nancymthurston

July 27, 2013

Ancestors: Memoir #4

My ancestors’ “memoirs” intertwine with my story in Big Topics at Midnight. I have a few photos and letters, but all of my parents and grandparents have long since died. I know nothing of séances, nor have I had previous experience communicating with ancestors. But as I dove into my own life and the story of my nation’s people, I wanted to know more about how my family was woven into history.

I had to suspend my skepticism in order to hear what they had to say. I returned to Mom’s genealogical research, brought family stories to mind, let my imagination go and listened with my heart.

Then I went to my computer and wrote down what I heard, using their voices. My female ancestors “spoke” first, one at a time, beginning with my grandmothers, Ann and Ruth, followed by my mother Sue. Seven generations of Tipps grandmothers spoke to me, from my mother back to Margaret who married Jacob, son of our family’s original immigrant, Lorenz.

Grace, the only one of thirteen slaves of Margaret and Jacob whose name made it through the generations, also had her say. Later, my father, Ed, and grandfathers,

O.R. and John, told me tidbits about their lives.

I was shocked at the power of the stories that emerged as each ancestor spoke in her or his unique voice. A number of them demanded to be included in this book.* I’d learned the futility of arguing with some of these people while they were alive, so I thought it best just to honor their requests. Their stories wove in and out of my own.

Are their stories true? All of them referenced documented moments of their lives, but each went beyond these details. Some might call their stories tall tales. Regardless, I heard their words as truth stronger than facts.

Listening to their stories helped me remember that the DNA that swirls through my body has roots that weave back through the generations and will continue to generations yet unborn. As I wove my ancestors’ and descendents’ memoirs with my own, I saw that the context of my life—and the implication of my choices and behavior—had grown from my one lifetime to include at least fourteen generations.

Sometimes we must immerse ourselves in the past to learn to be present.

*An audio recording with three ancestral memoir stories and a bit of my own memoir is on my website.

This is part four of five of my blog’s Memoir series. Much of this post is included in the introduction of Big Topics at Midnight.

July 22, 2013

Two Peas in a Pod

People assumed that Big Topics at Midnight would want to have her picture taken beside an exotic umbrella drink with the Hawaiian ocean in the background. That may still happen, but I soon discovered that she was much more interested in being photographed while leaning against trees.

Like Mother, like daughter.

Neither one of us is a tree hugger. We are tree leaners. Energy begins to flow when the back of our hearts connects with these magnificent creations with their roots deep into the ground and branches that reach for the heavens.

She and I have another connection to trees: our profound gratitude for the paper that comes from the gift of a tree’s body. We know that some prefer technology and pontificate on the ecological benefits of reading things on computers and “printing” books on the screen. The two of us don’t argue with the logic, but little compares with the sensuous feel of a book with paper pages—a gift from the heartwood.

Since I often tired of sitting endless hours at a computer screen, editing and playing with her when she was a wee book-in-process, the stages of her gestation were printed on page after page for me to edit. I bet Big Topics at Midnight is grateful that I continued to work on her story so she wasn’t presented to the world in any of the multiple drafts that were left behind…

Leaning is our way of saying Thank You to the trees around us, for their beauty when standing firmly planted in the Earth and their beauty as a piece of paper.

July 15, 2013

Moon: Memoir #3

As I wrote Big Topics at Midnight, the moon waxed and waned across the pages. She was silently shinning over events in the lives of my family:

My grandmother six generations back, the newly widowed Barbara, sat with her newborn and noted with gratitude, Mary Lou and the little sliver of a moon shinin’ outside my window call me back to life. (pg 21)

Elizabeth, my grandmother five generations back, reflected on the night her life turned around, Under the moonless sky filled with twinklin’ stars, my heart broke open like the ice on Tennessee mountain rivers come spring. (pg 181)

Looking up at the moon, I find myself within a universe wider than I can imagine. For me, as for Barbara and Elizabeth in their stories, Lady Moon brings the fullness of the universe close to our hearts, setting life’s crises and joys within the cosmic time frame.

My book reflects that sometimes the moon was a metaphor for far away places or life beyond death:

Great-Great-Grandmother Joanna stayed in the family homeland of Belgium when her infant grandson John and his parents emigrated to the US. As she waved and cried, She knew that soon my parents and I would sail out of her life to a place so far away it might as well be the moon. (pg 16)

John and I are now free to Tango on the clouds, tap on the stars, and turn cartwheels on the moon, recalls Grandmother Ann as she and her husband dance across the heavenly skies after their deaths. (pg 343)

Since the moon has a front row seat to comings and goings here on Earth, I started listening to what she might say for herself. I figured she had a unique perspective that she’d be willing to share:

You, like me, can reflect light effortlessly. Without urgency, moon told to me as I held my newborn Laura in my arms. (pg 98)

One night Moon, taking to those who gathered on a North Carolina Cherokee mound in my imagination, said … In that way, in a mystery beyond all telling, this entire universe is held together by attraction. You can call it gravity if you prefer. Call it whatever you want. (pg 294)

Lady Moon is beautiful and, like a women, moves through her cycle each month. We all watch our one moon rising and falling, from fat and round to a thin crescent, each night that she shows her face. She rises over my life as she rose over my ancestors nearer the dawn of time and will rise over generations yet unborn. The moon is a reminder of the unity we share across geography and time.

