Big Topics at Midnight

November 2, 2013

Fracking

How do I begin to write about something as overwhelming as fracking?

I have good reasons why I’ve been silent on paper so far. Swamped with Big Topics at Midnight and opening Big Topics Conversations. Overwhelmed whenever I remember that right now rock formations are being fractured through blasts of chemical-laden water in order to free up trapped natural gas and oil. Troubled that this is happening in gas wells where I own a .01562501 royalty interest.

What am I to do with a paradox that wide?

Sell it and walk away, clean? Just like I could give away all of my family money and walk away, clean?

What is “clean”?

If I sell it, the practice will still continue and I will still be who I am. I won’t be absolved from responsibility. One way that money has made my thinking stupid* over the years is that part of me wants to escape from my complicity in a system I disagree with by pushing away my family financial legacy. I’ve tried to do the same thing with the privilege I receive merely because my skin is white. But I am still the same me.

Don’t get me wrong. I have sold stocks and mutual funds that aren’t in alignment with my values. But something more is required here.

I first heard about fracking in 2006 when I was visiting my grandfather’s ranch on a pilgrimage back to my homeland of Texas (where I am now a partial owner of the “mineral rights” but not “surface rights”). The journey was one part of a larger pilgrimage into my ancestral history to Germany, North Carolina, Texas and, now, Oregon during the writing of Big Topics at Midnight. I set out on those trips when I realized I’d spent far too much of my life trying to cut out parts of myself that embarrassed me. Knowing that I need all of me to live the life I was born to live, I returned to the land of my family hoping to find clarity, healing and right action.

On the ranch seven years ago, I knew nothing of the actual geological impact of this drilling practice. Nevertheless, it felt to me as if fracking was cutting out huge holes in the body of Mother Earth while spewing toxic chemicals into our farmland and drinking water. As far as I could tell, fracking waste would be added to nuclear waste, piling up for future generations to deal with.

It didn’t make sense to me.

Gas prices are currently low. If we frack now, what will happen when high prices tempt us?

Is there no end to what humans will do to make money and exert control over the natural world? This is an escalating conquest that we won’t win.

My work is to explore and participate in the shifting of Big Topics like money, gender, race, power, justice, generational healing and soul. These topics are at the core, like the magma at the center of the Earth. Hot, molten topics. How we are in them—personally as well as in families, communities, organizations, systems, nationally, globally—is the underpinning of our decision making and values. My focus is rightly there.

Yet I can’t ignore fracking. It is hurting our shared homeland. In addition, it is part of the flow of money that pays my bills, funded the writing and now marketing of Big Topics at Midnight, finances my travels to open these conversations and is the source of my financial support of three organizations dear to my heart—Be Present, Inc., Wisdom & Money, and Community Wholeness Venture.

My work continues. Fracking continues. There are only so many hours in a day. I continue my spiritual practice of standing in partnership with a diversity of people right in the midst of the deep gaps that cut through our world.

Giving words to this hot topic is the next step on my journey. I’m listening for guidance about the following step.

* I play with the ways that “Money Made [my husband] Howard Stupid” in Big Topics at Midnight, page 241 after he made that comment about himself. From time to time, money has indeed made Howard’s and my thinking stupid. The important thing is how we work with that before it translates into stupid actions.

October 14, 2013

Standing in the Gap … Together

I suppose we could stack one on top of each other, the way one piece of my collage illustrates, as one way to “stand in the gap” together. One house on top of another on top of another. It is an efficient use of ground space, even if climbing from one house to another is a bit daunting with my middle-aged knees.

Not to mention my fear of heights.

There are all sorts of gaps or crevasses that cut through our world. We are divided by the color of our skin, how much money we have in the bank and all sorts of stuff about our gender.

I can’t wiggle my nose and make these gaps go away, so I want to get inside them along with others to do the work of love, compassion, justice, equity, spiritual transformation—those things powerful enough to build something new, together.

However, I don’t usually think of standing in the gap together as a stacking game. If I stand on your shoulders and someone stands on mine, we will fill up the gap vertically, but we’ll also be exhausted in the process.

I often feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders without anyone perched up there. I don’t really want you up there, too.

I know that our world is set up to climb ladders. The ladder to success—until you hit the glass ceiling. Jacob’s ladder on the spiritual journey. We’ve tried to build buildings and corporations higher and higher, and our world groans under the weight.

That is not the world I want to help build. I’d rather move with circles or waves or flow. Something more curving, connecting and inclusive. Feminine.

If not one on top of the other, how shall we then stand?

In a circle? Standing side-by-side with linked arms, supporting each other? Is there a way we can share the burden and the gifts?

Playing with images to explore big topics may seem like child’s play, but don’t be fooled. Imagination holds the power to clarify our thinking and propel us to action.

Anyone want to stand in the gap with me?

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey. Houses photo from my collage box. I explore more about “standing in the gap” in Big Topics at Midnight.

July 22, 2013

Two Peas in a Pod

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

Like Mother, like daughter.

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

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

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

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