Unwrap Deep-Gladness Gifts #2: Just "Sing"!

Sing

(Write...)

Sing a song

(Write what's yours...)

Make it simple

(Let it "sing out"...)

To last your whole life long

(...in your deep-gladness voice.)

Don't worry that it's not good enough 

(It's none of your darn sweet business...)

For anyone else to hear

(...what anyone else may say.)

Just sing

(Just write...)

Sing a song.

(...write what's yours.)

From dusky green Vermont hills
intoxicating breezes
and cricket symphonies

where I'm practicing what I'm preachin'
at a Fearless Writing Workshop,

Kathy


Psst...Just do it...unwrap your deep gladness gift.

Ready...

set...

go!

Note: Recognize the red lines that inspired this little post? Yep, it's the Sesame Street song, called Sing.

Tell Soulful Stories #2: A Full Book

"Every person is born into life as a blank page—and every person leaves as a full book." —Christina Baldwin


How did it happen? I really did not intend to write a children's book about my grandmother.

Instead, I was quite sure that my story would gently tug at a knotty dilemma I was noticing among little kids (especially girls) who one day suddenly hate the name given to them by their parents.

Especially if the name was old fashioned (read: not cool), the name of a relative (read: ancient) rarely seen, or worse, not even living. A name sometimes worn with embarrassed sighs or impatient eyes. A name like Stella.

My story also meant to glance at celebrity worship, which so many kids (and adults!) fall into, a quicksand of media-painted appearance, pedestaled performance, and ego-driven behavior—none of which remotely resembled my grandmother Stella.

Stella never won (or competed for) celebrity babe status. Never performed for anyone—unless feeding freshly baked bread/cakes/pies/donuts or myriad cooked dishes to anyone who crossed her home's threshold qualified as performance. As for ego driven, she was too busy spotting even a smidgen of appetite in visiting family and friends, no matter what time they arrived, to care about something she could do for herself, such as relaxing for ten minutes.

To my surprise, the story I began writing about unwanted names and celebrity veneer also became a story about my grandmother, Stella Kowalski Szaj, who died some eighteen years ago. A story beyond the facts (Oct. 12, 1895 - June 30, 1992) of her to the truth of her.

Decades ago, I used to tell my high school students that we need stories whenever we want to tell a truth that is bigger than fact. (Huh? Bigger than fact? Aren't stories just harmless fantasies?) I told them that a story tells truths that facts can't begin to touch, often about love or its opposite, fear. I wanted them to know something I finally knew: Story is for close-encounter truth.

Since then I've learned that telling close-encounter truth about a beloved family member or friend takes paying awesome attention, which kicks us out of orderly, chronological fact-land and sweeps us into the territory of entangling relationship. Truth, formerly the only child of Either/Or ("Either it's true or a lie," we often tell children), now multiplies into triplets: True, Truer, Truest.

And for me, telling the truest stories about our people especially means revealing how they unwrap their deep gladness gifts—and nourish the world, hungry to receive them.

True: my grandma offered food whenever her family and friends visited.

Truer: Grandma enjoyed watching us eat up her offerings.

Truest: Grandma's feeding us, me, was her language of "I love you." I learned and now speak "Stella," sometimes with food, often with words.

In my story, Stella Means Star, a little girl named Stella, who hates her name, experiences close-encounter truth about her great-grandmother—a "meeting" that begins adding tiny sparkles of pride to her name tag.

To my delight, Stella Means Star also tells the truth about my grandmother: the essence of who she was then, and how she still lives now...in me.

Come, cross this threshold. You just might remember someone gone or far away who still, in truth, lives...soulfully in you.

Story is the narrative thread of our experience—
not what literally happens,
but what we make of what happens,
what we tell each other and what we remember."
—Christina Baldwin

Stella Means Star

When I grow up, I'm going to change my name.

Or maybe I'll change it when I'm nine.

Then, when my mother says, "Stella, please come set the table," I'll have to stay sitting on my chair, reading my book, because I won't be STELLA anymore. Then, when she says, "Stella, please set the table" again, I'll have to finish my story because STELLA isn't my name anymore.

When Mommy says, "Stella, didn't you hear me? I asked you to set the table now," I will have to tell Mommy that (I am sorry to say) STELLA didn't hear her, because STELLA doesn't live here anymore.

Of course, I COULD change my name when I'm eight.

Then, on the first day of school, when my new teacher calls the name of everyone who's supposed to be in my class, no one will answer when she calls, "Stella? Raise your hand, please. Are you here?"

