Fleeting Opportunities

My college alma mater has a challenge most other colleges & universities don't face - a stunning scarcity of  photos & stories of past years, past teachers, past accomplishments & achievements.  

For decades, it was secondary in focus to it's companion high school.  It even shared the same name.  Now, it stands on its own, with an inspiring present & promising future unfolding before it.  

But where are its roots, where are the stories of those who came before?  Not the bound-in-leather stories, the official accounts, but the small ones, the personal ones, the ones that only a few or maybe just one person knows.  

These stories are fleeting.  So many have already slipped from us, teachers & coaches & staff who will only be a name on a list instead of a living, breathing character in a story or an appreciation that someone has taken the time to share, to write down, to discuss.  

I had a dream for this year's Charter Day, but I allowed myself to get discouraged, distracted, disconnected from it.  What can I do between now & early October to get the ball rolling on collecting stories about my college alma mater, helping give deeper roots to what's been, is & will be to countless people a sheltering tree of knowledge?  

The opportunities are fleeting, each person, each memory & moment truly does count...

O Give Thanks

There are only two things of which I am absolutely certain.  One is that I am not my body, that I am something way more ineffable, although I can't say with absolute certainty what it is.  The other is that our existence is made up of the stories we tell ourselves.

And most of us are really bad storytellers.  So, the more we can detach from our stories, the more we can see that’s all they are and the better equipped we are to live lives more in sync with happiness, with a sense of balance & appreciation. 

That’s easy for me to say because doing just that has always come naturally to me, even as a little kid.  Mind you, it's felt  more a curse than a blessing.  Right in my own family, there are people who think me insincere for how swiftly I can step away from  a heated conversation to see their point.  Since they can't do that, they reject that anyone can.  I'm pandering or blowing them off.  Ye gods!  Who'd guess that being in agreement with them could generate a sense of ill will??

My sister is a good example.  When she gets angry, upset, it has deep roots.  It doesn’t with me.  

Last week, when I was more distraught than I’d ever been in my entire life,  some part of me still held back, asking even at the height of my unraveling, “Now, what is this all about?”  I was able to get a grip on myself , see that I was feeling a bottomless sense of abandonment, of being utterly & completely yet casually Xed out, take a look at the thing that had triggered that sense of nothingness, realize how bizarre it was that an apparently trivial comment touched off a wild journey through a wormhole sucking me straight to a place where my worst experiences engulfed.  I was able to see how whacked out that was, able to figure out – finally! – how to step away in the future from similar scenarios so that even worse situations don’t erupt.  That including giving John a few simple words he could use - "I'm not them." - if he felt I'd been sucked out of balance.

That very tendency drove my family, in particular two siblings, absolutely bonkers.  The way I experienced it, particularly with my sister, was that the negative energies seemed to become part of her.  Whereas I could go from the height of distress to a calm understanding of her point in a matter of seconds – once my brain got what she was trying to say – she took a much longer time.  Sadly, instead of chalking it up to different styles, she seemed to experience it as my being insincere or dismissing her by agreeing when I actually didn’t. 

Knowing that we are our stories means that I have to respect the tales others tell themselves, because they’re every bit as valid as the ones I tell myself.  That’s been a HUGE help, especially since being married to John.  Many’s the time we’re having a bit of an upset or he seems to have processed abc when I was conveying xyz.  But my John is a master of detaching from his stories to get a better peek into mine.  “Oh, that’s what you heard!  Here’s what I meant to convey…”  has been a downright miraculous eye opener.  Gee, maybe what I intend to be saying isn’t what he’s hearing.  And the way he conveys it, it’s not personal, just messed up wording or garbled processing.

Does innately doing this, doing what I can to refine it, make me awesome?  No.  Came naturally to me, like caring for kitties or baking for the schools.  Born knowing on some level that we are our stories, that your stories are as valid as mine.  

Is it an awesome blessing, one that I’m mega grateful has been part of my life tool kit since forever?  Absolutely!   I thank whatever divine force so blessed me with the ability to step back & observe instead of getting emeshed & pinned down.  

Now, how best to show thanks? 

Creativity Colony

Looking forward to the day my social media skills match my dreams!  Get grand ideas that wouldn't take much social media savvy, but enough to put making them happen beyond my current reach.  It would be wonderful if Scott or Karen lived near by so I could get their help, but Georgia & New South Wales are a bit far for hands on support.

My biggest dream is creating an online New Church creativity colony, featuring current creatives AND ones from the distant past.  Artwork by Lisa Knight AND Nishan Yardumian,  Gillian Bedford AND Maggie Bostock, Christine Orthwein AND Cary Smith; music performances by the Feddertones & archived recordings from long ago concerts;  photography from the college, jewelry from the high school, 7th Grade dolls.  Every sort of creative, from art, performance, writing, architecture, lifestyle, cuisine - no limits.  

Make it like Wikipedia, where anyone can post copy & pictures, video & audio.  Use the church as structure, keeping the focus on a no-boundaries colony of creatives.   

Breathe in, breathe out, infuse with inspiration, make real what is now a dream.