A note from Gareth Higgins
Charles Kenny died last week. Charles was a retired Church of Ireland (Episcopalian) minister who genuinely changed my life. In 2001 or 2002 I sat in his garden on a sunny day, and asked him "So what's the solution?" His response: "The solution is the hard gospel.”
To be honest, I was pretty sure that the loudest version of the Gospel in northern Ireland was more than hard enough, but I suspected Charles meant something different. So I asked him "What's the hard gospel?”
Charles responded: "Well it's not that you don't say fuck, and not that you don't sleep with your girlfriend before you get married. It's that you love God and you love your neighbour as yourself. End of story.”
A Hard Gospel - not so much a difficult Gospel as one with the substance worthy of what life actually is, and capable of making it better for everyone, and everything.
That conversation was a pivotal moment in my life. I'm grateful to Charles, and send condolences to all those who knew him far better than I did.
He’s been on my mind as I’ve been thinking about what to share with you at the beginning of this year.
One of the most ineffable paradoxes is that the idea of “mind” or “spirit” usually transcend “body”, but disembodied spirituality is a mistake. The human adventure invites us to embody the mind and let the body be permeated by spirit. To be and to become at the same time, to be rooted in time and place, yet not to be dominated by either.
The disembodiedness of our culture is one of its greatest risks. Trivia is the enemy of experience, but without a body experience is simply impossible.
We need a place to be from which to become.
And when we recognize this then marking, undergoing, dancing with punctuation points of life becomes more vital. There is a meaning to seasons - most obviously in the form of the cycle of sowing, harvesting, and enjoying the fruits of what has been grown; but more deeply in the fact that learning the rhythms of Earth helps us be more fully embodied - and “enspirited” - as what we actually are: the most conscious and imaginative parts of the ecosystem, a little lower than the angels, as much in need of nurture as soil and water are.
Like Winter becoming Spring, a year’s turning is more than just a punctuation point on a calendar. It deserves denser rituals than we usually give it.
So for this first issue of The Porch in 2025 we’re offering a blessing for the new year and an invocation for mind-body practices that might be worthy of the task.
We also asked members of the Order of the Rocking Chair - The Porch community of writers, musicians, peaceworkers, therapists, filmmakers, sculptors and other friends embodying/enspiriting creativity, courage, and the common good - to share a thought on some of the transformative storytelling they feel called to step into this year.
When we say transformative storytelling we mean storytelling that transforms the storyteller and the story’s audience, enlarging our sense of how storytelling shapes our lives, and moving us from the dictatorship of separation, scapegoating, and selfishness toward an expansive vision of union, shared responsibility, and generosity.
This vision feels like something Charles Kenny would share.
I’ll say it again: the hard thing we’re called to is not so much a difficult story but one with the substance worthy of what life actually is, and capable of making it better for everyone, and everything.
PS: The Porch Gathering in March is part of that story. We’ll announce the lineup for this deeply meaningful annual festival/conference/retreat next week, but you can find out more and register now at www.theporchgathering.com
A Blessing for 2025 - Brian Ammons
It’s a New Year, and/or/but
it’s also just the next day
in the unfolding of your life.
May you live in the both/and of that reality,
starting afresh,
but not forgetting what came before.
May the burdens
and the blessings
of 2024 settle into your memory, integrating into the story of you.
May you weave your stories
with the threads of your community
to make a blanket
so large it could enfold you all.
May the stains of mud, and dirt,
and hope, and loss
emerge into spectacular patterns
of love and connection.
Now take your blanket
(you’ll need help carrying it)
and lay it in the town square.
Spread a picnic on it —
a feast of homemade soups,
fresh baked breads,
dips, spreads, and garnishes.
Offer what you have to give.
Fill your bellies on the offerings of others.
Then may you stretch out on this massive quilt of experiences
shared and personal,
common and particular.
Look to the sky.
May you see new constellations,
meteor showers,
and dancing ribbons of the Aurora Borealis.
Then together,
may you rest,
gazing into a universe of possibilities.
TWELVE RULES AND A POSTSCRIPT - AN INVOCATION FOR THE NEW YEAR - Gareth Higgins
1: Resolve Love as your way of being; and define its minimum as stretching yourself to serve the good.
2: Start this stretch by rejecting the voice that says you don't deserve to love yourself first. Like putting on your oxygen mask so you won’t suffocate while helping others, this is not only an ethical responsibility, but quite simply the way things work.
3: Mindfully observe what you mindlessly consume - especially information.
4: Nest in a hammock stretched between the common and the cosmic.
5: Love your neighbor(hood) as yourself.
6: Decide what kind of relationship to reality you wish to have, based on the clearest vision of the wisest people you’ve encountered.
7: Don’t hoard, but share - your generosity will make space for others to do the same.
8: Don’t aim for “productivity” - that’s what machines are for.
9: Imagine imagination guiding you beyond the dead ends of certainty. (But also let imagination guide you to the few places where certainty is necessary.)
10: Don’t make everything about you, but when you’re stirred by the pain of the world ask how you can unite your empathy with wisdom, serving the good from where you are, not where you’re not.
