Press Conference & Digital Premiere of OMYGOD by TinaO
Storytelling for Reconciliation
May 17th 2021 – Vancouver, BC Canada – PowHERhouse Impact Media Group with TinaOLife announces the three country press conference and the global digital premiere of OMYGOD, a Storytelling for Reconciliation experience about the women we’ve burned, the babies we’ve buried and the Gods we have worshipped.
There are Some Stories only Art Can Hold
On May 28th 2021, the digital press conference and screening of OMYGOD will connect audiences of Ireland, Canada and the United States to introduce the social impact project Storytelling for Reconciliation, and meet the writer/storyteller TinaO alongside the core creative team behind OMYGOD.
OMYGOD Press Conference
Friday May 28th at 10am (PDT)
OMYGOD Screening
Ireland 7:30pm BST / 11:30am PDT New York / Toronto 6pm EDT / 3pm PDT Vancouver / Los Angeles 6:30pm PDT
What is OMYGOD?
It’s not a feminist show or a witch burning show, and it is not a “dead-babies” show. It is a weaving of complexity and historical scar tissues that exists not to entertain, but to invite transformation. It is a production offered in a spirit of restorative justice, reconciliation and as a bridge of humility between cultures.
In Canada we have a Highway of Tears. In Ireland, they have an Irish Triangle.
In our current time, the narrative of OMYGOD follows a little girl named Cristiona who loses her mother, and her 50 year old self says yes to a call to Ireland as she wrestles with her own story of God, faith, Indigeneity, and grief.
The Tuam Babies and the Death of 9000 Irish Babies
In Tuam, County Galway Ireland, the remains of 796 unnamed babies were found buried in an abandoned septic tank outside of the Bon Secour Catholic Mother and Baby home. Such homes existed across Ireland, and more than 56,000 children from a ‘fallen’ mother were born there. The anonymous testimony from residents compares the homes to prisons, and recalls that the nuns verbally abused the children, often calling them the “spawn of satan” or “devil’s spawn”. Some were adopted out of the homes illegally to the United States and across Ireland, others spent their whole childhoods in such home. Across Ireland, some 9000 of these children died in Mother and Baby County Homes, each erased from their mother’s care and for many, from their actual existence.
Canada’s Indigenous Genocide and the loss of 6000 Children
Before we can have reconciliation we must have truth. Starting in 1831, the colonial governments in what we now call Canada removed Indigenous children from their families and forced them into residential schools with the explicit goal of cultural genocide. Priests, nuns and clergymen belonging to Christian Churches operated these homes and effectively carried out the task of “civilizing” more than 150,000 children, thousands of whom lost their lives in the schools, thousand more of whom suffered through abuse of all kinds and subsequent trauma.
The Murder of Women
In 1487 The Malleus Maleficarum, or, the “Hammer of the Witches,” was written by Catholic Clergyman, Heinrich Kramer. This manual detailed the how-to of naming, torturing and burning a witch, and it became a founding trauma tool in the Christianization of Pagan and Celtic Ireland.
Seven generations of children watched their mothers emerge from cages and prison cells after being crushed and tortured, becoming screaming witches before their eyes.
Witch burning continues. In 2010 Ama Hemmah, a 72 year old grandmother was burned alive in Ghana after being named a witch.
OMYGOD is a Storytelling for Reconciliation experience. It is a poetic, often humorous and harrowing journey across time, cultures, and faiths to invite each of us to walk a full story all the way through the trauma to acceptance, to grief and ultimately to a place of rest beyond blame. As a storyteller, this is TinaO’s offering to reconciliation: even if we weren’t there, we can still say we’re sorry and mean it.
Before we can have Reconciliation we must have Truth.
OMYGOD is Executive Produced by Impact Media Producer Charlene SanJenko. PowHERhouse Impact Media Group is a 100% Indigenous owned organization who champions social impact projects that change the narrative for H.E.R. – Human Expansion Realized.
OMYGOD – KEY CREATIVE TEAM
Writer/Storyteller/Performer – Tina Overbury
Dramaturg – Nicolle Nattrass
Creative Consultant – Dean Paul Gibson
Digital Director – James Gardiner
Director of Photography – Randal Hrytzak Bemoved Media
Sound Designer – Paul Tedeschini
Editor – Jay Lehmann
OMYGOD, a Storytelling for Reconciliation piece about the women we burned, the babies we buried and the Gods we have worshipped, premieres on Friday May 28th with a Digital Press Conference at 10am PDT, followed by three individual screenings: Ireland/UK screening 7:30pm BST; New York/Toronto 6pm EDT; and Vancouver/Los Angeles 6:30pm PDT.
On May 28th 2021, you are invited to Christina’s 50th Birthday un-party in Tuam, County Galway Ireland where an 8 yr old girl who thinks she’s a witch meets Jesus, a woman who knows how to boil an egg, lights three fires of reconciliation, and the special guest at the party is The Morrigan, a shape-shifting Irish deity of prophecy, battle and sovereignty.
OMYGOD is a mythical tale about the women we burned, the children we buried, the Gods we worship and the fires we light after seven generations of children witness their mother turn into witches before their very eyes.
Writer/Performer, Tina Overbury catches us off guard with her humorous, poetic and harrowing tales of life as a woman who loves the sacred, but offers: “I love God, but does he have to be a man?” She reminds us about the power of books by showing us the Malleus Maleficarum, the ‘Witch Burning for Dummies’ instruction manual which shaped us for 300 years. She asks us to come and sit by the fire with all aspects of what it means to be a woman. She offers, we are The Morrigan, The Three Mary’s of the Gospel, and the infamous Lady M herself. We have a conversation with Jesus, and we’re introduced to Mouse Woman, the North American Indigenous mother of Raven.
As guests at her un-party, audiences will witness the makings of a mad woman and say we’re sorry as we sweep up the ashes of those we have burned in the name of being holy.
OMYGOD is a mythical and redemptive tale across time, culture, and faith that is as funny as it is brave. As world patriarchal structures crumble, we are not left with void of wisdom, we need only look to the cultural stories that exist within to remember that God belongs to everyone, and power within gender is not hierarchical, or a conversation about sex, witchcraft or worthiness.
This is STORYTELLING for RECONCILIATION
Before there can be reconciliation, there must be truth. And there are some truths that only art can hold.
