Translating Mystery Into Everyday Life: A Collaborative Conversation
Chelan Harkin and Terry Chapman will discuss the concept of translating the ecstatic presence of embodied encounter with mystery into everyday life. The importance of gathering people in a safe space, to allow wisdom to emerge from within the group, a "liturgy of the people." They will consider the metaphor of a shaman or mystical poet to highlight the delicate balance between holding onto wisdom and avoiding burnout.
Chelan will share her long journey of feeling deeply creatively stifled beneath the chains of perfectionism and how creating an inner environment of permission through allowing herself to write what she called “a bad poem” every day broke her out of right/wrong, good/bad confines into deeper connection with self, soul, source, muse than she ever could have dreamed. We’ll dive into how the energies we reject and resist and judge in ourselves are simply misunderstood trapped lifeforce and how when we remove our conditioned judgments from them we open to receive compassionate, inspired genius that is life serving and gifts us with wisdom and insight far beyond what we could have concocted or imagined.
Conversation with Chelan Harkin
CHELAN HARKIN’S WORK
Let Us Dance - The Stumble and Whirl with The Beloved
Let Us Dance! The Stumble And Whirl With The Beloved is here to inspire you to harness your beautiful, dynamic power and look the world directly in the eye. It emboldens the reader to let go of shames and shoulds with The Beloved and entices you to step up to the dance floor of your life and ask The Divine for a whirl. It has within it a potency that cracks open old ways that no longer serve us and brings us to life. Let Us Dance! is more than just poetry. It catalyzes and transfers to its reader living, inspired energy that is made to propagate light.
Susceptible to Light - The Stumble and Whirl with The Beloved
Susceptible to Light is here to remind you of your joy, to assist you in reconsidering ways of relating to your life that better serve and open your heart, to deconstruct anything about God that doesn’t feel close, intimate, authentic, and warm, and to remind your soul to break the surface and take a breath. Hafiz says, “God and I have become like two giant fat people living in a tiny boat. We keep bumping into each other and laughing.” May this collection help you feel the possibility of that kind of laughter.
ABOUT CHELAN HARKIN
Chelan had a profound mystical experience at 21; in a time of mental/emotional anguish, she was shown how she needed to live in a more transparent and authentic way, and that she would access her gifts to the degree that she opened herself to joy, trauma, power, and tenderness. Inspired poetry has been flowing through Chelan Harkin for years though her publishing journey is only less than two years old. Her launch into sharing her poetry with the world has been mystical, transformational, and filled with prayer experiments gone right.
In her poetry and in her life, Chelan continually invites the fumbling, suffering parts of our human nature along with our divinity to meet for tea in the heart, to have a great laugh, celebrate our sacred grief, and share a big hug. Her poetry inspires redefinition of God as a force of profound love and intimacy that embraces our wholeness and encourages our gifts to blossom. Chelan lives with her children in the Pacific Northwest.