This declaration can apply to several things this spring–I’m finally taking time to blog again! We’ve gotten our new book, The Circle Way, A Leader in Every Chair, both into the office and out the door into the world, and I’ve fulfilled a long-standing promise to myself.  With great delighted I invite you to our business website to check out the new books, both our co-authored legacy work on circle and Ann’s legacy work on Keepers of the Trees. There will be other stories that follow from these book launching months, what I want to celebrate here is the promise I kept–from the time I wrote Storycatcher.

Only after Storycatcher was published and I was reading through the book did I realize I had told three versions of “the same story.” In three different actions, I described leaving something in the earth for the future to find. In Chapter 4, I tell about burying my journal during the Cuban Missile Crisis; then in Chapter 9, I talk about what it meant for a community to decide to bury The Dead Sea Scrolls; and in Chapter 10, I wrote about putting a letter under the kitchen counter during a remodel that will be decades before rediscovery. And the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. I have remained haunted by the question “What of my life do I leave for the future to find?”

Books. I think about my immense gratitude for the words that have been passed down and down that carry meaning both ancient and modern. I love stories like Thomas Cahill’s, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. In this book he speaks to how the monks and scribes of Ireland spent several centuries preserving the foundational texts of western philosophy and science hand copying and hiding them until Europe had restabilized politically and could house its own wisdom again. Sounds a bit like the destabilizing going on today in the US with its far-right flare ups…

So I began thinking about taking another banker’s box, as I had in 1962, and filling it with books and burying it again–this time “forever.” I bought a metal box at the thrift store, bought several rolls of cellophane wrap and aluminum foil and began wrapping books in layers of waterproofing, and then putting them into plastic bags taped shut with duct tape, and then placing these book bundles into the box which I then also taped shut with duct tape. I inscribed each book “deposited by the author, March 2010.” So there is now a collection of my writing, Ann’s writing, and a few things I thought might be of interest, including The Chronology of Human History–year by year from prehistory to 1990, buried in our yard.

A few days ago Ann and I took pick-axe and shovel, dug a hole and buried the box. Then the contractor who is designing a patio off the front of the house further buried it under the stair landing. Dirt–>box–>dirt–>cobble stones–>rebar mesh–>four inches of concrete–>stairs. It’s going to be a while before anyone is reading those copies! And in the climate of the region this is about as dry and safe a situation as I could devise. So, I’ve done it at last, and for the lasting. And I am surprised by my emotion, a tenderness walking by that spot. Here lies…

Here lies my life work–or at least the part of it that someone can find in a hundred or more years. They can read about journal writing and circle and story and the seven whispers of spiritual guidance. They can read about how much I loved nature and this place and the people of my life. And I can pray that they too will love nature and this place and the people of their lives. I can imagine someone eventually finding the box: I cannot imagine what life will be like at that time. I hope when they will sit down and unwrap this rusted container, they will find something legible that connects us across time.

Who I am will be immaterial by then. Like the craftsmen who, stone by stone, chiseled the walls of castles and cathedrals each brick providing the raw material for inspiration. That’s what I am: a craftsman who chipped some bricks into books in the Information Age. Whatever will be built from this, I truly do not know– I only dream. And for the rest of the time that I live here, I can step confidently down the new patio stairs knowing that something is under there– waiting.

What might you leave in the earth for the future to find?

Mid-January and I have emerged from the moment between the years when I rest: two weeks—from Winter Solstice to the first Monday in January. The small educational company of PeerSpirit, Inc. lies dormant for 14 days. The books Ann Linnea and I have written this past year are off to the printers after the final, final edits and proofreading, along with a lot of our hopes and dreams.

I entered these two weeks of annual retreat tired, satisfied, and sorrowful…an interesting combination of emotions. Tired makes the most sense—looking back at our workload and how the teaching, coaching, quest guiding, consulting and writing all require intense presence, creativity, and stamina. Satisfied also makes sense—looking back at the same year through the lens of output, interaction, the legacy of our work being captured on the page, and through opportunities to meet hundreds of incredible, wonderful, extraordinary people doing their best to live good lives in challenging times. And sorrowful when I look into the wider scope of things and ask questions like:

Why are we escalating the war in Afghanistan—when we could practically rebuild the country for what it’s costing us to further destroy it?

And if it costs a million dollars a year to support a US soldier, and much of our military consists of young men and women who can’t find jobs in their local civilian economies, couldn’t we more readily support them through bringing work to them that isn’t likely to maim them in body, mind, or spirit?

And why can’t we have universal health care in the US when every other country we measure ourselves against already has it?

So, what actually happened in Copenhagen—and why are the outcomes so ambiguous when the crises are so concrete?

You get the idea—I finally have time to ruminate on all those things that I have been counting on the international world to resolve while I’ve been so involved in the interpersonal world. Sorrow is ultimately restorative—like filling up the water table, not visible on the surface, yet deeply sustaining. After a week or so, I feel the shift into restfulness and after a week of rest, a shift back into willingness. That’s where I am now—in the willingness.