Storytelling is a way we can honour the scars left behind from unspeakable atrocities. It’s a way through the bruising to remember, witness and move toward reconciliation through a restorative process of embodied listening.
Theatre can do that.
OMYGOD is the first storytelling experience offered by TinaO. Semi-autobiographical and inspired by real-life events and historical references, this storytelling experience is offered in the spirit of reconciliation and restorative justice, and as a bridge of humility between cultures. It is a feminist narrative combining humour, storytelling and poetry which brings together two Indigenous cultures rich in oral history and a shared scar of cultural and human genocide.
From the residential schools of Turtle Island (North America) to the Mother and Baby homes of Eire (Ireland), from the triple essence goddess of The Morrigan to the three Mary’s of the gospel, from witch burning to the everyday making of a madwoman – OMYGOD offers historical explanations as to why we are the way we are, and asks us:
‘Who do we become when seven generations of children watch their mothers burn?’
This story is personal, hopeful, humorous, and deeply tender. We are human. Storytelling reminds us of this.
Tina Overbury is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She is devoted to global reconciliation through the exploration of origin stories, sharing our oral history, land-based knowing, and a continued focus on communication as a sacred practice. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Stories from the Core – her weekly writing and conversation series. She is a proud associate of PowHERhouse Impact Media as a core-communications specialist working with individuals and organizations who feel called.She is a co-host of GATHER for HER, and a PowHERhouse Artist of Impact Amplify Coach helping leaders become artists and artists become leaders.
Welcome to Voices from the Stones – 50 Nights with TinaO leading up to the launch of
STORY STONES – The Book
& O MY GOD – The Show
& Celebrating my 50th Birthday
On December 25th, Christmas Day and day one of my 50th year, I will begin fifty nights of poetry, soliloquies, creation stories, musings and more… sharing excerpts from my upcoming solo-show O MY GOD, and reading short bits from the second draft of my book: Story Stones.
I will send excerpts to you via email to enjoy over these long & chilly winter nights when you subscribe here.
The Set Up:
It’s her birthday and you’re invited to help blow out the candles.
At the party you’ll meet a young girl haunted by a 15,000 year old giant, a painfully self-conscious witch lost at the altar, and a Celtic shape-shifting mistress of war sharing the burn of what it means to fiercely love and protect.
Some uninvited mythological guests drop in to offer jokes, warnings and insights about the sacred irrelevance of the divisive words and worlds we lovingly, and whole-heartedly refer to as God.
This isn’t a book about rocks, though my house is filled with them.
It’s not about divorce either, but like the big jagged stone it is, it’s in here.
I didn’t want to write a cancer comeback story either, but… it happened.
And it’s not about God.
Who am I kidding?
It’s always about God.
Voices from the Stones
50 Nights with TinaO
WHAT: 50 Nights of Poetry, Soliloquies, Readings, and Musings. I will be reading you excerpts from my upcoming book: Story Stones, and sharing with you some of the behind the scenes moments and inspirations from my solo-show in development: O MY God. Come, listen with me over these long winter nights. Let’s fall into the story together.
WHY: Pure listening enjoyment, plus receive first access to pre-order TinaO’s book: STORY STONES, and reserve your limited seating (and socially distant) tickets to her Spring tour of O MY GOD (March – June 2021)
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
These videos were pre-career change. They were who I had become, and not who I have always been. I share these with you to close one story and open another.
–
This year on December 25th, which is both Christmas Day and my 50th Birthday, I am stepping into a new story…
and I know what I know what I know about how stories work:
Stories won’t let go of you until they’ve been fully heard.
This is release #2 of sixteen weeks of Story Hits (vlog) from as far back as 2013. Some are my favourites, some are yours. If you missed week #1, you can start at the beginning with: Out of the Water here.
I will be writing more about these moments in both my upcoming book: STORY STONES (coming fall 2021, and in my one woman show: O MY GOD (touring spring 2021).
On my 50th Birthday, if you’re on my VIP list, I’ll be sending you 50 Days of Christmas Story Gifts from Dec. 25th to February 12th. If you want some story goodness filled with sneak peeks into the creation and rehearsal process, plus be able to pre-order the book, and order tickets to the show, click here and the let the gifting begin! (You’ll get a bunch of cool story right away)
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you’d like to know more about TinaO’s approach to STORY and receive updates about STORY STONES the book, and O MY GOD, her one woman show, click here and you’ll be added to her ‘stay in touch’ list plus she’ll send you a few short intro videos about what story means to her. CLICK HERE for TinaO Story stuff.
Last fall I had a particularly hard time. Between September to January I had three emotional surprises, which took me out. Looking back now I can tell myself, they were no big deal: a break-up, a spiritual dumping, and a date gone badly, very badly. In light of what is going on right now, it seems insignificant, but I can tell you, it was not.
I know this zone. I was on the verge of literally coming apart, and I’ve been here before. I started writing letters to an old friend I feel really ‘seen’ by.
This is one of them.
As I read it just a few months into this pandemic, I can’t help but notice how prophetic it sounds. I needed this. Not what happened in the fall. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
But this.
This time we’re in.
This pause which has changed everything.
It has given me what I’d been crying out for.
Dear A,
I’ve begun working again like she’s a lover.
Damn.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy working, I do. Like I really do. Like I’m kind of obsessive about it, but once I finally stop for the day, I can’t help but hear in my head:
‘this was supposed to be the fall-back plan’.
You know?
It’s always been my ‘fall back plan’ but for all the reasons, it keeps becoming my actual plan. If I am honest, which I’m not, not about this anyway. I never wanted this life. I have created it. I’m not complaining. This is the coping that looks like happiness and keeps me away from knowing what love is.
When I was sixteen I had five jobs. I’m not even kidding. How on earth did I ever think that was normal? You’re going to laugh… Wanna know what I did?
I was a birthday party clown on Saturdays at a community centre… seriously.
I was a Saturday morning receptionist at a realty office, for three hours only, 9am to noon, and it took me 90 minutes to get there by bus… seriously again.
I was a late night waitress at a pizza joint. I started at 11pm and worked until 3am, on Friday nights — which comes before the ninety minute commute to my 9am job the next day (see above)…yep, still seriously.
