The Speed of Soul Blog - Carrie Newcomer

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Moving To Substack

Hi Folks,  I’ve loved interacting with you at Tumblr, but i’ve decided to move my blog and newsletter to Substack.  I’m calling the space “A Gathering of Spirits.”   I hope you’ll check me out there at

 http://www.carrienewcomer.substack.com

Thanks for reading and interacting here!  I hope to see you at A Gathering of Spirits!  

Warmly 

Carrie  

[carrienewcomer]

Mind The Gap

 I remember the first time I stepped onto the London Underground and heard the sound of an automated voice saying “Mind the gap.”  This phrase was to encourage people getting on or off the subway to pay attention to the little space between the subway door and the station platform.   I found the phrase interesting.  In the states, we might say, “watch your step” which focuses on ourselves and where we are putting our feet.  But this phrase was an encouragement to pay more attention to the open space, the small empty threshold between two locations.  I think of this experience whenever I am living in a transition or negotiating a process that can only happen with time.  Sometimes that open space can look suspiciously like a hole or remind us of loneliness.  But if I “mind” the gap, I usually discover that what looked like a hole, is actually only an open space –a space that has been waiting for me to step into it and just “be” with what can only happen in the quiet times of transition or process.  Between the place we are and the place we are going is an open space - these are the spaces between physical locations, between one vocation and the next, between an old habit and a new a way of being, understanding or seeing.  It is easy to fill our days, appointment books and chattering mind to the brim.  And yet, it is when I pay attention to the open spaces between where I am and where I’m going, I have a chance to clear out my cluttered mind and spirit and tap into a deeper sense of Knowing, sense what has been waiting for my quiet attention.  The space is not a hole, it is only a space - and one that is still full of an open kind of wonder and a deeper presence.  I have a part of myself that wants to “get on with it” to step from one growing edge to the next without some of the “in-between” work that might feel risky or uncomfortable.  And yet, it is in those quiet times, when I am walking daily with awareness and compassion about “where I am” instead of pushing forward to “where I think I want to be” that the tiny quietly seismic changes and deeper Knowing are possible. There is a lot on my new album and book of poetry "Until Now" about this idea.  So I guess i'm pondering these things these days Are you Minding The Gap today?  Have you every experienced a open space in your life or work that allowed you to grow or learn in ways you might not of otherwise?

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"I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed."— Mary Oliver

I love this Mary Oliver quote.  It reminds me that a good day is one part tenderness, one part grinning for no good reason...and all of it a song.(picture of my dog Ella on our walk - she's listening for something chase-able)

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A Great Gathering Of Spirits All On A Human Journey

In the past year we have experienced a time of great unraveling.  But with great disruption comes a moment of unique possibility.  The steam ship of our culture and our lives often have a momentum that can be hard to turn from its course - unless something big happens.  And honey, something big has happened.  And so I've been thinking a lot about what I want to preserve and deepen, what matters and what doesn't matter, what  I can pick up and what I can now lay down.

I have a sense I am not alone in processing this year of reckoning.   Whatever our individual challenge (old coping strategies, a tendency to overwork,  the need for greater self compassion, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, physical health issues, difficulty with uncertainty, difficulty with solitude or with reaching out, flossing...whatever it was, it came into view and needed attention.  

On the flip side, we also discovered ancient aquifers of spiritual grounding and strength, deep sources of courage, resiliency and  hope, a sense of humor, we discovered gifts we didn't know we possessed, an aptitude for Zoom.    We discovered that we are not alone in our humanity and that it is possible to find unabashed delight in small things.  In the light of it all, may I tenderly hold my own humanity and challenges with a sense of love and self compassion, to cut myself and others a little slack (because we've all been doing about the best we can).  May I love and hold all those small moments of wonder and connection and creativity with gratitude, and resolve to step to my next growing edge with a sense of adventure.  

Today -may I, may we, feel the companionship of a great gathering of spirits, all of us on a human journey. You are not alone in your humanity. Have hope and take courage.  It might be difficult, it might be surprising. But honey, it might just be glorious.

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Go Ahead & Sing

I am grateful that I've been able to spend most of my adult life doing the work I love.  To open my heart and voice and sing has always been my finest joy and truest prayer.  But too often people are shy to sing, or have been told to leave such things to the professionals. This is a poem I wrote to encourage lifting up your voice, your true voice and your true heart - whether you dance it, or hum it, or sing it, or nod your head to the beat-engaging with a song is a "come as you are" invitation.   Welcome!  Go ahead...and sing. ********************************************** Go Ahead & Sing

Songs were never meant to be left to “the professionals”. 

