Figuring it out as I go

Awe and Wonder

By Rooze McKelvey | May 9, 2021May 9, 2021 by Rooze McKelvey

Awe and wonder. The way that hearing birds chirping first thing in the morning feels like a thread connecting me to every ancestor I’ve never known but whose DNA is in my body. They knew birds, I’m certain of it.

And leaves. And rain and sunshine. Some of them knew love and what it was like to give life and to keep that life going long enough to grow into their own being with the next generation of us.

When I want to know the quiet of time before too much technology and too many people, nature lets me tap into that deep history.

Daily Write

Finding My Way

By Rooze McKelvey | May 2, 2021May 2, 2021 by Rooze McKelvey

In the book God in All Worlds, Lucinda Vardey writes “I believe we begin our search for meaning with doubt, pain, and a lot of questions” (3). In Buddhism, many of the teachings are about how to move beyond suffering. The people I grew up with turn to the Christian God when they are in pain, scared, confused. For myself, the least authentic approach to Spirit is the path of pain and suffering. Prayer becomes…

Longer Write

The Voice as a Thread

By Rooze McKelvey | April 10, 2021April 10, 2021 by Rooze McKelvey

I had always wanted a deeper voice so when my voice first started to change, I was giddy. It started early in the process of my medical transition and was soon cracking at odd moments and completely unpredictable and unreliable. I laughed, or at the very least smiled if I had to restrain myself, every single time my voice shifted mid-sentence. I sounded like a teenager going through puberty. Half of that sentence is accurate. I was, indeed, going through puberty but it was my second go-round and I was thirty years beyond being a teenager.

Leap Series

Leap: A tale of faith and failure (part 3)

By Rooze McKelvey | April 3, 2021August 24, 2021 by Rooze McKelvey

It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Klein Of course, this is not THE thing that defines us and makes us unique. But it is ONE of the experiences of what it means to be human. We each fail uniquely (ala The Anna Karenina Principle). Perhaps it isn’t how we fail but how we respond to the failure that…

Leap Series

Leap: A tale of faith and failure (part 2)

By Rooze McKelvey | March 28, 2021August 24, 2021 by Rooze McKelvey

While it is already obvious from the title of this series and from the intro to this post, let me state clearly that the event I ran for Ness Labs did not go according to plans. It started off with the odds against it.

I woke up to my alarm at 6 am that Saturday morning. This is not a typical Saturday occurrence…

Daily Write

Photography as Meditation

By Rooze McKelvey | March 19, 2021November 9, 2024 by Rooze McKelvey

As I was reading last night, I had my television on and tuned to my Chromecast. I wasn’t streaming anything through the Chromecast, just enjoying the slideshow that it displays by default. I looked up from my book at one point, and had to stop reading so that I could spend as much time with the photograph on the screen as the slide show would allow. A pier beckoning the viewer out onto a serene lake, the photograph was…

Leap Series

Leap: A tale of faith and failure (part 1)

By Rooze McKelvey | March 17, 2021August 24, 2021 by Rooze McKelvey

For the past seven years, I’ve had a file dedicated to a series of writing workshops that I’ve dreamt of facilitating. The first workshop in the series is a prompt-based generative writing event called Leap! The idea is to do a series of timed prompts with a focus on creating new ideas and rough starts of works during the session. For the next workshop, each participant would pull together a more focused piece and create…

Longer Write

Teaching through Tools

By Rooze McKelvey | March 11, 2021March 12, 2021 by Rooze McKelvey

In what ways do tools change how we think? We’ve all heard the expression that to a hammer every problem looks like a nail. But, of course, it isn’t the hammer with the myopic problem; it’s the wielder of the tool.

Daily Write

Seeing Differently: The Third Path

By Rooze McKelvey | March 6, 2021March 6, 2021 by Rooze McKelvey

Other than adversity, where else is there a third path? Not only in ways of responding to situations around us and within us but to seeing the world in general. How often do I get stuck in this or that, either/or thinking?

Daily Write

Coming clean

By Rooze McKelvey | February 15, 2021February 15, 2021 by Rooze McKelvey

I should tell you now that I’m self-diagnosed. After taking a self-assessment test online, attending online seminars, and living with this hell for over a year and a half, I feel qualified to make that assessment. At its worst, I had close to 200 wounds at once, across both arms, both shoulders, my upper legs, my chest, and my lower back. I know. I counted them.