I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken during the week… not even kidding. I was Miss KFC in the Miss Teen Vancouver Pageant.
And I can’t remember the fifth. Hmmm…what on earth was it? Maybe I was teaching cooking or running a spring break day-camp for kids, or who knows what else. That was me at 16 years old. I worked.
I worked hard.
I still work hard.
Back then, I did all of that and sang in three choirs, and was the lead in the musical, and and and and and and…
Back then I worked because I never wanted to go home and I needed the money. I moved out at seventeen and was making my own way in the world. I work now because I have three kids, I live in a stupidly expensive part of the world, and there’s no one at home to nestle in with but me. Yes, I’m a mom and everything but they’re getting older and who wants to hang out with your mom? And I don’t want that for them either. Go. Get. Your. Life. is what I always say to them.
And this. This. What I’m doing right now. It’s ridiculous really. I woke up at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep so I started scrolling, then the obsessive thoughts started as they do for me, so I had to shut it down by writing to you, so thanks once again for being the ear I can go to. But this. This isn’t what I want at 2am.
Last fall when I started my Ministry of Story, and I was leading at church, the rhythm of my life was just starting to feel ‘right’, like my true rhythm. I was excited to get up every morning. My timing was slow and my days were full. I do love full days. I want to squeeze every ounce of life out of each beautiful moment. Slow is good, and full is good.
I was beginning to let my guard down.
I was married for 17 years and all I wanted was that rhythm and I did have it briefly when we first met, but it didn’t last. He fell into a massive depression which lasted for years and I filled in the emotional and financial gaps for all of us, by working, baking, crafting, and everything else you do when you are loving on a family. When he left, I had to throw myself back into work again to keep the lights on, and I have been functioning on and off of overdrive for the last three years. I swear I’m sixteen again and working five jobs. I’m never home. I’m clutching my way to get there, and scrambling just as fast to get away.
But that’s the piece I’m craving.
I want to be ‘at home’ somewhere.
When the Ministry work arrived in my life it was if God was saying: Read. Write. Walk. Listen. Share. Rest Tina. Rest.
Rest into this.
I’m not a religious person, and I wrestle with the Minister part of my nature but it’s actually what I want.
I want a contemplative life.
I want a rhythm of love.
I want to drift through my days.
I want time to listen.
But right now, my time is so full. There isn’t a minute in my day when I’m not doing something and I’m scared I will lose another ten years of my life running away from the quietness I crave.
And yet I am starting over and work is required. I don’t own a home and I would like to. I pay my way. I have very little debt. I will be able to pay for my kid’s education — somehow. And I’m building multiple streams of income so I have a retirement plan to move forward with. But hon… it’s still too fucking fast for me, and it’s too much.
That’s the truth I’m afraid to say. I actually don’t have enough space in my life to say it.
It’s too fast.
It’s too full.
And it’s actually not who I am.
I just needed to say that out loud so I can wake the fuck up and stop before it takes over. I know this path and it ramps up slowly. I have lived this cyclical rhythm my entire life. First at 16 to survive. Then in my 20’s to feel worthy. Then in my marriage to feel wanted. And it’s starting again so I can run faster than rejection. Because work doesn’t leave. It’s actually the one part of my life I can hold on to and I won’t be alone there.
That therapist I started seeing last week (she’s lovely btw) did the usual ‘story collecting’ process with me, her pen and her pad of paper to map out my relationship with attachment. I don’t want to spend ten sessions just talking about my past so I blasted her like a fire hose with all of my details in the fifty minutes we had together. I haven’t told my story in awhile. Not like that anyway — all at once, and not in the experience of asking for help.
At one point she looked at me, down at her page, then back up at me again and asked ‘have you ever been in a relationship where you can let guard down?’.
It’s a funny question, because the answer is yes, but then maybe the answer is no.
I know that the way I’m working right now is not sustainable, nor is it going to make me happy. I will get all ‘the things’ I tell myself I need like: a house, a car, no debt, my kids education paid for, a business that pays me… And I do need some of those things, but not at the expense of me.
I don’t want to be an expense. I want to be a treasure.
I don’t know how to do that.
I can self-care. I can therapy. I can consciousness group. I can exercise. I can mastermind. I can wisdom circle. I can pray. I can I can I can I can…
What I want right now, is the I without the can.
I want to let my guard down and rest for awhile. Oh God. I just really want to rest for awhile.
I want the rhythm that started to happen for me last August before everything blew up. Work is not the lover I want, nor the partner, and definitely not the rhythm I am.
There. I said it.
And you heard it.
And now I can hear it too.
I know you work as much as I do. I’m not sure what your story is here, but maybe one day we can just sit for awhile and not talk about it or do anything. I’d like that. You can pull out your kite on the beach. That would be fun.
Thanks for listening. I think I’ll try to go back to sleep now. I made it to 5am.
hahahaha…
Love you.
xxT
p.s. I’m so glad the fires are out over there. My heart my heart my heart.
If you’d like to know more about TinaO’s upcoming book: Story Stones or performance dates about her upcoming show O MY GOD, click here.
TinaO is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse Impact Media Group where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
As part of TinaO’s audience, CLICK HERE to receive a personal message from TinaO about the power, beauty and invitation of Story, and your personal Story from the Core. You will also be able to stay up to date about TinaO’s performances, storytelling events, and upcoming retreats and workshops.
I’m TinaO from TinaOLife and this is Story Stones, an hour of deep listening and learning together.
I am a storyteller, a listener, and a holder of spaces where we can connect with the Story of Us.
My work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the Christian Tradition.
Myth and story as the guide.
Mysticism as the path.
And the Christian Tradition as the living footsteps.
I’m an artist, a writer, a mom, a runner, and a poet. My faith is in the space between us, where two or more are gathered, my trust is in the Mystery and my practice is listening and communicating from there.
That’s me.
Okay… so what happens in this hour?
Every week we listen in to a word, and it is a listening. It’s not a telling. I’m not here to tell you anything. That’s not my job. The word becomes the invitation and the gateway which you can open with your softening, to hear in the way in which you hear, and be nourished, in the way you are nourished by your connection, and it’s the connection which is the practice we are building together.
