The Story Midwife

Spring Giddiness

Spring GiddinessToday, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

	-- Jalaluddin Rumi

Ah, welcome spring!!
It's been over a year since my words have splashed out here. Today, on this first day of spring 2008, it feels like the blessedly ripe time to stop in for a visit again. These days of solstice and equinox are, after all, some of my favorites in the year. 

Rumi's Spring Giddiness has been my mantra in the last few weeks.  A little over two years ago I wrote a song from these words. Called Don't Go Back to Sleep, once I made a rough scratch recording it seemed to fade back in my mind. I was perusing the contents of my little hand-held digital recorder which I use to capture my song ideas or works-in-process. When I stumbled upon the very first strains of this song  my breath caught.  It was just what I needed to hear that day.  And apparently every day since.  Over and over the refrain comes to me: "The door is round and open, the door is round and open." The song has begun to sing me.

This is a different phenomenon than getting a song annoyingly stuck in the groove of my brain. Roseanne Cash has been quoted as saying, "I've always found that songs can be postcards from your future."  When I first heard this quote about a decade ago I totally got that haunting quality to art of any medium.  To me, as with Roseanne, it comes in the form of song and I find it everywhere in my works. Even considering the new rush of energy and enjoyment of a fresh baby song, in some ways it's more fun to look back at a song when I can feel it through the seasons of my life. Rumi and his poem and my ensuing song have embodied this haunting future-past quality.  Something in me wrote the song two years ago, but it's real impact hasn't been noticeable until now.  Perhaps some mysterious future self sent this song back to me a couple of years ago so that I could partake of it in this season by simply enjoying my earlier fruits.  Or maybe my subconscious was just way ahead of my conscious.  Either way, it's a cool thing.

Being the equinox, we Bruxvoort-Colligan's will be celebrating with our traditional Equinox Pizza.  I'll be sitting in some quiet space with a candle and my journal for some reflection and looking forward.  And my beloved and I will find space together on our couch (Viola - who will be making an appearance in the sheep pasture on our upcoming duet CD), sipping red wine and sharing the holinesses-made-manifest from our own lives this Holy Week.

And you: have a happy equinox and may you drink in the loveliness of this grand day,
Trish

Dolphin-bound

A.K.A.  My sneaky husband...

Thank you, thank you for all the wonderful birthday wishes! It was a wonderful birthday and birthday week. One of the coolest parts was a secret my boys were keeping from me. I could see Sammy was about to burst, but as I love a good surprise, I kept stroking him in his "doing a good job keeping this secret, Sammy."

Here's one thing I love about my husband: he knows me. Another thing: he loves me beyond words, methaphor, and image. I am pretty sure I have no idea how deep his love goes. While we live in the day-to-day unfoldings of life together I encounter the well of his love for me and our love together. But it's a moment or event like my birthday surprise where I catch my breath and think, "Damn! This man really digs me.  And he gets me."  It's a lovely combination.

So what is this surprise?

I'm going swimming with dolphins!  And my best friend Heather Michele will be joining me!  WAHOO!

The Minnesota Zoo has a get-to-know the dolphins program which includes special seats for the dolphin show, followed by a special one-on-one time with a particular dolphin. From what I understand, the dolphin swim is more like a dolphin dip: very brief and highly controlled in a small part of the pool. And while it's my dream to someday frolic in the wild with dolphins this is a glorious foretaste of the feast to come. Made all the more fun that Heather and I will do it together. The date's not yet on the calendar, but it will likely be a Saturday in the next couple of months.  I'll be sure to take pictures and post them here.

In the Native American traditions, animals are messengers and bringers of good medicine. As I talked about in my last post, there is much arising in my emotional life right now. With the surprising way Dolphin has shown up here has me wondering what what gifts she might bring. Here's a traditional native story re-told by Jamie Sams and David Carson, co-autors of the animal Medicine Cards:

     Dolphin was traveling the oceans one day as Grandmother Moon was weaving the patterns of the tides. Grandmother Moon asked Dolphin to learn her rhythms so that he could open his female side to her silvery light. Dolphin began to swim to the rhythm of her tide, weaving, and learning to breathe in a new way. As Dolphin continued to use this new rhythm, he entered the Dreamtime. This reality was a new and different place from the seas he had known.
     Dolphin came to discover underwater cities in the Dreamtime, and was given the gift of the primordial tongue. Dolphin learned that all communication was pattern and rhythm, and that the new aspect of communication was sound; he carries this original pattern to this day.
     Dolphin returned to the ocean of the Great Mother, and was very sad until Whale came by and told Dolphin that he could return to be a messenger to the Dreamtime dwellers anytime he felt the rhythm and used the breath. Dolphin was given a new job. He became the carrier of messages of our progress. The Dreamtime dwellers were curious about the children of Earth, and wanted us to grow to be at one with Great Spirit. Dolphin was to be the link.

