“It takes a whole village to raise a child.” ~ African Proverb

The first time I heard this quote, I thought, “Of course!  A child needs all kinds of teachers and mentors to become their best self.”

What I didn’t understand is that parents, for their own sanity, need the help of the village in order to be the best parents they can be.  Now I’m god mom to two very special short people, and I know that I am part of the fabric that helps hold both their mom and dad together.

A few years ago, I had Kurt as my healer, Sara as my life coach, a therapist, an acting coach, and a voice teacher.  A friend looked at me and said, “My God – you have an entire committee working on you!”

It was true… I was looking to make big changes as efficiently as possible, and I gathered a team to help me make it happen.

We all need assistance in order to be our best selves… people to support us, to challenge us, to call us on our stuff, to laugh and cry with, to think out loud with, to simply be with…

When you think about your day-to-day existence, the joys and the trials, who’s on your committee?

Who helps you be you?

Are there areas of your life where you don’t have a go-to person?  Are there people you’re close to who can fill the void – or do you need to cultivate some new relationships?  Or find a professional who can satisfy the need?

(uhhh… preferably LEGAL professionals, if you know what I mean….giggle ;))

And then there’s the flip side – whose committee are you on?  What role do you fill?  Does it work for you?

We all need community – it makes the world a better place; it makes our lives richer and more meaningful… it makes us better people.

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born; we live a little while; we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.” ~ Charlotte, from Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

“Leave your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I’m betwixt and between today…. I have about 72 different things I want to write about, and nothing is gelling.

It’s a little like standing in the center of a snow globe and watching the random thoughts fall all around me in a blizzard, each individual flake a piece of something larger that I have yet to grasp.

Or lying with my face mashed into an amazing tapestry – I can see the threads, but I don’t know if what’s in front of me is a beginning or an ending, or if I’ve picked up in the middle… I just don’t have enough distance to see the weft and the weave, or how things connect and diverge.

Apparently, I’m gestating.

“The creative mind,” says Carl Jung, “plays with the object it loves.”

And I am – my brain is turning over my deepening understanding of healing, the process of manifesting, Perfection of Effort, choice, purpose, connection, love, relationships, and a myriad of other “stuff,” as well as a zillion questions about our individual experiences of the sacred, boundaries vs. limitations, empathy, our need for others to conform to our way of thinking and feeling, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, quantum physics (which sometimes I feel like I need in order to figure out the Republican and Democratic parties,) and all the usual “what is the meaning of life” sorts of ponderings…

It’s a nice, juicy, full-of-possibility place to be…

Except there is, at the end of the day, a commitment I’ve made to putting something concrete out into the world…

And I got nothin’…

A very, VERY pregnant nothin’… a nothin’ on the way to becoming a whole lot of somethin’…

Which, I have to admit, started to make me feel a little bit panicky and pressured… the need to come up with PRODUCT…

But I also know that when I try to force my creative juices, I end up being unhappy with the result… Kinda like trying to bake a cake faster by doubling the temperature of the oven – what you get is something flat and crispy… ugh.

So I’m just sitting in the betwixt and between…

And I gotta say, when I actually let go and just let myself BE in the muddle, my brain started meandering around about the process of processing…

It’s one of those things the “THEY” always tell you – start from where you’re at, let go of the trying, surrender the end result, stop worrying about the audience – and once you do that…

FLOW happens!

“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

“We’ve got to take back the ideal of justice; we’ve got to take back this principle of human dignity. We’ve got to take it back from vengeance, from hatred, we’ve got to say: look, we’re all in this together. We are human beings.” ~ David Kaczynski

This morning I received an email from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) asking me to sign a petition urging the US Government to speak out against human rights violations in Uganda:

“[L]ast March, three American right-wing extremists, posing as “experts” on homosexuality, led a conference in Uganda where they claimed that gay men prey upon teenagers, that there is a gay agenda to destroy families, and that gay people can and should be changed to straight.

Then, in October, Uganda’s legislature introduced a bill making homosexual acts punishable by death and failure to report them punishable by jail time.

These Americans have put LGBT Ugandans – and those who care about them – in grave peril. We have a responsibility, as Americans, to protect them.”

This afternoon, The Courage Campaign sent me an update on the current Prop 8 fight going on in California.  Challengers of the same-sex marriage ban are fighting to have the lawsuit televised:

Opponents of marriage equality filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday, begging to hide the trial from the American public. And a few hours ago, the Supreme Court delayed their decision until Wednesday.

Prop 8 supporters and anti-equality organizations like the National Organization for Marriage have spent tens of millions of dollars on 30-second ads scaring the American people into thinking that same-sex marriage will destroy our country. And now, when federal judges want to open the courtrooms to America, Prop 8 supporters want to unplug the TV.

I read these things – that in the year 2010, somewhere on this planet, loving someone may soon be legally punishable by death, that millions of dollars have been spent in order to deny Americans their right to love as they choose – and I wonder:

What is wrong with us?

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

How would these “defenders of heterosexuality” feel if forced to be gay?  How would they feel if they were told they would be killed for holding hands with their loved one?  How would they feel if they knew their friends and family could spend life in prison for not turning them in?

I understand that people have their faith; what I don’t understand is why they need to impose them on other people.

What I don’t understand is how a political party whose platform is lessening the role of government in people’s lives is lobbying for more legislation on our bodies and what happens in our bedrooms.

What I don’t understand is how a country founded on freedom of religion and the idea that it is self evident that “all men are created equal” can deny any of its citizens any rights based on public opinion.