Listen closely to that “woman in the moon” tonight.

This is third in a series (following Getting Naked and Nature) about the diversity of the “memoirs” held within Big Topics at Midnight.

July 8, 2013

Nature: Memoir #2

For much of my life I agreed with Shakespeare that “all the world’s a stage,” a backdrop scene for life. Our house was built on the earth, and roads were the means to explore places near and far. For me, real life happened mostly indoors.

My language for natural activity included reading, writing, visiting with friends, planning, organizing, creating, and studying. Definitely not hiking or sports or camping. As a child I didn’t want to stop reading Gone with the Wind and get out of the car to see the Grand Canyon. I didn’t like to sweat. I didn’t like it to be hot…or cold. Living on the edge, pushing my limits, happened in the areas of thought, spirit and creativity, not on the side of a mountain.

One year into the writing of Big Topics at Midnight, I was still repeating my well-worn description of myself saying, “I like nature through a window.”

Needless to say, it was quite a surprise when I was clear that I was to return to the land of my North Carolina ancestors. Having no clue what to do once I was standing on that land (now owned by others), I asked Ann Linnea, a woman at home in the wild, what I should do once I got there.

Her answer was simple: “Don’t try to do anything. Just look around, find a tree, and lean back against her trunk. Listen with an open heart. Then you’ll know.”

I started leaning against trees in my neighborhood in preparation for the pilgrimage and haven’t stopped. Pausing for a few moments, back against the prickly bark, my body relaxes as I feel my deep connection to this earthly home with her wild and diverse nature.

In the last six years, I’ve regularly leaned against trees. Plants and animals, sun and rain, air and soil help me keep perspective that I am a woman of Earth as well as Spirit. Memories have returned about a favorite tree from almost every place I’ve lived—the Mimosa in Abilene, Texas; the Elm in Midland, Texas; the Blue Spruce in Klamath Falls, Oregon; the Tulip Magnolia outside my writing office. Obviously, I was more connected than I’d thought.

I can’t write a memoir for the Earth, but her story intertwines mine. I am deeply grateful to have wakened to the bigger perspective that nature on this third planet from our sun has offered me all of my life.

This is second in a series (following Getting Naked) about the diversity of the “memoirs” held within Big Topics at Midnight.

June 29, 2013

Getting Naked: Memoir #1

I’m not fond of taking my clothes off in public. St. Francis did it when he renounced his father’s lifestyle and business and ran off into the wilderness. But I’m no saint.

And yet I felt led to write one of the most revealing of books—a memoir. Not just one memoir, like a normal person should write. But multiple, parallel memoirs: personal, family/ancestral, “my people” (white skin, wealthy, Christian, woman, American, and Texan) and even the moon has her say. Most of these push the definition of memoir, yet all come from my experience and find their “voice” through me. All of these “memoirs” speak with an eye to supporting change from the personal to the global levels.

It was a writing task, to be sure. I’ve always written, but writing a book required lots of learning and relearning the craft of words as well as putting myself at the mercy of great editors. Nevertheless, learning how to write a book was the easy part.

Diving back into the nooks and crannies of my life and the world around me was the demanding part. I looked at things I thought were true about myself and the world around me. I was humbled to see how often I was POSITIVE, yet wrong.

Standing in the light, wide awake and seeing things for the first time, was demanding. Sometimes I hid under my mother’s blue afghan. Often I doubted I was up to the task of learning and change. In the end, however, I surrendered, naked as a baby.

That process continues every day.

In her exploration of the fairy tale “Vasalisa the Wise” from Women who Run with the Wolves (page 108), Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes about these demands of living an conscious life:

“… watching and comprehending of the negative forces and imbalances both inward and outward. Secondly, it causes striving in the gathering up of will in order to do something about what one sees, be it for good, or balance, or to allow something to die.

“… we clearly see all sides of ourselves and others, both the disfigured and the divine and all conditions in between.

“Yet, with this light the miracles of deep beauty in the world and in humans come to consciousness. With this penetrating light one can see past the bad action to the good heart, one can espy the sweet spirit crushed beneath hatred, one can understand much instead of being perplexed only.”

In the end, getting naked through a memoir was the only structure I found powerful enough to dive deeply into race, class and gender in order to support the great turning that is so needed in our world today.

