Ancestors

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.

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

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

May 2, 2018December 18, 2019

Daniel’s Arrival

Big Topics at Midnight’s dedication reads, “My ancestors and I dedicate this book to [my grown children] Paul and Laura. May you and other young adults and children around the globe today, as well as your children, benefit from my generation’s work to create the transformation we long for. Blessings as you live your own lives fully, wildly and boldly.”

I wrote that in 2012.

Just after midnight on April 25, 2018, the bleak hospital maternity waiting room cleared out as other eager but tired grandparents left to find a more comfortable place to rest for a few hours. Left alone, I felt free to sing out loud. A favorite lullaby I sang to Paul and Laura when they were young. Beloved hymns. Chants. One flowing into the next, all lifted up for the parents, Lauren and Paul, in the last stages of laboring.

Just before 3:00 am, I heard faint bells ringing. They ring when a baby is born; at that moment, the bells pealed to announce Daniel Gunner Thurston’s arrival. Within the hour, I stood beside my 6’4” son as he held his 19” newborn with such gentleness. Soon, I too got to hold Daniel close to my heart. One so tiny burst out of his tiny womb-home, and a new generation in the family had arrived.

I am so excited to be Danny’s Grammie. As my mother used to tell young Paul, we’ll have many grand adventures together.

With my one-week old grandchild in my heart, I am more committed than ever to help create a world where all children and adults can live fully, wildly and boldly.

For me, that commitment used to hold an urgency. Seeing all that was so unjust and inequitable, I wanted things to change quickly.

I’ve learned that urgency only slows down the process.

Daniel reminds me of the mystery and grace of a life lived in both body and spirit—a life that can’t be rushed. Before I know it, he will also show me the awe of discovering the wonders of the world around us, the joy of playing and the natural flow of creativity.

As always, the flow of gift between the generations moves in all directions. As I hold Daniel, I can feel my ancestors, especially my parents, Sue and Ed, my grandparents Ann and John, Ruth and OR, great-grandparents Allie and Arthur … gathering around. Those long gone from this earth and this one so newly arrived all encourage me choose integrity, love, equity and respect in every moment. And to have fun along the way.

Daniel, and all of his generation, send out this summons to you and to me with their adorable sleeping faces, their lusty cries, and their innate desire for snuggling. I want to be a student of the seasoned teachings from the ancestors, from my colleagues and friends, from my own heart, and from Daniel’s baby’s delight. Together, we are all up for the task of living and loving our way into a beautiful world that values us all.

August 23, 2017December 18, 2019

Homegrown Terrorism is the Battle Cry for Repentance

More Americans have been killed in the US by white male citizens, often white supremacists, than by any other domestic or foreign group.¹ Well-armed with guns and hatred of Jews, Blacks and Muslims, these white Americans fight to regain a white and “christian”² nation.

It is accurate to say that our country was founded on white, male, wealthy, “christian” supremacy. While that foundation still has a strong foothold on almost every aspect of our culture, it is predicted that by mid-century, white skinned people will be in the minority in the US.

I can’t pretend that I am totally separate from these white extremists. They have lit their torches illuminating the fact that our country has long been dominated by whiteness and anti-Semitism. This same system has opened doors for me all my life, as it did for my ancestors. The natural consequence of generation after generation of exclusion has erupted today as hatred directed at non-white and non-Christian people.

My grandfather was an attorney who believed in justice. Yet, in a letter to his fiancé (my grandmother) written in 1923, he spoke about one of the best speeches he’d ever heard: “This Col. Simmons of the KKK made a talk [at the Texas Capitol] to 20,000 people. He has a wonderful personality and is a good speaker. I wonder if you have joined the Klan? Or the Order of Camelia, I should have said.” Years later, my grandfather publically supported the first black female attorney’s nomination to the Wichita Falls, TX bar association. And I loved him.³

In Big Topics at Midnight, I wrote a chapter titled “Did My People Survive Slavery?” After listening to a Sweet Honey in the Rock’s song “I Remember, I Believe,” where black women asked that questions about their own ancestors, it struck me that the same query applied to my ancestors, and I asked myself: What was the moral legacy of families like mine who owned slaves and were moved by a KKK speech?

Unfortunately, we are living that legacy now.

