nancymthurston

September 1, 2022

Big Topics at Midnight: Ten Years Later

Tuesday, August 30, was the 10^th Anniversary of the coming out party for Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself.

I just finished reading the book cover to cover for the first time since it was published.

Of course, for me, this isn’t just a book. It is my own dance of words exploring my journey to come to know myself beyond the often unconscious but nagging dissonance between my heart and spirit and the injustice I experienced within and around me.

Ten years ago I wrote that I knew something different—and far more beautiful—was possible, for me and for the world. I wanted to live a life of justice and fairness for myself and I felt the responsibility to participate in building a loving community and world for my two children, Paul and Laura, their generation, and for generations to come.

I come from a long line of stubborn and tenacious Tipps family women,

and Big Topics at Midnight shares stories of my unstoppable searching. Bold as my focus was, however, it was and was not a journey that could be walked alone. Big Topics at Midnight also includes a diverse collection of fellow pilgrims—including many of you—and organizations that knew how to hold the vision we shared in full alignment with personal/organizational actions and structures.

In the book, I wrote about my life as a myth: The Eight-Eyed Steam Girl in her Little Red Boat. In that myth, I played with two images that are core to my being. I am a many sighted woman: “seeing” with my sharp mind, intuition, noticing interconnections between different aspects of life, my budding awareness of my emotions, my body. I am also a woman who is prone to intuitive bursts of insight that drop into my body like a boulder, mixing my inner fire and water in a way that creates a steamy blast.

Naming that aspect of myself was helpful. But naming itself is rarely enough for the transformation and alignment I was then and am still seeking.

Today, over a decade later, I am coming to both a deeper respect and honoring of the many-eyed and steam-powered aspects of myself, AND I am excited to be in the learning of how to direct my steam energy in a way that allows me to slow down enough to bring all of myself to participate in the way of justice, fairness and love.

For most of my life, when an intuitive knowing dropped inside me, the steamy blast led the way. I felt an urgency to “do something immediately” and was VERY frustrated when others couldn’t see what seemed so obvious to me. I pushed. I fought. I cursed. I always stayed in the conversation, but it wasn’t an easy staying for me or for anyone around me.

In the last year, I’ve realized several things. When I lead from my steam-powered response, I have no access to the variety of other things I know about the issue/situation: my quieter knowledge and experience. With only the steam power, I also am at the mercy of the urgent burst and, from that place, I have a hard time being in partnership with others as I can’t easily listen to their wisdom about the issue. In addition, I’ve never taken time to just appreciate this unique way that clarity drops into my body and knowing.

This past year the eight-eyed steam girl has used her little red boat to carry me to a new shore. I no longer need to let her take over in her explosive, exhausting way. While I want the powerful energy the steam provides and I need to share the clarity it brings, in order for the resulting action to be the movement that I really want, that energy needs to be contained and focused. That is the skill I am now learning on this new shore.

As I refine the process, I first want to stop and take time to honor whatever sight and clarity I am given. These are gifts, and I want to receive them as such.

Next, as I contain and direct the steam, I can take time to see what else I know about the topic at hand. I’ve been on this Big Topic journey for a long time, and I’ve learned some things. I want to give the quieter insights time to emerge and join in with the new steamy clarity that was given.

My urgency to act immediately, with steam blowing out in all directions, comes from a false belief that something horrible will happen if I don’t share what I see immediately—in other words, believing the lie that “it is all up to me.” In truth, since I believe that these intuitive knowings are part of my Spirit sight, I have come to trust that I will also be guided as to the best way to bring the sight I’ve been given to a conversation with my partners.

I am I ready to share my sight and listen consciously to others when I have added my fuller clarity and knowing to the contained and directed steamy sight. No more leading with my urgent fighting, pushing, cursing frustration. I am still responsible to share what is mine to share, but HOW I’m in it can make all the difference.

Now, from this shore, I can both honor the reality that I am an eight-eyed steam girl and act in ways that are in alignment with my heart and spirit and aren’t so exhausting to myself and others.

Near the end of Big Topics at Midnight, I wrote:

Godspeed, my friends, fellow pilgrims on the path and dancers outside the lines. Grandma Ann and I will twirl together forever, weaving beauty across the rips in the fabric of life in the best ways we know how. In this dance, those willing to be cracked wide open will find that our differences add to the grace of our movement. Will you join us, … hoping beyond hope that our dance across the generations would serve those yet to come?

Reading about Big Topics under the full moon

The journey of awakening and alignment of heart, Spirit and actions may not be the easiest one you’ve ever walked, but you won’t find any better way to joy and delight as you continue in a grace-filled dance, feet on our shared earthly home, heart filled with Spirit and Love, in partnership with our global family.

If you’d like a copy of Big Topics at Midnight, just let me know and I’ll send you one (or more if you’d also like to share a copy with a friend). It is a gift to you. Email me (nancy@nancymthurston.com) your address and I’ll mail you the book. If you’d like to send a gift in response, make a donation to Be Present® or Wisdom & Money, the two organizations that fully support me on this journey of transformation.

July 30, 2021

A Vision Realized: The Critical Step of Stopping

The vision that broke into my life when I was 30 set me on a life-long journey. In one weekend, I realized that my family included everyone around the globe. I understood that how money flowed (or got stuck) in my life and in society affected our global family, and I experienced a transformative spark of Spirit that holds together all of life, including money.