Everybody knows you shouldn't raise your hand and say "present" for the wrong name. I suppose that's when I'll have to tell her that STELLA doesn't go to this school anymore.

I might change my name tomorrow, on my birthday, when I'll be seven.

Then, when I meet that new girl I saw who is moving into the apartment building across the street, I will say, "Hello, my name is Cassandra. Or Belle. Or Jasmine. Or ArielLouiseSuzanne. What's yours?" (Her name WON'T be STELLA, either.)

This morning, my daddy found me copying names from some books for older kids that have lots of good names in them. I practiced writing some name I like: "Paloma"..."Guinivere"..."Amelia."

Daddy asked me if I was writing one of my super stories. I almost said, "Yes, I am," even though I really wasn't. I didn't want him to know that I didn't want my name anymore. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. So I said very fast, "No-I'm-finding-a-new-name."

Daddy asked me if the new name was for a school project. "Not exactly," I said.

For one of my dolls or stuffed animals then? "Not exactly," I said.

A pretend name for me or one of my friends? "No, Daddy," I said, "A real name...a new name for me."

Daddy looked at me without saying anything for a long time. I looked down at the names I wrote and wished I were invisible.

Daddy asked me if I knew why he and Mommy named me "Stella." I said, Yes, because it was the name of his grandmother, which means she was my GREAT-grandmother. He said Yes, and that he had loved her a lot. I said, I know that, but....I stopped talking. I didn't want to tell him.

But Daddy waited and waited.

I took a big breath and said I didn't want the name STELLA anymore because nobody almost seven years old had that name...and because kids at school were always saying stupid things like "Stella Stella, Let's all yella, Stella Stella..." and because it's not a beautiful name like "Paloma" or "Natasha" or a special name like "Guinevere" or "Indigo" or a brave name like "Amelia" or "Pocahontas"...and because even though Stella was Great-granny's name, she died before I was even born.

Daddy looked surprised, like people do when they find out they're accidentally wearing two different socks. Then he said Thank you, and that now he understood. He asked me if it would help to have my very own picture of the other Stella. I didn't think so, but I said okay.

He asked Mommy to please bring that picture of Stella when she was a bridesmaid a long time ago.

Mommy did and gave me this photograph with no color. I said thank you and stared at the lady in it.

She had curls in her hair that covered only one ear and touched her shoulder. She wore some kind of fancy dress, and was holding some flowers, and smiled a little.

I told Daddy and Mommy that Stella looked kind of pretty, and maybe a little bit shy, but not really beautiful or special or brave. Mommy said, Oh, but Stella was all of those things.

She was special because she was gentle, kind, and generous. She never said anything awful about anyone, and she was always feeding lots of friends and family who dropped by her house, no matter what time of day or night they came.

She was especially brave when two of her sons, who were only a little more than twenty years old, died in the same horrible war, one right after the other.

And all of these things made her very beautiful, Daddy said.

I didn't say anything else because I knew I had to think about Stella some more.

* * *

Tonight, I put Stella's picture on the table next to my bed.

I peeked at her just before I took my bath to see if she looked beautiful, like Daddy said.

I peeked at her again while I put on my pajamas to see if she felt special to me yet.

I peeked at her once more just before I climbed into bed to see if I could tell how brave she was.

She was still giving me her little smile.

THEN, I remembered something very important.

I jumped out of bed, ran to the den, and took down our huge dictionary from the bookshelf. Mommy was always saying that a dictionary could tell you lots of interesting things. But could it tell me about "Stella"?

I turned the pages as fast as I could, past the G's, the S's, and the Z's. Past the names of American presidents, faraway places, and famous artists. Then I found the names of people. There it was: "Stella"—a name that means "star."

STAR! I'm Stella, but am I a star? My teacher said we all have little bits of stardust stuff in our bodies from sky stars that lived before there were people.

And everybody says stars are very beautiful people who act or dance or sing very well.

But now I think maybe stars can be people who have kind and generous and brave bits shining in them—even if they're NOT in the movies or on TV.

I'm Stella, and I'm a star.

Maybe I'll sing or dance or act someday.

Maybe I won't.

I hope that when I'm a grownup I can be a beautiful Stella-star, like my great-granny was.

Maybe I will start practicing tomorrow.

"...In the midst of overwhelming
noise and distraction,
the voice of story is calling us
to remember our true selves."
—Christina Baldwin

P.S. Christina Baldwin's Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story is a rich, beautifully written book, combining personal stories (her own and those of other individuals) with those belonging to larger communities, including the human family itself.

