Category — Soulstories
This I Believe (circa Easter, 2010)
This Easter morning, before the chocolate rabbits come out of hiding, Paul and I will take inventory. In what do we really believe? …A literal Resurrection? Actual God-and-Man? Redemptive violence? An empty grave?
Two years ago Easter came to me all bittersweet. It felt like letting go of a loved one’s hand as the train pulls away. Last year I was angry at the messages being handed down to our little ones. This year, after a Winter of snow and depression, Easter finds me already awash in the arrival of Spring — fields of snowdrops; a blanket of crocuses spilling out from the doors of our local castle; the magnolias tight in the bud and waiting to open. In the midst of this earthy glory, the theology of Easter arrives as a late comer, tagging on the coat tails of a natural spectacle.
Every year Easter it comes out of its cocoon with wings of different shapes and colors. This year, I may have finally stopped trying to pin it to a board. This year, I’ve realized that I’ve developed a new practice – a practice of allowing Easter to be born again, to bring new flavors of belief, new forms of adoration. I doubt I shall ever be able to ascribe to a permanent creed. All I can say is this Easter morning I believe…
I Believe…
In a Source larger than myself which at its core is creative, healing, and restorative. I choose to call this Source God, though I recognize her by other names and have seen her in many incarnations. I believe in all the ways renewal, regeneration, and rebirth flow forth from this Source. I look eagerly to understand her better, and to live her life of creativity and renewal more completely.
I Believe…
In a man named Jesus whose tale has been carried, replicated, and expanded through many cultures and many eras. I believe in his habit of telling meaningful stories; bringing the outsider home; and being dangerously compassionate. To these I do aspire. I believe his Sermon on the Mount creates inside me a passion for justice, equity, and inclusion. I strive to live these in increasingly meaningful ways. I hear him in the mouth of a all the great teachers. I see him in a thousand faces. I try to reflect him back to others from my own.
I Believe…
In a guiding force which resides within each of us, sometimes called Spirit, who has made herself known to me as The Muse. I believe in her creative capacities, in her skills as a guide, and her residence in my intuition. I believe in her connection to God, and strive to align myself with her.
I Believe..
In community wherever it may be found. In dancing in the overlap. In everyday holiness. I believe in rites, rituals and worship which connect us to God – primal, traditional, and emerging. I believe in sacred spaces and thin spots. In inexplicable fore-knowing, sometimes called prophecy. I believe in an unending source of love, which translates into abundant acts of charity. In generous curiosity. In the high value of hospitality. In miracle, and whimsy. And above all, I believe in love.
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Writing your own creed is an excellent way to practice Standing in Your Own Power. If you pen one of your own and share it in the blogopshere, please leave us the link in the comments. What might be the opening lines of your creed, circa Easter 2010?
To see all the posts on Standing in Your Own Power, click here.
The League of Extraordinary Heretics
L’Orangerie, built specifically for Monet’s last great work, his waterlilies series.
Paul and I both love Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. We’ve traveled the world to worship at Impressionists Temples: The Getty Museum, our Mecca in Los Angeles. The Art Institute in Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Even the tiny Impressionist room in the Glyptotek in Copenhagen, with a painting by Renoir of our neighborhood park. And now, at long last, the Musee d’Orsay and L’Orangerie in Paris.
As a teenager I would see posters and calendars full of pastel reproductions of Monet’s waterlilies or Van Gogh’s sunflowers and think, “Ick. Too pretty.” Then I went to the Art Institute of Chicago, walked into the enormous Impressionist wing, and nearly fell to my knees. The impact of those pieces in real life, the depth of the paint strokes, the vibrations of the color — there’s no way to reproduce it. No way at all.
The more I’ve learned about the Impressionists–and perhaps even more so, the post-Impressionists– the more I’ve come to feel a kinship with them. Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and dear, broken Vincent Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Latrec: I adore them all. I feel if I could meet them today we would be like siblings: all bickering and laughing: remembering and reaching. These painters, who we now see as little more than producers of decorative posters, were once brave, bold radicals.