11: And that means be somewhere.
12: Treat the next six months as if they were the most full of possibility, this year as if it might be your last, but let yourself be dreamed into a legacy beyond it, and eternity to follow.
PS: Learn to take life seriously without taking yourself too seriously.
THE ORDER OF THE ROCKING CHAIR - A YEAR OF TRANSFORMATIVE STORIES
“I'm seeking to step into transformative storytelling with two things: living into the rhythm of the season I’m living in and believing in the idea, we'll figure it out." I'm trying to embrace the hibernation of the winter season in the Northern hemisphere instead of pushing to be the same year round and then embrace spring when it comes, planning and being open to the joys and challenges of the season. And, I'm really exploring a belief that we will figure it out together - whatever it is - no need to do it alone, catastrophize the bad, or rush.” - Micky Scott Bey Jones, justice doula
“I saw Our Town on Broadway on the last weekend of 2024, and I am carrying forward the impact that it so deftly made — highlighting the preciousness of mundane moments, and reminding me of my own capacity to overlook their importance and sacredness. 2024 was kind of a big year for me in some ways. Good things happened in my own life and work, even as so much damage and pain unfolded in the larger world. In 2025, I hope to think small, no matter what bigger things may be going on. Maybe big, too, but I am more likely to miss the small, and it matters so much. That’s a better story, I think, and I hope to live into it, and tell it.” - David LaMotte, singer-songwriter
“This year is the last in a decade for me, so I’ve been straddling the past and future, sinking into a reflective state and for the first time giving myself permission to slow, ease up, and take stock of all that has led to this point—that is, before I default back into my drive to push, push forward. The word I’ve landed on is alignment: How can I finally stop straining to be what I’m not and instead find ways to fall into place as the person I’ve always been and am still becoming? I suspect that involves making room for more delight and wonder and still, quiet moments.” - Elisabeth Ivey, writer
“Transformation is a journey. Travelling down roads and paths that lead to new places, or old haunts. Our stories become roadmaps, journals and logs of where we come from, how we got here, and the trials and triumphs along the way. Occasionally we have the skill to create the key to our maps, so we can more easily find our way, and share our paths with others. More frequently those keys end up as scribbled notes on napkins and scraps of foolscap. Peering at them is equal parts memory, divination, and guesswork. This year I want to write and embody my stories in a manner that allows me to be my own roadmap, with a key I can share to help others find the waypoints and totems in a shared odyssey.” - Jonathan Warner, student of leadership, emotional intelligence, and the mysteries of interactive entertainment
“I am seeking to step into transformative storytelling this season through walking in the dark. I feel we are all doing this right now, learning how to walk in the dark, summoning courage and recalibrating our senses to make our way. I am learning that maybe the dark is not as scary as I have been taught it is, not as scary as I have assumed. There are gifts here in the dark and I'm learning to welcome them through direct engagement with inhabitants of the darkness: countless stars and planets shine every night, moths and bats thrive after direct sunlight disappears, the neighborhood owls resume their vigorous conversations at twilight. I am finding that there are people who welcome opportunities to bathe in moonlight and explore what else there is (and can be) when the lights are not casting their shadows. This practice is changing the way I see/hear/feel everything, opening me up to unseen beauties. I commend it to you.” - Shan Overton, educator, writer, and gardener
"I’m holding the difference between finding what we think of as ‘balance’ and the ebb and flow, daily dance of liminality in daily life. How we embody this seeps into our ideas and embodiments of transformative storytelling, and as the solstice arrives and the turn of the calendar year, we are going to be holding a lot of sacred liminality in our personal and collective lives. I’m leaning into that ebbing and flowing dance as best I can.” - Kaitlin Curtice, author, poet-storyteller, and public speaker
"This season I'm open to opportunities to help people tell a different story about our relationship to the land of Western North Carolina. We look around and can see a story of destruction and being victims of and harmed by the land, but I want to invite solidarity with the land by including the land's grief with our own in this terrible thing that happened to us all collectively....and seeing the land as an ally in our collective healing. I sense we will need the healing transformation of grief in order to metabolize the fear and anxiety, felt betrayal, and heartbreak that lingers between us and the land.” - Tamara Hanna, certified Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapist
“I am thinking about the alchemy of wonder tales (to use Martin Shaw's phrase) and how they can ground us in awe and mystery. I am wondering how I can find ways and places to share some of the old stories that form part of the DNA of Christianity.” - Michelle LeBaron, scholar/practitioner of conflict transformation
“This season, I'm thinking a lot about the medicine of our dreams and the ways in which the dream stories we create - in both our waking and sleeping lives — hold an alchemical power. I'm thinking a lot about my own dreams, the dreams of the communities of which I'm a part, and the collective, unconscious dream life of the U.S...and I’m experiencing a lot of curiosity and tenderness when I consider how to come alongside others as support in navigating the landscape of dreams and integrating them for wholeness and healing.” - Jasmin Pittman, writer, editor, and spiritual companion