Bonus: the author offers memory/story prompts for writing and conversation at the end of each chapter to become a "storycatcher." Plus she provides free storycatcher resources online on her Storycatcher Network page.


P.P.S. Yes, the photo of the demure bridesmaid is indeed my grandmother Stella, around 1918. And the the picture of the little girl with her grandmother? Uh-huh, me. Roughly the same age as my story's Stella-star.

Nourish This Awakening World #1: Wake Up, My Love

Yoo-hoo...anybody there?

Yes, you with the eyeballs scanning this page.

Wait...don't flit away.

Stay a while...please.

Take off your to-do's
stretch your gotta-get-going
make yourself comfortable.

What can I get you:
Some reflections to ruminate on?
A story to slowly digest?
A snippet of poetry or prose to savor later?

Come in, stay a while, enjoy your visit.

Um, but first, could you please wipe your feet a few more times on the welcome mat?
(You won't take it, when you leave...right? Welcome mats cost so much these days.)

Oh, and one more little thing: if you could just put your hand on this inkpad..? The fingerprinting won't take long. I promise.

No, really, I mean it. Come in. (Just don't take what's not yours.)
Stay a while. (Just don't steal anything that's mine.)
Oh...you're leaving so soon? (Make sure all my words are put back where they belong, okay?)

Fear is an awful host.

Ah, but you're just being realistic, you might tell me.
This is how the world is, you might advise.
People steal stuff, defraud, make a profit from what belongs to someone else. The news proves this everyday. You gotta protect yourself. That's the truth.

Except that for me it's not...the whole truth, that is.

Sure, daily doses of names, dates, and deeds factually document the dangers of those who turn over their savings, creations, hearts to others. Suckers. Wise up, people. Don't show anyone (except maybe your family) anything valuable without first padlocking it, copyrighting it, or attaching an alarm. People will steal your stuff, you know, given half a chance.

Well, yes, they might.

But here comes the whole-truth part: if I don't freely give what is deepest in me, dearest to me, I can't be received—by you or anyone.
And if I'm not received, I can't fully unwrap the gifts that I am.
I remain securely bound by wrappings and decorations. Boxed in. Safe. Intact. And unopened.

Like Ebenezer Scrooge, before the night of his ghostly visitors—and his eleventh hour rescue from his smallest, fearful self.

In Charles Dickens's 1843 classic, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge—"a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner"—clings to his Midas-touch for conducting business and making money. Piles of it.

No welcome mat lies at Scrooge's door. Only misery. A mother who died in his childhood, an indifferent father who sent him away to school, a loving fiance who broke her engagement with him—all stockpile Scrooge's fear of personal relationships and stoke his fierce determination to lockbox massive amounts of money. All chain his heart, imprisoning him. He can't give to those who need his generosity, and can't receive from those who want to love him.

Enter the chain-clanking, moaning ghost of Scrooge's dead partner, Jacob Marley. Jacob Marley, former excellent businessman who learned too late that humankind was his true business. Jacob Marley, a zombie forever condemned to walk the earth helplessly witnessing human suffering without being able to help in any way. Jacob Marley, who tries to save Scrooge from the same hellish fate by arranging three hauntings from Christmases Past, Present, and Future.

The Scrooge story has a happy ending, of course. After seeing a vision of his own grave and no one to celebrate his life or mourn his death, he throws off his smallest, fearful self, deliriously dancing and whooping his glee. Freely and lovingly sharing his wealth, himself. Forevermore.

Nice story. But what's wrong with making lots of money, especially if you're fantastically good at it? Nothing. It's just that making money isn't Scrooge's deepest, dearest gift—which remains unwrapped and unopened until the hauntings scare him awake.

What is? A heart-singing trio.
Compassion.
Generosity.
Love.
And giving these gifts with no strings attached, in turn, saves him.
Not just because the eventual recipients of his wealth are healed (Tiny Tim), grateful (the charitable men and Bob Cratchit's family), and joyful (nephew Fred).
Because their gratitude, joy, and willingness to receive the real Scrooge, despite decades of mistreatment by the former skinflint, heals Scrooge.

Unless I am received, I remain unclaimed, unwrapped, uncirculated. Alone. Miserly. Miserable. Sort of dead.


Money, words, hearts: all need to circulate, "to follow a course that returns to the starting point." When circulation—whether within an individual body or among billions of people—slows, clogs, ceases, we become ill. And what if no one loves us enough to awaken us from our grasping, scraping, clutching little selves to be the gifts we already are...? We shrivel and die.

