The Chapel of Small Breath

_{Our lives are awash with moments when we come undone.}

_{We face a loved one's belongings after they have gone, a deer jumps in front of the car, or we experience a debilitating illness.}The Chapel of Small Breath meets us there.

As the collection moves from love to loss to possible renewal, the reader experiences the journey through precise and stunning images.

Linn invites us into the liminal space of loss and shows us the holy that's stitched right through it.

This book has been on my heart for decades.

_{My friend Lynn Rather, published a book as she was dying.}

After Lynn died, I decided I wasn't going to wait that long.

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This is a book of loss and wayfinding through grief, and about possible renewal.

It’s about renewal that’s far from Instagram-perfect.

A renewal that takes more time than we’d prefer.

A renewal we plant seeds for even as we’re drowning in darkness.

I hope that the reader sees themselves, a great swirl of parts–

tumbled through the seasons of a lifetime...

And cradled by the earth, our complexity, and what’s holy–through all of it.

“The Chapel of Small Breath is a work of art. It is brave and wise. Rhonda Linn traces a young woman’s experience through a marriage that dissolves, complex layers of pain and uncertainty that result, and the journey toward possible renewal. The poems are deeply rewarding.

Father Richard Rohr says that the spiritual life is about facing pain. If we don’t learn how to transform our pain, we will likely transmit it to others. In The Chapel of Small Breath, Linn shows us the journey of transforming pain: doing this, we realize we live within a small dwelling of holiness.”

_{—Dr. William Palmer, poet}

“Rhonda Linn’s poems thrum with so much being it’s like bathing in the light of eternity. In one poem in The Chapel of Small Breath she writes, ‘Now I believe in undoing’—and what all her poems marvelously undo is take down the false facades of this world and offering us something radiant and terrifying and utterly true. She’s the spiritual daughter of poets like Edith Södergran—and hers is the perfect voice of our uncertain age. To read her work is a form of salvation.”

_{—Dr. Robert Vivian, author of The Tall Grass Trilogy, Mystery My Country, and Cold Snap As Yearning}

“Confronting the ambiguous loss of a loved one to mental illness, Rhonda Linn’s debut leaves no emotional stone unturned.

Through taut images and verdant metaphors, she builds—brick by brick, plank by plank—a sacred space with room for both tenderness and grief. In these poems, Linn paces the abandoned pews to ask, what is gained?

The Chapel of Small Breath ‘jut[s] vulnerable into the pale sky,’ and it has a seat for every reader.”

_{—Joshua Zeitler}

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“In The Chapel of Small Breath, Rhonda Linn writes of a life ‘always pulled across the wire / in the half-gasp of longing,’ of mind and body traversing the liminality that may be our truest state.

‘Those strike-slip boundaries are the danger,’ Linn tells us as the collection arcs from love to loneliness to dissolution to a renewal that’s no easy answer but offers, in its a vulnerability, a new rush of risks. ‘Oh Holy Web / holding me / between God / and the sidewalk / Open me up, / just open me up,’ Linn incants, and the world obliges, and the reader is better for the stunning poems that follow.”

_{—Kerri Webster, author of The Trailhead, Grand & Arsenal, and We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone}

Rhonda Linn is a writer, educator, and entrepreneur who has spent the last 11 years living with the land and leaning into nature’s wisdom by planting a permaculture-based food forest on 36 acres of land in Michigan. Her marketing agency offers copywriting, online business management, and publication support for world-changing spiritual, nature-based, and holistic wellness businesses.

Linn writes and works to remember that we are cradled by nature through the soaring beauty (and muck) of our daily lives. She writes to remember our sovereignty from a system that profits from our illness, overwork, and disconnection. And she writes as a reminder that our hearts are shining—resonate and infinite. We only have to remember that. She believes that a different world is possible and it’s our job to build it. That work starts in our own hearts and minds—and in our homes.

You can find her ever-evolving writing on Earthen Jar; Stars on Substack.

Available from Bell Publishing House, Fall 2024

Buy Now

Available from Bell Publishing House, Fall 2024

Buy Now

Our lives are awash with moments when we come undone.

We face a loved one's belongings after they have gone, a deer jumps in front of the car, or we experience a debilitating illness. The Chapel of Small Breath meets us there.

Linn invites us into the liminal space of loss and shows us the holy that's stitched right through it.

This book has been on my heart for decades.

After Lynn died, I decided I wasn't going to wait that long.

This is a book of loss and wayfinding through grief, and about possible renewal.

It’s about renewal that’s far from Instagram-perfect.

A renewal that takes more time than we’d prefer.

A renewal we plant seeds for even as we’re drowning in darkness.

I hope that the reader sees themselves, a great swirl of parts–

tumbled through the seasons of a lifetime...

And cradled by the earth, our complexity, and what’s holy–through all of it.

“Confronting the ambiguous loss of a loved one to mental illness, Rhonda Linn’s debut leaves no emotional stone unturned.

“In The Chapel of Small Breath, Rhonda Linn writes of a life ‘always pulled across the wire / in the half-gasp of longing,’ of mind and body traversing the liminality that may be our truest state.

Available from Bell Publishing House, Fall 2024

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_{Our lives are awash with moments when we come undone.}

_{We face a loved one's belongings after they have gone, a deer jumps in front of the car, or we experience a debilitating illness.}The Chapel of Small Breath meets us there.