following the breadcrumbs

A couple years ago I discovered the artist Meinrad Craighead (through a brief mention in a book I was reading—shoutout to following the book breadcrumbs!) And I was completely taken with her art and with her. 
 

Meinrad Craighead. Memory. 

I poured over her art books and watched video lectures and a documentary about her and it was all so moving. And the scenes that showed the inside of her home and studio and her routines were fascinating.

Each morning she would go outside with a cup of water. She would pour some of the water onto the ground and then lift the cup to the sun and then she would drink the rest of the water. In one of the videos she even mentioned that she preferred to do this ritual naked, in the warmer months, of course. Ha!

Something clicked when I saw these simple but intimate scenes from Meindrad's life. She showed me an example of someone living with so much creativity and intention and sacredness—she showed me what's possible. 
 

Meinrad Craighead. The Grandmother.

I've taken Meinrad's life to heart. 

When I claimed my work as a life and creativity coach it felt like raising a glass to the sun. 

I realized I love working with folks longing for larger conversations, more trust, creativity, wonder, and meaning (like me!).  

And I love working with folks frustrated (like me!) by the ways in which the smaller conversations continue to edge their way in, by the exhaustion and the days filling up with over-doing or over-thinking, self-criticism, people-pleasing, and procrastination.

We lose the trail of bread. We lose our sacred nourishment. 

I know this territory of losing and finding the trail, and I have a reverence for the longings that send us out searching in the first place. And I've seen firsthand how creative and contemplative coaching can help us learn to love and trust and follow our longings.

I'm so here for this.

This way of trusting and following our longings feels good. It feels like giving water to the earth and our body.

I'm so grateful for Meinrad Craighead first showing me what was possible. Here's to our possibilities and to our teachers, those on earth and those beyond the grave. 

+ drinking a large glass of water +
Brianna

Like layers of an onion

I so relate to the metaphor of self-knowledge (and self-acceptance) being like an onion full of layers, new arrivals and departures, the process of peeling back a layer only to discover another. For me the path of knowing and recovery and discovery is a spiritual path.

St. Francis of Assisi would pray “Who are you, my most dear God, and who am I?” Sometimes I think about this mystery that is my life, how just when I've gotten to the bottom of some aspect of who I am, another layer peels away and reveals a new and deeper mystery—and what appeared to be the bottom now appears to be bottomless.

It can be confusing or discouraging to continue moving back and forth between knowing and not knowing, but maybe this tension will always exist. Helen Luke writes: “Wholeness is born of acceptance of the conflict of human and divine in the individual psyche.”

When I read this, I feel a sense of relief that the tension/conflict is to be expected. A sense of acceptance. And more onion layers, more peeling, more mystery.

Taproot

My poem “I, too, have been writing this” is appearing in Taproot Magazine’s Issue 48: Nest. It’s a beautiful publication full of four-color illustrations and recipes and essays and crafts. Their tagline is “inspiration for makers and doers and dreamers.” You can check it out here.

Geographies of Justice

I have two poems appearing in About Place Journal’s Geographies of Justice issue. Both of these poems are “Cortez” poems and are about the place I grew up. You can read them here. The entire issue is really special!

Creeping Bellflower

I’m excited to share that my poem “Creeping Bellflower” was selected as an honorable mention by poet Marilyn L. Taylor for Third Wednesday’s Annual Poetry Prize. You can read it here.

My Ruminate Farewell Note

For over a decade I have used these editor’s notes to wonder with all of you, examining life through a lens shared by the artists and writers in each issue. It’s only fitting then, that this is where I share with you that this will be my last issue as editor-in-chief of Ruminate. The past thirteen years tending to Ruminate have been a gift, and as excited as I am to be pursuing new paths and focusing on my writing, I will deeply miss this magazine, its readers, and the people I’ve had the privilege of working alongside. Our exceptional staff will carry Ruminate’s good work into the new year and beyond. 

