Khara Scott-Bey

August 23, 2017December 18, 2019

Homegrown Terrorism is the Battle Cry for Repentance

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

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

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

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

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

Unfortunately, we are living that legacy now.

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

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

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

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

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

Being quiet and disconnected is no longer an option.

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

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

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

¹Article with links to more primary sources

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

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

May 28, 2017December 18, 2019

Nothing Lasts Forever

Nothing lasts forever;

No one lives forever.

Keep that in mind, and love.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 4, 2015December 18, 2019

Inside and Outside

Working for justice in the world begins on the inside.

We live in a culture addicted to power, growth and control. While these elements affect each of us differently, depending on our race, class or gender (among other things), they ultimately influence us all. In order to step outside of injustice and into the Kingdom of God, we need to wake up to the full spectrum of reality around and within us.

For instance, it was easy for me to assume that my life experience and knowledge, alongside good intentions and spirit-led values, were enough to build a strong inner foundation for my work in the world. This was not true. I had to learn to recognize systemic abuses of money and power. Likewise, I needed to look deeply inside to notice my own assumptions and to clearly see when my behaviors (subtle or obvious) were not in alignment with my values.

Diverse, in-depth community was the context in which I was able to do this kind of waking up to and unhooking from the distress of our culture’s oppression. In that community, I discovered the truth that we are all part of a much greater fabric, one that includes the voices of our ancestors, the hopes of our descendants and the messy and miraculous humanity of our contemporaries around the globe.

Honestly sharing stories of our experiences, perspectives and assumptions across our differences has the power to break down the walls that divide us.

These are words I’d like to shout from the mountain tops, announcing the message I’d like to share and the path I’d like to walk. What would your message to the world sound like?

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.

February 14, 2014December 28, 2019

Rising Up With a Little Kick-Ass Help

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now I’ll let Nancy say a few words.

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

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

February 12, 2014December 28, 2019

Eight-Eyed Steam Girl—That’s Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ignore my distracting chore list.

Shut up my protesting that this was crazy.

Lie down on my couch.

Listen.

Then dash to my computer and begin to write.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You think you don’t have one?

Nonsense.

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

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

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

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

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

February 3, 2014

Roots and Writing

It matters where my words take root.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 28, 2013

Death in a Season of Birth

The call came in the middle of the night—a shrill ring startling me awake from a dead sleep.

It was Dad calling to tell me that my mother was “gone.” He couldn’t yet say the stark word “dead.”

That call came twenty-seven years ago last week. This holiday, I heard of one death after another—Richard, Skipper, Gabe, Brian, Shirley, Nelson and people whose names I only know as Dad, Mom and Grandpa. None of these people were in my inner circle of friends and family, yet all were people I cared about or were loved by them.

Each of these deaths involved phone calls no one wants to make or receive. Death here in the season where we celebrate birth.

I know the light is returning on this side of the winter solstice, but in the dark of night, the ever-present reality of death has settled deep in my bones.

In this upcoming year I will turn sixty, the age of my mother when she died.

My knee aches. Howard’s hearing diminishes. What will aging take from us?

Death and loss pace just outside the door of my life, and at this moment I’m afraid that someone I love dearly might be next.

Several years ago, I selected songs to honor Howard’s and my thirty-five years of marriage. One, “Nothing Lasts Forever,” was based on a poem by the mystic Rabindranath Tagore:

Nothing lasts forever…

keep that in mind,

and love.

To live with an open heart, loving others and life itself, will lead to the sharp pain of grief when death comes. And yet, paradoxically, full-hearted loving despite the fact that “nothing lasts forever,” it is only path to joy.

It takes courage to be awake and present in our lives. Rather than push my fear of loss away too quickly, I sit in the dark of night and let it soften me. Now is what we have each been given. Tomorrow is mystery.

Writing is one of the ways I make sense of my life and my feelings. Putting these words on paper didn’t make the fear evaporate, but it reminded me once again of the solid foundation that trust and courage offer all of me, including my loving heart and frightened bones. Someday soon, my fears will settle as they have many times before.

When that happens, I will remember that life and death are two sides of the same coin. And both are normal and safe.

December 23, 2013

I’d Like to Thank the Academy

My favorite part of the Academy Awards is the thank you speeches.* I love watching someone take the stage amid cheers, take a deep breath and say a big grateful wow to all the work, support, energy and heart that led to that moment.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be on an awards show, but I think now, more than ever, I need to pause and give a big grateful wow.

Our world seems to be rocking and rolling and groaning. Fear spreads like wildfire across the surface of our globe and narrow bricks wobble beneath our economic towers of Babel. But there are deeper truths and wider foundations.

And the way to find them is through gratitude.

