Saying It Another Way

The Special Edition for August

I was feeling really torn about what to focus on for this month's issue. So in the spirit of Joy (which has been calling to me) I'm going to do something a little different and easeful. I'm taking some quotes and writing what comes up for me in them - a contemplative, loosely interpretive practice in “saying it another way”.

May it all hug you closer in to the wonder through and around you.

—

On Quotes

Don't forget how whole and complete you are holding it all, including the poetry.

-Aomawa Shields, Life On Other Planets

In case you were wondering, I am not a poet. Have I written some poems? Yes. Were they "good"? Depends. Do I see myself as a poet? I do not.

I have friends who would disagree with me, citing one Beloved as saying there is poetry in the paragraphs I write. I appreciate that and understand the subjectivity of poetry, so I don't argue when those who Love me also call me poet.

I am a writer who doesn't consider herself a poet who also sometimes writes poems.

I am other things too.

I am a mother who Loves her kids—and many others' children—something fierce.

I am a Lover of my husband, my family, my friends, and strangers. I desire to consider every being kin.

I am serious-minded and a goofball. I sing karaoke and gospel, Disney and jazz.

I am Bear and Bird. I am Butterfly and Sunflower. I am Water and Stardust. I am Flesh and Spirit.

I am whole. And I am becoming whole.

I think this is the poetry Shields is talking about. At least, that's the poetry I heard when I read it. The cadence of a complete life, a life that isn't flat or singular but is multi-dimensional and multi-versioned. And somehow, for some reason, it's embodied right here in me. Between my lips and the foreheads of my children. Between the laughter shared with my friends. Between the tears and my words I share with my classmates. Layers of an 8-slice pie, crust golden and berries hot, soft, and sweet. This is me.

I am the poem.

Does that mean I am also the poet after all?

Robert & Sharifa, thank you inviting me to play with poetry together last month <3

That love would turn the trick to end despair

But now I just can't fool this head that thinks for me

I've mortgaged all my castles in the air

-Tom Adair, Everything Happens to Me

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

— Henry David Thoreau

I've recently fallen head over heels for Samara Joy, a love I can thank Robert Monson for starting. She has a great rendition of “Everything Happens to Me” that I've listened to countless times since learning about her genius. There is a phrase I've been curious about and hadn’t understood: mortgaged all my castles in the air.

When I saw someone quote the above Thoreau line, the song lyric finally made sense. It's about hopes and dreams.

I so appreciate Thoreau's offering of being led by your daydreams, hopes, wishes, and visions of the heart. Many of us far too often are admonished to shake off the wishful thinking and get to something more practical and serious. But what if the dreaming is the precursor to our practical? What if the hopes are the sketch of what we can get serious about?

Now, let me establish that hope and wishful thinking are not the same. When I'm teaching over at The Dignity Effect, I talk about this difference when speaking about Reasonable Expectations. Wishful thinking is much more frivolous than hoping. Wishful thinking is akin to the stuff we'd say to a genie in a lamp or to the meteors we misname "shooting stars."

But hope? Hope has teeth. Hope is informed by reality and sees a future that doesn't deny the past while being wholly different from it. Hope is fueled by imagination, not fantasy.

I believe that's why we can build our hopes on things eternal. I think that's why we can have a complicated relationship with hope, as sister Anastasia Brathwaite says, without negating it completely. Hope is hardy, and can take being bumped, bruised, questioned, and even abandoned for a time. Hope is hella persistent and even easily borrowed.

The retired folk Christian musician Bebo Norman has a wonderful lyric about this:

You can borrow mine when your hope is gone

Borrow mine when you can't go on

Cause the world will not defeat you when we're side by side

When your faith is hard to find, you can borrow mine

I get wanting to mortgage all your castles in the air, putting your dreams at the end of your driveaway for some stranger to take off your hands and out of your sight. Like many other things, hope is a communal endeavor. The kind of community that offers you hope to borrow is expansive, including beings of past and present, entities of earth and the cosmos.

Give your wishes to meteors. Tell the stars your dreams.

Then, take your castles off the market and put your hope to work building eternal foundations under them of Love, connection, and community.

Marla, we putting foundations under these castles e’ry day!

We are more powerful than we realize. - Rhyn Clark

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. - Marianne Williamson

My whole body was shaking. My whole body never shakes. Unless I'm utterly cold. Or utterly scared? My body was responding like she felt she was in danger and all I was doing was singing a song about whistling.

Earlier in the year, I decided to gingerly ease a baby toe back into the theatre space by signing up for a musical theatre class. My original goal for doing this was to defuse my newly noticed disease when public speaking. If you know me, this is odd because I'm quite comfortable speaking publicly (it's basically my job), but something else had started showing up.

I chose the musical theatre class for a few reasons, the primary one being I have loved theatre for a long time. I'm not as versed as my counterparts in this particular class, but something was reawakening in me. What I didn't realize is my love for the theatre had been in bed with some of my deepest fears. When my love of theatre woke up, these fears did too.

I'm not talking just a little stage fright or some general nerves. I mean body-trembling, throat-closing, confidence-draining fear.

Why do I feel like I'm in danger every time I get up in front of this class?

