Cosmic Cowgirl

UranusIt’s a cowgirl’s dream—mine anyway. Sitting high in the saddle, one hand holding on for dear life while the other is waving about in glee.

This is no ordinary horse I am riding. It is the planet Uranus. The far-out planet in our galaxy with a name that sounds like potty-humor but energetically represents cosmic revolutionary energy.

No wonder I have to work so hard to stay in the saddle.

The stars and meteors might scare some cowgirls, but I feel like I’m in paradise. Speeding through the Milky Way in the midst of a universe wider than my imagination, I can see the whole shebang: The shimmering possibilities. The horrifying consequences of human greed for the last few hundred years. I can see it all written on the surface of that fragile island, our earthly home.

I ride through outer space and inner space at the same moment. Bucking over bright Sirius heading toward Orion, then walking down Halsey Street admiring the outrageous pink and purple of the blooming azaleas.

It’s not easy to live galloping through the universe and walking on earth in the same instant—caring passionately about cosmic revolution and personal transformation with each step.Cowgirl

The thought of sitting in a “real” saddle makes my hips ache. Roller coasters or speeding cars terrify me. While I may be a scaredy-cat who likes physical comfort, this time I ride through the cosmos with ease.

How about you?

Are you a wilder explorer than folks around you would ever imagine? Do you ride high in the saddle? What are you discovering? Do you like to traipse around in two different places at the same time?

Life is too short not to take our own personal adventures. Yippee-ti-yie-yay.

I like to play and work my way around the big topics. That’s why I had to include myself in my book–Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself.

Deep Diving

I come alive when diving right into the middle of topics my father told me to avoid—money, race, religion, gender and politics.

BullNot interested in locking horns or intellectual analysis, I want partners who seek root-level transformation—from personal to global. I am captivated by sharing and listening to a wide variety of personal stories and experiences within diverse groups as these conversations can shift assumptions and misinformation—the things that keep us separated—in order for us to move forward equitably, together.

Since I was a girl, I’ve turned to the written word as my favorite way to explore both the edges of life and my own experiences. During the seven years I wrote and rewrote Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself I simultaneously honed my writing skills and dove into my own stories of sleep and waking up. It was a magical process.

I revel in the dance of writing and deep diving. The best way for me to begin a writingDeep diving roots day is to wake before the sun rises with a brilliant first sentence, followed by a flood of ideas for a new writing. While noticing all that I hadn’t noticed growing up isn’t always fun, I savor the sight of expanded vistas that emerge as I begin to see my life as one part of a multigenerational, global human family in the midst of our diverse, earthly home. And then return to my desk to write about what I see.

In addition to writing and poking into the nooks and corners of my life, I also delight in hosting “big conversations” where groups of people share longings and experiences of living in ways that bring our faith and values right into the middle of our deeply divided world. One particularly juicy topic I enjoy exploring is how money flows in our lives, in the community and in the world and how to continue to bring our engagement with that financial flow into deeper alignment with our values.

Waking up to the paradoxes within and in the world around me is sometimes uncomfortable and often requires me to change my behavior. Yet this is the holy work of spiritual transformation, both personally and in our world. It is pure grace to bring my deep diving faith-in-action to this moment in history.

This is what makes me feel alive from my head to my toes. What makes you tingle with excitement for yourself and the world?

Who Am I? Two Versions

It all depends on how you want to tell the story. There are always multiple perspectives, multiple doorways into the tale.

I often play with my bio. With a website, Linkedin, Facebook, blog (to name a few) there are so many opportunities for tweaking it. But I also have the bio that plays in my mind in the worst of times when all of life seems dreary and its counter point that plays in the best of times when I feel like I’m on the top of the world.

Here are two versions:

Dramatic Bleakest Bio
 NancyNancy M. Thurston stands on the battlefield being pummeled from all sides—her own self-critical inner voice, a culture gone awry and steeped in injustice, and judgment from many in the social change movement who continue to see her (white skinned and wealthy) as merely the “oppressor.”  She wants to be understanding and responsible, always moving forward. In her zest for niceness, she doesn’t take notice and stop those moments when she or others are being disrespectful and caught in injustice and status quo inequities.  She means well.

Exuberant Brightest Bio
NancyNancy M. Thurston walks right into the middle of the paradox of herself and the world and comes out the other side still standing—joyful and holding hands with a diverse community of people, trees, animals, stars and rocks. She is committed to noticing disrespect in her actions and in her interactions, knowing that it takes justice in EVERY moment to create a just world.

I know I am a mixed bag, just like all of you. But as I step into 2015 I want to soften the inner critical commentary about myself and play a bit more with the wild and bright parts.