And it’s your connection to an understanding of what you may call God, or the divine, or consciousness, or the universe, or the cosmos… I suggest the ‘name’ isn’t important, and the connection is. The name: God can be gateway IN for some, as an understanding of love and safety and home, and for others, a gateway OUT because alot of pain and suffering has happened in the name of God, and I don’t want to pretend that isn’t true.
And I invite you to remember that the name of God isn’t the same as an experience of God which is the divine Mystery. An experience with that mystery is the connection point where we feel met.
In this space I try to be inclusive by using language that is as broad as possible because I’m not attached to a name, I am anchoring this hour together to an experience of a God-connection. That is the pointy end of my ‘ship’ as it cuts us through the water.
And I invite you to use your ‘word’ for God, or to try on this acronym of GOD as the Good Ole I Dunno, or The Mystery if it feels safer for you, because faith doesn’t happen in what we know, it happens in what we don’t know and yet can feel rested within.
This is a weekly practice of our connection through the gateway of a word, or a story stone I choose through the readings of my week. That is all we do here.
This week the story stone is promise.
There is music:
This week it’s a piece by Antoine Bradford called promises, and a classic by John Denver. I have a story stones playlist on Spotify so you can find it later too.
There is a kid’s conversation and reading:
This week we’re taking a peek at an Inuktitut story, originally held in an oral history, or library, and now in a kid’s book by Michael Arvarrluk Kusugak and Robert Munsch called A Promise is a Promise.
There is a bible reading:
This week we’re listening into Matthew 5 – from The Message, pieces from the Sermon on the Mount.
There is a Buddhist perspective from Pema Chodron’s book: The Wisdom of No Escape.
And a beautiful poem by Sara Teasdale called: Since There is No Escape
All of this is crafted as an invitation and exploration of the word: promise.
So… shall we begin.
SOUP
Get comfortable, grab a glass of water or tea, or a bowl of soup, this soup happens to be: a blend of red pepper and tomato soup by Pacific Foods, to which I’ve added some spinach, some cumin and for the non-veggies out there, some sausage. Yummmm yummmm yummmm….
Let’s settle in.
I light this candle to remind us that no matter where we are, or what the story is inside our heads, or the story we are currently living, we are never alone. The mystery of our being and how we are held in this space and time, is always with us. We are loved.
INVITATION TO LISTEN:
Let the story of your morning go. It is not of this moment. Let the story of what you think this is going to be go… it is not of this moment. And let yourself be. Listen beyond the words in your head. Open up to listening to the space itself.
MUSIC
I invite you to listen to the words of Antoine Bradford: Promises on Spotify.
The story stone we are listening into today is the word: Promise.
What is a promise? Why do we promise things? What is the heaviness and the weightlessness of that word? What are we invited to experience within a promise?
Let’s start with something a little interesting: something kids might understand:
FOR THE KIDS
This comes from Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak with Robert Munsch
Kusugak is a celebrated storyteller and author who grew up in Repulse Bay, NWT which is now known as Nunavut. He grew up living a traditional Inuit lifestyle and is the author of twelve children’s books.
This book A Promise is a Promise is kind of a scary book, to me. It’s the story of a little girl who is warned not to go fishing between the cracks in the ice in the ocean because a creature Qallupilluit lives under the ice.
Do you think that’s true?
So why would that story be told? Let’s read a little?
You can listen to the whole recording of A Promise is a Promise by Robert Munsch and Michael Kusugak from a readers theatre performance of the story here:
This is one form of a promise. If you do this… I promise you this could happen… It’s a warning. Where does it come from?
My favourite scene in this story is the part where Allashua is tucked in bed with her parents and getting warmed up after falling in the ice and she says… I went to the cracks in the sea ice and her dad says: Ah, ah, not so smart. I called the Qallupilluit nasty names… and her dad says: “ah, ah, not so smart at all…’
There she is with frozen lips, crying and feeling pretty bad because a promise is a promise and she broke her promise: she did go to the ice on the ocean. She even challenged the promise her parents warned her about, called it names, and basically dared it to come out… doubting her parents. There she is, probably feeling really awful about what she’s done, and what do her parents do?
Take her to bed, make her some tea, hold her and say ‘ah, ah… yes, that wasn’t so smart was it?’. As you read on in the book, they don’t lecture her. They don’t blame her. They don’t cast her away or make her feel really bad – No… they help her, and there’s this great scene where the mom and the dad dance for Qualliliput, even invite them into their house and feed them…
Now it’s a myth, and as in all myths, there’s always all sides of a story. The ‘darker’ sides the ‘lighter’ sides, and everything in between, and this is a story just like that.
Life is never as simple as a one-sided promise.
This Inuit story of Qallupilluit is two-sided. It teaches us about the promise of being loved unconditionally, and the promise that there is danger out there. As the book says on the last page:
A Qallupilluq is an imaginary Inuit creature, somewhat like a troll, that lives in Hudson Bay. It wears a woman’s parka made of loon feathers and reportedly grabs children when they come too near cracks in the ice.
The Inuit traditionally spend a lot of time on the sea ice, so the Qallupilluit were clearly invented as a means to help keep small children away from dangerous crevices.
What promises make you feel like Allalusha or like her parents all tucked up in bed, safe and warm and protected together?
Here’s the thing about listening to a reading, or a story: in the words of mythologist Dr. Martin Shaw, who says: you can’t trap a story, you can only track the. I invite you to listen… to let the words of each reading wash over you and let what is speaking to you speak… no more, no less.
READING
Empty Promises
Matthew 5 33-37 “And don’t say anything you don’t mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong”
Love Your Enemies
Matthew 5 43-47 “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.48 “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
Pema Chodra’s: The Wisdom of No Escape This next reading comes from Buddhist teacher, author, nun and mother, Pema Chodron, an American born Tibetan Buddhist and ordained nun who has written several dozen books and is a teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. This excerpt comes from her very first book: The Wisdom of No Escape.
“There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.”
SERMON
Creator…. God…. Universe… Mystery… As I move forward into the story of PROMISE today, I thank you for complexity, for individuality, for the promise of acceptance, for the one-ness of us, and the place where we can all meet.
I acknowledge the story of us that was here before we got here and the story that of us that will be here long after we’re gone. May the words of my mouth hold your mystery well and be in service to the unfolding of the story of you in us.
