hmmmm

Strange to dream in the right shape and build in the wrong shape, but maybe that is what we do every day, never believing that a dream could tell the truth. - Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods

don't read too much into this

I was utterly miserable, and yet fearless as I had never been. - Ursula K. Le Guin, "A Women's Liberation"

gotta remember this . . .

O how we struggle until we realize the struggle is the blessing:  progressing, changing, evoling from a seed into a tree . . . - William Blake

sober thought

If we didn't have death, imagine what life would be like.  You'd postpone living.  Death is the pressure that causes you to invest in the moment.  Death rings the bell on all procrastination and makes today precious.  - John Shelby Spong

love her.

Inside the story told is the story that cannot be told. - Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods

redemption

For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological, but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered.  It is this real connection which is so feared by a patriarchal world.  Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women. - Audre Lorde

Privilege challenge

OK friends, here are the final posts

Day 3: White privilege

Day 4: Cisgender privilege

Day 5: Privilege of literacy

Thanks for reading,
Bre

Day 1: I am the 9%

Day 1: Resisting my privilege of wealth. Bre, the pseudo-solidarity hero, abjectly fails.

Click here to read the Geez Whiz blog post.

PPC

this week i am running a little blogging experiment for Geez magazine.

it might be a little bit silly . . .

The link for the first post is here.

Love,
Bre

hello adolescence. again.

hello!

Well, that last post was . . . dramatic.

Wow, it is so hard to get back into the routine of paying attention to the divine in my life. Something that seemed so normal in bible college (not necessarily natural, but normal) now seems way too foreign to me. I feel thrown back into ten years ago, where i was trying to learn simple things like mindfulness and breathing.

It's a good journey. It's a hard lesson. Is it weird to hate breathing?

I remember a time in my life when I was at Bible College that I was so terrified at my role as a campus leader that I woke up early every morning just to pray, because I was so afraid that I would screw up my students or my role or my life that I was so aware of my dependence on the divine to tangibly guide my path every single moment.

I wonder now if that was silly or if that was really really wise.

Lessons from a 19 year old. Maybe we should live our life in such awe of what is around us, and what is in us, that we should live in this sort of healthy holy terror of ourselves, our connectedness, our capabilities, and of God's love and call for our lives. Maybe starting the day off with a realization of our cosmic significance and big-ness is the only sane way to begin our days. And a healthy dose and acknowledgement of the overwhelming grace for us if we do stumble or make a mistake, the love of community and God, the significance and meaning of both our good intentions and sincere apologies.

Maybe.

november 5 2011

And on this anniversary of both life and death
i woke up squinting
the sun blinding from atop these prairie mountains
calling again to me in ways i am not yet ready to follow
and forward looks backwards looks weak looks entangling
i no longer have my Northern Star
. . . a lie wrapped in hope, self-deception, tears and a wounded heart
both a true and a lie in one neatly wrapped package
And i have worn out my welcome here,
a too-long couchsurfer
afraid of the world beyond that door,
seeking comfort in current surroundings and large bowls of sour cream
These tactics have grown scabs of pride and self-preservation
ever-more demanding of my attention.
This clearly is no longer working.
But my soul is stirring
change calls me from afar

a turning, a vision

i have been craving church lately.

it is an odd feeling. one that i would like to pay attention to but don't actually know how.
i have been craving prayer meetings, group worship sessions, sitting around a fire and singing cheesy jesus camp songs.

but i dont know how to get that without the gut-wrenching feelings that i get when i walk into churches, the feelings of unsafety, frustrations about patriarchal assumptions and language, etc etc etc

and this wrench in my gut whenever i think about god

i am not sure when this shift happened; this shift to a life focused only on the physical. i am not sure when i started to live on this planet and not in in my spiritual orbit of looking at life and everything that i encounter. but somehow it shifted, somehow it did and somehow i got so angry at the divine that i can barely encounter her anymore

meditations, sweatlodges, long walks often leave me feelings angry disoriented and unhelpful

i'm hoping this is a phase. i am hoping this is a just long and prolonged reaction to an ending of a certain dream that i once had. my idealist view of the world and my future is not so idealist anymore and i feel too real life lately. i feel somewhat betrayed by a God who lets shitty things happen, relationships get punctured, and dreams get crushed.

i feel a big ball of feelings which need to get worked out somehow. angst, anger, anxiety. but i do feel very secure in wherever i am in this life, and with how god and i interact. maybe i have finally gotten to a point where i believe i won't be abandoned by the divine which actually allows me to face and process these feelings of life pain and disappointment. could this be a good thing?

i heart jesus. but she makes me so damned mad sometimes.