I cried at the enormity of this vision. I didn’t know where it would lead, but I knew that an earthquake shook my foundation and changed the direction of my life’s work.

I also knew I couldn’t walk it alone. I wanted to be part of a diverse community where we could support each other by standing steady in our values and partnership…no matter what.

I wasn’t sure it was possible.

After a 20-year journey, I found the partnership I’d been longing for in Wisdom & Money (originally called Harvest Time) and Be Present™ and, more recently, in the collaboration between the two–The Trailblazing Collaborative. (That journey is described in my previous blog)

I am living inside of my vision in the midst of a strong and transformative partnership with others, knowing it is indeed possible.

My life-long knee-jerk response to realizing any goal is to dive in and get busy. Vision realized—done. No time to stop along the way, as there is work to be done. Keep pressing forward. I’ve been well schooled in the cultural values and skills of efficiency and responsibility.

But, I discovered that pressing forward may look efficient, yet quickly moving on skips over the bubbling up of feelings and new possibilities and truncates the power that is released when a vision is realized.

I am in the midst of something new…that is simultaneously ancient. I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a different paradigm is possible. In the world and in me.

My vision is big. Shifting the system. Stepping into a new paradigm. Outrageous. Audacious.

And I’m here, living right in the middle of that vision even as the divisions in the world around me deepens, violence spreads, racism and patriarchy flare—nothing new, just more visible. Right in the midst of it all, I know that something different is possible.

It’s time to stop and sit with that knowing.

I was guided along the way…supported at every turn…and I said YES, and kept walking.

Sit with that.

This vision manifested through the work and sight of many. And I was the one who first saw the power of this particular partnership between Wisdom & Money and Be Present. I’m comfortable sitting with the collective involvement of a network from both organizations, but slow to ponder my unique personal role.

Sit with that.

I sometimes feel empty. Being quiet with this moment isn’t as invigorating as being busy and “accomplishing” something.

Sometimes the quiet feels dull. Yet sometimes my emptiness opens up, and slowly feels less scary and strange and, instead, full of possibilities. And sweetness.

Sit with that.

I keep bringing myself back to this still place of savoring the gift I’ve been given and that I’ve participated in, one that is both complete and not yet finished. My daily participation in this movement continues – within myself, within Be Present and Wisdom & Money and our trailblazing partnership together, and within all aspects of my life.

Sit with that.

I keep returning to stillness, even as I participate in the tasks to be done. Slowing down to settle in the gifts of partnership that have been given is a critical place on the journey. Letting the joy bubble up.

Allowing my old familiar fear that all could still be lost to arise and dissipate. It is becoming easier to be with my feelings but not react or get caught in their swirl.

Sit with that.

The longer I sit, the clearer I can see. The ups and downs, ease and struggle are all are part of the whole journey that brought me here. Noticing grace at every juncture of the journey.

Sit with that.

The work of collaboration continues. My calendar is full. Finding a rhythm of working and resting.

I keep returning to merely sitting with the gift of a vision realized. Gratitude fills every cell of my body. There is time enough for the work that lies ahead…after I sit with that.

I wanted to have this second in this series ready to go months ago. But I had to slow down and sit with all that was shifting inside before I could find the words.

May 3, 2021

A Vision Realized: Journey to a Vision

This blog started as a letter that took an unexpected turn. This is now the first in a blog series about my journey to a vision realized: the building of effective and sustainable partnerships across our human diversity right in the middle of this time of global divisions. In this first blog of the series, I’m starting with my own journey from a spark of vision that stopped me in my tracks…and hasn’t dimmed for the intervening 36 years.

When I was around 30 I attended what I thought was a simple weekend workshop sponsored by my church. By the I returned home, I’d caught sight of a vision that has illumined my path ever since. I saw myself, and you, as one part of our global family. I saw how the flow of money in my own life and in my nation’s commerce affects that global family. Given that, I understood that I had a responsibility to participate in money’s movement in a way that was in alignment with my love and respect for (global) family values and this earth, our fragile island home. I saw how our global family and the flow of money are intimately woven into my faith. For me, life itself is a Spirit walk.

The vision was clear. The life I longed to live, the world I longed to be part of, was clear. But was it possible? Here? Now? Could I release my fears and my hyper-sense of responsibility and step into this vision? Would I be able to find others also longing to live in the midst of such an audacious vision? Was this possible in the middle of the beauty and mess, the love and the injustice that I could see inside myself and in the world around me?

My quest was to find answers to these questions.

It has been both a rocky and beautiful journey. Again and again, I slipped back into old habits of not trusting myself and going silent when I needed to speak. Again and again, in groups and organizations with beautiful missions and vision, I was disappointed when difficult times were met with old patterns of traditional hierarchy or “best” (corporate) practices. I was afraid the beautiful vision both for myself and for community inside of organizations was impossible.

I was deep in this search in 2001 when my father died, and my half of my family’s financial inheritance flowed to me. Within 6 months of his death, I stepped into Be Present™ and Harvest Time (now called Wisdom & Money). In both organizations, I saw the alignment I was seeking in my own personal life embodied in an institution and a community that I hoped would support my vision of personal and cultural shift.