So does the world, a little at a time, each time you or I shrink into our smallest, fearful selves, holding back the awesome attention and deep-gladness gifts we were made to offer to each other.

I'm seeing and listening to more and more good news lately. The world is yawning, slowly waking from a centuries-old comatose belief that what I do "is none of your business." That if you are not in my family or other approved tribe, I am separate and unrelated to you. That stockpiling my fame and fortune at all costs is "job #1."

Little by little
we're stretching into a heart-singing knowing
and connecting with
and celebrating
that we, everyone of us together, are job #1.

Look around:
See us standing on welcome mats
holding out minds, hands, hearts
with money, words, ourselves
ready to be received
by a world that deeply needs us.

I have heard it all my life,
A voice calling a name I recognized as my own.

Sometimes it comes as a soft-bellied whisper.
Sometimes it holds an edge of urgency.

But always it says: Wake up, my love. You are walking asleep. There's no safety in that!
—Oriah.

One day, I am sitting at a children's book fair, with two of the books I wrote stacked on the table in front of me. A mom walks into the room with her daughter, who is about seven years old. Surveying the books on the tables nearest the door, where I am located, the mom spots my first children's book, I Hate Goodbyes.

"Oh, look," she says to her daughter, "the author has written another book. We'll have to get this one too, won't we?"

Her daughter nods eagerly, taking the book from her mom, beginning to read it.

The mom looks up, noticing me. "Are you the author?"

I nod that I am.

"I have to tell you. We moved here recently, which terribly uprooted and upset my daughter. She didn't like her new school and didn't want to learn. Then we got your book, which I read to her many times, at her request."

I am pleased; I know my book must be hitting an emotional home run with the little girl. Exactly the kind of reception an author wants.

The mom glances at my nametag. "Kathy, there's more. My daughter learned to read with your book. It's the first one she ever read by herself. Now she's doing fine at her new school and loves to read."

Her daughter looks up at me, smiles shyly, then returns to reading my—her—new book.

I swallow, trying hard not to cry in front of them.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world
the stories and the songs you want our children’s children to remember. And I will show you how I struggle
not to change the world, but to love it.
—Oriah**

Yoo-hoo...anybody there?

Ah, there you are.


Please come in
take off your smallest, fearful self
and stay a while.

What can I get for you?


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Good-news goodies:
* poem excerpt from The Call by Oriah
** poem excerpt from The Dance by Oriah

Unwrapping Deep-Gladness Gifts #1: The Voice

Trust me.

It was not noble.
It was not pretty.
It was, quite frankly, largely lust...

...the pens, pencils, and erasers (Ooh!)
...the stacks of scrap paper and occasional tablet of pristine new paper (M-m-m!)
...the box of brazen, color-shouting crayons (Yes-s-s!)
...the stacks of books, old and new, pages yearning to be read (Come to me, ba-by.)


...and the raw power of being She Who Must Be Obeyed. (Ah-h-h.)

Presenting: my first reasons for wanting to become a teacher. Really.

Back then, at age eight or nine, my “classroom” venue varied from the pink-walled bedroom I shared with my sister to my favorite “school” location: Grandma and Grandpa's third floor barn-turned-garage attic. Here among the alluring remnant goods of Grandpa's various entrepreneurial ventures, chomped evidence of squirrels and mice, and plenty of reasons to sneeze, I jumped at every chance to stand in front of “my class” (my older brother, younger sister, and sometimes my cousin, seated in a tidy row of makeshift “desks”). Of course, I gave them lots of “assignments”―involving plenty of pens, pencils, crayons, papers, and books.

Curiously, although we officially took turns being the teacher, my siblings and cousin often let me be the teacher. For some reason, they often followed my “teaching” instructions, until in later years they discovered the pleasures of being unruly―something none of us dared to be in “real school.”

Lucky for me (and my future real students), the siren call of irresistible teaching materials and authority morphed into something bigger...deeper...glad-er.

I remember the moment as a real teacher when I read Frederick Buechner's definition of vocation (from the same root word as “voice”) or calling as “that place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep hungers.” I shivered in recognition. In this elegant phrasing, he extracted from my memory something I had never learned but already knew.

“Playing school” handed me the first piece of my deep gladness puzzle.

What deep gladness puzzle piece(s) did you receive in your childhood? What happened?

Hundreds of workshops and Web sites and thousands of books and experts offer advice, inventories, and other personal/professional development tools. Want to identify your strengths, abilities, and skills to find a job, change careers, earn more income? Click here, please.

