Traveling At The Speed of Soul - Choices About The Real Estate of Our Hearts & Mind
& Pre-Release Sale Begins & A Collaborative Work With Br. Lawrence Morey and Poet Phil Hall
This week a new single was released on all streaming platforms. Its called “Potluck” and I hope you check it out. Its about being in relationship and the experience of community when it is good hearted and welcoming, where we can show up as ourselves and trust what others bring to the table —with humor, a bit of grace and maybe a hot dish. Here’s the link. I hope you’ll check it out and share it with those who share this potluck of life with you.
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Claiming Our Mental & Spiritual Real Estate
I suppose the song “Potluck” is an affirmation of a different kind of interaction then we get so much these days. I’m amazed that we are over a year out from the next presidential election. And yet, we are experiencing blow by blow news coverage that includes every nasty statement and response, every ugly sneeze on social media, endless reporting of scary predictions and the most enraging actions on a repeating hourly cycle. The drumbeat and volume of an us-or-them conflict style reporting is already deafening.
I do check in with my most trusted news sources, but I’m being extremely careful about how I engage with news. This is because I do get to choose how much mental and spiritual real estate I fill with what Parker J. Palmer calls the “news of the world and the news of the heart” I still choose who’s poisonous rantings and presence I want to allow rent free room and board in my consciousness. I choose to get up and start my day by reading something beautiful, intriguing or meaningful or to scroll through the above the fold headlines. I’m also aware of how different my day begins depending upon which I choose.
But dear heart, this is not always just a matter of discipline. I really get bummed when the pat answer is “just say no” when we are only now beginning to understand what gets “pinged” that makes new media technology so compelling. Basically, we inhabit bodies and brains that are still geared to keep us safe in the way our hunter-gather ancestors would endeavor to stay safe. We have bodies and minds that are always scanning the world around us for novelty and new things, for potential danger, to delight us with the color of a purple aster and prepare us to quickly find safety from the lions that sometimes prowl in the bushes.
Our antenna are also always vibrating and gathering information, our minds are equipped in beautiful ways to take in a world of wonder and delight, awe and miracle. I try to lean into that as much as I can. Beauty effects us, moves us, as Mary Oliver wrote “We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.” Humans can be so darn clever and funny, generous, filled with good intention and can be really really decent. We can also be guarded, defensive, not inclined to welcome the stranger and intentionally cruel. With so much news focusing on the worst of what we can be, no wonder we are drawn to doom scroll for what is happening, which then becomes a feedback loop perpetuating a general sense of anxiety and fear.
Don’t get me wrong, technology is not all a bad thing. I appreciate the relative lightening speed scientists were able to create a vaccine in the first year of the pandemic, grateful for the development of sustainable energy systems, and the invention of the wheel, violins, cellos, banjos, the printing press and knitting are pretty awesome. Its just new technology has come so quickly in the past years we are a bit a wash with what has happened, and the most healthy, life-giving way to live with technology. So this week, as many weeks…I feel the impulse to check the news, but pick up the book of poetry I have on my night table instead. I have several favorite musical playlists, podcasts that lift or engage me in news of the heart, I also have several classic books (that I missed in high school) downloaded onto my phone, which I tune into when I’m in the car when I’m tempted to scan for lions. I’m currently on Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” which can bring a few confused looks at the stop light when the windows are down.
I also endeavor to create space every morning for quiet meditation, to stay in relationship with silence and sense the rhythms of my own breath and how it connects to the great and gracious breathing of the universe.
There is a press to move ever faster, and I have a busy life, and honestly folks, when a new album is released it gets busier. I think most of us living in an accelerating world have sensed or feel the pull to move faster than the speed of our own souls. And so it makes grounding daily intention and practices of reflection and connection to our own heart, and to the hearts of others, even more important than ever.
We are built to thrive in meaningful communities of care. Our hunter gatherer ancestors lived in small communities of trust that offered survival, connection, the wisdom of elders, the companionship of friends, the ability to work together, the delight and innovative ideas of the young. During the pandemic lock down it became so clear that being in relationship and community are not just side bars, but essential to our ability to live and thrive. And in a crisis, we all got very creative. Zoom helped -online groups, classes, online music and concerts, continued spiritual community all helped. Bless us all for figuring out the unmute button so quickly. So I don’t think technology its and either/or kind of thing. But for myself, it am finding I’m more and more important to stay intentional as I go through my days, and choose as much as possible what frames my life and takes up mental and spiritual real state in my mind and heart.
