Big Topics at Midnight

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

April 25, 2020

Reopening to New Life: A Birthday Letter from the Heart

April 25, 2020

My Dear Danny,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Globally, we have been shaken to the core.

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

I hope the answer to that is never.

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

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

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

We hold these truths to be self-evident,

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is a wonderful world to explore. Happy Birthday.

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

I love you, Gammie

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

June 11, 2019December 18, 2019

Blazing New Trails: Why Blaze Together?

11 Juneau, Alaska May 2015 This is my fourth blog about Blazing New Trails, specifically about a 15-year partnership between Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money and our most recent step deeper into our work together – the joint board meeting last February. At least, like the other three, it was supposed to be about the joint board meeting. Instead, all four are about the journey to get us ready for the meeting. I’ve been trying to take the direct path in to write about our week together, but, try as I might, this trail isn’t a direct one.

Trails of transformation, trails of effective and sustainable partnership, trails powerful enough to support a shift in consciousness are rarely straight. Or fast. And they aren’t simple to tame into mere words.

Organizations come together all the time, partnering for different reasons. Why is it path 5 that this particular partnership is cutting a uniquely bold trail, passing through my heart and the heart of our world? What does each organization bring that is multiplied and strengthened when we work together? While still continuing the work of each individual organization, what new is emerging in the this growing partnership?

Both Wisdom & Money and Be Present, Inc. are seeking root level change. Not charity, not even policy change, but a change of consciousness beginning with the individual and continuing through the community, organizations and systems. Both organizations are committed to living the same justice and transformation—personally and within the organizational structure—that we seek in our programs. Both are committed to slowing down and taking the time to be curious when something emerges that feels out of alignment, and to compassionately and consistently support each other in our movement.

This is a demanding process. It requires gargantuan patience and an ability to see the true Spirit of each other and ourselves no matter what behavior has emerged in the moment. All aspects of our work seek movement toward freedom, justice, equality and spiritual transformation.

That commitment to continual alignment of the interior and the external, the personal and the global, the organizational and the programmatic is the only way I know that we can move together toward manifesting the world we long for. This is no pipe dream about what might happen far off in the future. It is already happening in both organizations and within friends and partners in this work. However, it doesn’t stop there. As both individuals and these two organizations continue to work in widening circles—the families, communities, organizations and systems where we live our lives—the change ripples out farther than I can imagine.

This sort of work that requires both waking up to and seeing where behaviors too Banyon tree and bone with book often deemed normal and right in our culture but are actually disrespectful and unjust is very hard to do alone. That is why I stepped into Wisdom & Money and Be Present, Inc. seventeen years ago. And why I stayed. Since my awakening in my late20s (the topic of my book Big Topics at Midnight) I’ve been searching for partners committed to walking this path. It hasn’t been an easy search, but I knew I’d found strong partners in these two organizations.

Organizations that also recognized each other as partners.

Slowly over the last 15 years, these two organizations have taken one step after another to support each other, learn from each other and, last February, to join together for the Trailblazing Joint Board of Directors meeting.

It has taken me months longer than I expected to find words for the power of the growing partnership of Be Present and Wisdom & Money. My next blog in this series will look at the Trailblazing Board meeting and our current glimpse of the future of our work together.

October 25, 2017December 18, 2019

From “Shut Up and Follow” to “Step Up and Lead”

There was a voice in my head that told me to shut up and follow. It was finally loud enough that I took notice when, during a cross-class Bible study on Jesus, Faith and Money, it bellowed inside me, “Why do you—a white, wealthy woman—think anyone could benefit from your ‘privileged’ perspective?” I shut up.

There are lots of variations on this theme within the social justice movement. Men need to shut up and follow. White men in particular. And wealthy folks.

There is a certain logic in this thinking. For 6,000 years, patriarchy has upheld men and the masculine as ideal, while deeming women and the feminine as subservient. The whole concept of whiteness was conjured up around 1790 to give power to people with light colored, “white” skin (as long as they weren’t southern Italian or Irish or Jewish). The current demand by some in the social justice movement toward those with cultural power and access to shut up and follow, many would assert, is merely a desperately needed rebalancing.

But, for me, this logic breaks down quickly. At this moment of deep divides, both ancestral and current, we need everyone to stand up and step into the fullness of their leadership. The only way out of this mess is through the full, creative thinking and perspective of all of us.

That does not, however, mean that people like me can lead, unconscious of our assumptions of the “right” (i.e. “white cultural”) way of taking charge.

Collaborative leadership that includes everyone demands that each of us takes a level of personal responsibility that is rare in our culture. This requires a process of unlearning and learning anew that requires conscious awareness of ourselves, and sharpening our skills for working collectively within diverse partnerships.

I wrote Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Gender, Power and Class because I understood two things. First, my family’s white skin let us settle into a white-centered view of the world without any conscious awareness of that privilege. In the writing, I sorted through assumptions and perspectives to see what things were true, what things held only part of the truth and what was completely false and out of alignment with my values. Second, I realized that I’d been almost exclusively raised with the white male perspective of history and current events.