Could what I experienced in these two organizations be built on a foundation strong enough to hold the commitment to love and justice even in the hard times?

I stayed to see for myself.

Mind you, from many perspectives, these organizations were very different. Be Present was founded by an African American woman gathering with other Black women and girls while holding a vision that included everyone. By the time I stepped in, this work held EVERYONE—across diversity in age, race, class, gender, gender-identity. For the first time in my life, I was in a community that looked like the world family I’d glimpsed at 30. Was it possible to build community across such vast diversity right in the middle of a world that was still divided? Could it hold when things got tough?

I stayed to see for myself.

Harvest Time/now called Wisdom & Money was founded by a white man who gathered together self-identified wealthy, and predominantly white, Christians. I stepped into this organization with a great deal of trust as Harvest Time was born out of the cross-class organization that hosted the retreat where I had my 30-year-old awakening vision. Harvest Time was formed to shift the focus of the ministry to people of wealth or from a culture of wealth.

I didn’t self-identify as wealthy until my father’s death and the subsequent inheritance. Since I’d had a powerful history with this organization, I immediately sought out Harvest Time to get the next level of support I needed to “engage with money as a doorway to spiritual transformation at the personal, communal and systemic levels.”** I knew that transformation of wealthy people like me was one part of a larger movement of economic justice that included everyone.

I stayed and watched and learned so much from both organizations.

Then a crisis hit at Harvest Time. The powerful vision remained, but the way forward was hard to see. I panicked, fearful that the powerful transformative work would be lost. I was afraid that yet another fabulous organization wouldn’t be able to stay within its beautiful vision in times of trouble.

But I’d glimpsed another possibility in my few years with Be Present. I knew there was a practice and support powerful enough to guide Harvest Time back into her own light. My mantra, that I repeated over and over again, was, “It doesn’t have to be this hard!”

Finally, Harvest Time reached out to Be Present, first as consultants and later as true partners. Be Present offered Harvest Time a missing practice—the Be Present Empowerment Model™. This model for personal and organizational effectiveness and sustainability helped Harvest Time/now Wisdom & Money navigate the crisis in a way that was in full integrity with the vision and mission. Instead of destroying, the crisis left us stronger.

Be Present found in Harvest Time/Wisdom & Money a partner organization audacious enough to dive right into the middle of wealth and faith and willing to stay in the journey with integrity.

My vision was not only possible, but I am now living right in the middle of it.

The collaboration between these two organization has grown step by step. Together we participated in a 9-year process of working collaboratively with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to give away a family farm in Mississippi. Two years ago, we held a joint Board of Directors meeting working in partnership to design and carry out the agenda. Following the board meeting, we held a Transformative Philanthropy Workshop using practices from both organizations.

The journey of partnership between these two organizations has required a simultaneous journey inward. The one thing I bring to each organization and the partnership between them is myself. It is clear that this realized vision also requires me to wake up to, then shift, the ways I have been participating in the very injustice and disrespect that I seek to shift in the culture around me. A glimpse into that process will be the topic of the second in this Vision Realized blog series.

*All of these illustrations are by Khara Scott-Bey, and all but the first one are from Big Topics at Midnight.

**From Wisdom & Money’s Mission statement.

November 1, 2020

A Letter … and My Prayer

Dear Grace*,

It will be years before you walk on this planet Earth, but the same stardust and DNA swirls through both our bodies. You were the last thing on my mind when we began this wild year of 2020. But last Spring I remembered one special day, almost a decade ago, when you introduced yourself as my granddaughter from seven generations in the future. As if your life depended on it, you encouraged me to keep diving deeper into my work, into my loving partnership with all in this nation and on this beautiful planet.

It’s hard to know how to speak in ways you will understand a few hundred years from now. Just as when I read Biblical texts written two thousand years ago, when you read my words, things will be different. What I can say for certain is that I wrote from the truest place I knew and hope that my words will translate across time and space.

This journey has been full of Graces and grace. One Grace was a slave of our ancestors, Jacob and Margaret Tipps, seven generations before me. I don’t know the details of her life, but I discovered that living on a small plantation in the eighteen hundreds, she likely experienced brutality. Yet this Grace reached out to me and showed me that life is much bigger than I’d ever imagined. She refused to let me drift off to sleep again. You, young Grace, were right by her side.

My generation carries the responsibility to live our lives in such a way that yours is left with possibilities rather than the remains of today’s physical and spiritual toxins. I don’t want you to be born onto a planet split apart between those who have access to money and power and those who don’t. I don’t want you to struggle against a patriarchal undertow to find your own voice. I don’t want you to have to live among people who believe that the color of one’s skin is an indicator of value.

Instead, I long for you to be the person you were created to be, living in communities with others embodying their own fullness. In addition, I long for this for myself, my grandchildren, my grown children as I long for this for all of us who share this spinning planet today.

My book … this blog … my life’s work is my gift to further that end. I join many, many others around the globe now as well as our ancestors, working together to manifest that reality now.

Walking on this Earth between Grace and Grace, I am Nancy Ann Mathys Thurston. In Hebrew, both Nancy and Ann mean grace. In a world filled with grace and Grace, anything is possible. I pray that my story and your story will be intertwined with the stories of many, forming a web strong enough to beautifully support generations born and yet unborn.

Thanks be to God.

