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

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.

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?

Pienza greets us with a cheery patch of grass on which to have lunch. The elders are meeting here and the old men gabble, laughing as one when a pinecone drops from the trees, thumping Paul squarely on the head. We eat our typical Tuscan picnic fare, rounding things out with ricciarelli—sweet almond cookies which dust our fingers in confectionary sugar.

We have no agenda here. No cathedral to visit or museum to haunt. We want only to wander, to follow twisting cobbled streets under the clotheslines hung with shirts and slips, past the window boxes red with geraniums. We think, perhaps we might tour the small palazzo, or buy the local pecorino cheese and eat it warm with honey. Instead, we stumble upon a small chapel. It seems surprisingly spacious beyond the heavy doors; its four walls unornamented save for some crumbling frescoes, the space inside wide and welcoming. The detailed Nativity just inside the doors and the pale broken images of men in brown robes quickly identify this as a Franciscan cappella, my favorite among the old orders. We walk with echoing steps down the long central aisle as we are drawn to the altar at the head of the room. It is utterly unlike any we have seen – a huge slab of unfinished marble lying on its side, for all the world evoking the damaged block from which Michelangelo freed David. Paul and I cannot stop admiring it and of course I, being ever tactile, must lay my hand upon it. The front is rough-hewn with markings I cannot understand, reaching back deep into some hidden past. The back, the side that would face the officiating priest, is covered with images from Old and New Testament tales. Custom says the top must be draped with a cloth in the liturgical colors of the season—although no clearly no standard fare from a mail order catalog would fit this undulating stone. So someone has made one of green and gold, sculpted and scalloped to fit the curve of the gentle polished top of the stone. I am in love. I am deeply in love. Though I wander through the rest of the building—to the beautiful sun-lit Marian chapel with its painted ceiling of blue and gold; past the flat, metal modern sculptures on the walls and the unique candelabra—it is back to the altar I repeatedly come. I pass it round and round, slide my palm over its finished top, sink my fingers into the crevices on its rough sides. It is intended to be a place of adoration, so I adore.

Paul is deeply drawn to the lectern to one side of the altar. It is relatively new, modern in its styling. It reminds us both thinks of our friend Amber, a metalworker and sculptor. We know she would love it. We have forgotten our tripod, and no flash is allowed, so Paul stacks coins on the edge of a pew-back in order to make a sort of camera stand and snaps photos with a slow-closing shutter. The lectern harkens back to Francis’ love of nature and is made in the shape of a tree, its branches entwined and only partially in leaf, so the congregation would be able to see the Bible, the reader, the priest standing behind. I suddenly realize that this is not typical of a Roman Catholic Church. Where is the dramatic raised pulpit elevating the priest above the congregants? Usually it is large and obvious, separating the priest from the people, lifting him up under an ornate dome, rimmed in intricate carvings or fringed in velvet. It is gone. No, not gone—moved—hauled down the length of the transcript to the back of the church and chained to the wall.

I am shocked. I am stunned. Who is the priest here? Who is this innovative renegade? Surely he must be something out of Sue Monk Kidd novel—some romantic character doomed to run afoul of the authorities and into the arms of a clever nun or a pretty congregant with a curious mind. And then I am off and running, writing a sketch in my head of a postmodern misfit in the Catholic milieu. A doomed hero who realizes you have to use art to preach, who knows his people will intuit truth through art. Here is he in my mind’s eye with his open-weave lectern communicating transparency. Here he is, low and close to the community demonstrating equity. Here he is serving the Eucharist from behind an ancient stone, demonstrating a continuous connection stretching from our past to our present and into our future.

Most assuredly, I am in love.

Eden and I sit in front of the stone altar on the dark polished pews. We sing The Breastplate of St. Patrick, the surpassingly good acoustics carrying our voices and making them better than they truly are. We choose the verse Francis would most love:

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks…

The crowds of tourists come in and out of the chapel doors, glancing just a moment at the plain interior before moving on in search of bigger things. Eden and I stay in the echoes. I cannot help but think, “Beware all ye who enter here. You just might find what you are looking for.”

The only thing that has in any way tinged the joy of Obama’s victory, is the surprising and sorrowful win of Prop 8 in my birthplace, California. How a state that features both SF and LA managed to pass a proposition banning gay marriage is beyond me. But while the pundits argue about which sub-group’s vote got the win, many MANY others are working to reverse the decision.

If you live the U.S. you can be a part of seeking equity for members of the GLBT community, and in bring shalom to us all. Please consider particpating at Join the Impact, and wave a sign for me. And if you can’t make a local demonstration, make a statement on facebook, write a letter, distribute flyers, say a prayer. Let’s not forget the words of our new leader: Yes we can.