How about you?

What “bios” are written on the walls of your brain? Which ones do you want to wash away in the new year?

Thank you so much for reading. You might notice that I don’t have a space for comments, but I’d love to have conversation about what’s written here. If you’re so inspired, feel free to email me via the email address on the bottom of each page of my website.

What Do You Do? (Take 2)

postoffice boxesI’ve always hated the question, “What do you do?” So rarely could I fit into the little boxes of traditional jobs that I feared were the only acceptable answers.

And here I am in a month’s long quest to answer that very question for myself. At sixty, however, I am willing to create my own little boxes (or circles or triangles or blobs).

Today’s answer is that I am a Diversity Partnerologist. In other words, I am a specialist in the science or knowledge of forming sustainable partnerships across diversity. It is a field filled with experiments, stretching past the boundaries of good old American independence grounded in the values and perspective of Euro-American patriarchy. There are gems and wisdom to be found when everyone’s wisdom is heard as together we understand, define and envision ways to work together to attain common goals.

In the last year, I’ve been playing with different responses when someone asked what I did. Here are two of my favorites:

Big Topics Wrangler—I was born in Texas, after all. I like to “round up, herd and take charge of” conversations and actions around the drove of big topics that seem to roam—and sometimes stampede—freely today’s world.

Conversational Catalyst—I place myself in the middle of hot topic conversations where the chemistry of conversation has too long been reactive and divisive, in order to precipitate the possibility of transformation and healing—without being personally damaged in the process.

That’s me, for today anyway. What do you do?

Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey
Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey

I shouldn’t be surprised to discover when I came to post this blog that this is the second time I’ve written here of  this question that has haunted me most of my adult life. it is fascinating to see how it keeps moving, clarifying, deepening.

Let Your Heart Break #3: Joy

Paul and LaurenRight in the middle of a blog series about death, I am heading into a wedding. It feels as if I should complete my series before I turn in another direction. But life doesn’t work like that.

Death and birth. Crumbling and resurrection. Joy and sorrow. They weave in and out of each other on a daily basis. Life requires flexibility of the soul.

This isn’t just any wedding. This is the wedding of a child who was born into our family almost thirty-two years ago. Howard and I were twenty-eight years old when we brought him home for the first time, wondering, “What are we supposed to do now?”

Not sure we ever answered that question, but as the mother of both Paul and Laura, his sister born three years later, I learned about life and love, creativity and joy. On days when I struggled to get through a particularly exhausting parenting day, older friends would remind me to savor every moment, because childhood flies by. Thurston family 1986

It did.

And Paul is about to say, “I do.”

His fiancée, Lauren Holmgren, is an amazing woman. She has an inner light, clarity and strength rooted deep within her, and the two of them bring out the best in each other.

Of course, marriage is not all joy and delight. It is part of life, with all of its ups and downs, joys and sorrows. The daily-ness of marriage—or partnership for those still excluded from marriage—gives us the perfect place to work out all of our assumptions, rough edges and quirks. Some days are easier than others.

I am in the transition from spinning with all the details that need to be done toward savoring each moment. It’s sometimes hard to keep the bigger picture in mind—Paul and Lauren are getting Married!—when my calendar is full, my mind is trying to come to grips with Robin Williams’ suicide and my heart is aching with Michael Browns violent death in Ferguson, Missouri.

But that is Life.

And life is too precious not to take time to celebrate. I invite you to tip your glass in honor of Paul and Lauren, and all heart-filled, joyful events that are happening right now.

This blog is third in the series Let Your Heart Break…here about breaking open in joy.

Photograph of Paul and Lauren taken by Lisa Bogan.

Money and Transformation: Diversity

Fundraising. Money. Economics.

Strange topics for me. I hovered near the bottom of the sales list every year when my Girl Scout Troop sold cookies. I hated my economics class in college. Today, I struggle to keep putting myself out there to market my book, Big Topics at Midnight.

Nevertheless, most of my life has circled around economics, especially fundraising. I am passionate about spiritual transformation, global justice and partnership across our differences, and that journey has lead me directly into money.

Money that I invest, spend or give to organizations working in these areas close to my heart. And money that I invite other to give in support of those organizations.

Last week I signed up for yet another fundraising committee.

Did I mention that I don’t really like fundraising?

