Something New Is Being Born: Conceiving

Welcome to this conversation

Something New Is Being Born - Episode 1: Conceiving Statistics tell us that more than half of mothers have a ‘surprise’ conception. They also tell us that many of our best ideas, inventions, music, poems, books and artworks surprise us by showing up. There are also intended pregnancies and the dreamt of and carefully constructed creations of our efforts. Either way, whether you saw it coming or not, stuff takes hold within you. During this noisy time of holiday, pandemic and more, can you be still and sense what is just starting to take hold in you?

Episode 1: Conceiving

There are always signs of life, if we learn how and remember to look. This week we heard how Kris Meyer learns this in nature, how Jeanette Mayo does it through photography and Chris Tripolino in writing music. We also hear from the music of Tim Frantzich and Mark Trelstad.

Nascent - coming, or having recently come into existence.

New ideas, dreams, possibilities are being conceived all around us constantly. Sometimes they are earnestly sought, sometimes they just happen. Regardless, they are beginning to exist. Small, unformed and fragile they await our discover and development.

Something to consider: 

Kris Meyer shared how the natural world can look empty, seemingly spent and messy this time of year, like the dead leftovers of summer, seemingly devoid of life. But if we look more closely we can find nascent signs of life already present. 

Where do you find signs of life in the debris around you?

Jeanette Mayo (photos on Flickr.com) goes looking to capture new images that break into people’s lives (example), and is sometimes captured by them (example). She uses poetry and her camera to look beyond the obvious - pain, worry, or just the normal and expected. 

What ‘devices’ do you have to see what might be possible in the midst of your world?

To ask for visible and invisible help, and to ask for the right kind of help, and to ask in a way in which we feel that it is no less than our due, that in effect we deserve a visible and invisible helping hand, maybe an engine of transformation itself. Our greatest vulnerability is the very door through which we must pass in order to open the next horizon of our lives.  David Whyte

Another way of looking at the conception portion of the story of Jesus’ birth to Mary. ( Listen to Greg Meyer’s way of looking at that story from Luke 1.26-38 at the 20:53 mark in the podcast) What do you think?

Chris Tripolino shared how inspiration and craft work together to create what could be. He also reflected on how surprising the muse can be and has developed practices to open himself up to those nascent ideas of songs and more.

How can you let the loud noises of the busy, distracting world remind you to look deeper for what is waiting quietly for you to see, hear and notice?

In the midst of the loud noises, the fear, worry and distractions there are quiet, simpler voices. Signs of what has been conceived and will become. Listen!

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.

For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood

shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;

authority rests upon his shoulders;

and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9.2,5-6 (NRSV)

Talk more about this with a group

Click HERE for a discussion guide.