During the pandemic and now leaning into what comes next we are still mending the break that happened to the continuum of connection. It feels rusty, and because we are bombarded with a tsunami of the worst of human behavior, entering back into community, relationship and connect it may also feel risky in unexpected ways. But the decision to step back into community and how I choose to be in community (in love or in fear) is mine to choose.
Again, perhaps the thread of community and connection that runs through “Potluck” is an encouragement to myself. Yes, it feels so good to be in relationship, to sojourn with a spiritual community, to work on my friends farm on Tuesdays, to attend a concert that blows the top of my head off with gratitude. And yet, it also feels different and new, and the break in the continuum has been an encouragement to ask good questions, “What actually matters, and what does not” “How do I balance the news of the world and the news of my heart?” “How do I hold the fact that we humans (including myself) are complicated with a sense of reality and clemency?” “What is meaningful?” “What is kind?” “What is life-giving and life-sustaining?” “What brings us together for the common good?” “What manipulates our fears, and what supports our best practices? “ And, “Just because we can, does that mean we should?”
And so, I try not to beat myself up when my hunter gatherer brain gets pinged and I react in a way that is entirely sensible given my evolutionary make up. Yup, that was me, doing the thing again, scrolling for news about all the lions that are ready to jump from the bushes. But I’m paying attention and leaning into communities care - in person and online - where I can show up and be part of an authentic conversation that supports who I am, and who I am becoming.
Anyway…. Thats the thoughts rolling around in my head this week with the release of a song about compassionate community and the news of the world and news of the heart there to greet me each day.
Question: Where are you able to ground yourself in the “news of the heart.”
Gratitude and a Meaningful Collaborative Work With Br. Lawrence Morey and Poet Phil Hall
This is a film created by Brother Lawrence Morey who I met last December at The Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where Thomas Merton lived and wrote. I was there for a presentation of poetry and reading on the anniversary of Merton’s passing. It was a powerful experience and one of the songs on the new album, “Vigil” was written with my friend John McCutheon soon after I returned. I’ll write more about that when the album is released in October. Br. Lawrence is a contemplative and a poet and filmmaker. After describing this project to me, I sent him what are called “stems”, recordings of different instruments and vocal lines that he could use like a painter to support the imagery. Its a hauntingly beautiful film. I hope you enjoy!
This is what Br Lawrence says about the film: “This short film is a three-way collaboration. The words in the song come from an unpublished (as of February 2023) poem by Phil Hall. It was set to music and performed by Carrie Newcomer. And the sound and images are from yours truly, with Phil's assistance as critical viewer. Back in the 1960's, Phil's mother worked in an old-age home in Bobcaygeon, Ontario, where he's from and near to where I grew up. A patient there, well-advanced in dementia, would repeat these words over and over again. As it turns out, there is a song about Bill Dunbar, who drowned when his team of horses fell through the ice on Pigeon Lake, bordering on Bobcaygeon, back around the turn of the last century. The woman in the old-age home really was Bill Dunbar's daughter. You can find the song on YouTube, and the link is below. The words, "Bill left a wife, and one young child, in sorrow and in pain," are from this song.
Feel free to leave a comment about how you experienced the film.
Tour Schedule Fall 2023
For tickets visit www.carrienewcomer.com/tour
One Inch Photos
Digging potatoes this week at the farm.
Thanks for constructive reflection. Yes, the news of the world is alarming, and I'm trying to be selective about the things I write. Not just critique, but reflection and gratitude. Where do I get the "news of the heart"? From Richard Rohr, Carrie Newcomer, the Psalms, the faith stories written by my friends, and the hymns I sing in church. Maybe it's all about singing and hearing the singing of others.
TYTYTY, Carrie, for making these sharings a choice, a priority in your busy schedule. And also for the reminder that each time we toggle into a horrifying news story, it sends a powerful message to those who post these divisive and shock-dramas to continue w/their game. I'm reminded of Ben Franklin's morning mantra when making his bed: "First I make up my bed, then I make up my mind." I'm finding that even before I get OUT of bed, choices have been made! And another quote that arose as I read, "I move only as fast as the slowest part of me feels safe to go." I read your musings very slowly, feeling nurtured and enriched, encouraged and ready to make wise choices...coupled w/Pema Chodron's beautiful "How can I be of service today?" All blessings, and bows.