This legacy came through families like mine and through the larger cultural family of Euro-Americans. Unnoticed without confession or repentance, the moral flaws of yesterday erupt now in the growing movement of white supremacists, our nation’s homegrown terrorists. A terrorist is defined as “a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” Our focus on foreign terrorists is merely a distraction to the real terrorists within.

The signs of this ingrained white supremacy is fully visible for anyone who cares to notice. Can you imagine if the August 11 march on the University of Virginia campus—complete with lit torches, armed men and hateful rhetoric targeted at specific groups—had been as assembly of black skinned rather than white skinned men? Or Jewish? Or Muslim? Can you imagine the uproar if President Obama, a black skinned man, had spoken and acted as disrespectfully as white skinned President Trump has consistently done? Can you imagine what the law enforcement response would have been if the armed men who took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon had been black skinned? Or Jewish? Or Muslim?

Our national law enforcement and public sentiment response would NOT have been the same.

I’ve spent years unmasking the tendrils of white supremacy that have been part of my nation and my family and my life. Denying that, or white-washing it as merely a historical problem or an isolated issue of extremists, is to personally participate in the movement for white supremacy.

The cry of my heart is directed at others like me—white skinned and Christian. The legacy of racism, patriarchy and religious intolerance that was one part of our nation’s founding is threatening to destroy us all. While we are not responsible for actions of our ancestors, we are living in the toxic legacy of the moral disconnect between values and actions that worked their way into our institutions and systems. We—you and me—are fully responsible for how we live today.

Being quiet and disconnected is no longer an option.

My prayer is that our nation is going through the last gasp of what has been and is still a dangerous and hateful legacy. For that to be true, however, all of us need to step up and embody justice for all. Each in our unique way.

The steps forward to constructive change are ancient and outlined in many of our faith traditions: open your eyes and heart to see; confess where you as an individual and where you as part of the national collective have participated in injustice and inequity; repent—a transformative change of heart; and then take action that flows from your new, wide-open heart.

Our nation’s racism and anti-Semitism runs deep. The call of my heart to our beloved nation is to wake up and repent, remembering these self-evident truths: that all are created equal; that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of a union with the good spirit (named as “happiness”).

¹Article with links to more primary sources

²A side note: I can’t help putting christian (with a little c) in quotes. There is no relationship between the heart of Christianity and white supremacy’s christianity. Unfortunately, far too much of CHRISTIANITY as a institutional church has become infected by the sin of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Likewise, it is also true that white-skinned people and male people have too often been culturally infected by a sense of power-over superiority inherent in racism and patriarchy (among other things), and perhaps should also be noted with quotation marks. This cultural sin has a wide and deep legacy.

³Individuals (such as my grandfather) like nations are complex and paradoxical, full of wisdom and generosity and prejudice and hatred. I am hopeful that seeing our own shadow will give us greater compassion as we support each other on the journey back to the just and equitable essence that is our birth right. We need each other as we unhook from the toxic parts of our national legacy.

June 9, 2017December 18, 2019

The Bigger Story of Hate and Heroes

On August 20, 1965, Alabama resident Tom Coleman, a white-skinned vigilante, aimed his gun at seventeen-year-old, black-skinned Ruby Sales and threatened to blow her brains out. Jonathan Daniels, her white-skinned companion in the Southern Freedom Movement, threw himself in front of Ruby and was killed instantly.

In a recent On Being interview, Ruby Sales reflected on the larger context of this incident: “When you signed up to be a part of the movement, it became very clear that we were willing to die. Not because we were suicidal but because we believed so much in the work that we were doing that we did not believe that death was the end.”

As a correction of how the story of Jonathan’s murder is usually framed, Ruby said, “Truly I am grateful that Jonathan saved my life and truly that was an important event. But at the same time, the narrative must include the profound impact that local black people had on shaping and stretching my life as a young black woman in the south.”* Jonathan’s heroic act was one small part of a larger justice movement that had been active for generations both in Ruby’s community and around the world.

I thought of Ruby’s words recently when a raging White Supremacist yelled anti-Muslim vitriol at two teenagers, one wearing a hajib, and then killed two white men and injured another who stepped between hatred and those threatened. Ruby’s words remind me that the horrifying event that occurred in my Portland, OR neighborhood on Friday, May 26, 2017, was one part of a nation-wide pattern where other Muslim, Black and Brown people (among others) experience violence.

