Becca Stevens's Blog, page 3

Listen like you are falling in love

My speaking materials from a recent workshop

Recently, the Thistle Farms Events Team and I pulled up to small Methodist Church in rural Arkansas. We had driven past bales of cotton and wide open plains where fall takes a pretty wide turn. We were offering a morning workshop on healing, and we were sharing our oils from Rwanda, our Moringa from Mexico. Then we were ready to sell tons of products before we turned right back around for the long drive home.  

When we got there, the room was almost completely filled with pink t-shirts worn by young women at a nearby program . They had been invited to come to hear our story. They were from a 12-month treatment program that takes women from all over the United States. We shared our story and our idea that healing is a practiced art that needs to be relevant, practical and ritualized for daily use. We shared stories about the importance of economic freedom in healing and gift of meaningful work. 

The young women drank it all up like deer by a water brook. They took every last drop of oil and asked how to get more. They loved the pure Moringa and took all the leftovers. Pretty soon the Graduates began their testimonies and the all the pink shirts had their hands up asking question after question…

When we listen to stories it changes us. Part of the gift of traveling around the country to support communities of healing is hearing heroic stories, and in the midst of depressing or fearful news feeds, I get to feel inspired by the stories of people love and forgiving one another.  

I've never grown tired of hearing a good story. This week I invite you to listen again to the story of a friend or coworker or family member. Listen like you are falling in love. Listen like your job is not to fix or change it, just witness to the story they are sharing. Listen like you will hold their story deep in your heart and be their story bearer.  

Group Photo: #loveheals

When gathers now we are quite a force!  Loveheals

Photo Credit: Northman Creative

Poem: "An Ode To Mistletoe"

 “An Ode To Mistletoe” 

Standing beneath hundred-year-old Elm 

My head rising in awe of such regal canopy, 

I glimpse her hidden in peaceful solitude, 

Dressed in dappling camouflage. 

Wild Mistletoe firmly rooted 

On the highest branch in prismed light 

Elm and Mistletoe connected by old love, 

Enduring more than memory holds. 

She survived that cold winter 

When two young lovers shot her down 

Easy prey with a bb gun 

Elm's branches bare in the frosty air. 

Tying ribbons to her stem to fill desire 

Dangling her white berries, lost food for Pilgrim birds. 

Simply decor for a gala where young love 

Is too shy to kiss on its own. 

She vows to climb higher into Elm's branches 

Where there is no judgment about her beauty or poison. 

She draws from Elm's willing nourishment. 

Happy to thrive among Paw Paws and Ironweed. 

Mistletoe, in spherical wisdom, calls to us from on high. 

Without ribbons or legends; to simply love. 

To live beyond others judging what is beauty or poison. 

To live in gratitude for friends like elm that accept us.

She sits in peace recalling times when woods 

Have been our refuge and lover. 

Times we fled to hallowed ground 

With a broken or fearful heart. 

We cling to woods no less desperately 

Than Mistletoe to Elm

We long to climb to safe branches 

Where secrets and dreams are held like wind. 

We, whose seeds were sown in the depths of the earth. 

Are made to love the woods.

We who were made by lovers who walked before. 

And planted desire in our earthly bodies. 

In the shadow of the arbor 

Woven by Elm and Mistletoe, 

With curious chipmunks as witnesses,

May we renew our vow to become wild lovers of woods. 

Helpful Hints

On the eve of midterm elections I thought it might be nice this week to focus on some helpful hints to keep us centered and grounded on our spiritual path. Enjoy. 

Love,

Becca

***

All of us are born with everything need to make the journey. Everyone can see visions: Visions are sights filled with grace. Everyone can be mystical: Mystics are people willing to bear witness to their visions. Everyone can be prophetic: Prophets are people willing to speak the truth of their visions. Tend to your visions and bear witness to them in this world.    

Take the longer path. There is no shortcut on this journey, and it is definitely a walk, not a run. Think of it as exercising your heart muscles. If given a choice between a quick walk to the car or a long stroll thru the woods, take the stroll and use the time to pray and listen for God's voice in the woods.

Remember that even though you are traveling alone, you can carry communities with you. While the journey is lonely, you can share the experiences, joys and sorrows with those in your community. 

Pray for humor to carry you on the journey. It is a great gift to be able to laugh at yourself. 

Don't worry what you do in the name of justice might not make a difference. Walk with conviction that if you offer your life and heart, you will never be the same. 

Celebrate the knowledge that small changes make all the difference. Sometimes the miracle of healing and love happens so slowly that we forget to notice the great difference that has occurred in our lives. 

It's hard to love the sinner and hate the sin. In my experience the fascination with the details of the sin and its consequences far outweigh the love offered the sinner: On this road try first to love the sinner. When you have figured that out, then you can move forward hating the sin. 

Faith is not a closed system to be argued. It is a story unfolding in our lives. 

In all history, the most beautiful prayers of praise were raised after tribulation. 

The walk toward faith is noble. To abandon it and be a cynic is the easier path, but it doesn't lead anywhere. 

If people begin to argue a religious or moral belief in a mean-spirited way, suggest that they close their holy book and hit you over the head with it. It's simpler and more straightforward. 

