Category — Soulstories
Magpie Minutes: Why You Should Stop Trying
Do you ever have one of those days? You know, the one where nothing goes quite right. Your writing doesn’t gel. Your 3 year old is gleefully stomping up and down on your last nerve. Your best friend isn’t answering her mobile. And also, the barista really messed up your coffee.
As Alexander would tell you, “Some days are like that, even in Austrailia.”
Now, when I am having One of Those Days I click around the internet.
Yeah. That works. (Not.)
Like Jess Weiner said at BlogHer ’11 this weekend, “The problem with that method is that inevitably someone on your Facebook has cuter kids, or a better vacation.” (Your Gremlins tend to be especially petty when you are having One of Those Days.)
But what if it did work? What if you could come somewhere and get just a little bit of something to tide you over?
That’s one of the things I’d like to do here at Magpie Girl. I’d like to be what Ree Drummond of Pioneer Woman calls “the habit someone has with their morning coffee.”
So I’m making a renewed effort to blog more regularly. To drop you little lines and small, helpful things–even if they aren’t fully realized. Even if it means leaving in a few typos. Even it means refining my theories later.
So here’s the plan. I’ll be dropping these little Magpie Minutes. So if you are having One of Those Days you can come buy, and I’ll scratch where it itches.
Here’s today’s thought.
Why You Should Stop Trying
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Trying. It seems I (we?) are always trying to do something. Eat better. Breathe more deeply. Pay Attention. But that word “trying” has such an onerous connotation to it. Trying is hard. Trying is laborious.
What if it’s true, what Yoda said to Luke Skywalker? “There is no try only do.”
Once, when I was struggling to find away to work whilst experiencing chronic daily migraines, I said to a friend of mine, “I’m really trying here.” And she said, “That’s your problem right there. You are trying, not doing.” At the time I wanted to throw a book at her head. I mean really. I think I hung up the phone. (See, you think I am nice. I’m really not all that nice.)
Grant it, her timing might not have been the best. Telling someone “There is no try, only do” when they are struggling just to get out of bed everyday might not be super nuanced. But the idea in general is a good one.
Trying is about perfection. Until we reach our goal perfectly, we say we are trying. Until we get to our goal weight we are “trying” to lose weight. Until we have finished all 200 pages we are “trying” to write a book.
But is that really true? Are you trying to do those things? Or are you actually doing them?
For the last few months I’ve been saying that I’m trying to eat better. Then last week, at the tail end of a 30 day juice cleanse, I realized something. I wasn’t actually trying to eat better. I was eating better. Sure, after my cleanse I had to travel and I ended up not being able to meet the 70% raw goal I have for myself. But does that mean I was “only” trying? No. I was still doing. Just to a different degree.
So today, if you are feeling the burden of trying, change your language. You’re already in process. There really is no try, only do. And you’re already doing it!
Be kind to your own baby soul today, my young padawan.
Much Warmth,
Rachelle
*your magpie girl
BlogHer 11: Blogger Beware
Being at the BlogHer convention this week has been an revelation.
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
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.
____________________
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.