The “silencing myself ah-ha” in the middle of my Bible Study class led me to the work of Be Present, Inc. There I learned a model that has been invaluable in waking up to both the injustice woven into the middle of our culture and into the edges of my mind.

This model, called the Be Present Empowerment Model, was birthed through the leadership of Black Women with a vision for a world not constrained to the injustices they had experienced but rather a vision of the playground of life where all are welcome to bring our full, creative selves.

Here are a few of my learnings along the path from “shut up” to “step up.”

I need to take the risk to step in to conversations with as much integrity and justice as I can muster, and the humility to admit it and change when I stumble.

I need to release my assumptions that the world has worked for everyone the same way it worked for me, and really listen with openness to other’s experiences.

I need to slow-down awkward moments in my interactions so I can take responsibility to know what is true about me—even when I don’t like what I see—and what is an inaccurate assumption.

In conversation, I need to listen to myself—those powerful inner voices—to see when I am listening more to myself than to the other person and when my mind begins to shape what I assume I am hearing.

And I need to show up with my sight as one sight among many. We need to hear the beautiful diversity of everyone’s perspective, including mine.

It takes partnership with others for me to “step up” as much ease as possible. Someone to help me remember the goodness of my heart when I stumble. Someone to stop me when my behavior smells like it might be tainted with the very injustice I am working to shift—even when I am in public and embarrassed that I “got caught.” Someone to help me keep my sense of humor.

While “shut-up and follow” might seem logical from one perspective, at this moment in history our world needs all of us to “step up and lead” as one part of the global collective.

This is the 25^th year of Be Present, Inc. In honor of that anniversary, I’ve been pondering my learnings over the 15 years I’ve been part of the network. I’ll be flying to Atlanta the first week of November where I am part of the leadership for Be Present’s National Network Convening and 25^th Anniversary Fundraiser. I invite you to join me in supporting this groundbreaking work by making a donation to Be Present, Inc.

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…

April 24, 2015December 18, 2019

White Supremacist

A viewer answered my YouTube video’s title“What it Means to be White” with a direct answer: “It means to be a white supremacist (racist)!”

In the past, his words would have cut me to the core. As it was, I merely gasped for a moment. Well aware of individual and systemic racism, my emotions would once have boiled at the assumption that I, one who has worked so hard for justice, was a “white supremacist.” Back then, in my offended state, fruitful exploration of his analysis would have been impossible.

I am grateful that I’ve done enough work with racism, mine and the culture’s, to be able to step back and carefully read what he had to say.

There is some truth in his accusation. As a Euro-American, I was born, raised and now live in a culture where white skin is considered normative. The vast majority of those with historical and current power in our culture are white skinned. Therefore, collective societal experience and perception is inevitably biased toward whiteness.

In short, ours is a culture where white is considered supreme, even though few would articulate it so bluntly. This bias has been part of the American and European fabric of life for so long that the belief in the superiority of the white race, especially in matters of intelligence and culture, is woven into the unconsciousness of individuals and institutions.

I’ve had my own journey waking up to racism. Sitting in a diverse group of participants in a Be Present, Inc. Training on the Issues of Race, Gender Power & Class, I listened intently as Cynthia told the story of her mother, Pat.* In 1965, shortly after moving from the west coast to Dallas, Texas, Pat was confused by a “Whites Only” sign in the laundromat window. Not sure why they wanted her to wash only white clothes, she’d entered and proceeded to finish all of her laundry, whites and colors. Later, at home, she’d realized that “white” had referred to her skin color, not her laundry. Listening to Pat’s story forty years later, I realized that I’d never seen signs such as these in any Texas business of my childhood. Blinded by a racism I didn’t even know existed at nine years of age, I’d not seen what was all around me. Waking up to racism happened in stages beginning in my teen years. Since then, every new insight has propelled me to wake up and change.

I am a white supremacist by default, because the culture’s shards of racism are lodged within me deeply as they are within any child of this society. Likewise, I work and live in the midst of diversity where collaboratively we seek justice and equity. We humans are paradoxical by nature. Denial merely pushes the parts deemed shameful into our shadow where they can do the most harm.

I am, however, uninterested in keeping silent about race nor about constraining racial conversations within the dualities of oppressor and oppressed, white supremacist and victim.

Instead, I want radical, root-level transformation. To do that we must build partnerships across our differences: Black and white. Red and yellow. Young and old. Rich and poor. Women and men. We must be able to listen to each other outside of our own personal experiences and our cherished social analysis.

Waking up to the presence of the culture’s injustice within and around us is a demanding process. Our deeply divided world cries out for justice, and the spirit of our response matters in spite of our differences.

How do we best support each other to see and shift behaviors that are out of alignment with our longing for justice and equity? We can no longer ignore disrespectful and unjust behavior. We must take the risk and step into the middle of difficult conversations.

Labels such as “white supremacist” may be short hand and direct, but I prefer the longer road of initiating conversations that open the possibility for long-term personal and social change.

*Story told in my social change memoir Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself

October 20, 2014

What Do You Do? (Take 2)

I’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?

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.