Some things are too important to put to a majority vote.

With all the pain, suffering, and hatred in the world, can we really afford to outlaw love in any form???

“Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.”
I Corinthians 13:4-8

“Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first. “ ~ E.B. White

“Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it’s greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.” ~ Agnes De Mille

I like Agnes De Mille, and I normally agree wholeheartedly with the things she said…

“To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking. “

and

“The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.”

(LOVE that!)

But this quote about our hasty lives… I’m having trouble with it.

I’ve definitely lived a “seize the day” “what would you do if you knew this was your last day” kind of life, welcoming intensity of experience, cramming all the good things and great wonder into a packed existence, all in the name of Really Living.

Which is exactly what Agnes is talking about… but I’m not sure it’s working – not for me, not for anyone…

It seems as if, in a driven Western mind, all of these motivational “make the most out of your days” catch phrases actually compel us to skate furiously on the surface of life instead of allowing ourselves to be fully immersed in… well… anything.

What are we missing because we’re working so hard not to miss anything?

Instead of wondering how we can squeeze every drop of life from our years, what if we ask, as Creativity Coach Jill Blixt does, “What would I do if I knew I had all the time in the world?”

My own list includes things like:

Spend more time with family and friends
Meander through my days at a much slower, more nurturing pace
Study another language until I was fluent
Linger over coffee with loved ones, or even by myself
Dance daily
Take naps
Enjoy where I am at in the moment, without worrying about what comes next
Enjoy the experience of exploring and nurturing relationships without worrying about the outcome

There is so much wonder and beauty and magic in the world, not just in big, mind blowing, life altering experiences, but in subtler, more nuanced moments…. The kinds of moments that we miss when we’re moving so fast…

It’s the difference between running through the Louvre in order to see Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa, and Venus de Milo before lunch and a tour of the Eiffel Tower, and choosing to spend the day sitting and studying just one of Monet’s paintings…

Both have value; there’s definitely a balance to be achieved… but Agnes is right when she says that ours is “an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat,” a beat that is ever quickening as we feel our breaths slipping away, forever aware and fearful of the limitations of human life.

What if we let go of the limits?

What if our goal was depth of experience rather than breadth?

What if we choose to behave as if there is time enough for everything that is really important?

What if we relish life instead of trying to conquer it?

If we choose to live moment to moment as if there is all the time in the world… what small miracles will we witness, what subtle discoveries will we make, what connections will we deepen, what joy will we savor “to the last drop”?

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away” ~ attributed to George Carlin

“When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out – because that’s what’s inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.” ~ Wayne Dyer

R. went to graduate school with me… she was tall and willowy, with flowing dark hair. She had a low quiet voice, and corn-flower blue eyes. She looked like I imagined the historical Mother Mary would, if she stepped out of one of her paintings and into modern clothes.

On the first day of our Art-as-Meditation class, R. wore white… all white for painting.

At the end of the session, I looked up from my own work to see her… she had painted these great, swooping, dancing purple curves – graceful and dynamic – and her whites were still pristine.

As I turned away, I caught a glimpse of my own face in the mirror – somehow, in the throws of creation, I had painted it green… my whole face – GREEN.

It was first grade all over again. In first grade C. was the always perfectly put together epitome of femininity. While I was playing kickball with the boys, and spraining my ankles running in clogs, she was sitting knitting quietly… and her knees socks always stayed up.

Mine were always bagged around my ankles… and now my face was green. Some things never change.

But where my 6 year old self hated C. for her perfection in the face of my… not-ness… I admired R. her ability to create while remaining unmarked; I yearned to discover the secrets of her seeming serenity, her quiet way of moving through the world… she appeared to be the epitome of what we think of as “spiritual.”

And me… well… my personality seemed to constantly be bursting out in fits and spurts, evading all my attempts at stillness and quiet.

I went to school for spirituality in large part because I yearned to connect – to find the peace and calm and surety that would come from directly experiencing mystery.

And so far, by my own measure, I was failing…

I mean, c’mon… my FACE was GREEN…

And then I met Hildegard…

Hildegard of Bingen was a 12th century mystic. Dedicated to the church at a young age, she had always been sickly, but then, suddenly, in her early forties, Hildegard began having visions. Her health miraculously recovered and she experienced a surge of creative vitality. She wrote the earliest musical that we have extant; she painted; she wrote amazing manuscripts on the natural world and its connection to spirit. She even wrote letters to all the higher officials in the Church, including the Pope, telling them how they could better do their jobs…
Hildegard was a force to be reckoned with.

The instructor explained her this way, “When you think of the mystics, you think of those blue- green mystics…. Your Francises of Assisi, your Meister Eckharts… but, Hildgegard… well, Hildegard was an orange mystic.”

It was like a bolt from the blue – the sky opened up, and I saw….

“THAT’S WHAT I AM!” I whooped inside my own head, “I’m an ORANGE MYSTIC… sometimes with CHASER LIGHTS!!!!”

Suddenly, my brand of high energy, enthusiastic, questioning searching had a place – a place that had been part of the fabric of spiritual seeking for at least a thousand years, and most definitely long before.

I didn’t have to repress my passion, or stay above the action, or even keep my socks up in order to place my feet firmly on the path of discovery – I could simply be me, and the right doors would open.

And they have.

The white light streams down to be broken up by those human prisms into all the colors of the rainbow. ~ Charles R. Brown

“There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” ~ Vincent van Gogh