Photo by: Silvia at DreamerGirl. (blog:art work)
Song by: Me by the Sea, Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians (listen)
Love for: Miss Lynette F, emailer extraordinarie

Remind me each day
That the race is not always to the swift;
That there is more to life than increasing its speed.
Let me look upward into the towering oak
And know that it grew great and strong
Because it grew slowly and wise.

-Owen L. Crain

In the midst of my existential crisis I have decided that I need to embrace my puckish side and say ‘Hello, there!’ to whimsy. So today when I found this turtledove feather in the University Havn I decided to send it to my former housemate Sharon, who has an enormous eagle feather amongst her special treasures.

This got me to thinking about the charm of the hand written letter. I love applying pen to page, and the act of licking-and-sticking a stamp is one of my favorite simple rituals. (Alas, most stamps are self-sticking nowadays, but not air mail stamps from DK.) The best pick-me-up I can think of is getting something real in the mail–once a long-distance friend even sent me a tiny music box!

Nowadays I tend to write a letter or two a month. Souren gets the lion’s share of them — which I’m sure is a wasted effort, given that they are going to a teenage boy. But still, I feel compelled to write in real ink on real paper from time to time and generally he’s the one who gets the magic.

The other teen in my life right now, Miss Mabel V., recently insisted that I read a fantastic YA novel by David Levithan, Boy Meets Boy. It’s a postively jubilant tale, which I highly recommend, and includes this lovely line about letters:

“A note is an update or an entertainment. A letter is giving of a part of your life—an insight into your thoughts beyond mere observations.”

What do you love about letters? What’s the most memorable one you’ve recieved? Do you have a lovely quote about the art of letter writing? The comments are open…

This is my dreamboard for September’s full moon.

I believe: time around the dinning table is sacred; lighting candles on the windowsill is ritual; a flock of friends in a cozy home is essential.

Since moving to Denmark 9 months ago we have been lonely. A lot of our time has been spent adjusting to a new culture and just learning our way around, so at first we were okay with the solitude. Hiding out with our nuclear family was sort of novel and refreshing those first few weeks, but now it’s “ikke sa godt.” (not so good.) When we first came here I was burned out from over-hosting — too many dishes, too many personalities, too much dirt tracked across the living room floor. It was good to rest for awhile. But now we are ready to gather a little flock in our home. Flock gathering is kind of my superpower.

We are accustomed to being the hub for friendly gatherings, and I have sent out an invitation for monthly gatherings in our home through the Fall and Winter. I’ve also invited a group of women to come dreamboard around my dinning room table each month. Monday is our first one and I made a dreamboard in advance, because I know my hostessing energy will be too bustle-y to make mine on the actualy night. So here it is — my dream of a tiny flock of lovlies in a cozy home. The words on the left are in Danish and mean “welcome,” “sacred,” and “cozy.” You can see the whole thing better here.

Well, shall we say “Amen, let it be so”? I think so. I do indeed.

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.

I enjoy the architecture of holy spaces: churches, abbeys, monasteries, temples of all types. Europe suits such a fancy, and lets me see a wide variety of structures meant to honor something – though what they honor is sometimes a bit off from the original goal. This week we are on holiday at Børnholm: Denmark’s only rocky island! (Sometimes the Danglish on signs can be quite amusing. My favorite so far is “Feminism Squats my Heart”…but I digress.) Børnholm has proven to be far more charming than its English tourism by-line. It’s a pretty leafy island in the Baltic Sea, with fine sandy beaches, clear water, and pretty woods through which to bike. In addition to home brewed brown ale (quite nice) and smoked herring (not so nice), Bornholm’s claim to fame includes several Rundekirks – round stone churches white washed to a gleaming brilliance. We were lucky enough to visit a couple of these unique bulwarks, which have served as a combination places-of-worship-cum-look-out-towers since the early 1100’s.

I was particularly struck by Nylars Kirke, the smallest and least significant of the bunch. It’s stolid bulk and cool interior is just the type of space that appeals to me – old, earth-rooted, and simple. I was compelled to touch things there. I ran my fingers along the rim of the grey stone of the baptismal fount, planted firm in the center of the building; placed my palms on the stout center column and felt the wisdom held in its age; ran my hands along the curving outer walls to feel the warmth of the sun-kissed wash and the underlying chill of the hewed stones.

These are the kind of places that speak of home to me—these simple rooms with history in their walls, with time poured into their mortar. It is in these nearly abandoned places, anchored deep in the unwinding days of time, where I my footing can be found.

That’s my daughter in the water….