
• Tragedienne went to Paris when she was 20 years old. Now, a decade later, she’s letting us peek into her journals from that experience. It’s a fascinating journey through a woman’s younger self.
• Two of my favorite new Mommy’s happen to be in this month’s section of the list. There’s a new arrival at Bella Wish, just one week old and adorable. (Plus Stacy has new classes at the Wish Studio so scroll down and find out all about it.) And Maggie Ann , a momma for a bit now, is doing the most beautiful job of documenting baby/parent/familyhood. Find her at Most Sincerely and be inspired.
• Finally, two of my Soulsisters turned upon the list this week as well.  I just can’t resist singing their praises. Jenna McGuiggan is helping writers over at The Word Cellar. And Jolie Guillebeau is doing 100 paintings in 100 days over at her studio. Stop by and think up your own creative challenge!

Next month we start at number 110. I hope to see you then. May your story ring from the rooftops!

Fellow Revolutionaries are featured once a month for link love and general accolades. Readership numbers, fame, and fortune matter not one whit. Grab a button to play along, then sign up on the mailing list or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for being here!

We believe stories are valuable, no matter how many people read them.
We believe following your passion is more important that watching your site meter.
We believe in the handmade, the first try, the small start, and the good effort.
We believe that small is beautiful.

The first Saturday of the Month I click through the over 700 blogs listed in our tiny revolution. (Oh that I had thought to ask all those people to join my mailing list!) I go through about 30 a month, picking out 5 that give me an intuitive pull.  This month is an especially eclectic group, featuring dance, medicine, magic, and tatting. Click around and see if you find someone to wonder with today.

• Gen Gibler’sblog is full of art and wonder, including stunning photographs of dancers. Dance is my new favorite love affair, so Gen, here is a kiss from me to you. (Mwah!)
• As many of you know, I am a chronic pain survivor. So is Shauna. Her blog celebrates all that she has achieved, even with chronic pain, and is full of handy resources from the registered nurse.
• Every month when I click through the Small is Beautiful list, there’s always one blog that catches my eye, even tho I can’t quite put my finger on why. Robin Riger’s blog To Put it Simply was that blog this month. Plenty of poetry, some really powerful work around miscarriage, plus the occasional just-because-you’re-neat free knitting pattern — and all in a clean, uncluttered blog layout. Nice.
• Jackie’salways got something hearty cooking on the stove. Death with Dignity, religious topics, and how she learned to love her daughter’s playlist are the first three, and all keepers.
• Finally this month there is Nancy at New To Me, a lady who tatts. Tatting is sort of a dying art, so I’m delighted to see it perseved here. And I like how Nancy’s tagline is all about sharing. How delightful! (Thanks Nancy.)

Fellow Revolutionaries are featured once a month for link love and general accolades. Readership numbers, fame, and fortune matter not one whit. Grab a button to play along, then sign up on the mailing list or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for being here!

We believe stories are valuable, no matter how many people read them.
We believe following your passion is more important that watching your site meter.
We believe in the handmade, the first try, the small start, and the good effort.
We believe that small is beautiful.

This month in our February round up of Small, Beautiful, and Passionate bloggers we feature four sites with beautiful words and inspiring images. You know how encouraging it is when you get a new comment, right? Why not stop by and say hello? (Tell them Magpie Girl sent you!)

Shanna at For That Which Matters has a very handy, back-to-basics post for Moms who’s need to learn How to Say No. (I don’t know about you, but I could always use a refresher course on that one!)

Rachel B. Blog is a very pretty photography blog, and she’s offering a photography ecourse which starts Feb 16th. (If one of ya’ll take it, let me know how it goes!)

I don’t know what it is about Shehani K’s blog, Shutterbug Scribbler, but something about it calls to me. Maybe it’s this inspiring story about a spunky HIV survivor, or the fact that she shared this inpsiring video of JK Rowling speaking to Harvard grads about benefitting from failure. You should stop by and see what catches your heart.

The Streets I Know – it’s a vegan fashion blog. Need I say more?

Fellow Revolutionaries are featured once a month for link love and general accolades. Readership numbers, fame, and fortune matter not one whit. Grab a button to play along, then sign up on the mailing list or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for being here!

We believe stories are valuable, no matter how many people read them.
We believe following your passion is more important that watching your site meter.
We believe in the handmade, the first try, the small start, and the good effort.
We believe that small is beautiful.

This month in our January round up of Small, Beautiful, and Passionate bloggers we feature five sites with beautiful words and inspiring images. You know how encouraging it is when you get a new comment, right? Why not stop by and say hello? (Tell them Magpie Girl sent you!) Happy New Year.

Going through changes? So is SAHM’s Musings, and she’s got a good grip on how the word “Change” is going to power her through the new year. (Plus, I love her tag line: “I’m up. I’m dressed. What more do you want?”)

Learning to Embrace the Present? Dreams of a Simple Life has a lovely banner, and her tagline is “a journal of how I’m learning to embrace every single day.” That’s a sentiment I hear echoed often in the blogsophere. What is that deep hunger all about, and what in our culture creates it? Hmmmm. Christine doesn’t claim to be answering these questions forthwith, but she’s making a dedicated effort to practice the practice of Being Present.

Want to Hang Out with an Artist? Rachelle Baum at Eye Candy is doing some intriguing art right now around soul retrieval. I like how she gives us a peek into her process of making mixed media. (I do so love peering into artist’s studios. Don’t you?)