So here’s my acceptance speech, my list of thank yous and a big, grateful wow:

* I am grateful for the perspective of the horizon, that bigger picture that contains the close up details of each day. When the rocking and rolling and groaning of the world around me get loud and crazy, I can raise my eyes to the place where heaven meets earth and remember the long term view: generations in the future who will reap the harvest I help plant today; the mystery of Spirit that transcends and infuses everything; the new sprouts that grow even as the old crumbles.

* Unable to see the path ahead on this journey of life, I am grateful for my growing courage and tr

ust to take that next step. Mary Jo Leddy’s poem sings in my heart:

“We walk on the waters of gratitude

knowing there is nothing there

trusting there will be enough

to go on.” **

* I am grateful for this flesh and blood and bone body that I was given at birth. She carries me through every day. When I slow down to notice, I feel the tingle in my feet when I am grounded, a cloud of confusion when something smells “off” and I need to pay close attention to what is happening around me or a tickle on the top of my head when something feels right on. My wise body has much to tell me every time I stop to listen.

* I am grateful for paradoxes that meet me at every turn, and keep showing up even when I fight them. Paradoxes like living personally and globally at the same time or my conflict about putting my book in an online bookstore while supporting independent bookstores (as I spoke about in this blog).

* I am deeply grateful for every one of you and to others around this globe. We were born to be in community, to work together across our diversity. When each of us contributes, we have everything we need for equity, justice, joy and creativity.

* I am grateful for my partnership with Harvest Time , Be Present, Inc. and Community Wholeness Venture where I have both received and given in one smooth, continuous motion. And for Khara Scott-Bey, illustrator for Big Topics at Midnight and the drawing above. Her creativity invites me to delight and ponder. Working together with partners like these gives me great hope for the world.

So there’s my list. If you’re in the mood to share, I’d love to read yours.

Now is the time to celebrate how far we’ve journeyed, to fan the flames of creativity and joy that fuel our sight and work, to drop to our knees with a big grateful wow, knowing, as Rumi wrote, “There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’”

Blessings to each of you as the light of 2013 fades to a close and soon gives way to the dawn of a new year.

*This was a newsletter I wrote last month. As the year nears its end, I find that gratitude fills my heart. I am posting it here for those who missed it in the avalanche of emails that filled our inboxes just after Thanksgiving.

**Leddy, Mary Jo, Radical Gratitude (New York: Orbis Books, 2002) pg 38

November 21, 2013

One Author’s Paradox

I want to live my values, yet so many of my choices are complex, multi-layered. I will never be able to avoid this paradox, but it is important to me to keep asking the questions, noticing my inconsistencies, always seeking to bring my values more in alignment with my actions.

For example, I buy locally; shop predominantly in neighborhood stores; support small businesses; and hire individuals doing a service or producing something that flows from their hearts.

These are important values of mine.

And yet a huge online bookstore is also part of my life. Big Topics at Midnight, both paperback and eBook versions, are carried in that store-without-walls. Occasionally, I purchase a book there myself.

This cyberbookstore is often where book buyers turn to when looking for a specific book—including mine. Their selection is vast. Drive-less shopping is convenient. Prices are often discounted.

And this business is hurting local bookstores.

How can I reconcile this paradox?

Initially, I begrudgingly put my book on their virtual shelves. I didn’t want to be there, yet I wanted my book to be available there. Whenever I could, I directed people to buy the book from my website, local bookstores or at my Big Topics Conversation workshops. I was on their “shelves” but I didn’t want to promote them by advertising that fact.

In essence, I was trying to go two directions at the same moment. Stepping in while holding back put me in conflict with myself. That was neither good for my health nor for selling books.

Since neither removing my book from their stock nor being in conflict with myself is an acceptable choice for me, what can I do?

I am searching for the deepest foundation where I can stand solidly, with integrity, amidst opposing values.

Online publishing options, bookstores and social media platforms are central marketing arenas for today’s author. Part of me resists offering Big Topics at Midnight in eBook form. I love reading books printed on paper, underlining favorite quotes, leaving colorful tags sticking out to note cherished passages and sharing a favorite read with a friend. But my deepest value was to offer Big Topics at Midnight in a variety of formats, both paperback and eBook (and, I hope, an audio version sometime in 2014).

In a similar way, I love to meander through a local bookstore, touching books as I walk down the aisles, flipping through ones that catch my eye. When I purchase a book, I know that I am also supporting a business I want to remain in my neighborhood. But I also want to offer Big Topics at Midnight to readers at the huge online “bookstore” where so many routinely shop.

That is where I have landed. For now. My preferences remain, but my choice is clear: I want to reach readers through a diversity of formats and locations.

As I type, I must admit that I am a little afraid that writing about my issue with huge online stores will result in their refusal to sell my book.

But silence in the face of fears of retaliation by a powerful corporation also violates my values.

Paradox again. Nevertheless, my choice clear. I will click “publish,” and this blog is released to cyberspace.

Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey