Desire

I recently read Alice Walker's Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, a collection of her journals from 1962-2000, and it is such a fascinating and intimate exploration. It's also an act of revolution: "While Walker was keeping these journals, virtually all published diarists were white."

Some pages were tallies of her income and questions about being able to cover her expenses in her early years and then tallies and questions about real estate purchases in her later years. A sobering amount of pages were filled with the ups and downs of her romantic relationships. Some pages were about her writing life, her activism, her meditation practice, struggles with depression, her sexuality, and her garden.

The book is 500+ pages, and I was rapt! I kept thinking how brave she was to let her journals be published—most people want to keep their journals private and most authors would at least want to wait until they die before having them published. And the wild part was that at the beginning of her early journals and before all her recognition for A Color Purple she writes about having a sense that her journals would someday be published. I found this desire and ambition remarkable! And then she really didn't seem to hold back on what was included—it gets messy, as all lives do.

Walker's openness and passion for and trust in her desires is what made me want to keep reading entry after entry, and her faithful recordings of the details of life pointed toward the value she found in the supposed "mundane." I loved reading the thoughts of a woman who was writing, loving, and learning how to be at home with herself, and she's also a woman who prefers to have multiple homes, thank you very much!

Yes to it all,
Brianna

why the writing strategies never seem to last

I'm so excited because I re-read my poetry manuscript the other day and I liked it. This is a huge for a couple reasons. First, I didn't write for pleasure for years, so the fact that I have a manuscript is amazing. Now, when I want to write I usually do. Imagine that! And second, because the overall process has been light and playful, something I never thought possible. 

I credit the foundation for this shift to one main thing: I started to actually like myself (which is probably why I like my manuscript). My baseline shifted from generally treating myself critically or with hostility to treating myself more and more with genuine care, trust, and friendliness. 

I think this discussion is missing from a lot of the writing/art/creativity books and classes. 

But it can be really helpful and feel so good to name why all the strategies and tools just don't seem to ever last or why setting your alarm a little earlier to make time for your writing isn't the key to everything. It's like you finally know what you're dealing with, which is where we must get to before we can really begin. 

I love the poem “Distant Regard” by Tony Hoagland. It's about finding that place of self-friendliness, and it's from his final collection that he wrote shortly before he died, Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God. (His book titles are all amazing.) 

Yes to the idea of forgiving ourselves "like water, flowing around obstacles and second thoughts."

What do you think? Do you struggle with self-friendliness or self-kindness and do you think it's directly connected to any angst/tension you have with your writing/art/creativity? I'd love to hear. 

Gratefully,
Brianna

wild puttering

I was recently trying to answer this question from a class I’m taking—what do you dream about or visualize when you imagine your future?

I closed my eyes and sat still and I had a faint vision of me puttering around a cozy home. Yep, that's it. And I was surprised, like really imagination, that’s the best you can come up with? It seemed like my dreams should be a bigger. Ha!
 
I had a session with a spiritual director some years ago and I told her some of what I was grappling with as I was facing some big decisions in my life. She stood up and said she wanted to tell me something. And then she spread out her feet in a wide stance and put her hands on her hips and said: In the next ten years you are going to become a wild woman.
 
I couldn't see it then, but I loved that she could. She had a vision for my future, and in those intervening years, I remember borrowing from her vision, which perhaps is a very solid way to begin. 

And what I've discovered over the years is that each person's version of "wild" looks different. My version of wild is less about big, bold adventures and more about the inner travels, and no version is right or wrong, just good to know.

For me, it's like this—let’s say there is a woman who moves from her bed to the kitchen table to the walk around her neighborhood to her desk to the kitchen table to the couch to her bed and her atmosphere is a calm pond around her and she lives behind her belly button. She is not constantly dispersed waves going out to her lover and child and the dying tree and the thing she said yesterday. She is contained within herself and she is present. She is making something. She is in fact smelling of almonds while the earth circles the sun.

Whew, she sounds like a wild woman, and like she enjoys puttering around a cozy home.  :)

Gratefully,
Brianna

P.S. Wanna dream together? I'm here to help folks listen for and move toward their truest selves and truest dreams. And this kind of work is not about achieving and checking off individual goals. This is about trusting ourselves, and when we begin to trust and align with our own deep desires we can begin to take conscious responsibility for the life we've been given, which is a "mighty kindness" as Rumi says—it actually lightens the load of everything and everyone around us. 

asking for help

Some good news, in case you've been short on good news.

I was on my trash collection company's website and saw this:

I called to let you know that I am very grateful for the drivers today. I had my can up by the garage due to an emergency and was not able to take it to the curb. I called and dispatch said they would try to get it picked up. I came home and the driver did in fact pick it up. I just wanted to say thanks! -Horsetooth Reservoir Customer

I don't know, something about this really moved me. Maybe it was just the simplicity of someone asking for help (it can be so hard to ask for help!) and help being given (thank you driver!). 

I read Joy Hajo's memoir Poet Warrior last month (so good!), and I can't stop thinking about her poem "Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet." Do yourself a favor and read the full poem here! 

With gratitude,
Brianna

Not done yet

My new neighbor worked so hard to hang the garland of peace flags in her backyard. I think it was one of the first things she did after she moved in. If you've recently moved or you remember how exhausting moving is, then you'll join me in finding this remarkable. 

My kitchen window looks onto her backyard and I was bringing a dish to the sink when I saw her hanging one side of the strand of flags from her plum tree. She was alone and was standing on a patio chair reaching up to the tree. And when I came back to the kitchen later, I saw that she had hung the other side of the garland below the eave of her house.

I think it was windy that night and the next morning I looked out my window and the peace flags had fallen from the tree-side and lay crumpled on the ground under the eave where the one side was still hanging.

And then she was out there again and this time I saw a step ladder and she did something to really secure the peace flags to the tree because they haven’t fallen since. Perhaps an eye hook screwed into the tree?
 
We recently moved, too, and my daughter became consumed with hanging lights over the deck. She kept talking about it until I finally ordered some lights and when they came I told her it was going to have to wait, that I was tired and didn’t feel like hanging them that day.

So of course she tried to hang them by herself (with thumbtacks) and they fell and a couple of the bulbs broke. My mom was visiting and she patiently replaced the bulbs and the fuse that had blown and then the three of us cleaned up the broken glass and hung the lights over the deck and my tall son made an appearance to reach a high branch. I thought the lights were kind of silly (I have much bigger things to worry about!) and actually lit up the patio too much. But then it was dusk, and I really liked them.

It's baffling, this thrust and determination to make things better, even in the smallest ways. Sometimes I am consciously participating, like my daughter, my mom, and my neighbor. And sometimes I am giving up. And sometimes I am simply baffled, stunned into silence by the impulse that (thankgod) seems to continue in the collective on behalf of us all. 

I'm thinking of Lucille Clifton's poem "i am not done yet." Have you seen the beautiful letterpress print of this poem from Expedition Press?

With gratitude,
Brianna

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