Part of the willingness is that I have had time to re-evaluate and rearrange my story—the way I carry forward tasks, accomplishments, work and play, relationships, and questions of my life. I step over the threshold of the New Year as though it has been freshly painted.

So here’s my story now: I remain committed to legacy transmission in what I love about story and storycatching, in circle process and transformative presence with each other, and in earth stewardship, especially supporting Ann’s book on trees. I expect this year to change radically as we go along, as the books come out, and people respond. There are indicators of this in the first pieces of work we’ve done on the road: we have integrated something through the act of writing. We stand resiliently in our bodies of work, we talk differently, people respond even more readily—and we sense that the shift happening in the room is happening in the world.

And that is the point where your stories and mine intersect: what is happening in the rooms of our lives is happening in the world. What are you noticing is different as you enter the world of your work this January?

Last December I wrote about my mother’s habit of anonymously giving away $20.00 bills to folks who look in need of a little windfall before the holidays.  (See blog entry December 1, 2008) This year she’s “reading for peace.”

My mother lives in Canada, and on November 11, called Remembrance Day in that country, there are ceremonies of patriotism and prayer honoring those men and women who have fought and died in wars. Early in the month she asked herself, “What contribution could I make toward the idea of enduring peace and no more wars?”

A friend had lent her a book of religious poetry that included sections on courage, war, and peace. My mother reports, “Many of the poems in that book were from the period of World War One, the time when Britain lost a whole generation of poets, artists and musicians. And many of the poems were heartbreaking calls for peace and prayers for help and guidance.  Reading them over and over brought me to feel they needed sharing, so I decided I would find a way to do just that.”

In the little town of Chemainus, British Columbia, up the block from where my mother is a member of a small congregation of the United Church of Canada, her minister, Fran, presided over the local ceremony. After the flags had been paraded by aging veterans and prayers said and taps played, my mother set up a music stand in the city park and proceeded to read poetry to anyone who cared to stop by and listen.

My mother is 89 years old. While this statement may conjure an image of white-haired frailty, my mother is brown-haired, sturdy, dynamic, progressive, and daring. A young friend of hers, a ‘surrogate daughter’ about my own age, helped her make a flyer explaining what she’s doing, and on December 1st she went up the highway to the largest mall in the city of Nanaimo to stand under the clock tower and read poems for peace to the shoppers.  She emailed me her plans, “Kate will be coming with me to help me setup. She made a few suggestions, such as printing a flyer to hand out, doing a choral reading out of it with her and me alternating, etc.  However, I want it to appear unstaged and spontaneous and simple but I will not be alone.” We, her far-flung children, are glad she’s not alone.

Among other selections, she’s reading from the Peace Poem, a project from the United Nations sent out to all primary, secondary, and home schools throughout the world to submit two lines of poetry on peace. The resulting contributions from 38 countries were presented on the web and if printed runs 64-pages of verse. And she’s reading from the book Christmas in the Trenches, the story of the spontaneous Christmas Truce between ordinary foot soldiers in 1914.

She’s also sent out a letter to several of the area churches announcing, “If you care to include announcement of my reading in your bulletin I would be grateful to have people know where I am and stop by. I would also be willing to read to Sunday school classes or other occasions. This is a strictly personal activity of mine and should in no way be construed as an action of the Presbytery.”

And that’s the point: that she has the courage and creativity to come up with a strictly personal activity that challenges the status quo and empowers her voice in the world.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”

I believe world peace is achieved and sustained by each one of us taking responsibility for the quality of what happens within a five foot radius of our own bodies, in our own lives. If there is peace in my radius and yours and his and hers and theirs—then there is peace in all of ours.

And that is the greeting that makes the most sense to me every year when this season rolls around: Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

What shall we each do this holiday season as a strictly personal activity that shakes up our complacency and models our ability to stretch out and mend the world within our reach?

I look forward to collecting ideas that we may share with each other.

We had months of almost no rain until mid-October. Now, the storms of November are upon us–including lots of rain and tree-bending winds. That’s our prayer–trees bending, not breaking. We’ve moved the vehicle out of the path of falling limbs and started the debate over which end of the house to sleep in tonight. Our closest “neighbors” are a row of Douglas firs 100+ feet tall that are, at the moment, whipping against the night sky like manic dancers in the mosh pit–and we hope their roots are holding firmly on the earth as any one of them could crash across the yard and into the south side of the house. (Assume this did NOT happen–unless I write about it in the next blog posting–or unless this is the last blog posting!)

I have just returned from an annual retreat with a circle of women friends and we naturally started by reviewing where we were last year and where we are now–both in our private and more public lives and thoughts. I dug out the volume of the journal where I serve as scribe to our circles, writing down the statements of how we arrive to each other and our intentions as we depart. Last year we were full of the election elation–this year we are full of questions about how to support the need for deep societal shift–whether it comes from the White House or Congress or from diverse populist movements… We are disturbed to witness the unrelenting polarization around political process, certainly here in the US, and also in so many other places in the world. And we found ourselves asking how to practice effectiveness under these circumstances–and how to influence the parameters of our lives for greater common good.