And blessings to each one of you readers on this first day of November 2020.

*This was originally the Epilogue (slightly edited) from Big Topics at Midnight

With All Saints greetings from my parents, Sue and Ed Mathys (snuggled next to me) and their great-grandchildren, Daniel and Amelia

October 4, 2020October 5, 2020

The World I Know and Love

Here is what my heart knows and wants for us all on this beautiful morning:

We are one human family and all neighbors on this planet. Therefore, we naturally consider each other in all decisions.

Everyone deserves justice, equity, freedom and liberty.

Diversity serves all of life. It supports plants, animals, land, as well as humans. It is our strength, our agility, our protection. Diversity is to be celebrated and honored.

Life is served when we treat and honor others, and the world around us, as we want to be treated and honored.

This beautiful planet is our communal home—for generations past, present and future. All decisions, therefore, consider the health and sustainability of our home so Life can thrive.

We are fully embodied human beings with wisdom coming from spirit, intuition, our bodies, our feelings, our intellect, our experience and more. It is time to value all our wisdom, and to be open to the mystery of what we don’t know.

Alignment of values and actions is critical to our personal and communal thriving. That process of alignment is needed for our individual ease, health and wellbeing as well as for the communal ease, health and wellbeing.

Since we are all part of one family, we walk alongside each other, supporting the steps toward alignment and wholeness. We no longer remain silent when injustice happens in word or deed—responding with support for each other in the opening for shift.

We have the capacity to grow and change. This transformation from constricted points of view to an open-hearted experience of justice and fairness is achievable … and glorious … and is already happening.

We are a country founded on openness to immigrants “yearning to breathe free.” When we need to limit immigration, it is done without limiting specific nationalities, races, or religious traditions.

We all thrive when there is a limit to the size of the income and financial wealth gap between people. Too much disparity hurts everyone.

Health care is available to everyone.

True health care encompasses a wide variety of modalities, far reaching beyond the powerful but limited Western medical system. Each individual has the ability to know her/his own body and is a important part of the health care team.

Understanding the full truth of our history is critical to how we live and structure our lives today. Knowing that fuller truth requires learning far beyond the school-taught version of history.

Protests are a critical part of democracy. Truthful reporting of those protests, and the state’s response, is also a critical part of democracy.

Children at the border belong with their parents.

All children should be ensured opportunities to thrive: education; healthcare; nourishment; supportive, safe surroundings.

Torture is wrong, even for someone designated as a terrorist or a war captive.

Excessive and/or violent force should not be used by those who are charged to protect us all.

Support and guidance are available to all from both the tangible sources (books, other people, etc.) and from invisible sources (called by many names: Spirit, God, Intuition, life, the universe, synchronicity).

We need everyone’s voice. Everyone’s sight. Our diversity in sight and voice and body is a gift to the whole.

Every moment is a new moment. And the present moment is the best opportunity for change to happen.

The person in front of you is a unique person (not just another___ like all other ___s) and deserves to be heard and seen for themselves.

That’s the beginning of my list. What does your heart know about thriving together?

In many ways, I am living in the world I want to live in. I know that transformation, beginning with myself and flowing out into community and our nation, is possible. I know first-hand what it takes to step outside the oppression inherent in so many of the values and habits of our dominant system and to step inside the fullness of my spirit and sight in partnership with others. I am in relationship with others who are walking, and have walked, that journey of honoring ourselves and each other enough to mutually support each other in our movement. All of this, right in the midst of 2020.

This transformative walk is the key to joy and freedom in our hearts and in our community. The moment is right now. Focusing on the beauty of stepping into justice, love and fairness can make all the difference.

June 7, 2020June 10, 2020

Tongues of Fire

“They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.”¹

Last Sunday was Pentecost, the day Christians celebrate the spark of the Holy Spirit descending from heaven to earth, setting the hearts of the people on fire with love.

These words could also describe the fires that have scorched the country these past few weeks. The long burning embers of hatred, arrogance and white supremacy. The ashes of death of so many innocent Black men and women. The righteous flames of anger, grief and heartbreak. The smoke of careful planning and destruction at the hands of a small group of provocateurs, often white supremacists. The flares of action for equality, justice and respect.

Pentecost, a season when the flames of love enliven hearts with the power of the Spirit, is a perfect time for a spiritual awakening and reckoning.

A national reckoning is absolutely needed, but we must start with our own hearts. My heart beats within me: a white-skinned, wealthy woman.

My open-hearted longing for justice is true. As are the shards of racial and class injustice that made their way into me, often unnoticed. Shards that lie in wait. Waiting until I am afraid or want something or am caught in a distorted sense of over-responsibility. In those moments, these shards too often grow hot and prompt me to act in ways that are contrary to my deepest values.

I grew up in a Euro-American culture built on and steeped in injustice—racism, classism, sexism. Part of the sophistication of cultural injustice is that the perspective of those of us upheld by systemic power (i.e. white skinned people like me) is affirmed as “normal.”

In Big Topics at Midnight I describe a racial awareness that shook me to the core:

“I loved singing Sweet Honey in the Rock’s ‘I Remember, I Believe’ at the top of my lungs when it played on the stereo. As I tried to come to terms with my slave-owner ancestors, I attempted to imagine how these women’s black-skinned ancestors had survived the brutality of slavery.

