Pentecostal question
By Tess | May 14, 2008
Photograph by Snap-shooter
I subscribe to a daily meditation from Richard Rohr. These are often very helpful and searching.
Today’s is this:
How have you let the spirit change you?
Rohr goes on to describe the Pentecostal spirit:
The Spirit is always unmerited favor. She always does it first. God is experienced as intimacy and warmth and fire, as love-power. She is surprising, elusive and free. The Spirit blows where the Spirit will, like the wind: It comes from and goes where you know not.
Although Rohr is taking as his reference the experience of Christ’s disciples at Pentecost, I think this experience of “God as intimacy and warmth and fire” is probably common to all faiths (even if God/dess goes by different names).
The question “How have you let the spirit change you?” is challenging for me. It is entirely possible to deny the fiery call of Wisdom. I believe I am called to compassion. Often, I’ve allowed its flame to burn in me; as many times, I’ve turned away.
It can be difficult to discern Wisdom’s call. Am I, are you, called to something that seems impossible? Is it really impossible? How much is ego, how much deep listening? What is the difference between joy and enjoyment?
I’ll be holding those questions close over the next few days.
Topics: Contemplation, Sacred living, Spirituality, Questions | No Comments »
Would I be brave enough?
By Tess | May 12, 2008
The death, at 98, has been reported of Irena Sendlerowa, a Pole who organised the rescue of 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto between 1940 and 1943.
As part of the Zegota resistance movement, she worked in conditions of extreme personal risk which led to her eventual capture, torture and close escape from execution.
When I hear of people like this, I often wonder if I would be brave enough. Or would I be a collaborater? I don’t know. I hope I never have to find out. But I wonder.
Topics: Activism, Questions | 8 Comments »
Sunday Collection: Anger
By Tess | May 11, 2008
Photograph by Kiwanja
There’s an Incredible Hulk in all of us. Our anger bursts out and transforms us. Sometimes it’s directed outwards, and we leave a trail of destruction in our wake as we storm along (turning green is optional!). Or it can be directed inwards, choking us on its ash.
For some personalities, anger lies behind much of who they are, for others it is less of a ruling force; but it affects all of us, along with its close cousins hatred, fear and contempt.
Sometimes anger comes with the word ‘righteous’ in front of it, and then we can move mountains and correct terrible injustices. But it can still tip over into destruction and blindness very easily.
I was put in mind of all this by two posts I read this week.
The first is by Towanda, who tells us of a frightening experience of being the object of sheer rage. Head over and read the entire post, but basically, Towanda was screamed and sworn at repeatedly by a woman wanting her to move her car. All this in front of a four-year-old child.
At the time, I made a slightly light-hearted comment, but I’ve been thinking since how often I’ve contained similar vitriol within me, without letting it spew out. There’s something about the unnaturalness of the lives we lead, and the pressures on us, that can make waiting more than a few seconds for a parking space seem unendurable.
So then I got to wondering how we can express anger without letting it destroy us or those about us. After all, as Emily Dickinson says:
Anger as soon as fed is dead;
’T is starving makes it fat.
And look, there on the horizon is Magpie Girl, flying to the rescue!
Her regular readers already know that la Magpie is an intelligent and magnificent Mama. Check out this post, for example. In this week’s A Shrine for Hard Feelings, she describes her daughter’s difficulties in coping with their recent move from the USA to Denmark, and the child’s helpless anger. Again, read the whole post, but meanwhile let me share a little of Magpie’s dialogue with her daughter:
“Did you know anger is a cover-up emotion? It covers up some other emotion. Something else is hiding under there.”
“It is?” (now backing down to mere sniffles)
“Yes. And I need you to think about it and tell me what it is that’s hiding under there.”
Now this is a question we could all ask ourselves when rage threatens to overcome us. What is it hiding?
Magpie gets her daughter to create a physical shrine in which she can write down and store the hard feelings. So the feelings are not denied, they are held and honoured, but their effect is not destructive.
I have to say, this idea, and her other link to the Anger Altar have given me some ideas for working with my own anger (oh dear, that phrase does sound like pop psychology, doesn’t it!).
So thanks to both Towanda and Magpie for making me think, and I’d like to share another poem which has something to tell us about anger:
I saw you once, Medusa; we were alone.
I looked you straight in the cold eye, cold.
I was not punished, was not turned to stone.
How to believe the legends I am told?…
I turned your face around! It is my face.
That frozen rage is what I must explore -
Oh secret, self-enclosed and ravaged place!
That is the gift I thank Medusa for.
May Sarton
And to end on a more light-hearted note (because laughter can also often help us release anger), here is a clip from Anger Management, starring the incomparable Jack Nicholson and the not-too-bad Adam Sandler:
Have a great week everyone, and a Happy Mother’s Day to all my American Mama friends. (We have our Mother’s Day earlier in the year in the UK.)
Topics: Collections, Video, Community and friends, Poetry | 8 Comments »
Muse-ing
By Tess | May 8, 2008
One friend and fellow blogger has remarked a few times recently that the muse of originality doesn’t always visit these days. I’m sure we all have times (I know I do) when what we write feels turgid and recycled, or when we are unable to write anything at all.