Racial slurs and violence toward Muslims and non-whites aren’t new. Killing unarmed black men and women isn’t new. Injustice from the “Justice” system isn’t new. Prejudice and threat of deportation to immigrants aren’t new. They are, however, becoming more visible … to whites like me.

The incident in my neighborhood a few weeks ago isn’t an isolated event. It is part of a much larger story of hatred and violence that still festers at the heart of our nation. It is also one part of a long, powerful movement for compassion, justice and equity that many have bravely walked for hundreds of years.

The larger context is important. Oregon was founded as a white supremacist state: black-skinned people were barred from living within our borders. The KKK long supported our governmental leaders. Today, green and progressive Portland is one of the whitest big cities in the nation.

I am grateful for the heroic deeds of Ricky, Taliesin and Micah, and for the heroic deeds of millions over the centuries who have stepped forward to follow the leading of their hearts and courageously stand for compassion and justice. I am saddened by the impact of hatred hurled at two teenage girls, and for millions over the centuries who have long been the brunt of prejudice, inequity and hatred. The power to transform our world’s injustice and stark divisions lies in our ability to see these individual incidents as one part of a much larger movement.

This is a journey of transformation that we must take together. This is not a time to deepen our divides, even if the divides are between oppressed and oppressor. This journey requires us to all step courageously into the gaps that divide us. Standing together in the midst of both hatred and the compassion, each of us can begin—or continue—to look inside our own skins and root out assumptions, stereotypes and fragments of the “isms,” then take the risk to actively build the world that best serves all of our children, now and for generations to come.

Otherwise, actively or passively, we are complicit in supporting the underlying generational behavior that erupts into violent and hateful deeds.

*These critical words of context for Jonathan’s death were cut from the finished Krista Tippet’s On Being interview of Ruby Sales. For that reason, I recommend listening to the uncut version.

This blog is one in an upcoming series of “The Bigger Picture” blogs.

May 28, 2017December 18, 2019

Nothing Lasts Forever

Nothing lasts forever;

No one lives forever.

Keep that in mind, and love.*

These words have danced through my head all spring. For the last few months, almost a dozen friends and family have experienced a traumatic, life changing event. Sometimes resulting in death, but more often in an event that will change them forever. Even after “normal” life returns.

Friday afternoon, just as I was finishing a support group call with friends, police car after police car streaked down the street in front of my home. It was an hour before I knew what had happened. During what most expected to be a routine light rail trip home before a holiday week end, a white man began yelling hateful things to two Muslim young women. Three men stepped in to try to deescalate the situation. The ranting man pulled out a knife and killed two of the men and injured the third.

A Memorial Day holiday that, for two families, began with death, for one family, began with a hospitalization, and for all the rest unfortunate enough to have been in that light rail car, began with witnessing hatred and death and compassion.

I too will die one day. Maybe today. All that I think of as essential parts of my life will one day pass, maybe in the blink of an eye.

Tagore reminds me that I must keep that reality in mind, and still love.

Love. Open my heart again and again. Knowing that nothing last forever.

This is at the heart of my spiritual path, the container that holds my whole life and death (both the daily little deaths and, one day, my physical death). I have many freedoms and choice in my life, but I am not charge of everything life brings to me. Life and death have their own rhythm and power, in my life and in all of nature. Birth, life, death and rebirth are all part of the natural cycle of life.

How we live matters. How we die matters. How we savor life and then, when it is time, release life, matters. For me, life invites me to live fully—savoring the gifts that surround me—and to die open-heartedly—surrendering to the big divine love in every moment.

The Rule of St. Benedict admonishes, “Keep death before you daily.” Know that only by fully accepting death can we fully accept life.

In our death-phobic culture, remembering our death and honoring the transitory nature of life seems crazy. In reality, it is the only way.

*Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey. Poem by Rabindranath Tagore

This blog is dedicated to the three who bravely stepped forward Friday in an attempt to bring peace to a violent moment— Micah David-Cole Fletcher, Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche (The latter two died in the process). And to all my friends, and yours, whose life in these past few months has taken them to places they never would have chosen. And to my mother, Mary Sue Tipps Mathys, on this eve of what would have been her 91 birthday. Thirty years after her death, I still feel Mom’s presence and guidance.

December 13, 2016December 18, 2019

Pandora, Mother and Hope

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.

