9.20.08 Update: This is now up in essay form as well…just scrolll down.

This is something that came to me today. It will be up in a day or two as a text post. But for now, I think it wants to be just sound. I’m sorry it doesn’t look prettier. If anyone can tell me in simple terms how to change the code so this is an embedded file that doesn’t have to open in a new window I’d appreciate it. Until then, thank you for listening as-is. Oh, and please say nice things, or at least that you listened. Podcasting still feels tender-new to me. Tak.

Click this to listen: 001_a_004_rachelle-mee-chapman_choosing-the-beast_2007_01_25

Choosing the Beast

I sat in silence for the first time in a long time today. No television on as background noise, no music, not even the warm tumble-thump of the dryer. Just the candles and a tub full of warm water, and the sounds of my noisy mind slowly settling into stillness.

There is a way of holding still without becoming stiff that only happens for me in the womb like waters of a bathtub. As I have no bathtub here in my Danish expat home, this watery stillness is a much longed for and uncommon occurrence. Today, in my borrowed claw foot basin something came to my side. A revelation:

The choice to love, to really love, is incredibly, ridiculously brave.

It is not a surrendering of self but rather, a time when you scramble a bit to find your footing, and then you stand in your own power and look the Vast Beast in the eye and say, “I choose this.” I choose this thing that can both protect me and tear me apart; that can and will bring me my most enthralling joys and my most excruciating and unanticipated pain. I choose the risk. I choose the possibility of endings. I chose to be as simpatico as old souls and to be equally, heartrendingly misunderstood. I choose to be at intervals rashly taken advantage of and unexpectedly worshipped. I choose this terror and this beauty. I choose love.

There are many times when we step into this place of love in naiveté—in the blithe flush of new crush and happy mutual adoration, blissfully unaware of the awe-full power we are inviting into our lives. We do this when we marry; when we choose our children; when we accidentally fall in love with a jubilant soul, with the idea of beauty, with wanting to be a writer or a painter or a poet; with a country we did not even know was part of our bones. When this happens, we live in that place for awhile with ease and contentment, unable or unwilling to see the depth of the pact we have made, not acknowledging that some part of our soul was the currency used in the bargain. Sometimes this joyride continues through the long luxurious length of our journey. But more often the fearful awesomeness of what it really takes to sustain the choice to love looms in front of us and we find that we must be very brave. Brave enough to say, “I choose this still.” Brave enough to stay the course, to maintain the bond even when it becomes painful to do so. Brave enough to say I will bear the ache of watching you grow up, of watching you be sick, of watching you grow old. I will bear the confusion over what to do, over how to love you best. I will love you through this whirlwind, through this firestorm. I chose this beast called love.

I am in a place right now where I must very intentionally choose to love: to love people who are far away; to love my challenging tween and teen; and most challengingly to love my own ill and tired self. And I am watching others commit brave acts of love: surrendering to a first love; watching someone die; tending to a baby soul born at midlife; loving someone through the sickness part of “in sickness and in health.” These acts, these making of stands on the high ground of love are so real, so raw, so terrifyingly powerful they make me want to shield my soul from the solar-flare burst of it all.

But I won’t. I don’t. Instead I stand in the choosing. I stand in the heart of the flame and I try to remember, “if you are never afraid you can never be brave.” And then, I chose love.

Click here to listen to this post, or opt to read it below.
_______________

Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek God
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Look to Abraham and to Sarah who bore you;
For they were but two when I called them,
but once I blessed them they multiplied.

God will comfort Zion; God will comfort all her waste places,
God will comfort all her mounds of ruins.
I will transform her dead ground into Eden,
her moonscape into the garden of God,
a place filled with exuberance and laughter…

This was the lectionary reading from Isaiah this Sunday. When I heard it read aloud in the clipped Danish accent of Hanna, my sister in liturgical ministry, I was immediately transported back to Stonehenge, where I lay my hand upon an ancient heel stone. It made me think of my ancestry, held in ancient stories, and of my—of our—deep connection to the earth. These words and this memory released inside me a wellspring of gratitude for the very real connection I have to such an ancient heritage.

When I returned home and read the text again, I was struck by the feminine language that Isaiah uses for Zion. This is a word which has many meanings, but perhaps most meaningfully to me is how it holds the idea of homeland–the physical or metaphysical place in which we find our source, our identity and our solace. It encouraged me to know that this ancient statement of true things, this old poet’s tongue, still stands. It is an affirmation to me and to my soulsisters, known and unknown, who are feeling as though bits of them have been converted in mounds of ruin–who feel as though they are living in wasted places.

As my dear Jen always says, “Whatever you do hold on to hope…that this is not the end of your story.” Our sisters, our mothers, our ancestral Sarah’s, have been holding on to the hope that the homeland of our hearts and hearths would be comforted—would be made into gardens like unto Eden. Whatever you do today, in whatever way you can, hold on to hope—like a seed in your palm, like the scrap of a fortune cookie paper cupped in your hand. For this is not the end of our story, but the very place from which it is born. Amen. May it be so.

click for more podcasts: Beaches and Bodies, The Care and Keeping of Sacred Stories.
click to learn more about Sacred Sunday.

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 that I have a digital recorder I’m going gaga making soundscapes, audio essays, and interviews. In one such interview, Eden chatted with me about living the artist’s life — specifically about quality control, mass production (pro or con?), and pricing your artwork for sale. There’s some really helpful stuff in there.

By the way, Eden is nine.

Listen to Eden on Art

It’s a little bit of a rough recording because I don’t know how to edit properly yet, but hang in through the not-too-long slower bits to catch Eden’s pearls of wisdom. In the recording I mention this product and this event, and Eden talks about my vintage collection which you can find here. Also, as a nice little tie-in I’m reviewing the band you hear at the end of the podcast in my weekly review over here. Happy listenting!

P.s. I’m a little shy about posting these podcasts, so if you feel like commenting it would go be ever so encouraging. And I promise to learn how to edit soon!

Cate’s summer knees on brilliant display.

There is a part of me that misses preaching, and another slice of my persona that desprately wants to be this guy. So here’s a little bit of both captured in my very first podacst — it’s me reading my latest blog post. It mentions a couple of things you can link to like Tweet and this charming get away.

Coulon Beach EssayPodcast