A golden pool

Me in it up to my calves. Looking across it at a figure. Lying on his side on a temple, seductive somewhat. Caressing the top of the water with his hand. Looking at me. It’s Ganesh. The elephant god. Eyes black rimmed in kohl. He beckons to me with his eyes, his fingers tracing the water. He knows I want to come. I am afraid. Reverent. I stand still, water lapping at my calves.

The water is not water. It is a liquid golden light. It is a pool of liquid light lapping at my skin and moving beneath Ganesh’s fingers. I am an Indian boy with thick black hair close cropped. I am a girl. I am me. I want to answer Ganesh’s invitation but I do not know if I can rise to it.

He watches me from across the pool.

I see other…initiates? Devotees? Women with loose cloths draped over their breasts, their legs. What are they doing? Are they afraid? They are dipping their hands in the golden light water and dripping it on themselves. Down their chests, behind their necks. I do what they do. I dip my hands in the water and pull it to my head. It runs down golden in rivulets. It feels good. I feel grace. Gratitude.

Still afraid but surrendering

I look over to the other women and when I look back, I am up to my thighs in the pool. Ganesh still strokes the water, eyes on me. He wants me to come to him. I am still afraid, but I am surrendering. He is asking me, isn’t he? Why be afraid? But I remain thigh deep in the golden pool of light. I run my hands in it like Ganesh. He smiles his slow smile. I step toward him.

Are the other women? Where are they? Totally self-absorbed, in their own light. I am chest high now and my arms float at the water’s surface. Ganesh is beautiful and I am closer to him now. He wants me to surrender fully to the light. To come to him through the light. To approach him. His attention, relaxed as it is, is trained on me. His look beckons.

Now it is just me. No more attention paid to the other initiates. It is me in the light, up to my chest, it cradling my arms and flooding my body.

“There’s more,” says Ganesh’s look, which hasn’t changed. His smile is a coy smile. He knows something I don’t.

Worthy or not

Somewhere here, my fear gives way. The resistance leaves and I realize I must submerse myself in the light. Worthy or not, I must dip myself into it entirely. Will I be able to breathe? Am I worthy to approach Ganesh in this way? Will I disappear? What is within the liquid light?

My left shoulder is in. Then my face as I look beneath the surface. And then I am submerged. My fear has left me and there is only experience. Light against my skin. Warm bath of gold washing against me, holding me in it. I am horizontal. Naked. I am caressed by the gold, lit by the light. I see no other creatures but I know that they are there. I am light. I cannot see them because we are all light. I have become this light. I feel like I am exploring this sensation. This experience. This disappearance indeed. But I am calmed by knowing that Ganesh is above the surface, tracing his hand along the water. He is there so that I do not have to be. He is a placeholder for me and a place for me to return to. An anchor. I can remain under the light pool’s surface without fear of not coming back. I can come back. For now, I feel the light. It is light-weight and airy and golden. It is grace.

This is me

I stay because it is not time to leave. And suddenly, I spring from beneath the water’s surface to the branch of a tree on the shore where I started. I am an owl. I have taken the shape of an owl! I spread my wings and shake them. Golden! Made of light! This is me. I watch Ganesh in his shrine. He smiles at my ride in this light. The branch beneath my golden feet begins to turn gold. The light spreads all down the tree. And I am back under the surface of the pool, submerged, floating subsurface. Enjoying this.

There is something more. I can feel it but I don’t know what it is, so I float. I am close to Ganesh and his hand above the water’s surface. I remember that he had beckoned me. I was to walk to him. I go to him, to his hand at the water’s top. My vision of his hand is golden from my submerged view. I place my hand beneath his. I place my hand beneath his and it is a man’s hand. It is an elephant’s ancient foot, leathery. It is a man’s hand again. We touch, my palm reaching up against his.

Several images and sensations of this occur, like flipping slowly through a deck of cards, all versions of the same picture. Our hands touching at the golden light’s surface, me submerged and he aloft.