Rebecca Solnit

sue-last-photo-copy — Mary Sue Tipps Mathys

My mother died thirty years ago on the night of the winter solstice. Many of those years I’ve stayed awake ’round midnight because that’s when the veil between us feels thinnest.

Starting with the year she married Dad in 1952, Mom made an annual Christmas card that she mailed to 200+ friends and family. In 1971, she focused on Pandora’s Box and the hope that was left inside when all of the troubles escaped. In the card that year, Mom noted that I was to graduate from high school in May, and the only way she had the courage to let me leave home* (followed by my brother two years later) was that she had hope that “we would find our niche in the world” and that “some of the world’s problems concerning war and inequality and injustice will soon be solved.” The latter is far from happening, but I find it fascinating that my “niche in the world” has included working with others for spiritual and social transformation of “war and inequality and injustice.”

On one had, we live in dark times: midnight times. After this fall’s presidential election, many of my friends are still in grief, some crying most times we visit. It looks to many of us as if the troubles released from Pandora’s Box have won the day. And others around the country feel hopeful—underscoring the deep divides that cut through our nation today.

Silk Screened Pandora's Box by Sue — Silk Screened Pandora’s Box by Sue

I believe that Hope is a powerful force. Not a flighty Pollyanna kind of hope, longing for utopia, but a force in the darkness, facing the unknown, knowing that anything is possible in the next moment, and the next, always letting your heart take the lead.

I follow the One who reassures us that the light shines in the darkness, a light that no darkness can overcome—even when I can’t see the light. When walking in the dark, I must remember it is critical that I take each step with integrity and respect so I can add to the light and not the darkness.

I have found my niche in the world. Mom worried that I would be too timid, as that was strongly at play in my growing up years. But my passion for justice and equality danced with the flame of my spirit, and I’ve been on a revolutionary path all my life, no matter how timid it looked at any one point. The world calls for each one of us to step even more fully into leadership, into the work that is uniquely ours to do.

Mom was a force to behold. Opinionated. Headstrong. Steady. She was also open-hearted, creative and had sight far beyond her years. I couldn’t have asked for a better mother, a better role model for the life that is mine to live. And yet my work steps away from her path, off onto my own. Shortly before her death, she blessed me as I shared the ways I was stepping away from the path she traveled. That was what she was hoping for all along.

Are there hopes and dreams and visions that your mother or father, grandmother or grandfather or trusted elder friend have held for you to step into? What are you waiting for?

*I smile at these words she wrote because I know that Mom was also thrilled to have my brother and me move out of the house…

June 23, 2015December 18, 2019

Double Helix Transformation

Science has affirmed what I know intuitively—genetic changes happen throughout our lifetime, can affect our behavior and are passed from one generation to another.

In the last few decades, epigenetic research showed that epigenetic changes (molecular methyl groups attaching to our DNA) occurred during one’s lifetime. In the middle of writing Big Topics at Midnight, I discovered the work of Barbara McClintock exploring changes in a gene in response to environmental stress. In my book I noted, “Dr. McClintock had won the 1983 Nobel Prize for her discovery that stress to a corn plant caused genes to change their position on the chromosomes. She proved that genes, the genetic building blocks passed through the generations, were mutable and could be changed. If this change could happen due to stress, I presumed it could also happen due to a positive stimulus. It appeared to me that generational healing through changes in our DNA was scientifically possible.” *

When my ancestors began to share their stories with me, and then wanted them woven into my social change memoir, I knew experientially that transformation was possible not only in my own life but also genetically in my family line.

Often we trace physical characteristics back to our families: creative like Mother; stubborn like Grandfather; walk like Dad. But the similarity can also flow into emotional states: fear, anxiety, optimism. There are also behaviors to consider: control, integrity, obsessive tendencies.

In addition to family patterns, we also carry the imprint of the culture’s influence on our ancestors over the generations. For me that has included guilt around playing when there is work that needs to be done or dissatisfaction with my body. Culturally we also have the stain of sexism/patriarchy and racism/white supremacy woven into our DNA (both conscious and unconscious).

Trauma, nurture and emotional patterns of all sorts can be passed to us through our genetic make up at birth. However, genetic and epigenetic research both point to the fact that change is possible within our DNA itself and/or molecular attachments to our DNA.