One afternoon as I sang along, my perspective flipped. I, Nancy Ann Mathys Thurston, didn’t know how my people survived slavery…

How was it possible for my ancestors to love their own children, enslave others’ children in their fields, and not suffer deep spiritual damage?

What happened to the moral fiber of men who fought for our country’s freedom and then held human beings captive?…

What about me as a young person? How was I able to sing about God holding the whole world in his hands and often forget that the whole world included people who weren’t all white like me?

Had I survived racism?”²

As I work for justice and equality, too often I’ve been oblivious to my whiteness. Until I find shards of the very behavior that I abhor “out there” present within me.

I am not speaking abstractly.

For the last month, I’ve been in that tender practice of peering into a shard wound in myself. Despite my best intentions, my rugged responsibility and trying to be helpful resulted in behavior that looked similar to an in-charge wealthy white woman.

Was it?

I’m still not sure, yet I know it certainly looked that way.

Stopping to let that question sink in alerted me to the fact that my self-image is split in two. I see myself as a combination of my personality, family history and life experience and then, off to the side, the white and wealthy Nancy.

I’ve spent most of my adult life exploring the intersection of faith, money and the global community. I understand the intricacies and impact of wealth inequity, race inequity and gender inequality. I know the social analysis, history and current presence of injustice. I’ve made radical changes to bring alignment between my values, heart and my actions. I’ve worked tirelessly in two organizations—Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money—aimed to bring transformation to big topics at the personal, communal and systemic levels.

And yet here I am. Burned by my own behavior. Segregated within myself. Noticing what I’d not seen before. Listening to all of my inner excuses and explanations about why I acted the way I did. Followed quickly by inner judgment and a sense of my inadequacy. Supported by friends who cared enough to ask me what was happening when my behavior was not consistent with my desire for Spirit-centered alignment, I was able to find the courage to look directly into my shard wound.

Naming what I see in myself is an important first step, but I must keep looking deeply at the shard and see where I, Nancy Ann Mathys Thurston, am in my unjust beliefs or behaviors. And then wait. Wait until I know for myself what is true and what I must do to remove the shard completely.

I’m waiting still. Emotions I hadn’t realized were present are now rising, often lurking just below the surface. I’m listening.

Slowly I am becoming one Nancy. I remember the steady flame of the Spirit in my life, the depth of my relationships and the power of my practices³—all I need to support the transformation I seek. In the midst of easing this shard out of my being, I am grateful that I can still catch a glimpse of what awaits on the other side of this time—a deeper and more settled embodiment of the justice that has long burned deep within my bones.

My granddaughter will be born in a month. My two-year-old grandson delights and exhausts me. These two are part of a generation born into a world where the flames of racism and classism are raging for all to see and where a tiny virus has stirred the coals of fear and profound unknowing.

It’s past time for love and justice to take the lead. In me. In my nation.

In a spirit of Pentecost, I embrace the Spirit’s tongue of fire to give me the energy to step outside generations of oppression and do the work I was born to do. Starting with myself. It is past time to walk the journey to open up and remove our personal and cultural shards around race, class and gender. For ourselves. For the children. For creation. For us all.

“Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them…

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old [women] will dream dreams.’ ”¹

May it be so.

¹ Acts, 2:2-3, 17. Verse 17 is a quote from the Old Testament prophet Joel.

² Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself, page 251-252

³Most of the powerful practices that support this journey are central within Be Present, Inc. (primarily the Be Present Empowerment Model) and Wisdom & Money (in their core practices). There is more info in both of their websites and in “The Practices” tab on my webpage. I am so deeply grateful for the power of the support and guidance from these two organizations.

I am so grateful to feel the flaming power of the Spirit moving across our globe as millions of people rise together in the streets, in words, in inward transformation, in demanding law and policy changes, in continuing transformative work centered in justice, equity and love—in all of our human diversity and in all of the diversity in our ways of participating in building a world that respects and serves all of creation.

April 25, 2020

Reopening to New Life: A Birthday Letter from the Heart

April 25, 2020

My Dear Danny,

Two years ago, I was snuggled into your guest bed with Jerry and Omar, your furry brothers, about to turn off the light and go to sleep when I got word that your birth was nearing. I quickly got dressed and hurried to the dreary maternity waiting room, unrolled my mother’s tea napkin that held my traveling altar: my tiny well-loved doll, the acorn baby Ann gave me and a rose crystal heart … and continued to wait.

I’d spent hours in that waiting room over the previous few days, but the first time I actually heard the soft bells was when they heralded your birth. Within a few minutes after the bells rang, the nurse came out to get me. When I walked into the room where your mother had worked so valiantly in your birthing, you were snugged on your daddy’s bare chest—my firstborn holding his firstborn. Soon it was my turn to cradle you, and my heart broke open as it had years before when I first held my newborn children.

Today you turn two years old. After playing with you two days a week for most of your life, Howard and I haven’t been physically with you for 6 weeks. The COVID-19 pandemic hit, and love asked us all to stay physically apart to keep its spread to a minimum. We’ve had some lovely “visits” electronically. Howard and I have made a few videos for you, read to you through the screen, dropped off little gifts for Easter. We’ve watched you jump off your couch, play with your truck collection, run around the “track” in your home, dig in the sandbox and snuggle with your mom and dad. You’ve grown and learned so many new things since we were last together.

