Category: Spirituality

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Big Topics at Midnight: Ten Years Later

Tuesday, August 30, was the 10th 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,

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey

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.

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey

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.

 

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A Vision Realized: The Critical Step of Stopping

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

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

by Khara Scott-Bey

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

I wasn’t sure it was possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sit with that.

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

Sit with that.

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

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

Sit with that.

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

Sit with that.

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

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

Sit with that.

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

Sit with that.

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

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

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

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A Vision Realized: Journey to a Vision

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

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

Khara Scott-Bey*

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

My quest was to find answers to these questions.

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

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

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

I stayed to see for myself.

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

I stayed to see for myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**From Wisdom & Money’s Mission statement.

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Tongues of Fire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Had I survived racism?” 2

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

I am not speaking abstractly.

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

Was it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May it be so.

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

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

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

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

 

 

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My Will and Testament

Dad and Paul June 2001

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 23rd Psalm is sung by Bobby McFerrin and dedicated to his Mother.

Peace be with you all.

*based on a Tagore poem

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Reaching for the Right Sword

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Gift We Bring to Each Moment

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

Me too. It’s been quite a journey:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is work only I can do.

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

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

Are you on this journey too? Welcome!

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Blazing New Trails: Holding a Dream until it Manifests

Three decades ago, I was gifted with a dream that would change the course of my life.

Let me be clear. What I dreamed had few details or specific images. Instead, it was an elusive, yet compelling foreshadowing of a particular possibility, a possibility poised and ready to be gifted to the world.

In 1983, Howard and I and our 9-month-old son Paul moved to California. My plan was to get my master’s degree and become a professor of physical therapy. Unbeknownst to me, this was not the plan. Our first Sunday in Palo Alto the three of us went to a small Methodist church near campus and, over the next 9 months, I was exposed to what would become my life’s work. The seed of my dream was planted deep within me.

There was Christian wisdom practice: Starting in January 1984, I was part of a weekly group that met before dawn every Wednesday for 20 minutes of silence, lectio divina (an ancient prayer form of reading a short passage of scripture and deeply pondering the message), and shared reflections. Through those mornings, and occasional retreats together at nearby Mercy Center, the wisdom stream of Christianity took root in the heart of my faith.

There were money and faith practices: A month later, I attended a weekend workshop with church friends put on by Ministry of Money, part of Washington, DC’s Church of the Savior. In those four days, I discovered a Christian path neither conservative nor liberal; one that held the radical wisdom of Jesus’ clarity about the connection between faith, money, and the world as our neighborhood. That weekend, the prophetic stream of Christianity also took root in me as I realized that all of my life, including my money, was part of my walk of faith. A walk alongside my diverse and global human family.

There was the movement that would become Be Present, Inc.: I wouldn’t be officially introduced to Be Present, Inc. for 26 years, but in the world of mystery my path crossed with Be Present’s at Mercy Center. While Be Present incorporated almost decade later, this work had been birthed the previous year before when a thousand Black women and girls gathered for a Black & Female: What is the Reality? conference led by Lillie Allen. One of the first official gatherings of Black women and girls after that conference happened in California, at Mercy Center, around the time I first began retreating there.

I would learn later that this organization-to-be, and the Be Present Empowerment Model at its core, was the practice and the community I needed to live into my dream.

Fast forward to 2002. My few grey hairs of the 29-year-old me became a solidly salt-and-pepper grey at 50. Paul was in college, Laura in High School. I was a mess in the middle of a mess.

I struggled mightily with an organization I’d loved and was intimately part of for almost a decade.  I could physically feel the widening chasm between the powerful programs and people I loved and a growing disconnect between their vision and organizational behavior. Not knowing how to hold a paradox that wide, I thrashed around trying to do something, anything, to turn the tide.

At the same time, my father died and I inherited money. The walk of wealth and faith thus became mine. I needed help to navigate the process, and within a few months I’d found the perfect two places of support.

I stepped into Be Present, Inc.: I knew I needed more skills and mentoring to walk this transformation of spirit in a world filled with injustice (some of which was also caught, seen and unseen, within me). The Black women and girls I’d mystically met so long ago had expanded to include a wide diversity of people working collaboratively together. Within Be Present, I experienced an organization consistently operating within their vision and mission and skillfully using and offering training in the Be Present Empowerment Model to open up hot topics in a way that could nurture the blooming of personal and societal transformation.