Some of the characteristics I’ve inherited, I want to keep. Others I’d like to shift, such as generalized fear, feeling inadequate and unconscious use of excessive power and control sourced merely on society’s inaccurate and unjust bias toward those of us with white skin.

Every choice I make can have genetic/epigenetic consequences. When these choices and changes are sustained over a period of time, I believe they will support healthy genetic evolution.

I want that change to improve the integrity of my life, to be sure. But I also want to make changes in my life that will support generations that follow me.

Here is where my understanding boldly steps beyond scientific proof. I believe that these genetic changes move both directions in our family lines, affecting our ancestors and those descendants who are already born and those yet unborn. In addition, I believe that this shift can change the culture as well as individuals

Maybe one day science will catch up. Maybe not. Either way, I chose to believe this intuitive knowing that my efforts to shift entrenched, generational patterns—familial and societal—are part of my love and service to the world.

* Thurston, Nancy. Big Topics at Midnight (Portland, OR: Rosegate Press, 2012) pages 205 and 206.

June 12, 2015December 18, 2019

Grandmother Ann Takes the Lead

“I loved the idea of grandmother and granddaughter dancing together, plaiting beauty across the tears in the fabric of the world. Together we twirled, hoping beyond hope that our dance across the generations would serve those yet to come.”¹

Ann Cahoon Mathys take the lead:

Unlike some of my ancestors, I avoided epidemics, early widowhood, shipwrecks, Texas and prisoner of war camps.² Nevertheless, I shared my family’s determination to better life for myself and others.

After High School graduation, I bucked tradition and headed off to college. I graduated from Milwaukee Downer in 1913 with my Bachelor’s degree, and from University of Wisconsin in June of 1915.

I knew I was born for such a time as the opening years of the 20^th century. From my family’s experience as Welch immigrants to my volunteer work at Milwaukee’s Settlement House, I understood that “my people/our people” included far more than my family or nation. Many families, like mine, came to this country in the midst of tragedy and poverty, needing a compassionate helping hand. I was glad to offer mine.

Personally, and through my teachers and fellow students, I also knew that the boundaries of intellect didn’t end at the edges of a man’s mind. Despite the belief that higher education was a waste of time for a woman, I couldn’t wait to become a scholar of both the intellect and the body.

The intellectual narrow-mindedness of the world around me also needed to expand politically. I joined other Wisconsin women to fight for our right to vote. I wanted to bring my wisdom and knowledge to the legislature and make a difference in the world.

Nancy, as a child and teenager, you thought I was a boring old woman, but now you know better. I am delighted that when you came to your senses, you too caught sight of the possibility of a just world. That is good, as you are living in the early years of the 21^st century—a moment of history that is even more in need of awakening than mine.

Nancy follows Ann’s lead and steps into the dance:

Grandma, I have gladly stepped into your dance, plaiting justice and faith, compassion and equity. I know my approach and beliefs are different than yours, but we both loved to stretch the boundaries of our day and wanted to serve the larger community around us.

I knew so little about you when you were alive. Even when I walked across the stage to get my master’s degree—wearing the same gown you’d worn seventy years earlier—I knew little about the world outside my neighborhood.

I now see a bigger picture than I did during my university days. For example, I understand that doors opened for our educations because of our intelligence, to be sure, but also because of the color of our skin and the financial support from our family. Though today gender and race don’t usually affect admission, going to college too often results in substantial debt as well as a degree, strapping graduates financially for years.

The vote you helped secure wasn’t available to everyone for decades. Even today we battle voting irregularities and gerrymandering. The candidates on our ballots are just beginning to cross gender and color lines but have been much slower to cross class lines.

We as a nation seem to have forgotten that most of us came here as immigrants. Over the years our national racism controlled who was welcome—usually those with white skin—and who was not. We Americans enjoy the fruits of immigrants’ labor eating the food they grew, traveling the roads and railroad tracks they constructed, enjoying motel rooms and houses they cleaned—then turn around and threaten deportation, pay unjust wages or speak as if these newer immigrants are lazy.

In the midst of these two centuries, we’ve both listened for the song of justice playing beneath the inequities. This month it has been 125 years since your birth and 100 years since you graduated with your master’s degree. I am delighted to reach for your hand once more, and join you in the dance of Life.

¹Thurston, Nancy, Big Topics at Midnight, page xviii

²Ann would love to share the details about these events at another time…