I can't tell you the mechanics of the function of this, but here's what I know: whatever was dysregulated in me could only be regulated by community. Dr. Gigi Khanyezi has taught me and many others of the power one regulated nervous system has in a room full of nervous systems. All the science Dr. Khanyezi knows about this plus my experience point to a singularity of truth: We heal in community. More specifically, we regulate in community.

The shift for me, though, wasn't just on a nervous system level. I've said "yes" to my teacher a lot this year, and when she asked me a question, I knew I was being invited to tell the truth, to wager that the folks physically surrounding me could and would be present with me as I confessed my pain. I don't even remember what the question was, but I distinctly remember knowing I had a choice: I could hide or I could be vulnerable. In that moment I could choose to wear a mask or I could choose to bare my soul, but it was my split-second choice. Teary-eyed, I confessed one of the deepest fears that had gotten into an entanglement with my theatre-love: belonging. Rather, not belonging. A communal energetic exhale let me know I wasn't alone and I felt a regulation of my soul.

That was the moment my fear began to be escorted out.

I believe that was the experience that let my body know she actually was not in danger in this space. That she could show up imperfect, confused, definitely NOT the best performer in the room (damn Brian!), even unprepared...and she would be held. She would be cared about and cared for. She would be seen and honored. We belonged.

In that split second decision, I chose power.

The power of vulnerability. The power of community. The power of a whole humanity.

Even as I say "I", I understand there was a collective choice of power. The people in that class are some of the most courageous people I've encountered. We showed up with courage every class for weeks, for ourselves and one another. I don't believe I'm the only person whose soul was regulated.

Rhyn & Marianne are right. May you have community that supports you in regulating, in healing, and in power.

If you’re in Atlanta, you can take a class with Rhyn!

Deeper breathing can also makes us aware of sensations and emotions that we have not been feeling. In fact, we may have been subtly holding our breath to avoid feeling them.

- Neil Douglas-Klotz, The Hidden Gospel

I'm a little obsessed with breath. I have a practice that I try to do every morning to remind me of my connection to all things through my breath. It reminds me I don't have to earn my connection. There is no striving for it. It is there, and my invitation is to slow down and breathe into the reality.

Have you ever connected with your breath and gotten emotional? Maybe tears came up, a surge of anger, or a deep calm of joy—seemingly out of nowhere? This happened to me in a virtual gathering I attended at The Embodiment Institute. I wasn't expecting it, but I slowed down—I'm pretty sure for the first time all day—and realized that my body had something very clear to say to me.

I'd been practicing some pretty deep, soul-shifting courage for months and my body was tired. She asked me for rest. Can we just breathe for a while? Let all this work we've done settle down into the toes? I'm holding all of it up here, and I want it to take time to settle. "Up here" was in my chest and my belly. And when you are holding stuff in your chest and belly, guess what there's less room for? That's right. Breath.

When I slowed enough to reconnect to my breath, what I was feeling and needing came up, expecting my attention. I'm grateful I've learned to listen (most of the time).

While the internal shifting settles, I don't want to just remember to breathe, I want to take slow, deep, wondrous breaths. I want to drink each breath in like cool water, because it is water and connection to my own body, to every other human, to the trees, and more.

So I will leave space to wonder at my breath and welcome the emotions that ride on the ripples of air from my lungs to my mouth.

Maybe you will too.

Ritual of Connection

Photo by Cassandra Hamer on Unsplash

Settle yourself and bring your attention to your breath. You can place a hand on your chest or belly if you’d like.

You are always connected through your breath.

Consider how your breath connects you to yourself, your body, your emotions, your dreams, etc. Your breath can bring you back to your wholiness.

Keep breathing in an easy way.

Consider how you breath connects you to other humans - those you know and do not, those who you care for and those you do not.

Keep breathing in an easy way.

Consider how your breath connects you to the whole of non-human existence. You are connected to the trees, to the animals, to the water, to the earth. You are also connected to our star, other stars, and the cosmos as a whole.

You can linger in or repeat any portion you want.

Keep breathing in an easy way until you feel complete.

What Has My Attention

Aomawa Shields, PhD showed up on one of my space documentary episodes and I immediately started looking her up. A grabbed the audiobook of her memoir Life On Other Planets and was enthralled listening to her read to me. She’s doing amazing work as one of very few Black women in astrophysics with a PhD - and she’s an actress!

Ok so admittedly, I am late to the Terrell Grice party, but I’m here now! Terrell is like the cousin I want to be at every cookout and reunion and graduation and wedding cause he’s just dope. If you’re into music and like fun…I think you’ll like Terrell. Speaking of Samara Joy…she was on his show and it was so delicious!

I was pleasantly surprised to find Joie: A Parisian’s Guide to Celebrating the Good Life at my library! I checked out this beautiful work by Ajiri Aki and have been inspired by her message and drawn into every glossy photo.

I was out and had a shoemergency (it’s a thing). These shoes I’d been eyeing FOR MONTHS happened to be back in stock and in my size! They are comfy and versatile and they feel very me.

There are a few playlists my kids cycle in and out of, and we’ve recently gotten back on the Backyardigans train. If you don’t know, they’ve got a bunch of bops - fun to sing and dance to!