The reading from Matthew comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Even if you’ve never read the bible, you’ve heard about the sermon on the mount. Okay… so it’s probably a pretty big deal?
Why?
Within the Sermon on the Mount, at the very beginning we hear the Beautitudes. Ahhh I just love that word: Beautitudes. Lots of oooooh sounds in it. And sounds matter. Just as the Om sound is considered one of the oldest vocal sounds in existence and is considered to be the original, primordial sound, or a mantra of creation. In some sacred circles, the oooh or HU sound said to lead one to transcendence—to God realization and enlightenment.
Last week we listened into the words bless or blessed and blessing which came from the beautitudes. This week we go further into the Sermon on the Mount to listen as Jesus completely changes the rules of morality as they were once known.
He takes on the commandments and humanizes them. He digs under the narratives we have put on top of them, and instead says: listen ‘When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.’, he says: ‘You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.’ And then he says, after challenging us to love our enemies, and reminding us that God (creator, source, universe) gives the sun to warm and the rain to nourish everyone, regardless: if good/bad, nice/nasy; to Grow up. Jesus says: You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.
He takes the promise of fear which happens when we’re commanded to do something, because what usually happens after a commandment… The Or Else statement.
Do this or else…
Going back to Allashua in A Promise is A Promise “Don’t fish through the cracks in the ocean… or else Qallupilluit will get you”.
Jesus takes away the fear from the commandments and instead simply says: Grow Up. You are kingdom subjects. You do not need fear or consequences to motivate you, simply live as the God-created identity you are.
The sermon on the mount challenges the usual ‘or else’ promise and offers us a new one: ‘you are loved’, just like Allashua’s parents when they’re all tucked in bed together.
The hardest line for me in this Matthew reading is: When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.
How many times have you had the experience of having your ‘words twisted around’, or maybe even had your ‘words used against you’, or worse had an experience where you sat in silence where only ‘part of the story’ was being told.
Yuck right?
Okay, so I get it.
And there are times when this happens by mistake, where the person recounting the story simply misunderstood the situation, or had their own version of events which was true for them, just not true for you. That’s the easy peasy application of this piece of scripture, especially where Jesus tells us to ‘love our enemies’. Well that’s easy if we just assume they were having a different experience, and so we’ll just give them some grace and be done with it. But that’s not what I hear in this scripture. I hear the last line: GROW UP. Live the way God lives towards you.
Live the way nature lives towards you.
All of these examples feel like and ick.
So let’s take the hierarchical structure out of the God statement and see what happens.
Live the way consciousness lives towards you.
Live the way love lives towards you.
Does nature manipulate?
Does consciousness manipulate?
Does the energetic frequency of love manipulate?
No.
We do.
Because we get freaked out. We get hurt. We get angry. We get protective. We get defensive. We get offensive. We get tactical. We go unconscious with our pain and we manipulate.
There is no faith in manipulation.
There is no faith in control.
The only true control is faith.
For some of us it’s what we talked about last week when I offered: laying it down. For others it looks like co-creation, and group vs. individual connection or consciousness, still others, faith is a complete surrender or submission.
None of these are wrong, or more right than the others, because the one thing they all have in common is acting on the promise of the action of faith.
And yet most of us are Allashua, standing on the shore, ‘testing the waters’. She throws insults out to the mystical Qallupilluit to see if it comes, and when it doesn’t, she thinks, ahhhh… see…my parents’ promise was wrong.
Their ‘or else’ was wrong.
And don’t we do that all the time? Oh we human beings. We are wired for short cuts aren’t we?
Maybe I don’t have to get 8 hours of sleep.
Maybe they’re wrong and I can eat that processed… whatever.
We even head out there sometimes and search for new promises so that we can have what we want.
You know, like those stories of “My aunt Vera lived to be 102 and she smoked and drank for her whole life…”
We start living by the promises we acquire so we can have what we want.
Those kinds of promises usually sound like: ‘yeah… but that doesn’t apply to me because…’
It’s a slippery slope.
In Matthew, we are challenged, we are called, we are seen and told to grow up. Oh mannnn easier said than done.
The only promise I know for sure for sure, so it’s truly a promise I can count on is:
We are born – LIFE
We die – DEATH
So this third promise in this promise triangle that we keep hearing about, and yet testing consistently is the promise of LOVE.
That’s the third side of the promise triangle.
The promise that we are loved.
The promise of who we feel when we live from love.
The promise of the abundance of love.
And yet… you can’t prove it.
You can’t measure it.
You can’t count on it happening.
Unless you remember it, and build a life practice around it.
And for this, I bring us back to Pema Chodra’s offering of: What if there is no escape? What if the only thing we know is that we live and we die. What then?
Her story talks about the tigers above and the tigers below, and clinging to a vine which a mouse is gnawing at. She is going down. And yet she looks over and sees a beautiful bunch of strawberries. Then just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. She suggests: this might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.
There IS no escape.
When we grab the strawberries, not as a way to hide from the tigers, or bargain with them, or control them, or pretend they aren’t there, but simply to enjoy a strawberry… that is also as true as the tigers – we are in the moment, and in that moment, we are the parents cuddled up around Allashua saying: “yes… I see the tigers, and yes, I am here with you”.
There is no escape.
There is DEATH.
There is LIFE.
And there is LOVE.
I recently had a pretty nasty experience where I felt very insignificant, crushed even.
There were tigers above and tigers below and the only way I could find the strawberries was the whisper to myself:
I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you
And this is the practice I offer you.
Simply find a place in your day that is super insignificant, and something you do all the time, like pee… yep… pee… why? Because you do it at least 3x a day, and probably 6-8x per day.
Here’s the radical invitation:
Every time you pee, as you’re washing your hand, I want you to look in the mirror and say to yourself: I love you, I love you, I love you.
That’s it.
And I know it sounds weird… but that moment I had a few weeks ago where I literally felt like I was nothing… I went to the bathroom, and without even thinking about it, I said to myself: I love you, I love you, I love you. And in that moment, I came back into my body, and I found the strength I needed to take the next step.
There are three parts to the promise triangle.
I promise you are alive.
I promise you will die.
I promise you can love you.
I want to promise that you are loved by the mystery, by God, by the Good Ole I Dunno… and I will, but in the moments where you are drifting, one of the ways you can come back is by reminding yourself of the love you have within you.