Ted Andrews' Animal Speak book talks of the power of breath, sound, sexuality, and spiritual practice that Dolphin invites us to. Being a sound-breath-body-Dreamtime lover, all of this makes sense. A few years ago I attended a week long retreat in Shamanic Breathwork. Whew, what an experience. I'm still integrating things that arose in that time. I'm not sure I'm up for a retreat like that right now, but perhaps the elements of breath and sound and body and dreamwork are asking for a different sort of attention. Thanks for that post-it note, Dolphin.

It's a Spirations Spiritual Direction Training Program weekend coming up, and I must return to my preparations. We have been exploring Ache and Dark Nights of the Soul this quarter. It's been rich and luscious, and I am eager to be with my women to hear their stories and know their hearts.

How might breath and sound be calling to you?
   

Happy Birthday Week to ME!

Trish, age three, Burt and Ernie birthday cake - made by Aunt Beth, my mother's sister.

__________________

Yep - it's birthday week!  Wahoo!  I love my birthday week and drink it all in with feisty joy.  I'm an Aquarius, born January 22, 1975.  For those of you who aren't math geniuses, that makes me 32 years old on Monday.

In our house, the birthday girl or boy gets the whole week. Richard and Sammy have sweetly gifted me with a present each morning before Sammy hops aboard the bus. Monday it was a recipe book (handcrafted by Sammy and Daddy with LOTS of tape) full of recibes for just one item: the mango lassi! Ooh, I love Indian food, in particular the traditional Indian mango drink. The boys got a whole pile of mangoes and accompanying ingredients and Sammy and I whipped them up for dinner on Monday night. Tuesday I got a new orange (favorite color) folding toothbrush. Today it was the new Stephanie Plum mystery by Janet Evocovich, Twelve Sharp. (I'm a sucker for a quirky murder mystery, and Stephanie Plum takes the cake. No pun intended...) Last night Sammy took me out for pizza, and tonight we'll do something special, too. (Richard's at the Big City Church both nights.) This weekend friends are taking us out for pasta and the theater. I think it'll be a great birthday week for me.

This photo above of me at my 3rd birthday party is tender for me. Each time I really look at it - and into the eyes of my three-year-old self - I tear up. In the midst of preparing our house for sale, I recently re-discovered my baby book with photos from my early childhood. Many find me with a strained smile or no smile at all. Here though, at age three, I have a spontaneous smile - maybe even a precursor to a giggle? It 's both sad and heartwarming to see my/her face. I want to scoop her up as I have so often scooped up my son and ask her what she knows. To tickle her and snuggle with her and sing her to sleep. To love her like she's never been loved before.

Over the last several weeks, I've been exploring EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), an energy-based, self-healing method based on the meridians, as well as "mind training" methods that integrate prayer, meditation, EFT and hypnosis. As a contemplative who leans deeply into Buddhist Insight Meditation and treasures the journey of life (including the rich folds of the soul that darkness, sorrow, and grief lend), I am reluctant to try and am skeptical of ultra "light-based", instantaneous, "change-your-mind-and-change-your-life" recipes for success, happiness and manifestation. 

In his book Original Self, author, musician, psychotherapist, and former monk (now there's a combo I love!) Thomas Moore offers that when we are "chronically trying to be someone other than [our] original self, persuaded that we are not adequate and should fit some norm of health or correctness, we may find a cool distance gradually separating us from the deep and eternal person, that God-given personality, and we may forget both who we were and who we might be."

Three more quotes from Original Self:

   "The soul has its own set of rules; the events of the soul are cyclic and repetitive. Familiar themes come round and round. The past is more important than the future. The living and the dead have equal roles. Pleasures are deep, and pain can reach the very foundations of our existence."

   "The soul doesn't evolve or grow, it cycles and twists, repeats and reprises, echoing ancient themes common to all human beings. Its odyssey is a drifting at sea, a floating toward home, not an evolution toward perfection."

   "To be modern is to worship at the altar of health. We look forward to the day when we will be fully balanced and adjusted. We believe we will have arrived there when trouble vanishes and we feel chronically carefree... Behind this attitude lies a salvational fantasy... Once in a group discussion James Hillman was celebrating the soul's pathologies. I supported his stance by saying how important it is to safeguard our symptoms. A man in the group came up to me afterward and said, 'Did I hear you right? Did you speak in favor of preserving our symptoms? How could a therapist, of all people, make such an odd remark?'
   Our neuroses are the raw material out of which an interesting personality may be crafted. They are sometimes dangerous and debilitating but nonetheless valuable...
   Not wallowing in our limitations by creatively dealing with them as resources for a vital life - the prima materia of the alchemists - we arrive not at shallow self-acceptance but at profound love of the soul, which, with its rich mixture of the good and the bad, is the starting point of a creative life."