31 on 31

It's my birthday! again.

i always find birthdays a better time than new years to make resolutions. It feels a little more personal, a little more connected to me and my rhythm of life. plus, i can do a quick self-check at new years to see if i am on track 3 months later.

so here is the update, folks, this is where i am at on this champagne birthday:

I AM VERY HAPPY.

For an anxiety-prone angst-filled woman, this is quite a rare state. Took 31 years to get here really. Its so wild that 10 years ago I graduated from Providence College and started a new non-student life; my life looks so differently now than it did back then. 10 years is both a very long and very short time.

I am thankful for the challenges, hurts, pains, joys, friends, and people who rubbed up against me like sandpaper for your part in making me the woman i am today. You know who you are.

So this year I declare a year of rest. Meaning that one of my main lessons this year is that sometimes you just have to trust, sit, and let things be. To go slow, thoughtfully, and intentionally. To resist busyness and replace it with meaningful relationships and very important meaningful times-of-no-scheduleness.

I basically declare a year of play.

Will keep you updated.

Bre

dillie

tell it

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.  - Zora Neale Hurston

hmmmm

I realize now that the past does not dissolve like a mirage.  I realize that the future, though invisible, has weight.  We are in the gravitational pull of past and future.  It takes huge energy - speed-of-light-power-to break that gravitational pull.
How many of us ever get free of our orbit?  We tease ourselves with fancy notions of free will and self-help courses that direct our lives.  We believe we can be our own miracle, and just a lottery win or Mr. Right will make the world new.

The ancients believed in Fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything.  The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it.  We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior.  The burden is intolerable.
- Jeanette Winterson, Weight

Thoughts?

Each relationship you have with another person reflects the relationship you have with yourself. - Alice Deville

honesty and courage

Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears (their) grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate.  But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge - from which new sorrows will be born for others - then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply.
- Etty Hillesum

not rocket science

so
i am at work
talking to women with black eyes
women whose kids have been seized by the government
women who have just been kicked out of their homes because of factors they had nothing to do with

and i am listening to a podcast on the upcoming climate disaster
and then one on the holocaust where i almost started crying when i heard about people getting in trouble for throwing bread to those in the concentration camps

and then i said, "what the hell am i doing?"

sometimes i get home from my job and i feel drained. super drained, exhausted, in a bodily way

so maybe if i am working on the real-life effects of poverty all day i should consider what i am putting into my ear
something uplifting maybe

i know its important to know what's going on in the world
i know its important to work against oppression and harm
i know i really really really want a just world and that self-education is a huge part of that, especially through individual stories and through alternative media

but
i also know that sometimes i feel like i am losing my mind
sometimes i feel that these burdens are sitting straight on my shoulders
sometimes my job is too too hard

so maybe i should listen to banjo music or something once in awhile.

unresolved

So...I did it. After months of plotting and planning and working 50 hours a week, i have simplified my life.

And that's great. and holy whoopsie.

So I have time again to sit and to be and to think. To clean my house, to take walks by myself, to sit by the river and on culverts, to be spontaneous, to leave room for god and spirit and myself to collide.

Shoot.

And I remember now why i became so busy two years ago. How this wasn't actually an accident like I have fooled myself into remembering. Time and space means plunging back into deep and sometime dark places which are swirling around somewhere in my heart. It is surprising how quickly they have returned.

It is time to face some of these demons which I have tightly tucked away. I just didn't think they would come back so soon. I feel back in a time warp, being faced with thoughts, feelings, griefs that I thought I overcame so very long ago. Past losses, past hurts, past relationships, self-doubt, anxieties, fears, you name it.

I want so badly to be comfortable with myself; to be able to sit alone in stillness and feel contentment instead of nagging doubt; joy instead of fear; self-love instead of regret.

So. Here is a change, a shift, a new yet familiar journey. It is exciting and terrifying and mostly lonely. But I am thankful for it. Or trying to be, at least.

buckle up, here we go
b