Me and God

There are a few flashes of this image, and then I am Ganesh, lying on his palette under his shrine’s ceiling, upon the grand, shallow steps of his temple, leading down to the golden water’s edge. I am Ganesh. And Ganesh is me. Ganesh is me beneath the water, submersed in golden light and I am Ganesh. We are one. I am god. This is his lesson. Why he called me from the other side of the pool. We are one. There is no one between me and god.

I trace the surface of the water with my hand. It is warm and soft in its texture. Liquid light. My gaze is fixed on a young figure across the pool. It is me. Or another me. Another initiate, with short cropped black hair, loose cloths covering his or her limbs. It is me and I am Ganesh and Ganesh is beneath the surface of the Golden Light. We create a triangle, timeless. We are God. Ever beginning and ever complete. We are one.

# #

Memories

I’m writing memories for a while, in exploration. Staring out the window in the mornings, letting them fall out of lit corners and dark folds, rustling leaves, blunt sunshine of spring. Join me if you please. Write yours in the comments, or link to your blog. Explore with me.

See it

It’s like a bruise, best I can describe it, purply-yellow and tender. Radiates shocks of panic to see it approached for touch. Breath hikes up into the lungs and hovers there needing convincing to come out.

Describe it

It’s long, and narrow. Imagine a length of, imagine a street dash, the length and width of a paint strip in the street, put there to keep the driving in line. And bruisy in colored lanes along its length, swollen purple, swollen tattoo blue, swollen gray to yellow.

Feel

That was yesterday’s anxiety. A bruise. Today’s is a star at the back of the neck, top of the shoulders, arms of it jutting up, cutting into the air around my head, above the shoulders.

Ride

There’s a woman next to me. She got up to stand in line for a drink and her laptop stood open. “Finding Home,” the screen read, chapter headings cascading from the title, organized, articulated, achieved. I felt home there for a moment, calmed by the order, the accomplishment. Then she came back with her drink, glass mug, foamy coffee, fingers gripping the handle and her eyes on the screen like tractor beams. I hate her for it, for the way her body leans in like a bird with each heft and sip. Down goes the mug. Up immediately with the heft and slurp, dainty, driven, wholly unnoticed, she’s so on track for coming home, while I write the purpled symptoms of the block.

There’s a guy in my line of vision wearing a wedding ring, reading student papers. I know this is what they are because I ate several lunches with him years back in this same downtown. He didn’t wear his ring then. He was in the middle of a divorce, teenage daughters in his stories as we stabbed salad in sunshine, shade, and moments unfolding that would never matter again.

# #

Memories

I’m writing memories for a while, in exploration. Staring out the window in the mornings, letting them fall out of lit corners and dark folds, rustling leaves, blunt sunshine of spring. Join me if you please. Write yours in the comments, or link to your blog. Explore with me.

Pieces

It was a tiny room with historic wooden floors, a single bed, and summer ants that would eat holes in the crotches of my underwear. I pilfered food that wouldn’t be recognized as missing off the shelves of my landlord, and at work, stole quarters from the prospective-client-parking box to buy gas station egg salad sandwiches at lunch. I did this every day till I noticed I’d lost months of memory focusing solely on the next meal, and then the next.

On the phone with my dad, I reined in tears while he romanticized poverty, saying this life is a choice I made, and praising the fact that every successful writer has “eaten bark” to get by, eventually, refusing my just-in-case request to come home for a while if it was confirmed that, in fact, I was losing my mind.

Mirror, plate glass window, each one I walk by, I double-take at the reflection of my mother before realizing it’s me. This is me. Is this the way it’s going to be till the end? If the physical gene is this strong, surely the emotional one has some horsepower, too, and if that’s true, what will I, daughter of a mother who bolted when her kids were toddlers, face as womanhood takes hold? She is no longer nibbling at the edges of me. She’s inside.

Poles

I live under the roof of the most creatively suited mentor I could have imagined, help instigate a writers group dreams are made of, and make community with writers whose eventual films and plays call to mind the times spent creating those pieces in our living room readings. I fall in love with two kids and a dog. Family.