One thing that continues to intrigue and frustrate us is the question of how to bring people with widely divergent points of view into a dialogues where we have the opportunity to influence each other in positive ways. I am ruminating on this when at 10:15 PM the lights go out. Not a flicker of warning, just an instantaneous plunge into darkness without a single friendly LED glowing anywhere in the house. We brush our teeth by candlelight and head for bed—nothing else to do.  Winds howl in gusts up to 70+ MPH until the early morning hours and when I wake at dawn I know that somewhere out there are crews of line workers trying to put the grid back together.

At the entrance to our neighborhood a large alder tree has fallen across the road and is hanging on the low swoop of power lines. The men say it’s going to be several hours—maybe the day, go home, make a fire. We do.

This is our image of ourselves as Americans—and perhaps this is true in other countries as well—that we are the kind of people who will go out in the storm and do what needs to be done to sustain the community. We believe that ordinary men and women will put everything they have into their work, pull alongside each other for common good. This collective self-image reminds me of the lines in one of my favorite Marge Piercy poems, “To Be of Use,”

“I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.”

That is how I think of the men at the end of the road, straining in the mud and muck to move things forward… and I am guessing out there in the wind and rain they are not fighting over health care policy—just counting on the utility company to cover them if they get hurt. They are not debating the efficacy of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, though they may have sons or daughters in the military. They are not debating the agenda of the Global Climate Summit next month, though they may be comparing the strength of storms and wind now versus their early years on the job. And if religion comes into the conversation, it may be a muttered half-prayer, “Sweet Jesus, don’t let that limb buck up in my face!” as they fell the tree the rest of the way to earth and off the lines. And that’s the point—they are working together, whatever their differences. They have a clearly defined task, role, and responsibility. They have the skills needed to be doing what they are doing, and the appreciation of the rest of us who don’t have those skills.

They are not doing silly things–like only restoring electricity to the households that agree with them politically or religiously–and they probably don’t agree with each other about these things: they are getting the work done and moving onto the next piece of work that requires their skill and effort. I have a cousin who sends me far right-wing and fundamentalist statements and this is the point I try to make with him: that on in the dark and stormy night of these times there are things we must pull together and do whether or not we agree on anything else. And his point back seems to be that if we don’t agree on faith and politics there is nothing else we can work together on. I don’t want this to be true!

As I live through a week of unrelenting stormy weather, I am wondering if we will finally pull together as a human tribe only when the earth is blowing back so hard we cannot ignore any longer ignore our collective and immediate peril. And the irony is, I believe this is already happening–and I am eager to live into this urgency for exactly the kind of energy it has the potential to release in us. I want to join the line crew–to be able to contribute my strength while I still have it to offer and before our planetary ship is sunk beyond repair. And it is the time of year I start to think about all this again–because the story is raging outside my door. No–that’s not a typo, it is the story that is raging as strongly as the wind. My story is rooted as firmly as the neighboring trees in the belief that in spite of all the violence we do to each other, there is an ancient and universal sense of ethics that resides in the human mind. It is this taproot I am counting on to hold us in the thrashing storms, and though limbs of confidence may be torn off by the daily news, by the stupidly and slowness of our response to crises, I continue to base my life actions on the presence of this ethic.

I came across this quote via a writing student coming to December’s The Self as the Source of the Story seminar and it expresses what I believe: “There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives at every border we cross.” (Michael Ondaatje, Desidero)

I enter the winter and my island time at home after an incredibly busy year savoring that presence of others inside myself– noticing the ways that I am touched and changed by everyone who has crossed my path or walked even a few steps of life journey alongside me. I am trusting that others find me inside of them–and that eventually we will understand the mystery of our containment of each other.

I would welcome your thoughts and stories about how you are reaching out to people of divergence and how you are noticing the presence of divergent people residing in your own mind and heart and daily life. Let’s light that fire of sharing.

Written by candlelight on a far northern night.

Blessings, Christina

Sometimes in the synchronicity of the Internet, something comes our way that speaks to what we area already pondering. The bulk of this entry comes from an acquaintance, Elias Amidon, a man I have read and heard about for many years and finally met this past March when he and his wife/life partner, Rabia, came to Whidbey, where I live. They are the authors of Earth Prayers, and Prayers for a Thousand Years, and beyond these wonderful anthologies, they are also profound witnesses for peace and story. A few years ago they guided walking peace pilgrimages in Southeast Asia, and this fall they are planning one through Iran. Of course with current conditions erupting, they are watching closely, and looking for the story under the story.