And you do.
From there, the Good Ole I Dunno connection happens.
You stay soft.
Your heart is soft.
Your thoughts are soft.
You are the child in the adult in the wisdom.
You are growing up.
So let’s talk about the third point of the Promise Triangle, and for that, let’s listen to Sara Teasdale: an American lyric poet with a confessional style of writing. She died in 1933 and most of her work deals with love and death and the spiritual beauty of the natural world.
This is Sara Teasdale’s poem: Since there is no Escape
Since there is no escape, since at the end
My body will be utterly destroyed,
This hand I love as I have loved a friend,
This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;
Since there is no escape even for me
Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:
The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea
And hours alone too still and sure for prayer—
Since darkness waits for me, then all the more
Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore
In pride, and let me sing with my last breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.
What do you hear?
“Life is my lover… there is no way to baffle death”
And there isn’t.
We are promised this one life, on this human plane.
We are promised this one death, on this human plane of existence.
Is there more than what we see here?
Maybe. Probably.
But the only promise we’ve been given is right now, in this place, by this ocean, on this earth, under this sky, with these people.
This is the only promise we’ve been given to do with how we will.
We can be motivated by fear and the ‘or else’ statements.
We can be motivated by love and the promise of unconditional love.
We can be motivated by no escape and the invitation of the strawberries.
What I know for sure for sure, is the promise of this one beautiful lifetime and the love we all have access to, always and forever.
A love we can feed to ourselves:
as nourishment instead of dessert,
as gentleness instead of armour,
as faith instead of proof…
Then a promise really is a promise, and we can be Allashua, and always come in from the cold where we are loved, held and cared for.
And may it be so.
I will close on a song that always reminds me of my mom, who wore Chantilly perfume and one day after our mom had passed, as I was listening to this song with my sister Edna, she looked at me and said… Do you smell that? It smells like mom.
Love knows no time, no plane of existence, no boundaries. Love is the promise.
The song was:
Sunshine on my shoulders
looks so lovely
Sunshine in my eyes
can make me cry
Sunshine on the water
looks so lovely
Sunshine
Almost all the time
Makes me high….
MUSIC
I invite you to listen to the words of John Denver: Sunshine on my Shoulders by John Denver on Spotify.
BENEDICTION…
You are loved by the mystery.
You are held by the mystery.
And you are known by the mystery.
Listen
Listen
Listen
Let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.….
See you next Sunday at 2pm…
This is TinaO’s Ministry of Story. She is a sacred-listener in a divisive time, cultivating safe containers for real change-based connecting and conversation. She is a Storyteller rooted in Myth, Mysticism and the Christian Tradition. To Tina, communication is a spiritual practice of listening and following the living story of us.
Her faith is in the space between us, where two or more are gathered, her trust is in the Mystery and her practice is listening and communicating from there.
If you would like to receive her weekly Story Stones Sessions in your inbox, click here to have it sent to you.
Welcome to Story Stones, an hour of deep listening and learning together.
I am a storyteller, a listener, and a holder of spaces where we can connect with the Story of Us.
My work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the Christian Tradition.
I’m an artist, a writer, a mom, a runner, and a poet. My faith is in the space between us where two or more are gathered, my trust is in the mystery and my practice is listening and communicating from there.
That’s me.
Okay… so how does this hour work?
There will be some readings, some sacred text and scripture, and poetry.
These are the pieces I’ve been praying into all week and have then crafted a message of sorts from. There will also be moments where I invite you into deep listening between you and your understanding of what I call God, or you might call the Divine, or maybe even your guidance or inner wisdom.
In some practices this is prayer or meditation, but I call it deep listening. Let’s settle in.
GRATITUDE CANDLE
I light a gratitude story candle to remind us no matter where we are, or what the story is inside our heads, or the story we are currently living, we are never alone. The mystery of our being and how we are held in this space and time, is always with us. We are LOVED. The mystery of us is always with us.
INVITATION TO LISTEN
This is time you’ve carved out to be with you, to be with your understanding of the sacred, to be with God and the Mystery of us. Take a breath. Take a minute to drop in, close your eyes and just get here. Let the story of your morning go. It is not of this moment. Let the story of what you think this is going to be go, it is not of this moment. Let yourself be.
Listen beyond the words in your head. Open up to listening to the space itself.
MUSIC
I invite you to listen to the words of Kyle Church: SLOW DOWN on Spotify.
The story stone we are listening into today is the word: BLESSING and BLESSED. What does it mean to be blessed? Or when we say: that’s such a blessing. What does that even mean? And how do we live that? This is the word we are listening into today.
FOR THE KIDS
Let’s start with something really easy, something kids might understand:
This comes from Shel Silverstein’s book: Where the Sidewalk Ends
Shel Silverstein (September 25, 1930 – May 10, 1999) was an American writer known for his cartoons, songs, and children’s books. I grew up having them read to me and I have read them to my boys.
By playing what we’ve got…
KIDS READING
Hmmm…. boredom, imagination, making something out of nothing. Because the nothing is the blessing.
LISTEN
Let us LISTEN
I invite you to close your eyes and listen in to the phrase of ‘what is the nothing you feel blessed by?What does your NOTHING want to say to you today?
Breathe and be.
Be and Breathe.
Let the story of blessed by no-thing be with you.
What do you hear?
We’re going to move into three readings,
One from the Bible, from Matthew 5, and Psalm 15 and another from a Rumi poem.
MATTHEW 5 1:12
You’re Blessed
5 1-2 When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:
3 “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
4 “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
5 “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
6 “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
7 “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.
8 “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
9 “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.
10 “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.
11-12 “Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.
I love that… My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.
Take a moment to notice what is still with you?
What is speaking to you? What do you hear?
LISTEN.
Psalm 15
God, who gets invited
to dinner at your place?
How do we get on your guest list?
“Walk straight,
act right,
tell the truth.
“Don’t hurt your friend,
don’t blame your neighbor;
despise the despicable.
“Keep your word even when it costs you,
make an honest living,
never take a bribe.
“You’ll never get
blacklisted
if you live like this.”
SERMON
Creator…. God…. Universe… Mystery… I acknowledge the story of us that was here before we got here and the story that of us that will be here long after we’re gone. May the words of my mouth hold your hearts well and be in service to the unfolding of the story of us all.