I’m writing an electric story. It’s characters are taking over and I long ago forgot the time.  When, suddenly, I stop. It stops. The flow of the thing. The words, the characters, the picture I’m describing freezes like a Polaroid in its frame, nostalgia-tinted. I scratch at its surface trying to get back in. But it’s an inanimate thing, and I am locked out. Each day I return, I jangle keys outside it, doorless, frozen in time. Inaccessible. I slink away. But visit often. Visit all of the stories often. Pace the tiny room. Fuzz my vision at a golden afternoon edging windows, floor. Angry as the light wanes. Another day stunted into snapshot. Why do *I* have to heal before I can write? and then I wonder where that thought came from? Heal what? It’s just writing. Anyone can write. Especially writers. Paw again at the Polaroid. Notice the dust between bare feet and the floor. Let go the picture and find the broom.

Slalom

How do you know when a story matters?
You know when you don’t want to tell it.
Or when it makes you feel short of breath, or feel anything at all.
You know when time disappears while you’re telling it.
And when your audience is tearing up without noticing. When they’re silenced in wait of what’s next.
You know it matters when you have to be cajoled to tell it.
When people ask to hear it again.
When listeners and readers ask questions, and read the next one.
And when it heals.

Stories matter when they’re true. True to struggle, to human nature, true to experience.

You don’t have to tell on yourself. You don’t have to share your story if it’s too scary to reveal.
But consider this next suggestion: Tell yourself. Even if you don’t let others see it, write your stories that matter.
Let yourself feel the memory: Stark joy. Shocking fate. Painful mediocrity.
Notice the feeling of it, then write into it. What hurt? What stuck? What’s hardest to say out loud?
Say it. Let it out. Then watch it shimmer.
It has a life of its own, that experience, and its own little piece of soul—yours, shimmering in it, that you’ll never get back if you don’t first let the story out.
Stories lose luster without that piece of soul. Just words without it.
So listen. Feel. Find what catches, what makes you want to hide.
And write it. You’ll find the soul. And in finding it, repair.

Memories

I’m writing memories for a while, in exploration. Staring out the window in the mornings, letting them fall out of lit corners and dark folds, rustling leaves, blunt sunshine of spring. Join me if you please. Write yours in the comments, or link to your blog. Explore with me.

Ever watch a toddler run around the house screaming in glee before the diaper goes on and the clothes constrain? Sunlight on skin. Air rushing by. Naked speed.

I’m calling this my naked time.

I’m undressing my site. Emptying the closet.

And exploring.

Can’t pack any lighter than naked.

(Read on for the story. Click to skip to the announcement.)

Packing Light

Last time I explored on purpose for the year, my life turned into one adventure after the next. I had been head-down, bullet-train, preparing to enter the hallowed halls of life as an academic. Being a gal who loves to learn, it was a bright prospect I couldn’t wait to start, in the Ivy-est of institutions I could get my brain into.

Something struck me though, just before I committed. If I do this, I’m in. The next 10 years of my life will be academic. My conversations will be with other academics. My expertise will be built in that language. Will I have room for creativity? What if I want to be a creative?

And so, I put down the research and the letters of recommendation, put down the admission strategy and essays, and invited wonder. In order to make the right decision, I gave myself one year to explore. And then I would decide if I would dive into academia with all the fervor I’d been climbing the diving platform.

I traveled alone for the first time to Italy.

I fell for a boyfriend, for the first time in eight years of romances with women.

I fell in love with theatre, moonlighting at a local playhouse, selling tickets, sweeping floors, making nice with everyone who walked in the door, and LOVING it. I watched shows thirty times a run like it was the first time every night, and got an opportunity to direct a play. Sadly for that opportunity,

I got offered a job in the big city. So I moved to expand my horizons.

And the exploration continued in a new town. I wrote my first play, lost 30 pounds, fiesta-colored my hair, found fierce intuition, and flirted.

By the end of the year, I understood academia would not be my style. My creativity was electrified by my adventures.

I did soon end up going to school — for playwriting — and I haven’t stopped adventuring through story since.

Working the Wonder

Since the Waking Up blog series last month, I’ve been vibing to a tectonic frequency, waves surging up from the core of my business, dislocating work that has outgrown its meaning.

The business I built on copywriting and ghost writing is stripping down, to find its story core, its journeying center, and its own particular course of adventures.