I’d love to hear your bare stories too. Too much is at stake for us to continue to hide beneath layers and layers of silence.

First in a series of five blogs about memoir.

June 25, 2013

A Year With Big Topics at Midnight

Big Topics at Midnight and I stepped out into the world together under last August’s Blue Moon in Portland, Oregon. Yesterday, the two of us juggled justice, soul and our world with thirty amazing people in Littleton, Massachusetts, on the afternoon of June’s full moon. In between these two events, we’ve been opening conversations together in Redwood City, Atlanta, Oakland, Portland, Washington DC, Eastern Shore Virginia, Burlingame, Newport, Toronto, New York City –sixteen different events in seven US states and one Canadian province.

After seven years of the intimacy of writing, where the book and I were hard to separate, Big Topics at Midnight was born into the world. She didn’t feel like a baby, more like a teenager who had her own thoughts and her own life but still wanted me to stick around, not too close but always ready to pay for her adventures.

The only trouble was that I knew more about writing than I did about marketing. Websites and blogs, YouTubes and interviews, Facebook and Ebooks, reviews and events… the list of things to learn seemed endless while time had very demanding limits. I’ve felt incompetent more times than I care to admit, only to have it shift to amazement that I could learn more than I ever thought possible.

The first few months of our outside-my-writing-studio-work were filled with a critical question—what am I trying to do with Big Topics at Midnight? Is my focus selling books? Am I opening conversations?

I am obviously trying to sell books. I didn’t order 1,000 all for myself. Since a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the books is split between three organizations dear to my heart—Be Present, Inc., Harvest Time and Community Wholeness Venture—I want to sell as many books as possible.

My primary interest, however, is to open the conversations. A few of the questions that have guided these “book events” are as follows:

How might waking up to your own heart radically transform your life?

How might waking up to injustice bring you to the front lines of this ripe moment in history?

Before us: ancestors. After us: generations yet unborn. How is your life impacted by a context that wide?

Parents warned us to avoid hot topics in polite conversation. Now, our silence is harming our earth, relationships and souls. Are you ready to speak?

The world churns as the old ways crumble. In the midst of it all, we long for justice and our hearts yearn to guide the way. Are you ready to exploring life lived in the midst of such a wide paradox?

The Spirit of giving? Simple. The process of giving? Complicated. Justice demands thoughtful attention.

These book events were are offered to facilitate people jumping from my story into their own lives. My hope was that we’d catch a glimpse of how together we can wake up and live more boldly, knowing that everyone, even our enemies, is our neighbor. Our ancestors at our back and generations yet unborn are encouraging us, calling us, pushing us into the dance of life that is just and filled with soul right in the middle of the gaps that divide us.

None of us has to do it all. Workaholism and striving for perfection are part of the problem. The divisions are deep. Hard work is involved, but so is delight and joy. Generations yet unborn are waiting for us all to fully engage in the dance of life.

Last July was spent with final editing and waiting. With the book at Sheridan Printers, I had a month to contemplate what lay ahead. Now I return to a month of slowing down and listening deeply. What does the upcoming year hold for Big Topics and me?

I don’t know. But I am eager to find out.

June 16, 2013

Thank you Dad

I always wanted to please my Dad. But he wasn’t much of a little kid person, and I was full of life and questions and energy. I also wanted to please. It wouldn’t have taken much from Dad to shut me down–a short shout and I would quickly learn what behaviors to avoid around him. I did my “be careful what I say and do around Dad so he won’t get upset with me” dance until I was in my mid 20.

Mom and Dad had come up to see Howard and I just after I’d sent out a family letter saying that we were considering joining the Peace Corps or returning to graduate school. Mom went to battle trying to convince us that the Peace Corp would be a stupid thing to do. Dad listened most of the evening, then said the words that sparked our new relationship. Nine years later, after Mom died, Dad’s and my relationship deepened even more.

Thank you Dad. In your eighty years of living and in your three weeks of dying, you gave me profound gifts.

Ed Mathys, age 57, 1979*

On that night in Boise as you shared your dreams and ideas, I glimpsed a pattern. Men in our family have loved strong women, and then tried to tame them again and again.

In Boise, I realized I’m done trying to be in charge.

Sue can march into wars if she’d like. Not me.

Why did I think life was a contest? That I’d shine brighter if you faded and became quiet like me? If I step back in time I see you were a normal three-year-old, growing up. Not a threat, just full of life.

If I could do it again … Actually, I did. Twenty-two years after I squelched you, I supported your desire to do something wild.

It’s never too late. When you heard my heart, the healing began.

Excerpted from Big Topics at Midnight, page 73, 74.

June 4, 2013

Whale Blows, then Dives Deep

The moment my eyes open

the old story—

inflated, puffed up and glowing—

shatters.

