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Slowing down and embracing the spaciousness of the un-scheduled moment has been an increasingly important and elusive goal over the last few years as I experience too-regular calendar overwhelm and a daily Sisyphean battle with my in-box.
Thomas Merton articulates the problem perfectly in a quote I've used here before and will no doubt come back to again:
"The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.
More than that, it is cooperation with violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys her own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful."
To begin to redress the violence I've been doing to my soul and restore the tender roots of my own inner wisdom, I've decided to begin this new year by re-claiming something I'd almost forgotten - the weekend.
No small thing as - slowly but definitely - the weekend seems to have migrated from rest-time to work-time in the popular imagination. Turning the tide appears to require a personal declaration of some kind, a stance against the cultural pressure to over-work. Therefore, I have ordered home delivery of Sunday's New York Times and hereby publicly proclaim that I can no longer be relied upon to read email over the weekend.
Yes, you heard that correctly. I'm embarking upon a "occupy my life" campaign in 2012 that kicks off by fully occupying my weekends, so unless we have arranged otherwise, you can pretty-much figure I won't read anything work-related after 5pm Friday until Monday morning. With the accumulation that's sure to have piled up by then, you may not even get a response til Tuesday!
Even God didn't work 7 days a week.
Another reason the Solstice celebration was special for me this year was because this is the year my friend Gisela Wendling, who lives in Australia, brought the painting she has been working on for me since we launched her blog/site Liminal Songlines just before the last Solstice.
The name of this painting is "Businesswomen Doing Women's Business", and it reflects our collaborative efforts to support each other's work in the world. I had asked Gisela for something that would inspire me on a deep level, and to do that she drew on her experiences in ceremony with indigenous women in the deserts of Australia, powerful spiritual practice specifically described as "women's work".
While Gisela makes it clear that what she does is NOT Aboriginal painting, she uses some of the same iconography, which in Aborginal art is very literal, figurative and descriptive rather than abstract patterns as they may appear to a Western eye.
The two figures in middle of the central circle of my painting are Gisela and I, and we are surrounded by other circles of women sitting in ceremony. The circle in the top right is of men, also sitting in ceremony, and the circle in the lower right without people is what's "on the edge", or horizon. The flowing colored lines that frame the top and bottom are reminiscent of the snake that plays such a central role in Aboriginal creation stories, while the flowing lines in the background are the shifting sands of life at this time on earth as we come together in a sacred way while everything in our external world is changing.
Gisela and I were able to sit together for a few hours after the Solstice, reflecting on this beautiful painting and how it came into being. She was asking how what we did by supporting each other - me by helping her articulate her work through a web presence and her by creating a place of inspiration for me - reflects a way of being together as women that could inspire similar forms of relationship and mutual generosity in others. Unwilling to separate the sacred and the secular, together we recognized and affirmed that our work is sacred and that's the place we want to stand in the world.
Remarking on the central figures in the painting, Gisela said "In a way it's about us, but even more it's about what we are sitting for."
I am blessed to wake up to this vibrant call to life every morning. Thank you, dear Gisela.
My dear friend and colleague Alan Briskin was the conversation starter at Heartland's Thought Leader Gathering in the bay area earlier this month, talking about his recent book, The Power of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly.
This is not one of those books you skim through and set aside - you could profitably keep it on your nightstand and read it over and over, always finding something new and valuable. In fact, one of the basic lessons of the book stood out for me in Alan's talk as if I were hearing it for the first time: there is a point in many collective interactions where we have a choice to either ascend to a "higher place" together or fall into "folly". That point, Alan says, is characterized by disagreement or conflict. It's in negotiating problems where we are in danger of collapsing into either polarization (disassociating ourselves completely from the others' point of view) or false agreement, which is equally pernicious.
If in that critical moment of conflict, however, we are able to really listen to each other and find a way to accept our differences and continue to treat each other with respect, we truly have the capacity for reaching collective wisdom. I've been at this critical point several times since the TLG and remembering Alan's words - to listen more deeply, ask questions and make an honest attempt to understand another view - has made all the difference.
Now we just have to get the book into the US Senate reading list...
I've just returned from a trip to South Carolina to visit my beloved friend (and first husband), Peter Lenzo, and I'm not going to talk about the grand mal seizures that wrack his life and limbs, because it breaks my heart.
photo by Jim Hulin
One of the most talented and fiercely creative people I have ever met, Peter has always had the ability to inspire me silly, and this time was no exception. The gracious home he shares with his two beautiful progeny Joe and Roxanne has every surface lined with art - his own and pieces he's collected from his years as a gallery owner and the ongoing patronage of his contemporaries.
His studio, conveniently located in the back garden, is fully-equipped with every tool imaginable, boxes of clay and jars of glazes, two kilns, art in all stages of production, and drawers and drawers of the extraordinary collection of antique, contemporary, and found ceramic bits he currently uses to make his unique works of art.
photo from Pewabic Pottery
Peter was generous and patient enough to give me a step by step tutorial so I could make a piece of my own (ok, it's really more of a collaboration since he made several crucial design suggestions and did virtually all the tricky attachments for me).
Here's the "finished" (pre-glaze) piece - ready to dry for its bisque fire:
The piece of blue glass you see perched next to the Buddha will melt when the piece is fired and hold him tight in his seat.
This morning as I write I'm sending out prayers like bits of blue glass to whoever will listen - please hold Peter tight and do your best to protect him when next he falls...
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