Today I’m happy to announce…

Copy by Story Charmer is retired.

Story Coaching and Interviews are on hiatus till July.

And Story Charming Parties are in full swing.

Story Charmer is on a journey again. Come along and we’ll travel stories together.

Journey inspired

Sign up to get news from “the road,” track Story Charming Party locations and developments, and to download the free worksheet, Radiate: Make Your Story Matter. Subscribe in the sidebar, and start your story glowing. —>

Our stories infect, inspire, instigate. More will be unfolding here…To make your story matter one-on-one with me or in a group session, find out about workshops in the works, get advanced notice of Story Charmer’s next community blog project, and catch wind of wonders yet to be revealed on this journey of discovery, jump on the list and be the first to know.

P.S. Thanks to Jonathan Fields and Danielle LaPorte for the instigation to RADIATE.

What happens when words won’t budge? A rationed alphabet dries the tongue? What words break free don’t quench a thirst to speak?

That’s happening. But there’s something I want to tell you, about endings and beginnings. Transition. Transformation. Change.

Story is a journey. Life too.

It is the year anniversary of my grandma’s death. She was beloved. And yet her death set free constraints both unconscious and seen. Her end began many magical things, as surrender does the hero on her path.

Calculating experience 365 days since.

1
The end of a century. Hers.
The beginning of new legacy. Mine.

2
A wake.
Year long.
Awakening.

3
Word flow.
Stories swollen in a decades-long bruise,
release. Re-live. Relieve.

4
New love.
A new city.
New house.

5
And rest.
Horizon change.
New possibility.

∞
Exploration. Excavation. Art. And how.

Story is a journey, in which surrender leads to change, the same surrender that was all the while resisted to save one’s life, and finally accepted for the same.

There are changes afoot at Story Charmer. When you write about transformation, it follows that you shouldn’t be surprised when it’s upon you, right? (She says in hindsight.)

Watch for them here in the coming days and weeks.

# #

WAKE UP UPDATE

In the spirit of endings and beginnings, Jan Vozenilek, Director of Photography on the Midway Project responded to the Wake Up series post in which the project was featured:

Pema, that trailer that you posted, is the REALLY old one… BUT… the crazy thing… in that old trailer is the amazing chanting, interview and voice, of Raylene, the Hawaiian elder. Well, just last week, we lost her…

In the interest of offering you both the beautiful video that features Raylene, and the new, incredibly touching and beautiful Midway trailer, both of them are posted here, and the video on the original post is updated to the new trailer.

Beautiful new MIDWAY trailer

Original Wake Up post video with Raylene, a Hawaiian Elder

Don’t Go Back to Sleep

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 door-sill
Don’t go back to sleep
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep

- Rumi

Thank you to…

You, the reader, who makes this site and this collaborative conversation so special.

L’Tanya Durante for breaking open the Waking Up series by inspiring me to plant my voice in community before I use it.

Ronna Detrick, whose conversation expanded the week-long 4 a.m. wake-up from a solo venture to a community experience that blossomed.

Dyana Valentine for helping me wake up to a very deep knowing I was ignoring before this project began.

Michele Mollkoy for pointing out the mega flow of creativity that follows after the stories get charmed.

Stephanie Murphy for helping me stay close to target and chasing the big ideas.

Michelle Elmquist for the cool badges, the assistance, and the ever hilarious camaraderie

Lisa Slavid for listening to me think out loud for months before I put waking up into blog and community form.

Dave Markowitz for hosting the Wake Up week Story Charming Party.

Floyd Rocker for taking care of me the 9 fevered days I succumbed to a mysterious virus while barely meeting deadlines.

The Wake Up callers who woke up with me at 4 a.m. to create a community of intention and awareness—and as a result, magic happenings throughout the day and the week.

The wonderful contributors to the Waking Up series who answered the call to share their work on Story Charmer, and as a result engaged, inspired and opened readers with what you shared.

The contributors and interviewees of my last blog project, Memory to Light, for helping to inspire this one — Julie Daley, Laura Smith, Gillian Berry and all of the folks who made moving conversation in the comments.