This past January, I began my third Be Present, Inc. national 18-month training institute. For my first training, which started in 2003, I was a participant soaking up everything I could learn. Though initially I had a difficult time understanding all that was going on in the room, I knew that something was happening that I’d never seen before. I wanted to learn how to know who I was outside of the distress of anything that stopped me from fully participating in relationships/partnerships with everyone from my husband, Howard, to my grown kids, to friends, and to my work in organizations dear to my heart. I wanted to know how to really listen with my full self. And I deeply desired to be in partnerships that sustained and grew even in the midst of conflict across our many historical divides.*

That training was one of the most important of my life, and was part of the nudge to dive into the writing of Big Topics at Midnight.

In my second training, Be Present at the Table: Effecting Sustainable Change in Philanthropy, and this third one, The National Training Institute on Race, Gender, Power and Class, I have been on the leadership team.

Leron and AndrewMany organizations talk about the importance of diversity in their programs, but Be Present makes sure this actually happens. Too often, money stops diversity in its tracks: In order to attend, you must either pay the fee or apply for one of a few scholarships.

At Be Present trainings, no one is turned away due to lack of funds. Registration fees are on a sliding scale and support is offered for individuals to creatively raise money to cover these costs.

Stopping there would allow a few more people to attend, but the trainings would remain minimally diverse.

However, in addition to personal fundraising, all of the participants fundraise. That means that everyone, including people like me who have enough funds to easily pay our own way, works together to make sure that all of the registration fees are covered at a level that covers the site/training and organizational leadership costs.

Normally, folks like me are exempt from this fundraising process, leaving the responsibility for ensuring a diverse Trainingtraining on the laps of people with limited economic resources.

Be Present understands that every one of us benefits with the full diversity of people in our trainings. Therefore, we work together to make sure that happens.

This is what is required for trainings and conferences to embody a new paradigm of justice and inclusivity.

No mattTraining 2er how often I try to turn away from working the money, my commitment to waking up to the big topics and experimenting with keeping my values in line with behavior keeps bringing me back to the money. And fundraising.

 

*Be Present Empowerment Model

 

Small Topics at Midnight: Behind and Under

Tomato plant grows in compost bin
Tomato plant grows from compost bin

Compost worked deep within the field.

A young girl standing tall on top of a 1954 Chevy.

Little videos have their own stories to tell. Next year’s harvest depends on rich compost today. A book cover in 2012 requires a snapshot taken over fifty years earlier.

Past and future, light and dark—paradoxes meet in the middle.

Big Topics as Compost and Cover Stories: Behind the Scenes are out in the light of day on my website and You Tube Channel.

nancy-and-sky
Nancy and West Texas sky

Rising Up With a Little Kick-Ass Help

Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey
Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey

I know Nancy signed her name to this blog, but mind you she wouldn’t be speaking today if it wasn’t for me—Hectate. I’ve been at her side all her life, but she didn’t notice me.  She was sweet, nice and very helpful.

A few years ago I took hold of her ovaries, woke her up and she’s been rising every since.

Let me introduce myself. Straight-laced as Nancy was, she always had her little flare so she messed with my real name. When she first noticed me, she thought I was Hestia, the goddess of the home and the sacred fires. Nope. I was Hecate, wild goddess of crossroads like birth and death—those big paradoxes that make most humans quake in their boots. As much as her Texas roots have embarrassed Nancy, she was clear that I was the sort of strong-willed woman she recognized, like Sue Tipps Mathys, her native Texan mother. And, good as she is with words, she’s a lousy speller. My Greek name is Hecate. Nancy called me “Hectate.”

That works for me. All I wanted to do was to wake up good girl Nancy, light the flame of her heart and send her strong and clear into the world. Women have been on the sidelines for far too long. These midnight times for our Earth—the planet, people and creatures—are hopeless without the rising of feminine wisdom. Nancy’s always had that, but it was tamed and flimsy.

I like women who stand up and take charge. Women who lasso the lies of our culture and fan the flames of clarity. You women have been fed a pack of lies that now bounce around in your head. Quit hating your body, trying to fit into an airbrushed ideal. Life is too short and you are too beautiful.

Start thinking with your heart and your gut. All of that good head learning you got in school is still there, but balance it with your body’s smarts. Quit limping around with just part of your clarity.

Life isn’t a forced march. Quit trying to do everything all at once. Listen for what is yours to do next, then do it.  Simple as pie.

Smash any box that tries to contain you or your thinking. Life is always bigger, broader, deeper. Keep the boundary of your heart soft and subtle so it can grow and grow and grow.

Remember what we are all here for—to live justly, joyfully and equitably—to build a world for ourselves today and generations yet to come. Keep your focus there.

Let your emotions flow. Anger. Delight. Sadness. Joy. Grief. Disappointment. They all have something to tell you. Ride their waves; dive deeply underneath to see the treasures they hold. Then let them go and act from the wisdom they gave you.