Never mind the person who long ago shamed you 

Or the church choir member that told you to

Just mouth the words. 

Don't worry if your I's are dotted

and your T's are crossed

or your pitches are perfectly placed.   Trust me, If you spend today singing

If you start byhumming in the shower, 

Then whistling while picking out carrots 

Or singing as you wash dishes 

Or walking in the woods

Or crossing at the traffic light. 

You might just begin to feel 

Your True Heart 

Open.

  You might surprise yourself

By doing a little Gene KellyTwo step and slide

as you sweep into the kitchen,

or turn up the radio

and roll the windows down.

You might remember an old flame

Or catch the first notes of a new idea.

And possibly, 

very possibly

You will get to the end of the day, 

With nothing else to add 

Beyond 

“Amen” - Carrie Newcomer

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kindness again

Kindness is perhaps one of the most subtle gifts, and yet it may be one of the most transformative.  What is kindness but love made visible, personal and practical - love expressed as the most ordinary of things.  Yes, kindness is the country cousin to love.  Kindness isn't flashy or pretentious, it sings in the kitchen and does the dishes when no one asked it to do so.  Kindness looks up from the crowd and notices the lemons that fell out of your grocery bag and stoops to pick them up for you. Kindness sends a text of a sunset, because it knows it will help you feel less alone in the twilight. Kindness reminds us that something beautiful and luminous is possible and always incredibly close. In the past week, was there an act of kindness that happened to you (or given through you) that eased your day or reminded you to look for love in surprising or ordinary places?

kindness

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A Speed of Soul Thought - Returning to Small Kindnesses

 “Wounds won’t heal the way you want them to, they heal the way they need to.” – Dele Olanubi

In these days between what was and what comes next — be kind.  It is the small things that will matter most.  We are beginning to encounter one another again, in small offhanded ways.  Im a little out of practice, making small talk, being able to see a smile and give a smile, saying "bless you" when someone sneezed instead of involuntarily recoiling, offering my seat, or bouncing a curly haired baby on an airplane while the mother took a break.

  Although I have always loved  brief moments of human exchange and saw how small kindnesses could shift the tectonic plates of a day,  I think I now better understand the power of a regular practice of small kindnesses, sense a holiness in simply being decent to one another as a matter of course.  Such a practice affirms our own capacity for a largeness of heart and reminds us that every encounter is an opportunity.   

We have survived the trauma of the past year, we will now survive the return.  The choice will be what will we choose to practice each day, recover and rejoice in, or leave behind because it no longer serves.  

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To Deeply Listen

There is a process in Quaker community called "Clearness".  It is a way to sit in the presence of another person, to listen deeply, to allow them an open space to hear the wisdom of their own inner teacher.  Sometimes there is a question or decision to be made, but the listeners never give advice, they are only allowed to ask open honest questions.  In fact if advice is given, usually the entire process breaks down.  This process is at the root of Parker J. Palmer's Circle of Trust method of deep listening.   It is powerful and relies upon the belief that we each have an inner teacher that can be trusted, and that when we step away from our usual cultural modes of problem solving, something expanding and clear can happen. Can you remember a time when someone deeply listened to you?  Perhaps a time when you deeply listened to another? How something shifted, something felt safer, clearer and witnessed? This is the kind of listening that has no agenda or judgement, No sense that the listener is thinking ahead to a response No pressure to fix or brain storm or correct your flawed thinking. Try this today....listen to someone with no intention to fix or save or solve.  Listen with an open heart and belief in the good heart of the person speaking.   I began listening this way as a Quaker practice, then as a Circles of Trust practice.  But the more I listened in this manner, the more it seemed appropriate for most situations (unless very specifically brain storming with a person).   Listen....hear the speaker into their own language...and you will fill up a cup, that has been long waited for water.

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Mrs. McDonoughue

  I held out my story, A shy offering Written with blue crayon, On four pages of neatly folded notebook paper. My second-grade teacher, Mrs. McDonoughue Who I remember as a gray haired angel In a red cardigan sweater, Smiled and said it was a lovely book. Lovely. She’d seen through the rudimentary sentences And disregarded the misspellings. She skipped over the bent edges and smudge on the last page. She did what a true reader and good listener will do, She dove right into the deep water of the story And swam around with her eyes open. She praised the illustrations and asked me questions. She encouraged me to bring her more. Which I did, Until there was a flimsy stack Displayed on the corner of her wooden desk.   There is knowing that comes with living a story. There is redemption and power in sharing a story Particularly when in the telling The narrative becomes less mine And more ours. But there is an equal power in how we choose to hear it. Hold it, Consider it. How we look past the rough edges, And listen for the heartbeat at the center of the tale.   I am grateful for Mrs. McDonoughue in her cat eye glasses.  Thankful that she would stand at the front of the class each morning Reading aloud from Laura Ingles Wilder or Robert Frost. I am grateful she taught me not just how to form a letter But also how to shape a thought. I’m grateful that she taught me the importance of listening, And reading through to the meaning, How to hold a story in my heart, And give it away with gladness.  