My therapist for a weekly dose of wake up and the tools to becoming a happier, more honest, trusting, and in-love woman in progress.

I don’t think I’ve ever told you.
This is what makes my life worthwhile.
You.
In all your fragile quirkiness.
In all your blazing radiance.
You.
Tap-dancing down the street, sweaty, in a hurry,
so serious in the seriousness of it all.
Or dragging your one club foot, a reluctant dog you’re yanking along.
Or crying in your car, a stranger, next to mine at the stoplight,
your gaze averted, your fingers tight with shame around the steering wheel.
You.
When I nudge your exquisite body and apologize
as we shuffle past the canned soup, the frozen peas,
the hefty seductive eggplant,
the pregnant watermelon.
You, whom I’ve seen perhaps a thousand times, more.
And each time, I’ve forgotten
to tell you I adore you,
to bow, weeping, before your magnificence,
to skim the soft down of your arms,
to nuzzle and breathe you in as if you were the sea,
a bouquet of lilacs,
the first morning of snow after a long drowsy autumn.
You.
Grappling with the price of peaches,
grapes from Argentina,
conventional or organic.
Your forehead a beautiful worried twist.
Or your heart so wide it’s breaking,
wondering if Jennifer Aniston will finally be happy,
finally married to beautiful what’s his name,
your prayers for her, a perfect snowflake,
as she shines out from the cover of People.
I just need you to know.
Even if this morning you were standing at the mirror
with your tweezers, inspecting,
shouting insults to your one excellent face.
Or changing your sweater, shirt, jeans, dress,
over and over again,
trying to articulate the right you to help you tolerate yourself and meet the day.
I couldn’t live without you.
Couldn’t imagine the world.
A glorious field of wildflowers.
Each one, as precious and everyday as dandelion,
delicate and commanding
as Cosmos, Impatiens, Morning Glory.
You, the gentle unfurling fists of fern
tight-roped high in the forest trees.
You.  A perfect rose,
all thorned and finicky,
petals cupped around the light of dawn,
fragrant, silent
remembering yourself: glorious heart of the Divine.

by Johanna Courtleigh

# #

I originally asked Johanna Courtleigh if I could the post the beginning of her gorgeous, healing, John of God journey to Brazil. She writes about it with such beauty and openness. Then she sent me this poem, with a subject line in my email that said, “more waking up!” and I read it, more buoyant with every line, “heart so wide it’s breaking.” To read Johanna’s journey—and her proper bio—posted in the Wake Up series, start here, then head over to her blog to continue. It’s a breathtaking story.

# #

Story Charmer’s Waking Up Series is the month of March in meditation on WAKING UP. What does it mean? What growth does it spur? What wonder and challenge? GUEST POSTS and personal queries will appear here throughout the month. Read all the posts in the series here…

From my friend, new mom to twins:

My favorite thing about parenting is watching who my girls become every day. It’s like they gently unfold into more of themselves every time they wake up. It really is an honor to watch and support.

Every night it gets dark, and every day the sun breaks into day. What if we let ourselves gently unfold into more of ourselves, every time we wake up?

What did you wake to this morning?

What have you recently dreamed?

How can you take that awareness, from the edge of sleep, the edge of light, into your current intention?

How can you honor, watch, and support your gentle unfolding into more of yourself every time you wake up?

# #

Story Charmer’s Waking Up Series is the month of March in meditation on WAKING UP. What does it mean? What growth does it spur? What wonder and challenge? GUEST POSTS and personal queries will appear here throughout the month. Read all the posts in the series here…

If you’re spurred by what you read, and you want to write a post in reply, email me (hi) at (storycharmer) dot (com).

Join the conversation. Leave a comment. Write a post.

Let’s wake up together.

Post-Op

On my door, a bright yellow laminated sign has been posted—in six languages:

“I have had surgery and am resting/sleeping.
Thank you for your consideration and cooperation.”

My meals will be brought to me, and I will be with myself for the next twenty-four hours.