I sit with a heart full of dread

grief

sorrow

the ache pours out my eyes and belly.

I want to rush ahead.

How can I fix it?

Make it OK again?

Make this ache go away?

Escape merely tightens the clinch,

lets it all decay underground again.

One option is all that remains—

wait, sit in the ache.

Slowly

morning light returns.

The big picture emerges from the shadows.

The moment spreads across time and space.

A blue whale blows then dives deep down

into the abyss of the Monterey Bay,

making me remember

the present moment held in the middle of eternity.

May 28, 2013

Our Financial Legacy

Laura often moans, “Why can’t you be like other parents?”

When Howard and I wrote a letter to our then teenaged children, Laura and Paul, outlining the financial legacy we wanted to leave to them, we began with that sentence. An excerpt of that letter continues as follows; “It is true that our worldview is different from many others. This letter is an attempt to speak to you two about one of the legacies that we hope to leave you. It is counter cultural, but it has come through years of searching our hearts, listening to the stories of people around the globe, and studying the Gospels in an attempt to see beyond our ‘American’ interpretation of scripture and faith.

“First, a brief family history. Your maternal great grandparents, O.R. and Ruth Tipps, lived the American Dream. They started with very little money and died wealthy. O.R. was involved in many things—a teacher first, then County Judge (where he could use the law books to pass the bar exam), lawyer, rancher, oilman. Ruth was a teacher before marriage (that was where she met O.R.), and she cared for an extended family after marriage. She was also a wonderful storyteller. They lived modestly and were generous with extended family.

“The other set of your maternal great-grandparents, Ann and John Mathys, also had more money than most. John came to this country as an infant. His parents owned a successful tavern in Green Bay and sent money back to help support the family who remained in Belgium. John became a Vice President of Northrup King Seed Company and made his own wealth. Ann got her master’s degree, a very unusual thing in her day, but she was not allowed to teach after she married. They were not as wealthy as O.R. and Ruth Tipps but they lived a more affluent-looking lifestyle.

“Your paternal grandparents and great-grandparents, the Thurston and Costello families, were middle class. They had a strong family ethic of saving and frugality that led to a comfortable lifestyle with enough saved that your Thurston grandparents enjoyed international travel during their retirement years.

“Our family’s financial success is partially a result of all of their hard work, vision and saving decisions. But that isn’t the whole story. All wage earners are not afforded equal opportunities to excel and make money through their hard work. Your maternal grandfathers (through whom our family wealth came) had many advantages before they began to work. They were male (this was especially vital for those in business at that time), they were white-skinned (the only option for most careers and professions at that time, and still a huge benefit), they were U.S. Americans (with our globally more affluent lifestyle and with our business opportunities and laws aimed to support businesses) and they had access to education through family support and a valuing of education. Without those things and others, doors would not have opened so quickly for them to become successful and prosperous. That doesn’t negate their success, but it does put it into an important context.

… “Our family gets lots of benefits from this wealth and we could follow the cultural norm of spending more extravagantly and passing on the remainder of the inheritance to you two. But, for us, that is too narrow a focus. We consider our extended family to be the global family. Ultimately what is best for the extended family is best for our little family of four. The world will be a safer place for all of us to live, the earth will be more vibrant and healthy, and the community between people will be healthier when there is more financial equity between all peoples. There are enough money and commodities globally to provide for all on the earth, but it has gotten “dammed up” and blocked in the hands of wealthy individuals (like us) and corporations. In our own small but powerful way, we want to participate in undamming our portion of the world’s wealth and letting things flow smoothly again.”

Howard and I still had lots of financial questions to answer, but we wanted to share our overarching clarity with Paul and Laura as it emerged. The conversations continue today, eleven years later.

What would you say to your children, or the next generation of children, about the financial legacy you’d like to leave behind?

May 21, 2013

Keep it Short

It was back to the elevator speech. Or a response to a polite inquiry into the content of my emerging book. Short. Simple. Just a taste.

For a woman who loves to dive deeply into gargantuan topics, the thought of short or simple used to send me into a panic. I couldn’t even imagine how to boil my words down to a description that felt true and made any sense.

With a lot of hand holding and expertise from Jen Violi, my writing coach, creative dula and content editor, I found my way to the following short book description:

Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself defies easy categorization. It’s memoir and history and a celebration of the power of faith, myth and magic. It’s personal, and it calls for social change. Through the lenses of race, class, gender and spirituality, Nancy Thurston excavates history—personal, familial, global—for the sake of cross-generational healing and transformation.

Then last week I had 3-4 minute interview on Portland’s KATU AM Northwest show. No succinct description written out and read. But the instructions were the same. Short. Simple. Just a taste.

Slowly I am learning the art of brevity. Stretching out the boundaries of my preferences, I am experimenting with the power of holding both the full, deep-sea dive and the teaspoon taste.