Writing Into Transformation

A Summary of  "Say the Wrong Thing: Strategies of the

 H.E.A.R.T. for Racial Justice and 

Authentic Community"
 

a workshop with Dr. Amanda Kemp

To hold the space for transformation, we are 
learning, can be more important than

to make a point or to be certain that “those others” don’t 
mistakenly believe

we are with them.  We want a larger we. We want to grow able 
to love and to

critique ourselves simultaneously—a muscle that is 
underdeveloped.

So DANCE.  Find out where you each hold your breath and feel it ease under loving attention. How you create the space for transforming is by discovering that you are frozen

in formal bias and letting it ease within loving attention.  Oh.  

WE ease

and Melt THEM, breathe and direct attention to them, 
opening up the door to love

without conditions or defensive moves. In this homebase for transformation, we

give “those others” a chance to change, we take a chance on 
trusting an unfamiliar

procedure.  Oh.  We melt.  We speak our truth in order to 
connect, to hear their truths,

to meet them in space for transformation. If I say it often enough, it’s true. I think we can, I think we can.  To climb to transformation peak, to grow ourselves.

Exercising critique and love muscles in us, we contemplate 
and wait on God.

We take care of our soul and their souls, too. Oh.  How 

wonderful the parallel acts:

of releasing bodies, of holding space for transformation, 
and of opening

the door with time with curiosity with God and them and we--
expanding we.  I see.

☙❧

Just Saying

Over at 1sojournal, Elizabeth offers prompts for these challenging post-election times.  Her first 3 were Fear, Love and Acceptance. Today's is a poem and question.  Here's my answer:


Just Saying

for Elizabeth on Day 4

DO I know what I mean by saying “Just
Saying”?  I mean "I meant what I said, but
let me disparage it before you do
because I do not want to hear any
critique or commentary of my point
OR view."  And that’s true.

"The words, images,absolutes just crept
out of my mouth, like fish moving through an
aquarium toy, maybe a castle
with open doors and windows—my image
of what you must be—receivers of no
concern of mine, things for me to weave webs
around and to eat later during my victory
two-step and my twirl.  And why aren’t those fish
aquarium toys edible? Cakes are
and bird seed patties and the ground I stand
and the masses, faceless but nourishing none-
the-less."  (My brother taught me this meaning
and I haven’t used the words since he did
because he was savvy. I’ve become better
at listening and interpreting lines.
Trust a businessman  to know the lingo.)

Just saying.
With love, Susan

I love Elizabeth's directions for this series of prompts:  

The Challenge here is to use your creative talent to bring light into the current distress in the world around you, in whatever form that talent takes. Please remember that we are reaching out to a world that is facing upheaval and possibly a great number of changes. Let us reach out to that world and bring it the lessons we have learned by becoming artists and writers.  You may use images, photos, music, poetry, prose, short story fiction, personal essay, or whatever suits you best. I will post one word a day, adding a few of my own thoughts about the word. The rest is up to you. You may post as many times as you like, and may use old or new pieces, as you choose. When you have finished creating your post, return here and leave the URL in the comments section below. Then post it to whatever social media you are involved with. If you are not connected to some form of social media, consider joining one now. If not, say so when you post, and I will attempt to post it on mine, which is Facebook.

Visit her.  Visit me.

Election Day

Oh, Ye of Little Faith*

Image by jclk8888., posted with the Richard Rohr Meditation referenced below

My writing is the prayer that opens me

up to the meditations I read and/

or hear now each and every morning .

A discipline of sorts, it heals my sins

of Absence, Addiction and Attachment.

As a child I competed to get A’s—

But, now, Alone time is the only A

I seek.  Not even Absolution is

preferable to Love, Unlimited.

Writing is the prayer that opens

me—paradoxically opens me—to

in-pouring Love of which words are mere trace.

Out-pouring is the call that I am more

or less obedient to, ministry

I do not understand and so resist.

My writing is the prayer that opens me

beyond logos to roiling listening

and eventually to giving back.

And I hereby exhort myself to write—

despite not feeling it—despite what we

excuse as writer’s block, despite boredom.

Oh, yes, I bore myself and turn to film

and other diversions—most of which are

empty occupations which lead me back.

To where if  I were willing and able

to write through reams of dross, I’d think past

what I can write now into faithfulness.

If I could know the story’s end before,

how easy it would be to follow course—

how little faith I would need, then, to write.

*Matthew 8:26  He replied, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.  (New International Version)

Inspired by today's meditation by Richard Rohr: 

Twelve-Step Spirituality: Week 1

In Need of Healing Sunday, May 29, 2016 Quote:  "Nine of Jesus' healing stories are actually exorcisms. Although we may think we are too sophisticated for such stories, the fact that there are so many speaks to their importance. I understand "possession by devils" as a primitive but absolutely truthful way of referring to what we now call addiction. In each case, the person is in some sense trapped by a larger force, and is powerless to do anything about it. The only cure for possession is "repossession." You have to be repossessed by Something Greater than the disease." Find the entire meditation HERE.

And I haven't written either blog posts or chapters since ... since .... Perhaps this is a new beginning.