Awake, and Aware

I have imagined sleep, deep sleep. Long, beautiful sleep. The kind of sleep I have been longing for all of my life. (Christine, the doctor from San Diego, slept for two days straight, after her “surgery.”) I feel spent and heavy, and can hardly move. But instead of sleep, curiously, I am awake the rest of the morning and afternoon, save for two one-hour naps, the second after I’ve taken an Excedrin PM around four.

At 8:30 I take my nightly supplements, and two Benadryl. I still wake up at 3 a.m. for a bit. I know, healing doesn’t always happen in the timing or the way one might hope for. But I can also tell something profound is occurring.

I am very aware of my heart. Too aware. It is beating strong and heavy. I could even say it is keeping me awake. I am also very aware of my mind, and the cavalcade of memories it is trotting through. Some things I haven’t thought of for decades, more.

And I have a dream. That Ruth Paris, the mother of one of my brother’s childhood friends, who died when her kids were still pretty young, is alive, fifty and pregnant. This is a bit of a scandal. Breaking the rules for a woman her age! My father, also dead, is there.

Alive

I think this is a good sign. Something that has been long-dead is now again alive, and preparing to give birth. Not necessarily in normal timing, but birth, nonetheless . . .

In these long hours, I have many conversations with Spirit. Many prayers. I meditate and feel profoundly blessed by my life and all the twists of road that have brought me here.

I have come here to learn and witness more of what the Truth is. I have come here to see and know. I want to feel it for myself. More and more deeply. Many of us talk about spirit or God or guidance, but do we really Know how this works, know the Truth of it? Do we really believe in the spirit world? Beyond Jesus, if we’re Christians? Beyond the mere few we may pray to? Or receive and perceive as metaphor.

The Casa is full of helping spirits. John of God “incorporates” them and they heal through him. As he says, “It is not I who heals. It is God.”

So in my long hours alone, I ask to be Connected. I ask to Know. I ask to be well-used. I ask to forge a deeper relationship with the Divine. To be assisted, so I may more deeply assist. To become One with God. A portal. An instrument . . .

It Is All So Palpable

Today, I return, and again wait in line to see John of God. For a review of what occurred yesterday. I’ve asked a translator to assist me in understanding. This time, I take John of God’s hand, but our time together is still a split second. He waves me away, and I am told by the translator, “Go into the far room. He will work with you.” I follow the others before me and am seated in a row. Again, the energy feels very intense. And in a few minutes it is done, and we are ushered out. I go back into the Assembly room to meditate and integrate for a while. It is all so palpable.

Heart of Compassion

Wednesday night, we are invited to where Emma is staying, to watch a film on the life of Chico Xavier, a Brazilian man who was John of God’s mentor. This film was recently released—a full-length feature—and apparently has been the most popular film, ever, in Brazil. Xavier was a profound medium, who, in part, channeled letters from the dead, and even signed the person’s name in their own handwriting! Without having been given any information about whom the letter was for or from! There was once a lawsuit against him, accusing him of plagiarizing a dead poet whose writing came through him. And he channeled over 400 books! For which he never received payment.

Neither has John of God ever received money for his healing work. He works a job, as Xavier did, the days he is away from the Casa.

This is the tradition and teaching of the Spiritist faith. If God has graced you with a gift, you must give it away.
John of God came from a very poor family and is basically uneducated. At the age of nine, an angel came to him and asked if he would give his life to serve millions of people in healing. He has been doing this work ever since, and the Casa has been in existence for over thirty years.

He has also set up soup kitchens across Brazil. As an offering for the poor. In an interview I saw, he begins to weep, talking about knowing what it’s like to be hungry. A heart of compassion.

I feel so blessed to be here.

# #

Part 3 of 3. Read the beginning of Johanna’s journey…Part 1, here). And watch for the rest of the story on her blog at jcourtleigh.com.

Johanna Courtleigh MA, is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Certified Hypnotherapist and HypnoFertility Therapist, and Certified Oneness Awakening Trainer through the Oneness University in India. Her work seeks to help people heal from the mistruths they’ve been taught, and to awaken a core of deeper reverence, self-love, awareness, empowerment, ease and integrity—with themselves, and in their relationships with others. She is passionate about helping create a more peaceful world, and helping her clients become happier, healthier and more “in love” as a state of Being.