Feeling Nostalgic? Evelyn at Mindful Elementalsfound a bunch of her childhood poetry and shared a little of it with us on line. It’s poignant and charming. Maybe it’s time for you to go through your old journals and keepsakes to rediscover a little bit of yourself?

Learning to photograph?Me too. S-L-O-W-L-Y. I like what Erica over at Oak Grove is doing with a lens. Her aesthetic is lovely. I hope this shutterbug can replace her lost camera soon!

Fellow Revolutionaries are featured once a month for link love and general accolades. Readership numbers, fame, and fortune matter not one whit. Grab a button to play along, then sign up on the mailing list or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for being here!

Awhile back, when I was in a period of struggling with pain and the way it limited my work, Claudia sent me a list of things she’d done while laid up with pain. She called her list “Things I’ve Done From Bed.” She wrote novels. She raised children. She saved a marriage.

It helped. Seeing her list rolling out long in that email. It helped.

Because of this pain, I work in a unique way. I work small. I work in tiny steps and short spurts. I have to be very realistic about my situation and work within that reality. Just dreaming big is not enough. I have to work too, in this really uncommon manner. I may not get as much done as others I admire. But I do the work of my hands, every day. Every. Day.

I thought I was getting better, moving out of the pain, but lately I think maybe not so much. And sometimes, this just really breaks me down. I look at my life stretching long in front of me and think, “Really, another 40 years of this pain?” Then I look at my children and think, “Yes, of course. As many years as I can get.”

So I’m making my list now, in the little window of hopefulness  that I have today, in case the shades snap down again. So I can remember what I can still do. So I can recall that small is beautiful — even if you have to do most of it from bed.

1. Became famous among dozens for helping “recovering evangelicals.”
2. Wrote  several hundred posts on postmodernism as the Urban Abbess.
3. Wrote 453 posts on “soulcare for flibbertigibbets” as Magpie Girl.
4. Left my tribe and formed a new one.
5. Introduced arts and liturgy to the Seattle Vineyard.
6. Kept a dozen or so folks from committing spiritual suicide.
7. Became a spiritual director.
8. Got one tall, beautiful, intelligent girl to 11.
9. Got a coy, cute, crafty little girl to 9.
10. Managed to keep a woflpup’s head above water until manhood.
11. Made sure my husband did not live a boring life in the suburbs.
12. Created a sense of home for any number of people around the holidays.
13. Built shrines and holy spaces.
14. Created a dozen guiding catch phrases.
15. Produced seasonal zines.
16. Created a series of postmodern saints cards.
17. Submitted book proposals.
18. Landed a literary agent.
19. Decided that I didn’t want to go the traditional publishing route.
20. Published a children’s book POD.
21. Published a photography and essay book POD.
22. Started an on-line play along.
23. Started a Do Less Revolution.
24. Helped people (at least begin) to form their Soultribes.
25. Created an online brand.
26. Sold alternative prayer beads for alternative souls.
27. Joined a wonderful writers groups, who catapulted me through roadblocks.
28. Taught at conference, colleges, and churches.
29. Learned how to celebrate the Jewish feasts.
30. Bought a house, made a home.
31. Adopted a boy and a dog.
32. Made life easier for a few kindergartners.
33. Supported an urban school.
34. Navigated complicated medical systems.
35. Been present.
36. Learned the guitar.
37. Learned to knit.
38. Kept in touch with far-flung friends and family.
39. Nurtured a virtual community.
40. Never. Stopped. Trying.

What do you think? Did I miss any?

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

< Original art by Jen Lemen
for Let’s Help Ourselves and Others

It’s a rare day that I find a project so solid and so personal that I’m ready to champion it from the rooftop – but this is one of them! My soulsister Jen Lemen has fallen in love with every African immigrant in her D.C. neighborhood. They inspire her ever day, and she in turn extends a loving hand of assistance whenever she can. From springing someone from human trafficking to getting a sick daughter in Rwanda to the hospital, Jen and her network of passionate folks gets the job done.

Now Jen and Odette are on a mission to take Rwandan school girls the supplies and inspiration they need to be the next generation of leaders in their struggling, determined country. The inspiring Grace McLaren passed the opportunity to Jen to go to Rwanda; Jen asked her blogging pals for some financial support; and in 24 hours there were funds for the trip AND enough to print a book. What kind of book? A full color zine in two languages depicting the story of Odette and her brother Innocent’s clever microbusiness…in a Ugandan refugee camp…when they were 7 and 9 years old. (I cry every time I hear it.)

If this doesn’t convince Rwandan schoolgirls (and middle aged American ladies!) that small attempts can bring significant change, I don’t know what will.

Now that the books and supplies are taken care of, Jen is doing one last ask for a little more money. Innocent needs a cow. I know. It doesn’t sound like much, just one cow. But his niece (Odette’s daughter) is sick, and the meager little house flooded this year, and the cow, well, it will keep his family afloat in a highly tenuous situation.

Do you know what a cow costs in Rwanda? $600 – the equivalent of three trips to Costco or one really crappy dresser from IKEA. Now the Cotsco thing might keep you rolling in frozen lasagna, which I will admit, feels like a lifesaving act some nights in Americana. But a cow will produce enough income to keep this large extended family feed for as long as it lives.

Paul and I are down for $100. Let’s see if we can get her the rest of the way there, shall we?

Donate a buck or a billion at ChipIn.

Friends, thanks so much for reading this. Hold on to hope: all is not lost, Africa can thrive, Rwandan schoolkids can change their world, and one cow can make a difference.

In Kindness and Hope,

Rachelle Mee

For the whole Rwandan Project in orderly detail click here.

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