“You’ll never get blacklisted when you live like this”. Have you ever felt like that? Like you must be on the ‘naughty’ list. If you’ve seen Elf over the holidays you’re already laughing. But how about blacklisted? As in, the red rope of entry is closed to you, or worse, you feel like you are on the list of bad, doomed even. Or maybe you feel like you must be a target, as in a magnet for awful things.
Have you ever felt like that?
If you’re fortunate, you haven’t. Or maybe you’re lucky and this experience hasn’t happened to you. Maybe you’re one of the rare ones and you have no scars. But I doubt it. Because we are all blessed.
And that’s the WORD we are listening into today: BLESSED.
You will notice everything I do, every story I tell, every place I invite us into, I bring what I call the double edge sword of story to it. I am most interested in the wholeness of story, because it is where the wisdom lives. There is no wisdom in what we might call light only.
There is light… sure! Totally! Awesome! I Love it. I just posted on Facebook… Dear God… can the rain please stop? I’ve had a few dark days this month and the rain and dreariness is kicking my ass. I love light. But the wisdom of story doesn’t happen on one side of the sword. It happens on all three. Yes three sides.
What we might call light
What we might call dark
And then the edge between.
In Story listening, our invitation is to listen from the edge, so integration can happen.
We can’t hear integration.
We can’t hear transformative steps in a puzzle already done.
We hear in the individual pieces.
And today’s piece, or Story Stone is the stone of blessed. We are blessed.
So let’s jump into this notion I just threw at you about being blacklisted, or on the naughty list, or the experience that we might be bad or something.
From Matthew we hear:
10 “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.
Okay, before we go any further, since this is my first story stones episode, let’s deal with the God issue. For those of you who balk at the word God – I get it. A lot has been done in the name of God that hurts. A lot has been done in the name of God that can’t be undone.
Remember though: in the name of God, not as God. But then many of you don’t believe in God. Cool. I get that too.
I don’t know who I believe in, as in holding a pronoun he, she, or they. I don’t have some big image of a person or celestial being called God in my head.
I don’t know what I believe in, as in holding a static picture like: wind, or energy, or the ocean. I can’t say for sure what God is.
God is a mystery.
And the mystery happens in the space between us, when we connect, when we have opened our hearts a little, when we are shields down, and in that space, an experience of God or spirit as a ‘carrier’ of God happens.
Have you ever heard: ‘where two or more are gathered…’ – That’s what I’m talking about.
You might say then, that what I believe in for sure for sure for sure is experiences of God – because it’s happened to all of us. That deep look into someone’s eyes and there’s an unmistakable – otherworldly connection. Those moments when you’re with someone and all the hairs on the back of your neck go up. Or those moments when you’re with nature and the beauty of the place takes your breath away, or as my dear friend Jillian Rutledge (a breath coach) says, when you are awestruck.
To me… those are the universal experiences of God. We know exactly what they are when we have them. As to who or what is God? That’s not for me to say for you. But I believe in it. In the great unknown and the love we find in those places. So when I say God, for those of you who are carrying pain from that word, or cognitive reasoning disbelief with that word, please hear an acronym of God as the ‘Good Ole I Dunno” – because nobody does.
And that’s the point.
I think that’s the most beautiful invitation of all. To experience God and not be able to describe it. And I am devoted to that.
So back to the scripture from MATTHEW where we heard ‘You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution’.
In a literal sense, that sounds awful. Commitment to God provokes persecution… yikes. Right… kinda like marriage to some: til death do us part… you mean, I gotta die to get out of this one?
But that’s not what I hear. I don’t hear ball and chain marriage. I don’t hear die for my faith. I don’t hear suffering for enlightenment. Or the suffering of enlightenment. I hear freedom.
I’ve had a few dark days in my life as I know you have too. In those dark moments, when my belief in all the big things crash like:
Love and being loved: I don’t believe in anything. I am empty. I can actually convince myself that I am never going to be loved by anyone ever….
Abundance and having enough: I am convinced I will struggle forever.
God itself and being supported: I am thoroughly convinced, like I know, I am all alone here, and no one but me will get me through this…
Or even my very existence, and mattering at all. In those times I hear in my head I was a mistake.
Yup. I’m normal like that. I have pain too. Do you ever spiral away like that?
I do – still. Sometimes a lot.
It usually happens when I’ve been side-swiped by a life-experience, or I’ve had a series of bad happenings occur in a row. A person can doubt herself, or slide into a mental health spiral, or worse, ride a big wave of depression. None of us are beyond that happens. It’s one of the signs we are human.
However, in those moments, as I’m positive you have had them too – we are experiencing life as we step away from God. We are forgetting the God moments of our life.
We are empty.
We are feeling persecuted.
And what is the only way out of those things?
All the woo woo books say the same thing. It’s not just the bible or the koran or the Buddhist Sutras or Yoga… They all say the same thing: surrender, or lay it down, or accept, or let it go.
When we lay it down, or in my story language, honour the story of the pain and the persecution, we come closer to God, because the next step, if we’ve truly laid it down and reminded ourselves: we are not the pain we are feeling, and we are . not the persecution which is happening… The next thing that happens is we rest. We have our tears, we empty our buckets and in that empty place, we rest in being blessed that we can… rest.
And we can.
The container for that rest, for the emptying for those tears is the blessing . of God. Or the Good Ole I Dunno. The Mystery.
We are blessed.
PRACTICE
In the moments of my greatest pain, where I am up against my deepest scarring of beliefs which are not true but feel true, I have a practice of sentences I say to myself to help me remember I am blessed. Saying them helps me rewire the circuits in my brain for those moments.
It sounds like this:
I won’t give up my ___________
to ____________
because I already ___________.
For example:
Love – as a single person who experiences stretches of loneliness, and experiences of bad choices, and yes, rejection, I can be faced with the unloveable monster, and can experience what I call clutchy… you might call it desperate… weak… or needy…
These are also very very very very human feels, so no judgement here. And I know when I’m in this place, I forget I am blessed, and I’m at risk of doing anything or trading something to have what might be love, but probably isn’t… You know what I’m talking about.
So this is the phrase I use (following the example above), and I whisper it to myself over and over and over again to calm myself.
I wont give up my SELF
to feel LOVED
because the truth is I am LOVED
(or BLESSED)
Let’s try FAITH:
This is one I used just recently, and it was really, really challenging, but nourished me and brought me closer to my understanding of God:
I won’t give up my FAITH
to belong,
because the truth is, I already belong.
(I am BLESSED)
How about ABUNDANCE:
And to understand this one, many a time I’ve been in a crossroads between the safety of a job, and my integrity as a child of God, and a follower of Mystery. Each of these crossroads were turning points, and catalysts of destruction and rebirth. Here are three examples:
Once upon a time my mom said to me in answer to a crumbling marriage and an impending financial disaster coming: Christina… you just need to get a job.
I remember thinking: You must not understand me.
Another time I was in a leadership tussle within an organization so I asked for guidance from a senior leader and her answer was: Tina… just do what you’re told.
I remember thinking: You must not have heard me.
And recently I was in a job I felt called to and I heard: Tina…you don’t know what you don’t know and you just can’t do that.
And I remember thinking: I’m not motivated by rules, you must not know me. Which lead to: I love you enough to leave.
This is what I say to myself when I feel myself lean sideways, off my path, off my call, away from my knowing of being blessed.
I won’t give up my calling
to feel safe,
because the truth is, in this moment, I am safe.
What I offer to you is to hold the understanding you are already blessed, and you can rest in that. Craft a guiding sentence which takes the persecution you are experiencing, and the sacredness you are holding within you, and cushion it with the blessing of knowing what is really true.
I won’t give up my SELF/FAITH/SAFETY to BELONG/FEEL WANTED/FEEL SAFE – Because the truth is…. I already…. (insert the blessing of truth).
Okay… so you heard my big three ‘curses’ I tell myself sometimes. These are the three that take me out at the knees… What are yours? What takes you out? What takes you to your knees?
You know what I love about that image? It’s the universal body position of surrender, and the invitation for prayer, or sacred time with your connection to God.
Where we lay it down.
At the end of Psalm 15 we hear:
“Keep your word even when it costs you,
make an honest living,
never take a bribe.
“You’ll never get
blacklisted”
Never take a bribe. That is worth repeating.
Or we go back to the words of Shel Silverstein:
And though there may be orchestras
That sound a little better
With their fancy shiny instruments
That cost an awful lot-
Hey we’re making music twice as good
By playing what we’ve got
Hold on to your sovereignty
Hold on to the blessing of you
To remember you are blessed and you’ll never get blacklisted.
And then what happens…?
Well, now we can bring Rumi into this beautiful conversation…
LISTEN:
Don’t hide
The site of your face
Is a blessing
Wherever you place your foot
There rests a blessing
Look,
Every falling leaf is a blessing.
All of nature swings in unison
Singing without tongues
Listening without ears
What a Blessing.
O Soul
The four elements are your face
Water, wind, fire, and earth
Each one is a blessing
Once the seed of faith takes root,
It cannot be blown away
Even by the strongest wind
Now that’s a blessing.
I bow to you
For the dust of your feet
Is the crown on my head
And as I walk towards you
Every step I take is a blessing
-Rumi
Okay… so now you remember you are blessed, and you can source yourself back to that… but what about the big stuff? – right?
You know what I’m talking about… Fires in Australia, Koalas and Kangaroos and other soft padded foot animals burning in the heat. The divisiveness on our planet right now. The fighting we saw in China this year. The innocent people, doctors who couldn’t get to student activists bleeding. The shootings in classrooms of our children. Violence, and I haven’t even begun to talk about disease. We probably don’t need to go there. We have all been touched by cancer already. Someone we know and love has struggled through it, or been claimed by it. Why?
We’ll never truly know.
We are not God.
We are not the Universe.
We are not the intelligence of the cosmos in this one breath, body and brain.
We are not. Some might disagree with me.
So here is what I will suggest:
When we remember, truly remember and practice feeling, knowing, and choosing the understanding that we are blessed, we are developing a practice of treasuring.
And what we treasure we lovingly protect, we don’t put in harm’s way.
What we treasure we honour.
When we are in the act of treasuring, we make different choices.
The fires may still burn, but they wouldn’t be happening by the hands of us, and there wouldn’t be a global climate change due to us.
We wouldn’t be fighting as much. We would protect our values and beliefs differently. We would honour them, and treasure them, and in doing so, we might…. just might…. Be able to see that the person we are talking to across from us is just trying to treasure their stuff too.
Oh mannnnn it’s not like we don’t know this stuff.
Love thy neighbour as you love yourself.
Treasure yourself, and remember they are treasuring themself too.
Remember you are blessed.
They are blessed.
This world is a blessing
And treasure it.
We are treasure.
We are gold.
We are love, belonging, and abundance, and enough, and worthy, and chosen, and and and and and… we ARE.
We are that treasure.
We are that treasured, by God.
The Good Ole I Dunno.
We come in that way, and we go out that way.
We can count our blessings and begin to live as if we are them and are blessed by them:
From Irving Berlin we hear:
When I’m worried and I can’t sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep
And I fall asleep counting my blessings
Now Rosemary Clooney I am not,
Yet, I am blessed just the same.
And may it be so…
MUSIC:
I invite you to listen to the message of Irving Berlin and the gift of love that is the voice of Diana Krall as she sings: COUNT YOUR BLESSING, on Spotify. COUNTING YOUR BLESSING.
BENEDICTION
As you close your time with the sacred, I invite you to remember that you are loved by the mystery. You are held by the mystery. You are known by the mystery.
Let no mystery confound you into the conclusion, that mystery cannot be yours.*
Thank you for listening…
xxT
*a quote from Mark Helprin’s book: Soldier of the Great War
This is TinaO’s Ministry of Story. She is a sacred-listener in a divisive time, cultivating safe containers for real change-based connecting and conversation. She is a Storyteller rooted in Myth, Mysticism and the Christian Tradition. To Tina, communication is a spiritual practice of listening and following the living story of us.
Her faith is in the space between us, where two or more are gathered, her trust is in the Mystery and her practice is listening and communicating from there.
If you would like to receive her weekly Story Stones Sessions in your inbox, click here to have it sent to you.
organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of 