In the last 1800’s, there were two ways to succeed as artists: show in the Salon, or show in the Academy. Both French institutions presented perfectly executed works of art. And, both institutions insisted there was only one way to create and present said art. “Real” art, said the Institution, was neo-classical art. These acceptable pieces depicted the same set of myths and Bible stories, all portrayed with familiar, formulaic precision. It was pretty, perfected, and above all tame.
The Impressionists saw another way, craved another way. Truth came at them from odd angles, and they wanted to express the impressions reality made upon them. But the Academy and the Salon had no room for exploration. The new work was considered ugly, inappropriate, and misconstrued. So the new Impressionists broke away. They left paying jobs and secure posts. They gave up the professional credentials and the assured success that came with membership in the Institution. They risked everything. The Impressionists were reformers — not to make a name for themselves — but because it was the only way to be themselves.
Take for instance Edgar Degas, a privileged child from a family of wealthy bankers, who painted successfully in the Academic style — until he met the Impressionists. Or Edouard Manet, formally trained and accepted into the Salon, who threw his “opportunities” aside and instead surrounded himself with artists experimenting in new techniques. Or my favorite, Vincent Van Gogh, a seminary student with a guaranteed career in the church, who left it behind to follow the deep pull art, truth, and post-impressionism had on his heart.
I suppose by now you are seeing the parallels that draw me to these rebellious souls. I too had a career which was controlled by two great institutions — the Catholic and the Protestant. I too was set up for immenent success within that system. I too fell in with a crowd of outliers. I too left it all behind to follow a pull towards something “post.” (In this case, post-modernism as opposed to post-impressionism.) Like Van Gogh I battle depression. Like Toulouse-Latrec I work around a broken body. Like Monet I tend to circle around the same source material over and over again.
These are my kinsmen, these heretics we. And in their stories I find comfort.
What great artists are your withmates? Who in history partners you on your journey? Do tell in the comments below.
Stayed tune for my next Post-Impressionist post: Vincent Van Gogh and The Terrible Need. Join the mailing list or follow me on Twitter and you won’t miss a thing. Thank you for being here!
Sacred Life Sunday: Labyrinth
silent park
amid city noise
passers walk by, and i
i sit in the centers of centers
x marks the spot
grey walls and stone tower
surround me
ring me with I Am’s
branches overhead cross with
aged cracks
hail rains down
i sit alone
knowing that i am
what i am
created to do
rightwhereibelong
i circle out
dancing
In this photo post: What’s left of the Elys-style labyrinth at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle. It was just me and the bagpiper that day. Often it’s just me and the giant pipe organ. Poem written at a labyrinth in Victoria, B.C. 2001. Would you like to Unravel? Sign up for Susannah Conway’s photography and journaling ecourse.
Sacred Life Sunday: Light Keeping
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| Polyphonic Spree, Light and Day |
I struggle to live in the moment. So often I am casting my gaze back in regret and longing, or throwing myself forward in to future worries. I know it’s healthiest for me to live mostly in the Now. But to the Now I feel foreign born, and like an adopted child returning to the place of her birth, I must work a little harder to feel at home on what is truly my native land.
I notice this most when Summer fades to Fall, and the days begin to shorten. I start missing the Light even before she is gone. Start longing for her while she is yet by my side. And in doing so I waste the last long rays of her presence.
This then is my attempt to stay with her, to stay present as long as she is still here. To remain alert to her companionship. To “…follow the day and reach for the sun.”Later when she is gone, these images may hold her near to me a little longer yet, until she gently moves my hand from her hers, pats my shoulder, and tells me to lean into the next season until she returns.
How do you stay present to the edge of this season? What will you need to transition into the next?
Asking for Help: Seeing Ourselves
Sometimes we cannot see ourselves for who we really are.
While our compass is at our center, our community helps us to see.
What do you see in these photos? What is it about this face that moves you?
I’m curious to see what you see.
Love,
Magpie Girl
In this photo post: The four faces of me: out of the shower, made up for the day, just before bed, making dinner.
Would you like to Unravel? Sign up for Susannah Conway’sphotography and journaling ecourse.
favorite things: child of my heart
He comes to me in my dreams, this child of my heart, separated now seas and ages.