Meanwhile, as I emerge from the focus of our book writing, I look around in the work we are doing and the news we are reading and am asking the question: “How do I best pay attention to what is happening now?” This question leads me to seek the story in ordinary reality, and in mythic reality. I appreciated how Elias combined the news with the muse and invite you to read his “LETTER FROM THE ROAD, #36.” The boldfacing is my emphasis.

IRAN AND THE FEATHER OF THE SIMORGH

I would like to step back for a moment from the compelling drama occurring now in Iran to look at this drama with a long-view question in mind: What does it tell us about the evolution of human societies? What does the conflict in present-day Iran reveal about what is seeking to be born on a global scale in the way we humans relate to each other?

To aid us in this long-view, let us turn to a story that is told in Iran’s great national epic, the Shahnameh, written 1,000 years ago by Ferdowsi, the most beloved of all Persian poets.

The story goes like this: a baby was abandoned on a mountainside. His cries were heard by the Simorgh, the benevolent winged deity of vast powers, who raised the baby as her own. When the time came for the young man, now called Prince Zal, to rejoin the human world the Simorgh gifted the prince with three feathers which he was to use if he ever needed her help.

And so it happened upon returning to his kingdom that Prince Zal fell in love and married the beautiful Rudaba. When the time arrived for their first child to be born, Rudaba’s labor was prolonged and terrible. She was near death when Prince Zal summoned the Simorgh for help. The Simorgh appeared and instructed Zal to trace one of the feathers across Rudaba’s belly. He did so and thus saved Rudaba and the child, and the child grew up to become the greatest of all Persian heroes, Rostam—“the world brightening one.”

Rudaba’s Labor
I trust Ferdowsi will forgive me for suggesting that the story of the birth of Rostam may serve as a parable for what is occurring in Iran—and indeed throughout the world—in this period of human history.

Rudaba’s—and Iran’s—long labor will not come to an end until the cycle of human violence comes to an end—the cycle that reacts to violence and injustice with more violence and injustice. For thousands of years this cycle has recurred, preventing the birth of that which we long for: the possibility of living together in kindness, tolerance, and peace. This possibility is “the world brightening one.” It is humanity’s Rostam: no longer a singular male hero battling injustice, our Rostam is no less than the birth of the capacity to relate to one another with open minds and open hearts rather than from rigid positions.

The seas of people now marching in Iran are seeking to end the long agony of Rudaba’s labor. They are responding to the regime’s oppression not with violence but with nonviolent civil disobedience, and, in many cases, in silence. This kind of profound nonviolent action is the Simorgh’s feather being traced on Rudaba’s tormented belly. Its inherent gentleness is the only response that can release her from her long labor.

It takes enormous courage to face oppression with kindness, to put a flower in the muzzle of a gun. If Iranians can maintain this courage they will change the course of history, joining the recent nonviolent movements that have toppled dictatorships in places like the Philippines, Serbia, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Nepal, and elsewhere. A recent study has shown that of the 67 transitions from authoritarian regimes to more democratic governments over the past few decades, these changes “were catalyzed not through foreign invasion, and only rarely through armed revolt or voluntary elite-driven reforms, but overwhelmingly by democratic civil society organizations utilizing nonviolent action and other forms of civil resistance, such as strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and mass protests.”  (Stephen Zunes)

The Simorgh’s feather: resilient and tender, its magical touch is the heart of the Golden Rule, the heart of the activism of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, and the heart of the teachings of all the great prophets of humanity. It is the refusal to react to violence with violence.

What Can We Do?
Two months ago during our journey through Iran we met a man named Ali working in a bazaar in the city of Shiraz. Ali was a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, intensely proud of Iran and its central place in human history.

“We have been an important part of the growth of civilization,” he said, “but now we are stranded. Our minds are stranded. We cannot communicate with or travel freely in the world. People think we are terrorists—look around you, do you see terrorists? We are stranded, and no one knows who we are.”

I think of Ali and wonder if he feels less stranded at the moment, with so much of the world’s attention turned toward the events in Iran. TV, radio, newspapers, the Internet, Twitter, Facebook—in countless thousands of ways people around the world are taking part in the touch of the Simorgh’s feather as we bear witness to the nonviolent actions in Iran.

Just as it is for every nonviolent movement, the role of the witness is crucial. “The whole world is watching!” we cry, calling forth the power of shame that is heaped upon the perpetrator when an injustice is witnessed. This shaming is a curious thing, since it gets its power from an innate ethic within us—the British were shamed by having the world witness them beating Gandhi’s salt marchers, just as America was shamed by the publication of the photos from Abu Ghraib. The ruling clerics in Iran know that when they are seen butchering protesters any claim the Islamic Revolution has of benevolence becomes a lie.

So what can we do, far from Iran? We can pay attention. We can be at the other end of the tweets and the YouTube videos. We can be the watching world as the Iranians marching in the streets silently confront the guns of the military. In this way we can act in solidarity with all Iranians—the protesters and the ruling clerics and the Ahmadinejad supporters and the military—helping all of us come to the aid of “the world brightening one” that is being born.