It generated a series of poems:  

• Step One:The Paradox of Powerlessness
• Step Two: Going for a Walk with Truth
• Step Three: Rest
• Step Four: Taking Stock
• Step Five: Calling the Dance
• Merciful Presence: a sonnet
• Steps Six and Seven: There Are Truly Gifts Inside
• First Do No Harm:  Steps Eight and Nine: Reparations
• Step Ten: Consciousness
• Step Eleven: Remember the Day
• Step Twelve: Good News

In case you are interested, here are The Twelve Steps of AA (from Great Britain).

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast

My Pendle Hill Presentation

I made an outline and cut the chapters I read to the core—and I liked them so much that I think the originals need this cutting as well.  This was the outline:

ENTER AS Alice
Rd Ch 1 and 2 

Pause for a summary of the major conflicts and events: 

                        —the invitation and losing her job
                        —the laptop and Ricky’ visit

Rd Ch 22, 25, 26 

Discussion:      Helen as linear narrator
                        What’s like me, what’s different
                        Vertical 4-D writing
                        What I learned here
                        What I take home
Tanya

2 weeks before I can write again!

And this was my prayer:  

Many Pendle Hill staff people came and two interns and and two guests!  Let me see if I can walk my way around the table: (From my left) Lloyd, Jesse, Amy, Anne, Laura, John, Amadeus, Ricardo, Helene, Joe, Shirley, Steve, and Angela.  I wish I had taken a picture or asked someone to take one.  And I am not yet able to record the responses except to say they were generally positive, very positive.  Gosh.

I addressed my entire outline with a little prompting from Jesse to talk about the role of prayer in my writing and to talk about the space in which I worked.  

Here is the "discussion" part of the presentation in a much more organized form than my actual talk.  I wrote this earlier in the afternoon while planning what to tell folks about my work as Writer-in-Residence:

I’ve been thinking a lot about how narrative writing grows.  In my novel Alice in Wonder, I started with my own solo performances, making the character I once played be the core persona of the drama in a semi-autobiographical semi-historical novel. 

I made her 10 years older than me and financially independent.  I replaced my life as a teacher with hers as a storyteller.  I replaced my need to reveal what radical feminist community was all about with her reluctance and resistance to returning there—but otherwise we share a lot.  I was involved with women’s communities and did find Quakers first at the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice.  Alice’s lovers are quilted from my own and those of my friends.  Her experience working on racism and discovery of her own racism are my own.  My own spiritual life has deepened by exploring hers.

Here at Pendle Hill, I continued to write in a linear narrative, letting Alice’s conflicts and catastrophes lead me forward, but as I worshipped more and more I began to write vertically as well as horizontally, as if I were switching to 4-dimensions and exploring the depths and dimensions of single moments.  I hope the chapter I read aloud illustrates that. 

Essential elements of my time here included leaving home and its involvements, joining daily worship and starting daily prayer in three different modes—silent, in writing and in color drawing.  Also the food and its consistent scheduling--including my time with the kitchen crew around the dishwasher-- contributed a lot.   My weekly consultations with Jessie kept me on track, made me aware of creative patterns I can take home with me, and often eased anxiety as well.  She’s careful to meet when she can be fully present.  She’s a good listener and a skilled mentor.  

Finally, the events I participated in and the people they brought me in contact with expanded me—including my lunchtime writing sessions, the three sessions of readings I did before this one, the Monday talks and book signings, the Commencement ceremony of Radical Faithfulness and last weekend’s full conference on Transformative Justice in Community.  Wow.  Without the residence program, I feared there might be too little conversation and dialectic, but in the end it was just right.  I’m so happy that the last event of my residency will be Marcel Martin’s book signing event for Our Life is Love.  That is providential! 

According to Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, the Global Story Coach:

          The world has conditioned us, whether we are coaches, writers, artists, business people or other kinds of creative folks, that we need to always be moving outward.          [But] we don’t.  [We can center and then] from a place of deep abundance, we truly can remain open, and receive what is meant for us. This is the point of attraction and power. It is not a passive path. It is not a hermit’s path either. It’s one of powerful intention and receptivity.  And, it’s one of conscious awareness of being led by something greater than the individual self.

I have been reflecting today on what I take away from Pendle Hill, and Tanya's assertion is one of them.  To have a chance to learn this experimentally is a great blessing. One of the first things that Jesse said to me was that despite what I said I would be doing here, I should see what is on my heart right now and let it lead me. 

I find I stop writing to pray often about both this world and the fictional one.  I thrive in the writing cave and morning schedule I’ve made here and will build those in at home.  I also take back with me the uses of my weekly check-in with Jesse and have begun to gather a spiritual support team to read my work, to ask me questions about both the work and the process of writing, and to worship with me.  I think we’ll meet once a month.  But I would love to hear from others about what they have found supportive.

Finally: It’ll be two weeks before I can return to writing.  Obligations I’ve put off have crowded in—shopping Friday, sessions Saturday, Upper Dublin Sunday, Doctors Monday and Tuesday, and then Wednesday a drive to upstate New York family.  It will be March 28^th before I can become writer-in-residence in my own home!  I have to look into this business and figure out a way to get a well-cooked meal at least once a week back here at Pendle Hill.

I’m hoping to finish Alice in Wonder this year, even if writing about her wonder leads me to more books or more wonders and avocations.  I don’t know yet whether writing is the calling or the path to another calling.  

But I thank God and everyone for this stop on the road.  

I will write more as way opens.