I stepped into Wisdom & Money (then called Harvest Time, granddaughter of Ministry of Money): The Spirit had ignited this fledgling ministry just as Howard and I stepped into it, together.  We danced our way into a community of folks engaging with money as a doorway of spiritual transformation at the personal, communal and systemic levels. Again, it was, indeed, a hot door!

The dream buried deep within me in 1984 was manifesting in 2002. The intersection I’d seen in my dream – faith, rooted deeply in the wisdom and prophetic strands of Christianity, the movement of money, and equitable partnerships across diversity – had taken root and formed a bud. The collaboration between Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money deepened in ­­­2007 when it became clear that Wisdom & Money needed the model to navigate the hot door of money and faith in the midst of our diverse and unjust world.

Next week, the ongoing partnership between Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money – with me in the middle of both organizations – will bloom even brighter.

Now completely grey and 64, I will be flying with my daughter Laura to Atlanta for an event called Trailblazing Boards of Director’s Meeting and a training on Sustaining a Practice of Community-Engaged, Transformative Philanthropy. There, both Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money will take the next creative steps of deepening our partnership by coming together for a board meeting and training, working collaboratively together every step of the way.

Here I am. Living a dream that has grown far beyond anything I could ask or imagine. Partnership across difference, a Black-led diverse organization of leaders and a primarily white, wealthy, Christian organization, working together to support transformation from the personal to the global.

It is not just possible, it is happening. It is happening right now.

Drawings by Khara Scott-Bey

This is the first in a blog series Blazing New Trails. Since this trail is one that has unfolded so slowly, it has taken time to process and find words to describe that this has been and what I see. I’m slowly learning, such is the pace required for transformation trails.

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All I want for Christmas: Listening

All I want for Christmas … is to listen to you open-heartedly and to be listened to in the same way.

I’m playing a little here, singing a tune in the background, but wanting You for Christmas means, among other things, really listening to you and you to me.

Left to my own devices, I’m not always good at listening. I sometimes listen while also drifting in my own imagination, continuing to ponder some detail that has my interest. Or I’m not fully interested in what you are talking about, so I silently tune you out. Or I have different opinions about what you “should” think or do, and mentally build my case. Inevitably, in these half-listening moments, I miss the gift of you, and I get lost in the dross of my own opinions, assumptions and judgments.

I know better. And yet the listening guidelines I want to use aren’t the ones I learned in Sunday School: Be nice. Always nod and show I’m interested in what your saying by my body language. Don’t interrupt. Keep all of my focus on you.

This Christmas I’ve come up with a new set of rules that hold keys for the quality of listening I’m longing for.

Don’t act like you are listening. Over the years, I’ve perfected the nod and regular little affirming sounds to show that I am listening. I’ve realized that these affirming little gestures have absolutely no relationship to actually listening. I want to stop “acting like” I’m listening and start actually doing it.

Don’t just listen to you. Also listen to myself.  Conscious listening comes from listening simultaneously in two directions at once—to you and to the thoughts in my own head. When I listen to someone else, my thoughts naturally keep moving. The trouble begins when something you say reminds me of something in my past—something that feels similar to a story I’ve heard before or something I’ve learned when I was in “that situation.” Other times I quit listening because I feel your repeating what you’ve said a million times before. I must know what I am thinking, not to merely dive headfirst into my own ideas and judgments but in order to consciously step outside my reminiscing and back inside of actually listening. To you.

It is critical that I differentiate between past events and my assumptions. Being unconscious of that difference inevitably distorts what I am hearing into a mish mash of you and me.

Don’t put myself in your shoes. There is no way I can step cleanly into your shoes and not have them filled with assumptions that may or may not be true. Relationships are best lived when each of us wears our own shoes, or as my friend Rose puts it, where each of us stays on our own yoga mat.

Interrupt. Of course, I’m not talking about interrupting so I can tell you what I’ve crafted in my mind while you were talking. That only shows I wasn’t listening in the first place. On the other hand, the spiritual practice of holy interrupting is used when I am so caught on something in my mind and can no longer listen to you.