December 12, 2013

A Definitive Guide

Mother told me to define my terms. So here goes …

Big Topics

1. Issues, subjects, matters great in dimensions, bulk or impact, not trendy topics, but those at the heart of the injustice. Melatonin in the skin. Bottom line in the bank. Y chromosome in the cells.

At Midnight

1. The moment between the end of one day and the beginning of a new one.

2. A dark time when most people need or would like to be sleeping.

3. A time when it gets quiet enough to consider the Big Topics, or when one wakes up whether or not one wants to, with Big Topics on the mind.

4. Culturally, midnight marks the moment where the crumbling of the old way meets the unknown—the dawning of a transformed culture or the deepening darkness of environmental and community destruction.

5. Now.

A Texas Girl

1. A young woman born and raised in Texas, the 28^th state in the union.

2. Who I tried not to be within a few years of moving away from Texas in my early 20s.

3. The person I am since I realized I couldn’t run away from my roots.

Wakes Up

1. Emerges from a state of physical sleep, opens one’s eyes and steps into the day.

2. Emerges from a state of slumber or a fog of unawareness induced by assumptions, unconsciousness or limited perspective, and sees other ways of being and embraces bigger picture of life.

3. An action that often leads to more action.

Race, Class, Gender

1. Three Big Topics that have cut through our globe for generations.

2. Topics riddled with assumptions, mostly unconscious and often unhealthy, that must be explored to create listening, learning and partnership building.

And Herself

1. A reflexive form of she

2. In this case, Nancy Ann Mathys Thurston, a fiery, hopeful, determined (also see “stubborn”), loyal, curious woman who has learned she must love all of her parts in order to love others (also see “not as simple as it sounds”).

Mother, you were right. It is good to break things down. I had fun playing with the definition of each part of my book, Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself.

November 14, 2013

Listen Up, Honey-Bunchkins

I was stuck. Defeated. Hiding under Mom’s blue afghan.

Luckily I’d “met” a character that could give me just the shove I needed—Hectate, my own combination of the goddess Hecate and my wise inner guide with an attitude the size of Texas. Hectate, never one to mince words, demanded that I get up and do what was mine to do.

She had me put Helen Reddy’s All Time Greatest Hits in the CD player, crank up the volume and sing at the top of my lungs. Hectate wanted to “write” me a letter, so I sat at my computer, fingers poised over my computer keyboard, took a deep breath and waited. My fear and trembling disappeared as Hectate began to “dictate” this:

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Church night in the South

Listen up, Honey-bunchkins,

Your singing sounds great. How polite of you to close the windows first. Still afraid someone will hear you and Helen singing together? Being loud still too wild for you? …

You belted out “I Am Woman” while you danced with the vacuum cleaner as a young woman back in Boise land. Funny how your wildness came out a bit when you cleaned house.

Welcome home to the fullness of your life as a woman. It took you long enough. Fifty-two years old is no spring chicken. The power of the lie is so strong it is hard for women to break through much younger. Especially strong, intelligent women like you.

Like many women of your time, you’ve lived out a strange combination of falling asleep and feeling invincible. You thought you could do it alone, right? At times you almost sank from the weight of your strength. You tried to play by enough of the rules that you could sustain the illusion of your independence from things as messy as sexism and patriarchy. You got a little constipated trying to hold it all in while not noticing. …

$#@* invincibility and strength. They damn near drug you under a few times. …

This society does its little jig, pretending everything is just peachy for everyone. You are living in an insane world. That is not the whole picture, of course. Life’s beautiful, too. But it is the insane part that put you to sleep and is causing such havoc these days. Are you ready to wake up? Are you ready to open your eyes and see things as they really are? …

Time, it is a wasting. Midnight’s near, and it’s hard to see the way. But I need you human women to WAKE UP NOW. You must claim your wisdom and live it in the world. If women continue to remain silent, there is little hope for this little planet. …

You were created with just what you need to thrive, to live fully. You were not created lacking. Quit acting like it. Believe in your greatness, your magnificence and your power. Yes, most of the current world institutions embody a distorted power, dangerous “greatness.” $#@* that shit! You are talking about another kind of power. Don’t be so afraid. Live. NOW. …

If you try to hold back, I’ll drag this out of you. That will really hurt. So get on with it. Generations of women have your back and add their spirits to your breath.

Find that voice of yours, that WOMAN’S voice, and speak it. Living with only part of your wisdom is a luxury the world can no longer afford. None of us. Not men. Not women. Not trees or plants. Not rocks or stars. Not water or flame. Not air or animals or the cosmos. …

Amen, so be it, just do it, have fun along the way and all that. You are never alone. Don’t forget, you have a heavenly posse leading the way.

Blessings, honey-bunchkins, Hectate^*

While I still hide under Mom’s afghan now and then, humming along with Helen now and then helped me to remember Hectate’s straight-to-the-point guidance and put a little kick in my step.

Hectate has made it clear that she wants to share some of her wisdom with a larger audience. She will “take over” Nancy’s facebook author page for her own posts.

*Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself (Portland: Rosegate Press, 2012) page 264-266, slightly adapted

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey, Illustration from Big Topics at Midnight.