If you want to read more thoughts like this, you may register at Elias’ website: www.pathofthefriend.org and become more informed about their work.

At the end of the memoir class I was teaching last week, we had a conversation about placing stories into all the cracks in the world.  Certainly storycatching and “world brightening” have much in common. They are ways we pay attention: ways we bear witness. To be willing to know something, to hold the story as it is unfolding, even if it appears we cannot directly interact with the experience or the outcome, does contribute something in the world. I have to believe that my willingness to be somehow is sustaining to the people of Iran, of Iraq, of Zimbabwe, of Ohio and our own neighborhoods–all those places where pain is on the surface and the story is raw.

So, what in the world are you paying attention to? And how do you think that helps? Let’s tell each other those stories.

My friend Deb Lund, a well-known children’s author, is traveling on school visits throughout Japan these  weeks, and her companion is her 6th grade son, Kaj.  They are both keeping blogs of the journey–shared experiences through two generational eyes. It is beautiful to read these parallel and unique trains of thought and I invite you to check them out. Kaj is a voracious reader and has started his own blog to gather and share ideas for good books for the 12-year-old set. His blog is:http://portalreads.edublogs.org/ and his mother’s blog is: www.deblund.com/blog/.  I can tell Kaj is having a great time–his blog is not being kept up to date! Imagine that, a boy living in the present moment of his big adventure! However, he did tackle a huge piece of observation and reflection–their visit to the Peace Museum in Hiroshima.

Both mother and son are profoundly impacted. Each writes of it from their own ways of carrying story.

As a person who grew up very close to World War II, who was conceived near the day the US dropped the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and sent 100,000+ people to their deaths in a few moments, I have carried this story in my life narrative. And sometimes I feel I carry it in my psychic DNA somehow–as my soul was called in at the moment when so many others were called out. That’s an exploration for another time… what strikes me now is the picture of Kaj staring at the  rusted, twisted tricycle of a little Japanese boy who was killed by the bomb.

These are important lessons in the middle track of childhood. I remember the somber lessons from my own childhood. I was haunted by the big red book of LIFE’s History of World War II, and far more than I think my parents knew I would pour over pictures of this history that was still shaking us throughout the 1950s. My parents sponsored refugees from Germany and Poland and the tiny house of our Indiana childhood would swell with strangers whose stories we could barely know through the barriers of language and culture.

When the movie “Shindler’s List” came out, one of the responses I had was gratitude to have been shown the fullness of that horror in one sweeping story. I sat frozen in my theater chair, barely able to blink. But I was middle-aged and had studied this era. I had thought about these atrocities and come up with ways to accommodate my prenatal darkness in the peaceful privileges of my life. The teenage daughter of a friend, who was at the time much more removed and ignorant of WWII’s horrific details, was taken to the movie by her German language teacher. She came home, went to her bedroom and wept and wept. I remember her mother called me quite worried and asked, “What shall I do?”

I said, “I think she’s all right. Her heart breaking at the cruelty of the world. She needs that stamina and empathy. She needs to know she can hold this story and hold her own…”

That is also my prayer for Kaj–that he can know the story of Hiroshima and hold his own path. As a boy who just finished Lord of the Rings, he is already a student of good and evil. As a child heading into the 21st century, he is already living in the turning point. He needs to know–and to find ways to think about it–and then to go out for sushi and explore temples and let the light and the darkness make their rivers in him.

That is also my prayer for myself and all of us in this Storycatcher network–that we let the light and the darkness make rivers within us and learn to swim them both.

It seems to be an incredibly intense time at the moment. Is this temporary or permanent? We don’t know. I  made two teaching/speaking trips to California in less than a week and participated in a conference here–moving around several thousand people at a time who are infused with excitation, exhaustion, anticipation, resignation– all the big words seem to be in play. People are having life crises, health crises, work crises (not to mention Mexico shutting down for 2 weeks and serving up a big reminder of not being in charge of much of anything anymore)…

It is three weeks until Ann’s and my new book on circle is due at the publisher’s–and it is being a struggle for me to be as regular as I usually like with this blog. If you don’t hear from me for awhile it means I’m editing chapters and weeding the garden without a moment to spare for extra writing. I’ll be back in June.

I’ll miss you–please take care, keep writing, and know we’ll be back in the story circle soon.

Blessings,

Christina

A note of appreciation: I am so grateful for the quality of comment building on this blog–and thank many of you for writing in these past months. I read every comment, and  smile and greet the names I recognize:  friends, long ago students, and storycatchers coming in whose names are new. If you haven’t clicked into the comments, take time to do so–it’s a great community. I have an impulse to respond to each of you personally, and have decided I pretty much have to hold the boundary of how I spend my writing time. I can do this blog, and I can write the book under contract, and manage the business, and I can’t take on much individual response. Please know my heart says hello to each of you commenting, and each of you reading. Thank you.