I don’t want to pretend I’m listening when I can’t. That is a lie. If I really want to hear what you are saying, though, and I can’t, the only respectful thing to do is to interrupt and ask that you wait to continue until I can listen again.

Interrupting isn’t the goal, of course. Ideally, if I notice my thoughts wandering off, I return to listening to you. But sometimes I can’t do that. And then I must interrupt.

While it can be embarrassingly easy for me to interrupt when I impatiently want to share my ideas, it is very hard to admit when I’m mentally caught and can’t listen. The first interrupting is rude (even though it can feel like an exciting conversation); the second is very respectful (even though it can feel rude).

Sometimes just speaking out loud is enough to bring me back to being able to listen to you. Sometimes I need to speak just a little to bring me back. Unfortunately, sometimes I have to fight my embarrassment and take more time to get over my listening roadblock. My goal is always to return to listening to you. Really listening.

It’s a precious gift to listen and to be listened to.

Listening to others in a present and conscious state is the second realm of the Be Present Empowerment Model®: Nestled between knowing myself outside the distress of oppression and building effective relationships and sustaining true alliances. None of these are easy for me, yet they hold the key for me to receive all the gift all of myself and to build strong, sustainable relationships both with you and with my global family. When I truly listen, I am participating in the change I want to see in the world.

This Christmas, I really want to listen. To you. And to me. Because all I want for Christmas is you and me, together.

 

This blog is in honor of my mother, Mary Sue Tipps Mathys, who died 32 years ago on this night, as the Solstice drew to a close and the light began its return. She was, among many other things, an amazing listener.

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The Gospel According to Wild Women: Advent

This is the holiday season—Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa—many different celebrations for many different folks. For me, this season is Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas; a perfect time to proclaim the story of this season that has settled in my heart and bones.

This may be the season where Christmas songs jangle along at every store, but it is more rightly the season of a bold and wild woman.

Mary was no passive teenager.  She listened to the outrageous invitation by an angel, who then waited with bated breath for her answer.

She considered carefully the request to bear the infant Jesus, one knit of a pure union of the flesh and blood of a human and the breath and spark of the Spirit of God. Divine alchemy for all of creation.

Mary decided she was willing to break laws and protocol, risking shame and banishment.  Her YES took the courage of a powerful and grounded young woman, wise and courageous beyond her years.

Mary was grateful that the Angel sent her to a woman who could understand the magnitude of the earthquake that shook her life.  Someone else who recently had her own life turned upside down by an untimely pregnancy; Cousin Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, pregnant in her advanced years, knew and understood.  As soon as Mary arrived in her home, without saying a word, Elizabeth and the baby in her womb leaped with joy.

Mary, with the divine Word in her belly, preached the Good News.  Her words proclaimed a new way of ordering life on earth, a way that would bring a depth of vitality for everyone. But to those who were invested in things staying the same, those who wanted to hold on to their own power, her words would be heard as bad news.

These were dangerous words.  Traitorous words.  Mary, filled with rejoicing, breaks into her prophetic song:

God has shown strength;
scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
Bringing down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifting up the lowly;
filling the hungry with good things,
and sending the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)

Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months before she returned to Joseph, a man also visited by angels and bold enough to say YES.  Tongues wagged around town at this scandalous couple.

Thirty-three years ago, I walked through advent with a pregnant belly, awaiting the birth of my daughter. She was filled to the brim with Spirit, one so fresh from heaven. At the same time, her unique body, just right for this world, was being knitted, one cell at a time safe under my heart.

While my belly stretched, she was preparing for her birth into this world that would be her home. An Earth so beautiful and varied beyond imagining: Land and sea. Light and dark. Insects and elephants. Neighbors nearby and around the globe.

I was excited to experience life alongside her curious eyes.

But more was required of me, mother of this child.

I knew that her body would be seen through the eyes of a culture that had expectations and assigned relative “value” based on details of her precious body – including the color of her skin and her gender. From my own experience, I also knew that shards of this crazy cultural injustice would weasel their way into her bones, tempting her to believe the lies.

Mary and her child Jesus of so long ago, pointed the way. Rejoice. Dance in God’s mercy. Love your neighbor. As yourself. Always remember the presence of God in our world and in each other. Live in the Kingdom of God, now, right here on earth as one part of the family of creation.

Advent: the season of wild women willing to take bold risks to carry the seeds of New Life.