Whew - this is the sort of stuff that makes my mystic soul come alive! It's also very much in tune with my experience of breath-centered meditation. And, to me anyway, it seems that the hypes of EFT, positive affirmations, and hypnotherapy blatantly contradict this more soul-nurturance view. A 'salvational fantasy', if you will. Yet there are many individuals dear to me that claim the personal and life-altering power of these tools and methods. The movie The Secret is big news in many spiritual circles, as are books by Esther and Jerry Hicks, which contain messages on the laws of abundance and attraction brought forth by the entity Abraham, whom they channel.

As much as the contemplative in me may initially bristle at this sort of language, it has been my experience that where I place my thoughts my attention follows. And I love my readings in the intersection of faith and science, of quantum physics and faith/theology/spirituality, which is at play in EFT, affirmation work, The Secret, and other "mind tools". AND I'm also a Big Fan of the incredibly rich diversity of God.

So - what do I do with all this that initally feels like discord? I'm sitting with it. Exploring it. Opening my mind to the ways these seemingly different world/spirituality views might find stands of similarity, even compatability.

How, you may be begging to know, does this relate to my birthday week? I often find myself claiming themes rather than resolutions for a year, and as my birthday is so close to the new year it is often the marker for such thematic turns around the sun. Lately I feel a rumbling in my belly as I relate to my past. This is not new, and Lord knows I've done a shit load of inner work, therapy, journaling and spiritual direction as I bring healing and peace to my Story. But as my son ages, it becomes more important to me to live "cleanly" from my Story. I'm not sure what I mean by that, exactly. Just that I don't want to bring all the tangles from my family of origin into so many of my encounters with my son. I'm sensing that all of the above - from Thomas Moore to EFT to affirmative mantras - have pieces to contribute to a new layer of healing might occur in my life. Thus, we have a theme for Birthday Year 32. (Incidentally, in numerology the number 32 is broken down to the number 5. Here's what one resource says about the energies of 5. Right in line with child-hearted-ness, I think!)

This is a long post, I know. And full of diverse ideas and thoughts and explorations. If you've stuck with me this far, I'd love to know your thoughts on this. I know some of you personally, and know that you are mystic-contemplative minded folks. How do you integrate (or not) some of these ideas? If you feel yourself more in-line with positive visualization, the laws of attraction and abundance, and other new thought modalities, what do you think of Thomas Moore's assertions? You Buddhists, too - what's your take? I'm interested in creative dialogue here, so be real and be kind.

Okay. I'm off to slather on another coat of paint on some doors on my second floor. When will we ever be done with this house tending so we can get this baby on the market? 

Hmmmm.... Maybe I can harness this law of attraction.  I'm visualizing it now.... The doors are painted, the clutter is gone, the floors are so shiny I can see my face in them... The plumber is on his way to install the new shower... I can see the sale coming...

:-)

Sounds from my corner

After school, Sammy and Richard went to run errands so I could have some alone time.  (Seriously, this house prep may be the end of me.)  Richard, being the good musical, joke-telling daddy he is, takes his job very seriously. These two values came crashing together this afternoon as Richard pulled out his John Fogerty album (in cassette, of course) for the errand driving.  Sammy came running into the kitchen saying "Mama!  I heard the most awesomest song! It's John Fogerty!"  He played it for me as I continued dishing up our Chicken Fajita Soup from the crock pot.  Singing along he belted out these words: "I go crawling through a dried brain!"

Well, check out the lyrics here and scroll down to line two of paragraph three.  There you'll see how a 5 year old creatively interprets Mr. Fogerty. 

Now, as he's emerging from his bath, he's singing, "Oh yeah, I'm a rambunctious boy."

I have no idea.  You John Fogerty fans, please enlighten me.

Looking for a spiritual refresher in 2007?

Ready for more than the surface?

Looking for a way to freshen and deepen you spirituality?

Wanna dive in?

I may have just the thing for you.

Announcing Immersion: A 9-month adventure in spiritual transformation.

Come below the surface and midwife your Story.
Explore the depths of your soul with a community of men and women seeking the same.

I'm collaborating with Rev. Karen Hagen at Tippecanoe Presbyterian Church (isn't that a great name for a spiritual community?!) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  The focus will be interspiritual, contemplative, and joyful in nature. Music, ritual, and the arts will be interwoven into every particle of the process.