I’ve been commuting back and forth all this past week between my house and our exquisite local retreat center, The AlderMarsh, where we teach when we’re home. I was guiding a small group of women writers through the complexities and magic of a circle that is gathered to have an experience together, while at the same time focusing on the depth of their own works-in-progress. Most of them stayed on-site, so I was the bringer in of news from the world–and it’s not an easy time for morning sound-bites. In conversations that plunged into depth and poked into many topics, we kept raising the question–So, what’s really happening?

This is the most recent example of being in small groups where we are seeking a deeper story that will prepare us for the conditions that are really coming our way. I cheer when President Obama calls for a cap on the CEO salaries of corporations in bail-out, and snarl at the idea that these people are so removed from the realities of the rest of us that they can even imagine taking millions in bonuses and buying private jets, but that’s just one layer of the problem: I believe we are finally facing the imperative to retool the global economy.

In a recent article written for Merrill Lynch, I highlighted these quotes from economic analysist David A. Rosenberg:

“We are witnessing epic changes in the ways in which people approach how they move around and how they allocate their budgets, especially with respect to discretionary spending and their attitudes toward debt.” …
Since WWII, (78 million boomers) ensured that even the most dire recessions were modest… Now, the baby boomers are done. … there is no pent up demand for discretionary items in the household budget. The average household owns nearly $40,000 of non-housing durable goods assets (i.e., the art, the third SUV, the fourth television set, etc.)… The boomers are not just satiated, they are over-saturated, and since one of the few booming segments of the economy are consignment stores, …these assets are being liquidated so the marginal household can trim its record debt and interest burden.”

Wow, I had no idea that buying my teaching wardrobe at Senior Thrift would kick off a national trend (and economic downturn!).  A year ago we paid off our mortgage and we live debt-free. We have plans if our income continues at current levels, and plans if it drops. We live in a community in conversation about local sustainability.

I’m sharing this because I believe the current financial crisis raises the need for conversations that ignite a passionate willingness to redesign our understanding of the material world so that we–people, businesses, communities, and countries– can establish a new equilibrium and move forward into the realities of the 21st century. I’m an English major, a Storycatcher. My last math class was 10th grade geometry. Yet I know wisdom resides in each of us. We can assess what is happening in the larger story and design our lives to survive and thrive.  We can build the path forward, story by story and insight by insight, and action by action.

This is my first entry on this issue. I invite us into conversation, here, as well as wherever you are living.

• What are you talking about? Hearing or reading about?
• Who are you talking and listening to?
• What stories inspire you? What scares you?
• How are you framing the facts so that you can hold them with confidence?

At the end of January I had a conversation with a member of the Kufunda Village community in Zimbabwe where we visited and taught in 2007. He had been on a respite travel time here and I asked him what it was like to be in the US during the Obama inauguration, and also what he was taking home to speak to his village. He said, “It is terribly hard in Zimbabwe right now. I am afraid to go home and see what inflation has done to us in the time I’ve been gone. And I also go home to say, ‘there are ways we Zimbabweans are still rich. Rich because in our country there is always someplace to run–people who will take us in, who will share their last potato. Here, I see that people don’t know who will help them. They close the doors of their houses and suffer alone. This must be so much harder.’ ”

Wise words from one of the “poorest” nations to one of the “richest.” My interpersonal work now is to participate in conversations where we break the remaining taboos of isolation and start the conversation and share the stories that will help us help each other in the necessary losses and unexpected gains of these times.  I still have extra potatoes–let’s talk.

Christina

Last Tuesday, Inauguration Day, I don’t think very much work got done in America–and from what I hear from Canadian and European friends, a lot of people took time off  in other countries as well to watch Barack Obama become President of the US. We went to the local library to watch a video-stream on big-screen, and to sit among neighbors and be emotional together in public. Parents came in with kids, the Friends of the Library served coffee and cinnamon rolls, and it was a ceremonial moment. We cheered when the folks on the Mall cheered, stood when the national anthem played, and listened carefully to his first words to us from this high office of authority.

That night we joined about 300 Island folks to dance in the Freeland Hall. This wonderful community building has served to hold so many local functions from birthday parties and weddings to town hall gatherings, to canning the harvest, and wakes for the unchurched locals–I dare say this was its first “Inaugural Ball.” Potluck, of course. Someone’s son set up a sound system, and soon this high spirited crowd of mostly white folks were dancing to various decades of music under a projected CNN feed repeating the Inaugural moments. Children ran across the stage, playing in the video stream, their dancing, laughing bodies becoming part of the imagery. How different their America is, how different it will be, from the America of my childhood.

There are several thoughts from this moment that seem important to note–for this is a day of huge change in our national story.

First, the presumptions of my childhood are truly and (I pray) irrevocably over. Growing up in the Midwest of 1950’s and early 1960’s, America was presented to me as a white country with barely acknowledged minorities (none of whom were evident in suburban Minneapolis where the diversity in my entire school was the presence of two Jewish sisters). Media and advertising imagery was white, and all the people around us were white, and everyone in our school-books was white. Though my parents were sincerely liberal, the reality of other American subcultures was beyond my protected grasp…. and within the privileged cocoon of my skin and the places I have lived, the diversifying of the US has remained to some degree elusive in my consciousness–until now.