Give time to that place between dreaming and being awake. It is sacred ground where new ideas are free to take root. 

Don't grow weary of other people's stories. All war stories have truth in them and teach us something about our own lives. They all deserve a good listener. 

Guideposts 2018

I believe that if it weren't for God, the devastation of the abuse I went through would be much worse. So that's all that we're about at Thistle Farms is just saying, you know, love heals. God is a healing presence. And whatever else you went through, you can trust that…

The Power of Love

Regina, one of the first five women to graduate from Thistle Farms & the Director Outreach for Thistle Farms’ National Network of Sister Organizations

“I got a chance to go back to school, get my children back, and figure out why I was in the streets for so long...Love heals through our work, and love heals through our body and bath products. The money goes back into the program for the next women who come in off the streets, and it helps us make a living wage.”

— Regina

Power is the ability to make decisions, to act on the decisions you make, and to possess enough freedom to hope. That is how I define power, just for today.  

Of course, that definition implies one has some economic and political freedom. I still believe with all my heart that the most powerful force for change in the world is love.  

As we continuing to contemplate the meanings of power together, don't underestimate the power of love in your life or its ability to heal the world.

Love,

Becca

Guest Blog: What Does Hope Look Like?

Enjoy this guest blog from one of my best friends and co-workers, Frannie Kieschnick, about what hope looked like, rising in the midst of the refugee camp where she helped launch one of our newest projects Love Welcomes .

With more than 30 years of ordained ministry, she’s been an activist, a pastor, a write, a fundraiser, and a powerful advocate for the Thistle Farms community locally and globally.

I stand in awe of her life and ministry. 

Love,

Becca

…

Frannie (second from the right) & Becca with the Love Welcomes Team working at the Syrian Refugee camp in Greece where The Welcome Project was founded

What does hope look like?

Thistle Farms has a proven track record of initiating and accelerating social enterprises.  When Thistle Farms offers its experience and its powerful community to a vulnerable group of new entrepreneur women survivors, you can be assured hope will rise.

Hope is Hiva’s broader, bigger smile when she was able to get the dental work she desperately needed to relieve her of debilitating pain.

Hope is women bent over strips of life vests looking up with pride and relief at their children who endured so much for ones so young, beading friendship bracelets together and laughing.

Hope is the circle of women weavers arm in arm, displaying their mats, holding thumbs up and beaming proudly straight at the camera in contrast to that same same circle months before telling us to blur their faces and avoid including their legs in the photo.

Hope is the difference between the first mats that women wove by themselves and the intricately woven, richly colorful mats they are producing now.

Hope is the income from mats providing funds for each woman, and money to support the needs of their community. The weavers have control of that money and decided together to use that money for the buses now available for refugees to get to the closest town.

Hope is the independence provided by that income. But that income also provides a sense of pride, purpose, and dignity. Whether weaving  supports them in their new home, or whether weaving demonstrates to them that they can learn something new, it gives them hope which is their strength for the journey.

Hope is what is released at the door, or the sink, or on the table of each and every person across the globe who purchases a mat and spreads it out.

As the song says,

All we need, all we need is hope

And for that we have each other

And for that we have each other

We will rise

We will rise

We'll rise, oh oh

We'll rise

I'll rise up

Rise like the day

I'll rise up

In spite of the ache

I will rise a thousands times again

We can rise up by putting down a welcome mat. Hope looks like that.

—Rev. Frannie Kieschnick

"Desiderata"

A rewrite of Max Ehrmann's "Desiderata" for the Social Media Age

Go without your phone every once in awhile

into the noise and haste of the world,

remembering there is peace in screen-less visions.

Speak your truth clearly and listen to friends.

Avoid loud and aggressive accounts,

they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare the number of your followers with others,

you will become vain and bitter;

there will always be accounts with more and less followers than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own voice, however humble;

Exercise caution in your posts; for the world is full of trolls.

But let this not blind you to what good there is in social media;

many persons share wisdom and find their way to community through it;

Be yourself

Do not feign affection through too many selfies.

Neither be cynical about love or politics;

Do not use use filters to hide your age.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

do not distress yourself with hateful posts

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

You are worthy of your own images and ideas,

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here....

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful web.

Be cheerful, share the good news of love.

Redefining Power

The Survivor Leaders of Love Welcomes in Greece

Redefining power is an exercise that offers us an opportunity to see how we have undercut or abused our own. More and more, I am shying away from the word "empower" and using the word love.

Don't empower me. Love me.

The difference is that in the first instance you are claiming you have the power and want to bestow a bit of it on me. It doesn't recognize us as peers and doesn't recognize that I already possess power. My own power may look different from yours, and it may be less on a balance sheet. But it is still power. In the second instance, by loving another, you are honoring them and all their gifts and beauty.

In loving them, it might mean shared power, it might mean shared resources, and it will definitely mean you recognize their power.

Modern Hero 2018

We believe in honoring women and that love heals…This is how we grow a movement.

This piece was a gift to film and offers a real glimpse into our lives at Thistle Farms.  Thank you Modern Hero. Let us know what you think.  #loveheals.