Pay attention. Quit being disrespectful in your words and stop tolerating disrespect from others. Check out your assumptions.  Honor yourself and the others enough to treat everyone with respect.

Drop those scales over your eyes. Your experience isn’t everyone’s experience. Jump outside your own skin regularly and listen carefully. We can learn from the world’s diversity.

Be too much. Too loud. Too excited. We need to be respectful of those around us, but holding it in all the time leads to a constipated life.

Know who you are—the stuff you love about yourself—and do well. Your questions. Your burps. Your “good” and “bad” habits. Wrap your arms around the whole shebang. Then there is no need to be reactive or offended when someone says something about you. Either it is true or not true. You know. Quit quaking in your boots.

Sometimes you say or do something that looks like the messed up behavior in our crumbling world. We have millennium of crazy behaviors around stuff like money, skin color, genitalia, brain smarts and religion that has seeped into us all. When you get caught, notice it then change. When it just looks familiar to that smelly stuff, but isn’t, know the difference and keep moving forward.

Maybe you weren’t as far gone as Nancy was. Either way, I hope my little tidbits were helpful.

Now I’ll let Nancy say a few words.

Hectate came and never left. In my wildest imagination, I’ve always wanted to stand with billions rising for justice. Hectate stepped in and used her kick-ass ways to teach me how to do that in every cell in my body. Thank you, Hectate.

I am grateful to Hedgebrook for posting this blog on their website in February 2014. I love their byline– “Hedgebrook supports visionary women writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come.” It is what our world needs now.

Eight-Eyed Steam Girl—That’s Me

I’ve already come out of the closet as someone who listens for the voices of my ancestors, the moon, rocks and water, and then writes down what I hear. So I suspect you won’t be surprised to find out that I take dictation from other voices, too.

The process of listening for truths that lie within and underneath historical facts has taught me to value a different, feminine kind of knowing—one that can’t be documented or diagrammed or proved. One that doesn’t need to be. What a relief! What a joy!

In the middle of a hot August week, I decided to apply this process to myself and listen for what might be underneath the facts and figures of my own life.

I didn’t have to wait long. Silenced parts of myself bubbled right up in the language of myth.

Lordy, here we go again. I squirmed in my chair, thinking of all my laundry that really needed to be washed right now, and the dishes …

But since I’d been here before, this time I knew what to do:

Ignore my distracting chore list.

Shut up my protesting that this was crazy.

Lie down on my couch.

Listen.

Then dash to my computer and begin to write.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, a wild girl was born onto this planet. She was made of flesh and blood all right, but she was also made of fire and water.

I laughed. Maybe blasting through life with the power of a steam locomotive wasn’t the worst thing in the world. My myth continued.

Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey
Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey

Men drilled through the earth’s crust, through the hard shale and into the gas-filled rock. Black oil and bubbly gas burst through the earth’s surface, into the wild girl’s feet. Scorching, fiery black gold, red blood and shimmering gas bursting with the power of the Spirit shot through her from toe to head.

The Beverly Hillbillies TV show of my childhood had called oil “Texas tea,” and here it was flowing right through me. While I’d resisted my Texan origins in my fact-based life, in this story, being born on Texas soil sounded mighty fine. No wonder I’d struggled with feeling boiling mad—the miracle was that I hadn’t burnt to a crisp.

Luckily, however, as the earth’s flaming blood pumped into her veins, cool water fell into her eyes from the heavens above. This same water once filled the ancient seas. These rains filled her body, mixing with the earth’s oily blood in her veins. It was not a gentle mixing as steam poured out of her ears.

Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to soaking in the tub when I need to center myself. Or part of the reason Community Wholeness Venture’s foot washing ritual was so powerful for me. And why I loved the process of anointing the land with a different sort of oil and imagined it combining with the living water of Jesus.

As my myth unfolded, so did the extraordinary qualities of my steam girl self—I had eight eyes and was born riding high in my little red boat.

While she loves her own legend, this steamy, many-eyed girl wants to know about you. Not the boring resume stuff. Something juicy, too real for mere facts. A good story, a deep myth.

You think you don’t have one?

Nonsense.

Tell your skeptical mind to go outside to play and start listening.

Have your pen and notebook or keyboard ready, and hold on. It’s quite a ride to see yourself this way.

You just might discover some parts of yourself that you’ve tried so hard to change are the very parts that give you character. Within myth, quirks and foibles spice up life rather than spoil it.

As you explore, don’t forget to dive deeply into the mystery that is you. Let the fun begin.

