Hi folks - for years Brian Ammons has been helping me see that the truth about many things we take for granted is often a third option beyond the binaries offered in public. Brian is a deeply wise person of integrity, and sharing the work of The Porch with Brian is an amazing gift. I could quote a hundred or more things that Brian has said to me over the years that have made my life better. The video below is a distillation of one of Brian’s abiding passions: to help us gain clarity about what we’re here for, without turning “vocation” or “calling” into either a trap for those of us who know we are imperfect, or an elite game for only certain kinds of people. If the idea of Transformative Storytelling as a Way of Life calls to you, I urge you to listen to what Brian has to say - and we welcome a conversation in the comments.
I’m also so grateful that Jasmin Pittman is part of The Porch core community, and our circle of creative people that we call the Order of the Rocking Chair. Jasmin’s a wonderful writer, someone who claims the best parts of every thing - perhaps especially when those things have had ungenerous gatekeepers. Part of what Jasmin offers is that not only does everything belong, but in a sense everything belongs to us, so let’s not live like paupers. Jasmin’s poem Walking with Rapture manages to be spacious, gracious, and fierce at once.
See you next time.
PS: As always, please share The Porch with everyone you know :).
New from Friends of The Porch
From Brian Ammons: Heeding the Call: Vocation and Transformative Storytelling - the opening night keynote from this year’s Porch Gathering (we’ll be announcing details of next year’s Gathering soon, but you can save the date now: March 13th-16th, 2025; near Asheville, NC).
From Jasmin Pittman, a Poem:
Walking with Rapture
I.
One night, I walked alone,
cocooned in the velvet darkness
of woods ringing
with survival songs.
I felt the soft thrum of hoofbeats
before I saw them, felt
the tingle of anticipation before,
before
I stopped
dead in my tracks,
my breath caught
in the net of my lungs
as brushes of tawny fur
swept my bare arms, a herd
of deer parting around me as
though I was Moses’ staff
held high.
I watched one of the does
leap away, a tail flash of white
like the flag of surrender.
She ran free or afraid,
we can always be both
and still manage to be home
with the herd.
Read the rest of Walking with Rapture at The Porch.
Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash
The Porch is a slow conversation about beautiful, and difficult things. We convene a community of courage, creativity, and the common good, where no life is worth less than any other, and the value of what we express imaginatively is not based on how many people are paying attention, but on the integrity of the work. We offer The Porch writing here on a pay-what-you-can-afford basis, so no-one is turned away for lack of funds. If you believe in supporting meaningful creative work, and if you can afford it, please consider a paid subscription. Thank you.
What a gift to hear Brian's presentation again -- first at The Porch Gathering in March, and now here as a recording. So much to learn from him about vocation!
I was blest to hear Brian share this story live at the Porch Gathering. It was so powerful and I see the world in a different way now. I am a retired nurse and my identity was so tied into my nurse role. I now see that my "vocation" is the "Me" that I bring into every aspect of my life-not just my nursing. And that never ends-it only expands. ie: I bring my Cindy-ness into being a grandmother now, as well as all the other relationships I am in. Thank you for sharing this with others on the jouney.