Sometimes the dreams are all absurdity. Last night in my somnolence he came to me with a new love. I asked after her: what captivated? what called? His serious reply: “She taught me the word “Huntington’s.” Ah, what meaning in that then? Pizza for dinner, perhaps.
Othertimes they are wrought with meaning — Jungian symbols all in a row. He is lost in the woods. And what are these clamps there on his shoulders, at his gut? What is written on this new scroll? Are we falling or flying?
When he feels far from me, this child of choice, I wear this ’round my neck. A charm passed to me from my soulsister, long ago when I was the age he is now. Touch it with one finger there at the hollow of my throat. For safety. For comfort. For joy. Hoping to only connect.
A talisman then, swinging there over my heart.
In this photo post: Favorite things, culled from a vagabond’s backpack while on furlough from Denmark in the States, and posed on a swing which has held three generations.
Would you like to Unravel? Sign up for Susannah Conway’sphotography and journaling ecourse.
Soaring Lessons
Did you know you could fly?
Yes you, with the middle-aged greys springing out of your ponytail…
You with the quarter-life crisis and the world as your oyster…
You with Junior High staring at you from the business end of a double barrel…
You can soar, if only you will bend your knees and leap into the great unknown.
True, the next day, you may fly in a metal tube for 9hours with your broken ankle in temporary cast, and ice from the airplane galley packed around your leg. But you will know in your core that for those clear sparkling moments you were Icarus triumphant. And, when you are old, you will remember those glorious seconds aloft with clarity; while the throb in your bones will be but a faint memory, calling to mind not a fall, but a flight.
“In life you will come to a great chasm. Jump.” -J.Conrad
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the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
There are surfaces in our lives which we pass by every day. The sheen of a coffee cup, the gleam of some stainless steel appliance, the window made a mirror by darkness. We pass them by, unseen and unnoticed. Yet they capture us and throw us back into the world.
If no one sees that reflected bit of us — your nose caught in the shine of the toothbrush holder, your fingers tapping out a rhythm on the guitar, the curve of your hip in the shower knob — does it make a sight? Does it make a sound?
I’ve been struggling this year with knowing that I am enough. Not when I’m fully actualized; not when I’ve achieved Nirvana; not when I’ve been transformed…but now, right now, I am enough. Even in illness. Even in shortcomings. Even in the ever-present, ever-niggling experience of not-knowing. Enough.
In every reflective surface, every unexpected mirror, the world captures my image and throws it back at me.
She chants: “Be here now.”
She bears witness: “You ARE here now.”
She testifies: “You, just as you are, are enough.”
Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Even to my very self.
This is for Susannah Conway’s Unravelling ecourse. If this inspires you, please consider taking the course. In this post: Reflections in a tub fixture with a lavender filter, black & white, the original photo, and colour saturation.
A Pura Vida Solstice
Just one of many Solstice celebrations, this one at the house on Rockaway Beach.
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It is not quite 5am and the dark is slowly dimming to reveal pine trees like shadow puppets awaiting the stage. Beyond them the water is still as glass waiting or the faithful northwest kayakers who will slip out at the dawn, leaving a silent wake in their path.
We are finally at my parent’s coastal retreat, Pura Vida, a beautifully appointed home on a tiny island in the Puget Sound. Everyone is asleep, save me, the insomniac with jet lag. But in a place a still and beautiful as this, who can be worried about a few hours of lost slumber? (Beside, the hammock is waiting on the deck below, should sleep come calling in the afternoon.)
The house will not be quiet long as Pura Vida is full of happy grandparents and boisterous children – soon to be joined by more boisterous children and chatty mamas when the cousins arrive. My Irish roots will show big and bold and the gift of gab will be used in full force over the coming weeks as we greet each other in a rush of words and stories. In the happy, overwhelming rush of family reunion, these sleepless quite moments in the early morn will be my hermit-ish ying to the jolly yang of our happy clan. A time to reflect and write, and sooth the frayed edges of a soul worn down by the coldness of life abroad, now stretched to a joyful bursting point by the warmth of familiarity and common bonds.