I tell more of her/my fantastical story in Big Topics at Midnight. Or, if you want to  other tasty morsels about this wild ride of waking up and more deeply engaging in life, explore, poke around my website. She’ll be there, along with Hectate and some ancestors showing up with words, videos and pictures.

 

 

Roots and Writing

Roots bone and BTMIt matters where my words take root.

I will write anywhere inspiration hits—on a street corner, in the bathroom or while riding (not driving) in a car. I regularly slip off to Alivar Coffeehouse a few blocks away to do a bit of editing or play with an idea. But when I’m writing about big topics dear to my heart, I need a fertile place where my words can take root.

Big Topics at Midnight was born on the road between Portland Library’s Writing Room, Suena’s Coffee Shop and my home desk. But she took root for six years in a bedroom-turned-writing-studio within Rosegate Condominium #18, where blue walls are covered with art and photographs, my laptop perches on a Value Village desk, a candle flickers at my side and the courtyard’s tulip magnolia moves gently in the wind outside my window.

When I first started writing, I was part of a small group of friends scattered across the country who dreamed about bold experiments in community and economic justice. One of those ideas manifested in the co-ownership of Condo #18 as a place of “Hospice-tality.”

Hospice-tality. Hospice and Hospitality. A welcoming condo that intentionally holds places/times of death, either physical dying or, more often, the crumbling of relationships, dreams, habits and assumptions—in a container of love and community. Jan came to calm her anxiety while simultaneously looking a job. Sally came after a beloved relationship shattered. Nothing like grief to water our souls—and my words—and send our roots down deep.

Our group’s dreams for justice, healing and community wove their way into the pages of Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself. As I dove into my past, I realized that some of my cherished memories needed to be grieved and buried.

For example, my pride in Midland High School’s ease of integration crashed when I realized that it had taken fourteen years and the threat of a federal lawsuit before the community obeyed Brown vs. Board of Education’s ruling. In addition, I was horrified to realize that the way desegregation was implemented abruptly closed Carver High School, robbing the black community of a beloved gathering place and bringing an end to decades of school traditions. Meanwhile, my historically white school’s “Midland Bulldogs” remained strong and vibrant. Condo 18 held me while I ranted at the system and mourned all I hadn’t noticed for so long.

In Condo 18, with pen and paper, I also awoke to a lifelong distrust of my innate feminine, intuitive wisdom and how I, along with much of America, had exalted an intellectual, strategic masculine approach as “the best way to do things.”  I dusted off these newly discovered roots and began to notice how they had grounded my work even before I noticed them.

Sitting at the computer looking out my office window, I struggled with the ways that “Money [had] Made Howard [and me] Stupid.”* Waking up to life as it was around class, gender and race disoriented me. I was grateful to be writing in Condo 18, a community space born from a shared commitment, one created to align heart and actions.

Including actions around economics. Money, I’d discovered, sometimes had prickly and convoluted roots.

Money was part of the rich soil of the Condo 18 experiment, as we sought to grow a new economic paradigm. Each of us who stepped into the experiment donated 10% of our savings, knowing that we would be equal owners even though our invested amounts were vastly different. Extra money was donated to other organizations or people doing exciting new projects rooted in economic justice. When it is time to sell Condo 18, the money will flow out into the world in some creative way.

From outside my window, the tulip magnolia waves to me. I wave back.  She’s doing her work and I’m doing mine. I sit alone at the computer to write, but even here my solitude is held in community. In addition to the co-owners, members of my creative community have also filled my writing studio: Jen Violi, content editor/friend/word genius extraordinaire, Khara Scott-Bey, intuitive illustrator who drew the perfect image for each chapter and Ann Eames, copy editor/master at putting my spelling, grammar and tense quirks into finished words. My writing studio is full even when I am alone.

Just as Condo 18 itself pushes the edges of the cultural notion of independent ownership, my book doesn’t fit into “normal” categories either. It is a Social Change Memoir. Not pushing-the-blocks-around sort of social change, but root level change of the personal, institutional, national and global. Not just my memoir, but also the personal stories of many of my ancestors, the moon, Hectate and the Eight-eyed Steam Girl. Condo 18 and Big Topics at Midnight shoot down roots that refuse to be contained.

Big Topics. Big Change. Big awakenings. Writing Big Topics at Midnight demanded Big support. When the winds blew and threatened to knock me down, my roots held me firm.

I return to my desk, put my hands on the keyboard, plant my feet on the wooden floor and let the words flow. Condo 18 is the ground that supports my writing journey.

It matters where my words take root, and this is ground I can trust.

* A chapter in my book Big Topics at Midnight, page 241.