photo of dancer Albertina Rasch, 1915. via the amazing Shorpy.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.
-Pablo Picasso

..and your very flesh will be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words, but in the silent lines of itls lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

-Walt Whitman

To Build a Swing
-Hafiz

You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare-
Don’t mix them!

You have all the genius
To build a swing in your backyard
For God.

That sounds
Like a hell of a lot more fun.
Let’s start laughing, drawing blueprints,
Gathering our talented friends.

I will help you
With my divine lyre and drum.

Hafiz
Will sing a thousand words
You can take into your hands,
Like golden saws,
Sliver hammers,

Polished teakwood,
Strong silk rope.

You carry all the ingredients
To turn our existence into joy,

Mix them, mix
Them!

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.

I’m tired of not saying prayers I once loved because the language is gender exlusive, or the God they address is too limited in scope, or the self-degradation is way too intense for the sins of the day.  So I’m rewriting them, these words I once loved, until they are in an order I can love once again.

The Prayer of St. Francis
(before the crucifix)

Oh great Divine,
cast your light into the dark corners of my heart.
Give me purity of thought,
a firm hope, abundant charity,
and profound kindness.
Grant me wisdom, and perception
that I may carry out
that which brings wholeness to this world.

Amen.

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?

I wake up before as the sun is just rising over the horizon, tingeing the sky with light and calling the trees out of the darkness. The green fleece saddle blanket is warm around me and I rub my feet together in a subconscious ritual of awakening. I am a little stiff from my night on the couch (a side effect of insomnia, this wandering and sleeping in odd places.) Still, despite the stiffness, there’s not much that could make me happier than this weekend on our island retreat with my murmur of Soulsisters.

Ten of us have gathered here on the Sound, carving out for ourselves the Soultribe we could not find elsewhere. We range in age from our 40s’ to our teens. We are single-married-divorced. We are child free by choice or circumstance, and in the process of raising offspring. We are employed and freelance, looking and established. We live in 3 countries, 4 states, and one province. The one thing we have in common is that we all of us need a Tribe – not to define who we are, but to support who we are. Not a place of rules and membership guidelines, but just a place to be.  That’s what we are doing here on our island retreat, under our green blankets, at the dawning of day.

Already, with just one afternoon and evening behind us, I am fully convinced that this was worth it. The time and the money and the travel; the risk and the “jump!” and the Gremlins.  Something good is getting itself born. And we will help you get your something good born to. Whatever you do hold on to hope, your Soultribe is coming. Our’s arrival here is a harbinger of good things to come.

 May peace greet you this Sunday morning. Shalom.

Rachelle Mee-Chapman is an alt.minister dedicated to helping Soultribes get born.  To take some practical first-steps, or to read how-we-did-it interviews with fabulous Soultribe practitioners click here. To follow along as we stumble, experiment, and dance our way towards our Soulsisters Soultribe, follow our progress here.  Thank you for being here.

The result of one of my favorite start-of-the weekend chores — ironing our homemade cloth napkins for the week ahead.

The hot smell of  iron on cotton rises to me in a hiss of steam. I spread the cheerful colors beneath my palm, watch them smooth and ease against the board. Fold. Press. Steam.

There are never enough to match ’round the table. Never enough clean when company comes. But these napkins are ours, made by hand, pressed each week in a rite of gratitude.

Soon they will grace our chattery meals, be waved about in emphasis over a funny story, wipe mouths that have never known hunger.

This is alchemy –  a chore becoming prayer, a napkin transformed to a vestment.

What everyday spirituality moment are you treasuring today?

There is nothing more soothing to my soul than the sea — captured here most perfectly by Dutch photographer, Silvia DeVries. Silvia blogs at the pretty,  poignant True Colors, and as you can see in the new pink box to the right, she’s my favorite current blog crush. Get her prints or postcards for a spectacular price during her moving sale, on now.  May you have a meditative moment today by the (virtual) sea.

Shalom,

Rachelle

Remember, O most loving Virgin Mary
that it is a thing unheard of
that anyone ever had recourse to your
protection, implored your help,
or sought your intercession,
and was left forsaken.

Filled therefore with confidence in your
goodness, I fly to you
O mother, Virgin of Virgins to you I come,
before you I stand, a sorrowful sinner.
Despise me not my poor words
O Mother of God
But graciously hear and grant my prayers.

I am on a journey to Mary. I do not yet understand her; her appeal to so many, or the complexity of her character. At times I feel frustrated that she has become a stand-in for the feminine expression of God, a symbol of the feminine Divine, when she is not in fact a deity. But at other times her creative force seems so strong that I can understand the impulse to mold her into the void that our patriarchal God leaves behind.

In Sienna the shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary is immense. It is revered in the utmost, and nearby at a respectful distance the walls are hung thick with items that denote both thanksgiving and petition: baby booties on satin strings; motorcycle helmets of those who have survived the crash; war medals and memorials. The people pray, “Remember…that is a thing unheard of… that anyone had ever implored you for help…and was left forsaken.” What would it be like to have someone like that? To rest that assured that help was on its way?

In Sweden there are the remains of a most ancient chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I think it is telling that it has been left to decay, reduced now to a mound of fern covered rock. The powers that be may have decided that this chapel did not need to be protected, did not need to continue to stand. But the placard there will not let me go. It reads simply:

“The people loved Mary because she knew their needs.”

“When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary calls to me….” She is calling, there in the distance. I hear her like a whisper that resides in the curve of my ear. And I wonder as a I wander, what will she say as our journey goes on?