# #

Story Charmer’s Waking Up Series is the month of March in meditation on WAKING UP. What does it mean? What growth does it spur? What wonder and challenge? GUEST POSTS and personal queries will appear here throughout the month. Read all the posts in the series here…

If you’re spurred by what you read, and you want to write a post in reply, email me (hi) at (storycharmer) dot (com).

Join the conversation. Leave a comment. Write a post.

Let’s wake up together.

Clash

As an undergraduate, I slogged through controversial, complex geopolitical histories of the Middle East. I thought if I looked hard enough, I would find The Answer to better relations between the U.S. and the Middle East. No matter how many research papers, policy proposals, opinion articles and historical narratives I read, I could not satisfy my perpetual question: what is going on with this clash of civilizations??

Now I suspect my dissatisfaction resulted from where — and how — I sought knowledge, and it mirrors a larger problem of American short-sightedness about legitimate sources of understanding.

Connecting Dots

The extent of Islamophobia in the U.S. shocks me. I try to counteract the existing association of Islam to violence, an association that pervades mainstream media. I try to talk to my friends and family about my limited knowledge of Muslim culture, and I’m always looking for better access points for discussion with wary audiences.

One day in music class, I found an exciting possibility. I learned that in Islam the human voice is considered the best medium for understanding and preserving the word of God. Printing the Qur’an is helpful, but limited in its ability to convey the words’ highest meaning. Saying them out loud — with the proper pronunciation, lyricism, and spiritual sensitivity — illuminates their richer beauty, making the heart tremble with joy.

When I heard this, my mind lit up and my head went wild.

I’ve learned over time that my favorite ideas sound like really, really loud cymbals; the vibrations even seem to emanate from the center of my head. It feels like the sides of my skull have been struck together, for all the clanging and crashing going on up there. The opposing spheres of stubborn shell ring in clashing resonance.

Sound of A Wake-up Call

I’ve finally learned that the clash is a wake up call. An alert from the universe to keep an eye out for new ideas, to find a new path of understanding that’s somewhere close by.

So I invite you, too, to greet the clash from a new perspective. I invite you to listen. What do you hear?

I hear the intangible beauty of the human experience. I hear the yearning and longing of spiritual seeking. I hear the power of the human voice. Now there’s an entry point, a possibility for an unconventional connection.

The Value of Voice

U.S. policymakers have to realize Christian values are not universal, including values about communication methods. Western governments will not successfully communicate with Muslim governments as long as they cling to a version of world politics that’s written, written by and for imperial fantasies.

In every conflict, there’s a resolution waiting in the wings. One cause of the clash between the West and Islam is repeated miscommunication. Maybe we are trying the wrong methods, the wrong tools for connecting so we’re missing the current. Maybe — no, certainly — we need to stop asserting our values and listen to the other side.

What Does Your Brilliance Feel Like?

So let’s listen, let’s wake up. Be open to other sources, to other ways of knowing. Look out, sniff out, hear out, tongue out, feel out — whatever works for you. Go outside your world, yourself. Then bring your experiences back in to marvel, mingle with, and awaken more truths. What does your brilliance feel like? What sense do you use, and are you already aware of it?

And once you find out, please share: I love hearing others’ sources of inspiration.
For my part, I’ll keep you posted on the path through the clash, because I won’t stop looking for a better connection.

##

Stephanie Murphy showed up out of the clear blue and I had a feeling I had to work with her. Now she’s a sounding board, co-creatrix and executress of big ideas, pulling them out of the ether, chasing them with me around corners, and landing them with a daze, a triumph, and stars overhead. She writes more great stuff just like this, exercising her rich ideas on her blog. Take a look, and stretch that big brain you’re carrying around.

# #

Story Charmer’s Waking Up Series is the month of March in meditation on WAKING UP. What does it mean? What growth does it spur? What wonder and challenge? GUEST POSTS and personal queries will appear here throughout the month. Read all the posts in the series here…

If you’re spurred by what you read, and you want to write a post in reply, email me (hi) at (storycharmer) dot (com).

Join the conversation. Leave a comment. Write a post.

Let’s wake up together.