Funny how we can be so far apart physically and yet still feel the strength of our connection and presence with each other.

I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing over these weeks, looking back at pictures, talking with Howard about some of the fun and cute things you’ve done with us. Remembering the sweep of these last two years with you makes my heart dance.

I’ve also been thinking, yet again, about the world I want for you. In the span of these few weeks, our world has stopped in a way I never imagined was possible. This unasked for spread of one of nature’s viruses has brought separation, illness, death and a massive loss of jobs. The extent of that is reported daily in the newspapers and is felt personally, acutely, by millions. It’s heartbreaking.

Yet, in the midst of that, something else is afoot. The air and water quality have improved worldwide. Nature is healing herself rather quickly. Our deeply unjust, inequitable and broken systems have been stopped in their tracks.

Globally, we have been shaken to the core.

There is speculation about when we can return to “normal.”

I hope the answer to that is never.

Never for you. For your generation all around the world. For your parents’ millennial generation. For us all. My prayer is that we have the courage and vision to push aside the rubble of top-heavy social and economic “welfare” for “human” corporations¹and the debris of greed of money and power by increasingly few individuals who own more than many nations. Once that wreckage has been cleared, together we can build a world where you, Danny, and all of us can thrive. A world that supports all of creation to blossom together.

Danny, I know you LOVE scooping up rubble with your digger, dropping it into your dump truck as you focus on important construction work! You can lead the way.

In this time of abrupt slow down, we have a chance to become what was penned so long ago:

We hold these truths to be self-evident,

that all men [and women, girls and boys] are created equal,

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,

that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I know you are more interested in exploring and playing than in all of these words. Your focus is rightly on running, hiding, digging, hugging, reading, exploring… That is the work that you are to do—your two-year-old unfettered expression of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is the responsibility of those of us who are adults now, especially those of us who are older and no longer raising little ones like you. I wrote Big Topics at Midnight because I longed for a more just and awake world for my grown children. Now as you are marking your second birthday on a planet stopped in her tracks, I want to again begin to find words to articulate the world I so long for your generation to grow up in.

Finding words to express that through my blog is my work of the next few months. But today I pause to CELEBRATE YOU, in all your wonderful uniqueness and in gratitude for all you’ve brought my grandmother’s heart. You are surrounded by a wide and powerful community of family and friends. My prayer for you is that you will continue to explore and express all the variety of feelings and senses and thoughts and longings that dance through that miraculous growing body of yours.

It is a wonderful world to explore. Happy Birthday.

May it also be a day of new birth for all of us who were born and live within “the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”²

I love you, Gammie

Legally, corporations have many of the same rights as a flesh and blood human person
From the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer

March 23, 2020

My Will and Testament

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I walked into the living room and asked Dad to turn off the news … to hear instead the news I had to share. His doctor had just called with the results of his CAT scan the day before—an appointment made to check out Dad’s assumption that he had pneumonia. The diagnosis was stark—his lungs were filled with metastatic cancer that had originated in his kidney.

“Oh,” he responded.

Three weeks before his death, watching the horror unfolding at the twin towers, Dad heard this news differently that he would have the day before.

Today Howard and I will sign the latest version of our will. We started this process last fall, but our travels and our attorney’s family health crisis slowed the process. Finally, a month ago, we made our appointment. And here we are, mostly sequestered in our home due to a global pandemic … about to pick up a pen and sign our “Last Will and Testament.”

Howard and I are healthy. We are following the guidelines recommended by the CDC. We are living life fully and staying very connected, even in this time of physical separation. But signing our will in this moment in history feels different than it would have a month ago. Global illness and death are no longer far away nor out of sight.

Ten days ago, a dozen neighbors gathered in our shared courtyard with a drink in hand to toast the twin Tulip Magnolia trees in their full, pale pink glory. COVID 19 was lurking outside our gate—it was the last time we will be physically close together until this period has ended. Today the blossoms are falling. They remained in place much longer than usual, despite a short snowfall and wind—a gift of beauty we all have been grateful for.

This moment in history brings the fragility of existence, the power and beauty of life and our profound global interconnectedness of all of creation into stark view. This has always been true, yet today our thin and fragile illusions of separation, rugged independence and control have come crashing down.

How do we then live?

Words fall short these days so I’m looking in fresh places.

“Nothing lasts forever. No one lives forever. Keep that in mind, and love” I first heard Lisa Bonet’s* song years ago and found her haunting lyrics very moving. Lisa reminds us our life here on Earth is “eternally fresh” and precious, calling us to step outside of fear and into love.

“Learning to sit with not knowing when I don’t see where it’s going” I keep playing Carrie Newcomer’s song each day, as it is a good companion for this moment when I know so little about “where it’s going.” No answers, but it helps me live into the questions and the unknown.

January and February were my months of travel—Boise, ID, Klamath Falls, OR, NYC and Atlanta. I didn’t get to see Alison Saar’s Harriet Tubman statue while I was in Harlem, but hearing about it has sent me to search out photos and descriptions of this remarkable sculpture. Harriet isn’t depicted as running the underground railroad, but rather becoming it. She faces south, following her divine call to return again and again to lead people from slavery to freedom. Her time called for courage—i.e. being afraid and going forward anyway. Ours does too. We aren’t to try to be like Harriet, or anyone else for that matter, but to become more fully ourselves and to do what makes our heart sing as a gift to our global family.