The dictionary has muse as “the source of an artist’s inspiration”. Also “to be absorbed in one’s thoughts; to engage in meditation”.
And of course there are the Muses of Greek mythology. I was interested to read that the three original Muses were called Aoide (Song), Melete (Practice) and Mneme (Memory). Or alternatively Nete, Mese and Hypate, the names of the three chords of the lyre.
Perhaps this gives us a clue that to free ourselves up for inspiration, the various strands of our lives must link together in some way, whether in joy, pain or laughter, for the muse to inspire us.
This fits for me. Inspiration comes easier when I’m fully engaged in life: reading books, blogs, talking to friends, meditating, praying, writing, laughing, getting outdoors, experimenting with visual arts, working, learning. When everything is in balance.
But even then there are often times when that damn muse has packed her bags and gone on a trip and to write anything is a slog!
Which is when we have to unpack one of the most important tools in a writer’s kit: the shitty first draft.
At that phrase many of you will have smiled and breathed the name of the Goddess, Anne Lamott. For the uninitiated, Ms Lamott is a great writer who teaches others to become great writers. In her book Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life, she has an entire chapter called Shitty First Draft. This is part of what she says:
The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later… If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about… but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.
So it seems the muse can arrive backwards, during the process of writing, discerning, re-writing and polishing.
But for regular and fairly frequent bloggers, going through all those drafts is very time-consuming. We’re not writing novels.
I’d be very interested to hear how others invite the muse to visit their blog writing. How much is technique, how much inspiration, how much bloody hard work?
Photograph by **Maurice**
Topics: Blogging | 9 Comments »
Appleblossom time
By Tess | May 4, 2008
My photograph, taken at Turvey Abbey, May 3 2008
I saw the archangels in my apple-tree last night,
I saw them like great birds in the starlight—
Purple and burning blue, crimson and shining white.And each to each they tossed an apple to and fro,
And once I heard their laughter gay and low;
And yet I felt no wonder that it should be so.But when the apple came one time to Michael’s lap
I heard him say: “The mysteries that enwrap
The earth and fill the heavens can be read here, mayhap.”Then Gabriel spoke: “I praise the deed, the hidden thing.”
“The beauty of the blossom of the spring
I praise,” cried Raphael. Uriel: “The wise leaves I sing.”And Michael: “I will praise the fruit, perfected, round,
Full of the love of God, herein being bound
His mercies gathered from the sun and rain and ground.”So sang they till a small wind through the branches stirred,
And spoke of coming dawn; and at its word
Each fled away to heaven, winged like a bird.
Nancy Campbell
I’ve just spent a profoundly nourishing weekend at Turvey Abbey, sinking deeper into the sacred, welcoming waters of Benedictine spirituality.
And how fitting to do so surrounded by the full mad blossoming of Spring. It’s as if our Mother Earth goes giddy with delight, her swirling skirts and dancing feet trailing lushly delicate colour with every step.
I slept this weekend in a second-storey room of the guest house, my window opening right into the treetops. I was rocked to sleep by creaking branches, woken by birds flinging their praises to the sky, anchored by community and the wisdom of St Benedict.
One of those times to remember when life seems ugly.
Topics: Sacred living, Monasticism, Community and friends, Poetry | 3 Comments »
Away…
By Tess | May 2, 2008
…for a few days.
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, I look forward to catch up with all my blog reading when I get back.
Topics: Community and friends | 2 Comments »
You know you’re a nerdy bookworm when…
By Tess | April 30, 2008
…you hear that your local library is implementing an upgraded computer system that will allow full online management of your account including searching, reservations and renewals, and you get all excited and tell people about it!
My colleague’s glazed look and ill-disguised attempts to leave the room were the biggest clues that not everyone shares my enthusiasms.
Topics: Books | 13 Comments »
Happy is better than rich
By Tess | April 29, 2008
Every year, the UK’s Sunday Times publishes its famous Rich List, and this year’s came out on Sunday. Click here to find the names of those who are richer than most of us will ever dream of being - or in my case would ever want to be.
This year there’s an antidote to the Rich List: the Independent on Sunday published its Happy List. Here is their introduction:
The Wealth List, Power List, Influence List, Celebrity List… almost every week some publication or other is worshipping at the shrine of the wealthy and famous. Today, ‘The Sunday Times’ produces its famous Rich List, an entire magazine devoted to the moneyed. About time, then, we thought, that someone produced an antidote. So here it is: the Happy List, celebrating those Britons who have given back, enhanced the lives of others and realised that in an acquisitive society there’s a crying need for values other than mere materialism.
The 100 people whose brief profiles appear in the Happy List are indeed a joy. The list doesn’t just cover charity and philanthropy, but innovation and entertainment and everything in between. From fairly well-known names to more quietly-sung heroes, this list (whose only non-human inhabitant is TinkyWinky, the Telly Tubby…) will warm the cockles of your heart. Go on, take a look.
Topics: Simplicity, Activism, Community and friends | 5 Comments »