—Carrie Newcomer (2021)

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Joy Is Made Of Stronger Stuff

“After despair the one thing left is possibility” - Rollo May

There is a difference between happiness and joy. We experience happiness in moments of contentment, when things are going well, when all is right with the world.  Happiness has soft edges and it comes and goes.  Joy is made of stronger stuff, it transcends the rightness or wrongness of the current moment.  Joy comes in the morning, it happens when the night ends and against all odds the sun rises.  Let me be joyous today, to nod with old friends remembering many midnights and mornings .  Let me live in uncertain times with a sense of the light that is always shining even when the dawn is hours away. May we all experience happiness...but ah my friends, may we all live with joy.  - Carrie

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Tender Regard

This morning I joined a group of activists from all over the world to listen to an online conversation between mediation teacher Sharon Salzberg and my friend Parker J. Palmer.  It was so encouraging to  see the faces of so good hearted people.   I have a couple of pages of notes!  At one point Sharon spoke about how Covid has changed her busy life of travel.  It had given her time to pay more attention to the small things she does each day. More time to think about being intentionally kind.

Being closer to home has disrupted old patterns, but it has allowed me to love the small things more deeply. It has opened up some unexpected space in which to move and practice more deliberate kindness and daily tenderness with everything and everyone I encounter— whether online, in person, whether human, critters or trees.  I find myself smiling at a favorite mug, grinning at the extravagance of the bright red cardinal on the feeder, grateful for wonderful teachers and insightful authentic questions in the chat, a texted photo of an sweet old dog, breathing in and appreciating simple shower soap that smells of rosemary and mint, nodding to the trees I've known long enough to name (the three sisters, the dancing women, grandmother, grandfather, mother and old friend). Is there some small thing, that if you think about it, is waiting and worthy of your tender regard?What would happen if you gave all that tenderness, and did not hold any back?

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We Think of Light as a Formless Thing

We think of light as a formless thing.

But today,Just for a moment,

A veil of the stuff streamed down between the trees.

It was opalescent and silky smooth

and I stepped into it

Fully expecting it would brush across my face

Like the barest breath of a passing wing,

Or the gauze of a perfect spider web 

Spun and hung across the path,

Or like an unexpected visitationIn a quickly dissolving dream.

And even though I did not feel any physical edges

I caught the scent of the last days of summer

Cold creek water

And drifting leaves.

I am grateful

For all the tangible intangible things of this world,

All that has calmed me and called me,

Stories that can only be told,

In sighs and nods,

In light through the trees,

And sometimes the music that hangs in the air

After the last note fades.

Carrie Newcomer 2021

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Stopping on a Snowy Walk

The snow is coming down in enormous fluffy flakes.  I lift up my purple mittens to catch a few on the back of my hand.  Even with the naked eye I can see each crystal wheel with their individual arms and legs of ice.  There is a solitary stillness in the ravine back by the creek.  Few sounds beyond the occasional hammering of a pileated woodpecker and intrepid jingle of my dog's collar tags.  It is so quiet I can hear the soft hissing sound of those large flakes landing on the tree branches and forest floor.  It is that still.   It is in these quiet moments that I sense the expansiveness of time beyond my own life.  I sense there is still wellness in these bruised and troubled times.  What is whole is still whole.  What runs deep still runs deep.  Even our troubles seem transient when the falling snow lands on the ground like the most tender kiss - and you are truly there to hear it. 

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Staying In The Story

I have learned through my own history and experience that healing and forward movement means commitment to the process.  If my own growth and transformation is likened to a book, I cannot skip the middle part, I cannot complete the story by refusing to look at the truths revealed along the way.  To be sure, there have been many times when I wanted to skip the hard part, the painful part, the part that was going to take time.  This has applied to physical and emotional healing, creative process, grief, loss, forgiveness and other life challenges.  What I saw while watching and listening to the 197 republican legislators who did not vote to impeach was an attempt to skip the painful, truth-telling part of a healing story. Not one voiced aloud the legitimacy of the last election, perpetuating a lie that has caused even deeper divisions and threatens continued violence.  