At times like these I also turn to my old friends—books. I want to find my copy of Etty Hillisum’s An Unfinished Life, a moving diary of Etty’s spiritual transformation in the horrors of the Holocaust. And I’ll reread any of my Madeleine L’Engle novels as they skillfully illuminate the walk through darkness to light. Howard and I are reading World Enough & Time aloud, savoring Christian McEwen’s words. Rose just posted a beautiful blog about the sudden darkness…and light… in the midst of the Ash Wednesday service she, Steve and I attended in Atlanta.

I’ve also gathered with others on impersonal technology and have experienced a power of deep connection that left my heart warmed and comforted. Some were the organizational calls of Wisdom & Money and Be Present that I’ve been on for years. As always, we take the time to really check in during these calls, sharing wherever we are at that moment. Only then do we dive into the transformative work we do together—work that feeds me deeply. Saturday, twelve of us gathered on Zoom for our monthly Be Present Developer’s meeting—including the magical ability to meet all together, then electronically divide into small groups before returning together at the end. Some of the calls have been keeping touch with family. Howard’s and my heartache at this time of separation from our almost two-year-old grandson, Danny, and his parents has been eased by regularly “hanging out” with him on Google Hangouts. We are exploring having a virtual living room gathering with our family in town sometime this week.

Creativity hasn’t stopped with technology. Next Saturday we were supposed to go with Danny to see the play The Hungry Caterpillar. Instead Howard and I are going to make a collage caterpillar, strengthened by clear packing tape, to share with him. Creativity and play are critical aspects of life, especially in a time like this.

Today will be a full one, including crafting the caterpillar and signing our wills. Each moment brings the opportunity to practice vulnerability and courage.

I’ll close with another song that is balm to my heart, with the prayer that it will touch yours too. This beautiful rendition of the 23^rd Psalm is sung by Bobby McFerrin and dedicated to his Mother.

Peace be with you all.

*based on a Tagore poem

February 8, 2020February 8, 2020

Reaching for the Right Sword

For a woman deeply committed to partnership, too often I unsheathe my trusty, time-worn sword before I realize I’m in the middle of a fight with a colleague.

In the moment that I grasp that sword’s hilt, the steam that’s been building (unnoticed) inside me jumps into action. An unconscious power is thrown behind my conviction that my fight is for integrity, logic and truth. Instantly, my thinking is sharp and very focused preparing arguments and counter arguments that feel brilliant … but, I realize later, are often off the mark.

History has shown me over and over again that my sword and I too often confuse the issue since, with sword in hand, I almost never access my deeper knowing in the moment. Razor sharp focus narrows my thoughts and shoves my broad thinking, emotions and informative bodily rumblings out of sight.

The problem is that by the time I reach for my sword, my thinking is already calculating … and muddled. Now, instead of trying to change things in the midst of a fight, I am beginning to catch those early moments before I’m off and running—those moments when it is easier to make a different choice.

At the threshold just before I most want to jump into action, I am hearing wisdom call me to stop and notice. To give my feelings time to become clear. To scan my body to see if she is trying to give me messages in her own quiet (or bold) way. To soften and broaden my thinking. I’ve learned that while I’m well skilled at jumping into over-focused analysis, that pathway in an intense moment always leads to a very narrow thinking.

I know I need to stop. Slow down. Let my inner wholeness speak.

As so often happens, life quickly brought me an opportunity to practice this budding skill. This particular “moment” had a few days of buildup. I thought the task my colleague agreed to do would be done in a day or two, but four days later … still nothing. Should I prompt him? Should I trust and wait? I wrote texts and erased them. I got mad at myself because I was “obsessing” about what his to-do list—and labeled it as my over controlling tendency. My anger bubbled at myself. My anger bubbled at him. Two directional anger is never good.

The steam building inside erupted into anger when I got an email from the same colleague proposing that I take care of a certain matter. Frustrated as I was, I knew that his suggestion might be the best plan. I also knew that I would need to calm down and ponder the issue to see if I shared his perspective or had a different one. My right hand twitched for my sword.

This time, though, instead of unsheathing my sword, I picked up the phone and called LaVerne, a friend and colleague in our work centered around how to “risk being different” than old entrenched habits in ourselves and our culture.* She encouraged me to stay with my feeling of being pissed off (my gateway emotion to every fight). To be out loud with her. To stay with the feelings and not slip into problem solving or understanding or analysis. Hard as that was for me to do, I stayed with my anger. Noticed my tightening chest and aching head.

Slowly sadness peeked out. What was that about? As I sat with the sadness, I realized that how often I turn my judgment of others onto myself. In my self-constructed sense of fairness, when I am angry, I automatically begin to scan for what I have done wrong too. Being angry in two directions only clouds my sight more and is exhausting.

On the phone, I sat with these feelings, speaking about what I was experiencing. My emotions began to settle. Surprisingly quickly, I knew the next step I needed to take: Schedule a call with all three of us on the team. Share my own experience of these two incidents with my colleagues. Share what I know about how I was in both situations. And listen. Really listen.