In the meantime, the theme for this issue is “Shelter,” and I’ve been thinking about the ways that art and writing return us to ourselves, to our internal home. As the poet and editor Christian Wiman writes: “Who knows what atomic energies are unleashed by a solitary man or woman quietly encountering some arrangement of language that gives their being—shunted aside by chores and fears and who knows what—back to them?” Yes, who knows. When we create, our work reveals reasons and rewards we could not know any other way.

Helping make this magazine has carved out a kind of shelter of creativity for me and has introduced me to our fellow poets and storytellers and mystics, people who remind us of the unknowable, of our longing toward that which is larger than ourselves, who speak and create in approximation, where wiggle room and story and metaphor tell the unsayable truths. “Although I see the stars, I no longer pretend to know them,” writes the monk Thomas Merton. More than fifty years later, the poet Joy Harjo has a reply: “Beneath a sky thrown open / to the need of stars / to know themselves against the dark.” 

Given the space to move, our creative acts become a waltz of flexibility and courage, of generosity and perseverance, of discipline and lightheartedness, of making a turn and being frightened, of making a turn and feeling yourself in synch with the universe. It’s serious work and it’s holy play. It matters desperately and it matters not at all. And sometimes it matters simply because where there was nothing now there is something. 

And making a magazine, like making a life, is no different. I once heard two women in a cafeteria talking, strangers fumbling over topics and silence like hikers searching for a riverbed to follow. And just when the food was finished and it looked like it was only dead ends, they found it. It was something about St. Louis and a question and the other exclaiming “Yes, I know the Smarts!” with such enthusiasm it was clear this was only a stand-in for “Yes, I know you and you know me!” or whatever that is called when strangers become kindred become rivers become one. Which is to say mutuality, which is to say these lives we’ve been given and the stories we tell about them are far more baffling and connected than we imagine. Art and poems and stories imagine it before us, and then we get to waltz forward together.  

Thank you for waltzing and walking with me; thank you for pointing out the mysterious stars along the way. I’m so very glad to be joining you as a subscriber myself and look forward to the thrill of Ruminate arriving in my mailbox each quarter, full of beauty and goodness. I’m grateful for the shelter these pages have provided, and I know Ruminate will continue to be a home for many in the years to come. 

Warmly, 
Brianna

From Ruminate’s Issue 53: Shelter

Poetry, the middle years, and all the unknowns

Wolverine Farm

Hello friends,

I'm the writer-in-residence at the lovely Wolverine Farm in Fort Collins for the month of October, and I'm hosting an event there next week. I've been exploring and studying teachings on middle age, vocation, and the unknown, and I'll be sharing poems from some of my favorite poets on these topics as well as a couple of my own poems. If you’re local, I'd love for you to join me this coming Monday, November 4th at 7 pm at Wolverine Farm.

Hope to see you there!
Brianna

Welcome!

I thought I would start out by sharing the quotes that I keep at the top of my writing page—I return to these each time I sit down to write. I hope they are helpful to you! And if you haven’t read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, you are in for a treat.

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“What you seek is seeking you.” —Rumi

“If you are faithful to your practice, your practice will be faithful to you.” —James Finley

“But in order to let go of the addiction to creative suffering, you must reject the way of the martyr and embrace the way of the trickster…we all have both in us, but you can nourish one over the other. Martyr energy is dark, solemn, macho, hierarchical, fundamentalist, austere, unforgiving, and profoundly rigid. Trickster energy is light, sly, transgender, transgressive, animist, seditious, primal and endlessly shape-shifting…..Creativity was born out of trickster energy—creativity flips the world upside down. The most wonderful thing about a good trickster is that she trusts. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest this, because she can seem so slippery and shady, but the trickster is full of trust. She trusts herself, obviously. She trusts her own cunning, her own right to be here, her own ability to land on her feet in any situation. To a certain extent, of course, she also trusts other people. But mostly, the trickster trusts the universe. She trusts in its chaotic, lawless, ever-fascinating ways—and for this reason, she does not suffer from undue anxiety. She trusts that the universe is in constant play and specifically, that it wants to play with her!” —Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic