“Just tell the story!”

I suspect I’ll always hear that voice thundering in my ears. I was about 30 years old, and Walter Brueggemann was exhorting a room full of wannabe preachers!

I felt like I was being handed a terrifying thing I’d been seeking all my life! And, I feel even more like that now!

Maya Angelou put it this way:

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Thus, the glimpse of a painting, above. She was a total surprise. Literally. And she didn’t begin to appear until I set reason aside and followed my heart. Months of under-layers disappeared under the biggest, scariest glaze of my life.

Well, almost disappeared!

Once everything got purple, I began to see things I had not noticed before! And, rather than putting new things in all that space, I brought forward what I saw.

Their name is Choice, Voice, and Sovereignty!

Frankly, it was terrifying. Especially for one who is only beginning to have access to visual processing!

It’s the Voice thing that brings them here, today, because this moment is feeling a whole lot like time for speaking out. For showing up with all of ourselves. For finding our authentic voices. And, if you’re at all like me, that may not be what you learned as a kid!

I had a chance to practice, yesterday. Yep, Social media! Somebody who thought I should say things the way they would, instead of the way I did. I imagine you can relate! And the whole inner debate about leave it up/take it down/walk away from disagreement, etc., etc.

Then, I walked down the hall, past the place where this 48×60 inch canvas hangs, waiting patiently to be noticed again. To be helpful!

And I left my post the way I wrote it. Not because I wanted to win… but because it grew out of the top part of the painting. The part that looks like a huge moon. The part that carries some of my deepest chosen beliefs. Here’s the whole deal…

The teal blue place, above their heart, is their voice. And their hands are part of my code for power. And, perhaps most urgently, in this moment, their heart is painted in the chakra-green of compassion.

And all of this – as you’ve realized – is happening in the context of this world, now. A context that perhaps even Walter hadn’t anticipated when he was helping so many of us claim our calling to tell the story.

Then there’s the other story I’m telling. The one for our Littles. All of them. The one of belonging and mattering. It’s very, very, very nearly done!

And that, dear heart, means book launch! Which feels like a whole lot of voice! Mark your calendar, please, for September 22. And stay tuned! It’s time to cause some Good Trouble, and you’re invited!!!

For now, though… grace, peace, and blessings!