Already we have be embraced by the loving arms of people we cherish: the Curran-Coolmans who took our battered jet-lagged selves into their home so full of art, and story, and affection; the sweet child-like family at BF Day Elementary who jumped up and down to see us all on the sugar-filled high of the last day of school; the colorful chaotic buzz of the artists prepping for Solstice celebrations, awash in paper mache; the affection of our son-adopted-by-affection who apparently “does not get enough love” (hard to believe given the lovely young woman who rarely leaves his side); and the teary embrace of our dear friends Lynette and Dwight who could not possibly have more generous hearts toward we the ornery wanders.
All of that goodness in the first 48 hours—a restorative tonic for the 18 months spent in a culture which barely says “hello.”
And now, seven glorious weeks on the shores of placid sea, listening to the giggles, finding crabs under rocks, plucking oysters off the rocks for our supper, and wondering again why it was that we ever went away.
Today Brother Sun will shine his goodness down on all of this wonder, creating from his rays the longest, most glorious day of the year. And I will see very dear moment of it, until his Sister the Moon arrives to tucks us in, just so we can rest and begin it all again.
Happy Solstice.
What’s Your Dream World?: in which she rants about Very Minor Things, and also toys with escapism.
Since I didn’t have to prep my cold cut platters, I went into the sanctuary for the second half of the services and immediately started crying. I do that at lot at church. I think it has something to do with processing the deep loss of Leaving Church after so many decades of dedication. (We only go once in a while now, to give the kids a taste in case they like it and to take Communion which is all rite-and-ritual and kinda pagany–I do love it so!)
Anyway, this Sunday I realized that while I’m sure I still have a nice deep well of Leaving Church sorrow, I was also tearing up because I am so damn depleted from this expat living thing. I just want to buy a coke with ice in less than 15 minutes; buy clothes that don’t look like pregnancy-smocks with leggings; and for godsake be able to pick up paper cups on a Sunday! The closer we get to our sabbatical, the more on-edge I become. It reminds me of how we used to completely max out on being parents about 45 minutes before the babysitter arrived.
The toughest thing about living here–other than the vitamin D depletion– is a leathal cocktail of one part too-small adult-friends community + two parts ”family time” with the children. Recently the small community has shrunk even more, and the kids have had approximately one million days off from school. Yeah, it’s a deadly combination.
In past month I’ve said goodbye to:
-our BFF Family, who moved to Portland, OR.
-my favorite soulsister/artist in CPH.
-a pastoral collegue who actually “gets” me.
-the only other American family in the kid’s folkskole.
-6 of the kid’s friends. (There’s 2 left.)
I’m trying hard to see the benefits of this expansive web of friendship that now lies all over the world. But my deep communitarian roots are showing, and all this bon voyaging is wearing at me until “I feel thin and stretched, like butter spread over too much bread.” (Frodo, I believe.)
On the other hand, I am longing for solitude right now. Paul is Stateside for week doing the Microsurf thing, and I’m at home alone with the girls. Today when I got to church my enjoyable pal Joel asked me how I was. I sighed and absentmindedly said,
“My children never stop talking.”
This literally cracked him up. He’s child-free and apparently not accustomed to parents saying unflattering things about their beloved offspring. And yet, the sorry truth of it is that Eden and Cate talk non-stop: in English, in Danish, and I swear in some sort of alien language they learned from Dr. Who. And that’s when they haven’t had sugar. Post-Sunday School Cupcakes, this is what Cate did under her breathe the whole way home on the bus today:
“It’s chilly outside. Chilly Willy. That’s a good name for a penguin. Chilly Will was a Penguin. Chillywillychwillywillypenguinchillyoustside for penguinsnamedchillywillychilly…”
And she’s the quiet one.
So rather than whine and rant any further, let me just say this about that…
In my dream world I live the life of a hermit, on a deserted beach where the temperature is a constant 83 and breezy. Even tho I am all solitary and sh*t, I get to go out to lunch for big salads 3 days a week with my soulsisters…and there is a guitarist who lives outside my door with his band and they play amazing songs on demand. Oh, and there’s a bathtub with super soft bamboo towels. And superfast internet. And conjugal visits. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Where do you escape when life wears you down? What’s your dream world? Do tell…