Because we want Immersion to be truly open to all people of every color, shape, size, and way of life, Immersion will be available on an entirely self-set sliding fee scale. 

You are so welcome here!

Learn more now!

Or download a brochure: Download pdf_immersion_brochure.pdf.

And we have a winner!

What fun this has been to read your comments and guesses.  Perhaps every month we'll have to have a free music guessing game here at The Story Midwife.

Christine left the winning comment - Number 220!  So Christine, head over to my CD store to claim your prize: any CD of your choosing.

So what's '220', anyway?
My house number!  We are the proud owners of 220 "something" Street.  But we hope soon it will be home to someone else.  Thus, the news: We're selling our home. 

As of TODAY (January 1st) Richard moves from aproximately 12 hours a week to aproximately 30 hours a week at the Big City Church located 1.25 hours from our home. We've added up the hours on the road, the gas mileage, the auto wear and tear, and the time apart from one another, and we've decided we want to be closer. If this was a job in an office or other sort of business, we might feel differently. But there's also something about the faith community that pulls us there.  While I struggle greatly with Church in general and with this particular church, I am also aware of the gifts I receive from this community. And I hope the ways I show up and offer myself is Gift as well. For us, giving and receiving more fully means not traveling 2.5 hours round trip to be present in person.

And so the ripping out of carpet and laying carpet and refinishing hardwood floors and painting and curtain-hanging and wood pellet stove scrubbing ensues.

Our home is a lovely old turn-of-the-century, 2-story, 2500+ square foot home with hardwood floors, built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases, two clawfoot bathtubs, a 3-season knotty pine porch, and a custom-made music/video studio that overlooks the hills of Iowa dotted with our neighbor's sheep. It's breathtaking. And we have loved it so much. 

Saying goodbye will be challenging. But as I have cleaned and sanded and refinished the hardwood floors of our bedroom I have prayed that we might gift someone with this home.  It's been a healing abode for us and I wish this sort of deep healing for another individual, couple, or family.

We invite your prayers, wishes, rituals, blessings, love, and St. Joseph plantings in this time of transition.  There are so many layers to this goodbye/hello house and community journey, and I'll share more in the days to come. I'll also unfurl the locally famous and not-so-famous stories, and show pictures, too. One sneak-peek tidbit: this space has traditionally been home to artists/musicans/naturalists folk, and was once home to Marcey Alderson, music teacher, Lutheran church organist, and local eccentric. Ther's a sentence written about him on this website.

In close, I'll offer that if you'd like to move to Strawberry Point, or are looking for a small-town getaway space, artists' retreat quarters, or a place to midwife your own stories, we've got the house for you!  And all for under $80,000 US.  Yes, really. (Small town living comes with the smaller cost of living price tag, after all.) If you'd like to dream more, email me: breathingspaces@msn.com.

For now, sweet dreams and goodnight blessings,
Trish,
The Story Midwife

It's a Game!

So, I have some news to share. 

But rather than just share it outright I thought we'd play a little game.  As of right this very minute, my little blog has 215 comments.  There is a number - very close to 215 - that is intimately associated with my news.  When the comments reach this number, I'll announce the news.

But wait!  There's more!

The lucky poster of the yet unknown number will be the recipient of any CD of their choice from my online music store: The River's Voice Music Store

Questions? Thoughts? Guesses?

And we're off...

The Story Midwife gets a little press

Church Marks Winter Solstice:
People light candles and walk through a labyrinth to represent the soul's journey out of darkness. 

Iowa's largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register, did a nice little write up about the Winter Solstice concert/ritual I did last week. One little tidbit that did not make it to press: just after the candlelit spiral labyrinth walk and just before the closing song the altar, home to 70-some tealight candles, caught fire. Thankfully there were just a few flames with no harm done and no one hurt.  Exciting, though. And a rather memorable way to end a darkness and light-returning celebration, me thinks.

How did you spend your evening?

Hear the Angels Sing...

Merry Christmas to you.

In the coming year, may you hear the song the angels sang at your brith.

And may you live fully into it.

Deep bows of Holy,
Trish

Under the Pink Carpet

Today I have been ripping out carpet.  It's very therapeutic.  And a very good workout, too. The pink Berber of our bedroom - installed by the folks that lived here before us - decidedly does NOT make my heart sing. But in ripping it out I've found something that does: wide-plank pine that with a little help will be stunning. So rather than slapping down new carpet as we first planned to do we will be sanding and refinishing it this week. Had I only known what treasures lay beneath the aged, pink eysore carpet!

My lesson in this:
Fear not what is underneath. For under the layers there lies the inspiration for a singing heart.

What is underneath your pink carpet today?