Or perhaps you're eager to locate life passion and purpose. A growing multitude of personal coaches are lined up, ready to assist. All of these resources can be helpful and even life changing―if, as I have personally experienced, the individual learner or client is receptive and ready to change.

But the sheer proliferation of these resources tells me something more than individual human development is happening. Something on a collective scale. Something that looks beyond a separate me in search of a we're-in-this-together we.

We is the address where deep gladness lives.

Knock on the door and deep gladness answers if we're willing to risk walking past something we're really good at―and often perform with little sense of contribution or joy―to remember the bliss we abandoned as "childish" play.

Deep gladness answers whenever we, waving at individualism (sitting alone in its favorite cafe, drinking lattes just the way it likes them), remember to return home to the little neighborhoods and big world that hold our shared hungers, hopes, and dreams.

Deep gladness answers when we're ready to fall in love―with our own lives, and where they ache to take us. From resumes to inborn gifts. From just-me to we.

Where does your life ache to take you?

I invite deep gladness to come closer―
I switch my looking
same-old scenes of faceless crowds
entering and exiting subway cars
to seeing
freckled faces of a redheaded family
―mom, dad, sister, brother― laughing
(and I just have to laugh, too).


I enter deep gladness when I (temporarily) park my anxious questions―

• How much money can I make from this idea, project, book, blog?
• Which people in this room will speak with me, like my ideas, send me potential clients?

―outside the welcome mat.


I speak from deep-gladness gift―
Suddenly, the thing I am saying to my students
flows through me
as if I am a pipeline to a river that is much larger
than my small stream.
At these times a knowing whooshes through:
I am in exactly the right place
at the right time
with the right people
doing the right thing.


I forget (momentarily) my limits inside deep gladness―
Instantly, a powerful conspiracy takes over:
everything I see, everyone I meet, shows me
possibility (what could be)
purpose (what needs to be)
passion (what wants to be)
potential (what is ready to be)
or promise (what intends to be)
in ways I've never, ever imagined.


I return to deep-gladness gift
(after getting disconnected for the umpteenth time)―
I halt my struggle to write the “right words” here
to watch mounds of blue-gray density dance
with streaks of radiant light
in eye-popping cloud performance
outside my eleventh story window.

What disconnects you from your deep gladness?

Once upon a time, my usual writing performance consisted of lots of crossing out, scads of paper ripping and throwing, and copious tears. Oh, I could write competently enough―with enough suffering. Writing was my tortuous un-gladness.

Once upon a time, I am rescued. My knights are Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and the enthusiastic support of a dear writer friend. I live happily ever after: scribbled-out, fast first drafts that are too wordy, too wandering, and maybe even just plain suck become my intimate, if unpolished, companions in discovering my voice.

What rescues and reconnects you?

I scan the virtual horizon. My deep gladness monitor immediately shows me the face of Susan Boyle, who, one fine day in April 2009, stunned U.K. television viewers and, a few days later, the online world in the moment she opened her mouth to sing the first notes of I Dreamed a Dream from the musical
Les Miserables.

Her story statistics are nearly legendary by now: a 48-year old church volunteer with untamed hair from a small Scottish village. Oxygen deprived at birth causing some learning difficulties. Living alone with cat, Pebbles, after the death of her mother two years ago. Often taunted by village children and called “Susie Simple” by some village adults. Often described by the press as “frumpy,” “plain,” or other even less flattering descriptors. Instantly dismissed by rolling eyes and smirks from Britain's Got Talent judges who are about to rate her audition.

But Susan Boyle knows from the age of 12 that she is a singer, and all she needs is a chance to “make that audience rock....All my life I've striven to prove myself,” she said just before singing on the British talent show, “like I can be accepted that I'm not a worthless person people think I am, that I do have something to offer.”

“Something to offer”?

According to a Susan Boyle fan site, as of June 29, 2009, all YouTube videos of Susan's performances received an estimated 425,000,000 views―this, within ten weeks. Three months after her audition, Susan is recording her first CD, with millions already pre-ordered. 10,000,000 CDs will be sold in the U.S. alone, one of the judges is predicting.

Susan Boyle opens her mouth to sing―and her gift immediately pulls us to our feet in clapping joy and awestruck wonder.


Trust me.

Your deep-gladness gifts―which the world deeply needs―are calling.

With or without applause.

Just check your voice mail.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do....

(excerpt from “The Journey” by Mary Oliver)

Extra, Extra!
* Meredith Vieira recently (7/22/o9) interviewed Susan Boyle
* The full text of "The Journey" is in Dream Work by Mary Oliver, and the poem is also printed online.