Today white Americans saw America as it actually is: wonderfully multi-ethnic and multi-dimensional. We are invited to truly understand that white people are part of the mix, but not the dominators we have sadly tried to be. The crowd at Grant Park on November 4th, the nearly 2 million people on the Mall on January 20th, this is us, the US, now. I almost feel in need of being welcomed into this new country. And it has changed my sense of relationship and dialogue with all those strangers around me: how we see each other within this diversity, now that we are led by a man of diversity, is a wide-open story. I am eager to notice what shifts in the coming months and years.

Secondly, the thought went through me that my generational impact is starting to wind down. I was born in 1946, the first year of the Baby Boomers. The eventual 75 million of us have been a huge cultural wave–reinventing fashion, music, arts, social norms, and liberation and consciousness-raising movements as we pushed forward decade by decade. And now, after just two passes through the Presidency, our generational leadership is replaced by this vibrant young man.  Two thirds of the people in Freeland Hall raised their hands when asked who was older than Obama: he is not young enough to be my son: not old enough to be my brother, the other end of the Boomer spectrum.

For the children and the grey-haired, our local party was over by 10:00 PM. The balls went on in Washington, and Michelle and Barack were out ’til 1:00 AM on a weeknight. Then he got up after 6 hours sleep and headed into work to try to make a functioning country again out of the mess we’re in.

Little work got done on Tuesday, and a lot of work has been getting done ever since! Every day there is a list of actions taken to correct our course, to restart America’s presence in the 21st century. It’s not possible to wipe out the past 8 years and the profound damage done in our name to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, the folks who used to live in New Orleans, the young soldiers who used to have arms and legs, those who rest in the bloodied ground… It’s not possible to comprehend the shift from a $237 billion budget surplus in January 2000 to a $1 trillion budget deficit in January 2009. And yet the pervading mood  is a sense that truly an old story is over and a new one has begun. (Newsweek Magazine gave GWB an 81% shame rating as he left office: and Obama had a 68% approval rating at the end of his first week. The lady at the drugstore said today, “I didn’t vote for him… but I have to say, I’m impressed.”) We are picking up the threads of a different narrative and going on from here

And when a new story is gelling, it’s important to avoid assumptions about how things are going to go, or to set the path too firmly because we don’t yet understand the full range of possibilities. The storyfield needs to stay open-ended, ambiguous, contributory. My job, as we enter Obama’s Presidency is to keep praying thankfulness for his/their safety, and to keep open to the mystery that is unfolding in the world around me, from the local to the global, to keep noticing what is mine to do next. That’s what he is doing: the next thing, and the next: and that is what I’m going to do as well. And I’m going to continue to ponder my expanding awareness about what America is, what she might become, and what we grayheads have to offer the new age we set in motion while Obama grew up, and went to school, and to Harvard, and to Chicago and to Washington.

I’m writing on the eve of Inauguration Day in America… and it feels like New Year’s Eve–again. It feels like we are collectively starting the year over, which is a good thing since the first two weeks of 2009 have sped by faster than I can track. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to step onto a rolling treadmill set for jogging speed and been shocked and stumbly at the attempt to join something already going faster than you are. I’ve caught myself doing that a few times–and after 2 weeks of slowing down to the pace of guidance, stepping back into my usual pace feels just like that.

However, I also feel blessed that my busyness is just that–busy, but not disasterous. Around western Washington thousands of people have been dealing with flood in the lowlands and avalanche in the highlands. And friends across the northern US and southern Canada have been so far below freezing that the Centigrade and Fahrenheit thermometers match up–minus 40.  My brother and sister-in-law got in their Pruis in MInneapolis and just started driving south. Colleen said she wasn’t going to stop until she could stick her arm out the window and feel warm air. I think they are in Alabama by now.

And then there is the rest of the world and how we spin along in our suffering places of famine and war. And every day, when I think I’m at some kind of whelming point, I go down on the beach with my beloved and dogs and am wrapped in the peace of wild things. Words drift off my mind, and there is just the end of the day beauty–even if it’s rainy or foggy or a slit of light as the sun falls behind the mountains. I am filled with profound gratitude for this moment of peace, for the place I live, and the privilege of my life. Please, God, hear my gratitude, and fill me with the ability to do this all justice–the earth, the work, the tending, letting fall apart what needs to fall apart; fiercely saving and savoring what needs to be saved and savored. Let me discern which is which.

And when I think I’ve got too much to do, too many people I’m trying to relate to effectively and with heart, a schedule for upcoming speeches and projects that I’m committed to, I catch the news out of the corner of my eye and think about this new President and all that waits his doing! How is he going to manage his new year’s commitments? How will he learn to sleep through the night in that big slave-built house, under the coverlet of his burdens? And I pray:  pray for him, for his family, for Joe Biden and his family. I pray for all those gathered around this administration, the cabinet and advisors. I pray for the US Congress to come into its courage now, it’s ability to take action. And this is a new form of pray–one I invite you to join in with me, in whatever way fits your spiritual life.