The three of us have worked hard on our partnership. Because of this, I was able to speak what was true for me, and what I needed in our working together. Others did the same. We didn’t reach any bold revelations, but our conversation was one more step in strengthening our partnership.

I am learning to honor my emotions and to be clear what I expect from partners. I witnessed how easily I could envision an alternative action, once I sat with my feelings and began to access all of my knowing. For my own movement, I am continuing to dive deeper into my search to understand why I have such a strong reaction to what feels like pronouncements about how something should be done.

We all have unique sight and insight. The more I’ve begun to honor my own sight, the worse it feels when I barrel over it with my “righteous” battling.

How do I proceed, knowing I’m not naturally a calm easy-going person? Actually, I am an “Eight-eyed Steam Girl” with a fire that burns deep inside my bones. Whether I like it or not, when that fire touches my watery emotions, steam blasts through me. I feel injustice and inequity deeply, overwhelmed with things other’s may see as trivial.

No wonder I’ve walked through life ready to unsheathe my old sword when my inner steam builds up pressure!

I’m realizing that I’ve been reaching for the wrong sword—the old one at the beck-and-call of my reactive over-focused intellect. I am turning to the spirit sword of discernment that holds clarifying power, that paradox of vulnerability and strength. Its precision of use flows from discernment is only available when I can consciously access all parts of my wisdom and sight. It is becoming my trustworthy new sword of choice.

One of the best things about growing older is that I no longer have the energy to keep doing things the hard and circuitous way. I am learning the limits of my anger-fueled analysis and understanding the depth of my wisdom. In partnership with others.

I am ready to let go of my old, rusty sword, knowing that my sword of discernment is at the ready when I slow down and wait.

*The Vision statement of Be Present, Inc. begins with “We are a diverse network of people willing to risk being different with one another, our families, communities, workplaces and organizations…” It is a risk, and I’m grateful for the risks all three colleagues mentioned in this blog are willing to take together.

Drawing is by Khara Scott-Bey, from Big Topics at Midnight, adapted slightly.

December 30, 2019

The Gift We Bring to Each Moment

Are you searching for something in 2020 more satisfying than the status quo?

Me too. It’s been quite a journey:

I grew up saluting a country proclaiming freedom for all, only to discover that “all” never meant everyone.

I grew up in an all-white Texas church, never understanding that when Jesus said,
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” he meant everyone, including me, including those different than I, even those who feel like enemies.

I woke up and realized I was one part of a global family on one shared Earthly home.

It was enough to send me on a life-long journey seeking integrity, justice and equity within and without.

What an out-of-the-box and labyrinthine journey it has been!

So begins my w ebsite, and so continues my own journey after a long string of awakenings.

Here is the fact I keep coming back to: The only thing I bring to my every encounter is myself. Therefore, my life’s core task is to take responsibility for myself. It is the foundational gift I have to offer upon which all the rest of my life’s work is built.

That is how I can honor and serve the God who knitted me together in my mother’s womb, and honor my far-flung human family and our one shared earthly home. How I show up matters. Even when my computer’s dreaded “spinning beach ball” forces me to stop often and long to wait before continuing to type. Even when my old patterns of fear or overwork or suspicions flare. Even when I’m treated unfairly. Even when I recoil at the latest news.

I’ve been participating in an online Advent retreat offered by William Redfield. One quote that stopped me in my tracks was the invitation to “more fully and more completely and more truthfully know and claim who we are. It is this open and authentic presence that we must bring to the manger when we approach this special birth. We will not know who and what we are gazing at unless and until we know who we truly are. This is the work of Advent.” Knowing and honoring the sacred heart of myself is the only way I can know and honor the sacred in you and in all of life.

Let me be clear. I’m not shooting for perfection. Knowing who I am means knowing the fullness that was uniquely me at my birth, outside of the distress and adaptations I’ve picked up over my lifetime as I tried so hard to fit in and be good. For me, that knowing includes my clarity that I was born an “eight eyed steam girl,” and thus calmly strolling through life just isn’t possible for me. While I have to take responsibility for how I let off steam or what I do with my unique sight, I have only one life to live—mine. Like all of us humans, I fall down and have to get up time and time again. That’s the messy, frustrating and glorious journey of transformation after waking up to myself and the world around me.

My good intent is nice, but intent definitely isn’t enough. When something shows up in my thoughts or behavior that is out of alignment with my heart, I am learning to slow down and become a deep-diving home-grown explorer, looking wide and digging deep, armed with an old toothbrush to scrub my inner nooks and crannies that I’ve ignored or excused for far too long.

Despite all of the strenuous work of deep cleaning and the bruises from falling, I’ve walked with far too many folks on this journey to believe the lie that I am trapped forever in compulsions, distress, trauma—mine, our culture’s or someone else’s.

This is work only I can do.

However, I definitely don’t do it alone. I’ve learned to notice and appreciate the steadiness of Love that surrounds me. I grab the hands of friends and family. I reach out to the edges of the universe and into the smallest part of my cells and touch the support that is always present, even if unseen. Sometimes dancing and sometimes complaining at the top of my lungs, I step once again into taking responsibility for myself and my actions.

This has been my journey for most of my adult life. This Advent a few more pieces fell into place and my body and spirit feel the tingle of the new. The work of 2020 will be to knit this new into my bones and my actions.

Are you on this journey too? Welcome!