Reconciliation cannot happen without first acknowledging the truth. The 2020 election was not rigged or stolen.  The people storming the capital were not peaceful protesters, it was a riotous mob with weapons and intent to harm or kill, invited to gather and encouraged to violence by President 45.   These protesters literally defecated on a house that democracy built and had public leaders/servants running down the halls for their lives. Healing cannot happen without wrestling and learning from our own mistakes and misjudgments (small or grievious). Actions have consequences in legal and spiritual terms.  A reconciliation without truth is a book that falls apart because half the pages and binding have been removed.

So what can I do personally to help with the process of justice, healing and the reconciliation of a deeply divided country?  I can continue to require that conversations going forward are based in truth.  I can dedicate to find the inner conviction and love that allows me to facilitate change one day at a time, one interaction at a time, to live into what Howard Thurman calls “devastating sincerity”.   I can be willing to stay in the story (even the hard and painful parts) and in doing this help to write a better story with a better ending.

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A Speed of Soul Encouragement - Acknowledging Grief, Claiming Love, Remembering Radiance

In the wake of January 6th many of us are wrestling with grief, dismay, anger, racial double standard and discouragement. So today I acknowledge what is hard as stone. Lets not candy coat anything. But let us also claim that there is a stronger force, a deeper truth and a wide and active community of good hearted, decent people. Let us remind one another of all the fine and honorable people in our own lives. Let us remind ourselves of how many people got up this morning and continue to make the world a kinder place, one day, one person, three feet around them. Yesterday I wrote my legislators, and encourage others to claim agency and let their voices be hear. But I also encourage digging into what makes your life good. Howard Thurman wrote that “hope is the remembrance of radiance, the assurance that Light will be Light, even when walking in dark places.” I am gathering to myself that remembrance of radiance, the assurance that even in the aftermath of viewing the forces of shadow close up, goodness is still goodness, Light is still Light, and hope is still here and has not been hemmed in. I wrote my legislators, but I also texted a few dear friends to tell them I care, and to express that I am grateful for their presence in my life and in the world. My encouragement today is to claim agency and to claim love. Text, zoom, call or somehow connect with someone who you think of as a treasure in your life, someone that illuminates your life, who reminds you of the power of love and the remembrance of radiance. Reach out and affirm what keeps saving us - goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gratitude, generosity, hospitality, justice and love...always love. Lay your hand on your heart and know that you also illuminate the lives of others around you. You are also doing what you can each day, in your own way, to make the world around you a kinder place. Today we acknowledge the shadows, but we lean into the light.

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The Sound of Wings

Today I went out and tossed bird seed on the ground.  It is an old custom, an act kinship with all  tender winged things. It is an expression of giving from what we have received, and a hope for good luck, grace and mercy in the year to come.   As we gather across tables and across miles, may love shine through like the unstoppable constant it is.  May we bow our heads in gratitude for all that is still right in the world, lay our hand on our hearts for all that troubles our sleep and when screens do not fill our deep longing.  May we remember radiance, the light that is still light, even when walking in dark places.   May we breathe in the chilly air, listening for the sound of wings, always wings, all those light bones and feathers, lifting up into the air, like incense and prayers.

- Carrie 

ps...thank you to Gary and Laura who introduced me to this beautiful tradition.  I know you have often listened for the sound of wings.

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A Speed of Soul Thought - Oh Honey  

Last week I saw a cartoon that showed a person standing next to a ladder with rungs spaced so far apart it was impossible to climb.  On the other side of that same person was a ladder with rungs spaced in a way that made smaller steps possible.   This is a good image for me during this complicated time of Covid.  This is what inner work and growth looks like.  This is often how rising from grief or learning something new, or even the process of forgiveness happens.  This is most likely how the healing of the world from this pandemic will happen, one ladder rung at a time. 

Today my friends, in this season of mercy, rest your hand on your heart.  Feel the weight of your own hand there as you say, “Oh, Honey, one step at a time, you are doing the best you can.”  We are all doing about the best we can in these complex times.  We take a step, we rest, we take a few steps back, we look up and start climbing again.  As we climb our arms and legs and back will become tired, but we also can look up and look around at skies that are clearer, we can sense that the light has become little warmer and brighter.  

Now in the season of mercy, let mercy abound, stay safe as you can, stay home if you can, press your hand to your heart, “Oh Honey, one step at a time.”