My prayer is not a statement of request, a petition. I do not say, “please watch over… please guide…” My prayer is a statement of accomplishment, a completion. I pour a cup of tea and with my dog I go sit on the front steps under the shelter of the roofline and look into the raw breath of the new day. From this vantage point  I say, “Thank you for protecting President Obama and all around him. Thank you for their wise and courageous decisions today. Thank you for bringing the American people into readiness for this leadership, and willingness to face a future that needs to be different. Thank you for making me ready. Thank you for imbuing me with courage to step into the unknown, to let go of old forms of security and reach boldly for that which is coming into being.”

These are my words–you have your own words. Whatever they are–may you step into your statements of accomplishment.  I will meet you there, in that place where we are headed; in that place where we already stand in the future looking back with profound satisfaction and gratitude at how we expended our lives at this time.

Let me know your prayers…

Wow, when one closes off the world, even partially, for a couple of weeks–reading a 1000 page novel (highly recommended by the way–Pillars of Earth by Ken Follett), trying out some new recipes, sitting by the fireplace in the evenings and watching the Christmas tree with nothing going on but a little mental reverie, and then opens the door again–the whoosh is intense! The week has sped by–and it’s not the whoosh I want to write first into the new year.

We stepped out of our two-week mid-winter rest last Saturday evening (January 3rd) by attending a concert at the local arts center and then a reception full of island friends. It was so sweet to be greeted a dozen times with words of welcome, “You’re back? You came out for this?  What did you not do this year?… I thought of you, as this was the year I spent the holidays in some kind of retreat because we were all snowed in and had to be quiet!”

The reception was potluck, of course, and candlelight and clusters of conversation moving from room to room. All we middle-agers stayed up late, “My goodness it’s 11:00PM…” We drove home in the dark, floated in the hot-tub, and slept in the next day. Sunday we took down the tree and began admitting how few holiday cards we were sending. We put away Christmas.

It’s a week later and the evidence left of our quiet time is two card tables in the living room where we are still working a few evenings more to catch up on our annual scrapbook. This is a project where we go back and review the year, collect photos and journal entries and write out the narrative of life experiences. It is an act of storycatching that always surprises me in the meaning it gathers over time.

“Maybe we don’t want to do this anymore,” I said on Solstice in my desire for totally unstructured time… “We don’t have to…Nobody looks at these but us.” And then we open the books of the years behind us and see what is there. On one level it’s a photo album: the children grow up, a grandchild is born, we look older, events both personal and professional are recorded. On one level it’s a chronology of community building: one by one and two by two and group by group, here come the people who surround our lives with love, collegiality, inspiration, outreach into the world–trips to offer circle training, consulting, vision quests, storycatching, writing (see www.peerspirit.com, our educational company website if you’re not familiar with all this). On one level it’s a shared journal of reflection on the meaning of our lives: quotes from our actual journals, strings of narrative thought, perspective over time, the chance to write things like “little did we know…” or “much to our surprise…” or “now we see…”

Of course, we want to keep doing this.

While it’s fresh, while the mess is still part of our decor, here’s the value of this record as I understand it now. First, it sends me into the pages of my own journal, starting with last winter’s volume, and the story I was carrying at that time. I had forgotten how grief-filled I was over the state of the world, how I was working with myself to attach to spirit in ways that would keep me going. Having shifted out of that space, it’s privately fascinating to watch myself work it through in the journal, to observe my process and learn from it the way I might learn from reading someone else’s writing. And then, as the work picked up and carried us forward in an astounding momentum of travel and commitment, I watched myself grow into the “yes” we had said. And when Ann had a car accident and my brother had cancer and a colleague died, and a book contract came through–I could see both the fresh and the reflective reactions to the chronology of events.

And the second benefit is sitting side by side with my partner who is having a similar experience. How often, as we are passing scissors and glue and blank pages back and forth, one says quietly to the other, “Can I interrupt you a minute, listen to this…” And that most private revealing occurs between us–how we held one another from near or far, how we individually perceived the same event with different emphases, what we wrote in the times we were apart. It is amazing to hear the voice that we each use to speak to ourselves when there is no other audience than our own hearts.

And something alchemical happens in how we can see the patterns we’ve just come from, and how we look into the path laid out before us in the coming months. We know the new year will be full of both plans and surprises–no one schedules in an accident, a health crisis, a flood, an economic crash, renewed activism, more gardening, less money, more need for community… And what we see from the volumes of the scrapbooks is that we always find ways to respond to life that make sense out of plan and surprise, that we are making in this record the raw elements of story. The building blocks, the things we count on.

How do you do this in your life?

And what are your thoughts as you enter the new year?