The Girl As God - The Truth (pt. 2)

Monday’s Musing “The Little Girl as God” didn’t feel complete, yet I didn’t know why. Rereading it I realize I was less than honest.

‘Isn’t that called dishonest?’ an inside voice asks.

I was dishonest for two reasons.

Several months ago an acquaintance sent me an email containing a piece she had written. The further I read the more I realized her piece was about me. She suggested my stories were all about me and that instead of trying to “save the world” I should get some friends and learn to listen.

Since I listen for a living, write on the side and take after my father who contrary to his outgoing appearance often said he wished to live deep in the woods, I seriously considered the potential for truth in her comments. I recounted my week and realized I had been listening that week, to three different friends in distress.

Still I was stunned and panicked. Were my stories about me? I read a few and was mortified. She was right. They were. I scanned stories by other writers, strangers and friends, and realized their stories were all about them.

Once my heart stopped racing and shame stepped slightly away, I realized that’s what stories are. I’m not well read but I do suspect even fictional characters in varying degrees represent parts of their author’s insides. So of course it’s about me. That’s who I am.

Then there was the part about being accused of wanting to save the world. It might be hard for this person to believe, but everything I write has more to do with saving me. I don’t intentionally set out to weave the world into my stories. It just happens as I’m waking up after having episodically been asleep, ignorant and ignoring nearly four decades out of my 52 years.

So what does this have to do with the little girl at the church?

I cut that story short and was dishonest because I thought, ‘Here I go again. It’s all about me’ and I was embarrassed to write the truth.

I wrote “The girl walked away with her family” then went on to write that the girl was like the Creator or the energy behind the Big Bang saying, “Look what I made.” I still believe that’s part of the story, a significant part. I’ve walked away from my resonance with Nature and am just finding my way back.

But the full truth is I was the one that walked away. I turned and walked away from her outside the church of my childhood last Sunday morning.

I exuberantly heard myself telling her that her handmade, paper and plastic creation representing Nature was a work of art; that she’s a work of art and Earth’s a work of art.

I heard these deep truths coming out of me to this child I didn’t know. Then I promptly stood up, looked at one of the women with her, said “I like your necklace” and then I walked away.

Excuse me. I like your necklace?

What was up with that??

I did like her metal necklace made of flowers. Yet what was up was my discomfort. I was uncomfortable with the exuberance I heard bubbling out of me as I knelt eye level to this child who excitedly said, “See what I made!”

I was uncomfortable because I didn’t want to be judged as that woman who gets excited and acts like a child.

You may know “what’s up” with that. I don’t think I’m the only one who absorbed the messages permeating society’s ethers: “Grow up.” “Stop acting childish” “Act your age.”

I walked away last Sunday from that child as I had walked away from the real me, the me that girl represented from my own childhood. And I walked away from the exuberance of being seen and sharing.

That little girl represented the me from decades ago. My detaching and walking away from her is what prompted my move to the anesthetized state I’ve episodically been a resident in much of my adult life.

Please bear with me here. This is where at least for me writing gets tricky. I want to offer what I awoke this morning thinking. It’s about you (or it may not be) and yes, here’s where saving the world comes in too…..

I awoke this morning with one thought in my mind. My walking away last Sunday mirrors what we as a whole have collectively done over eons in relation to children and the Earth.

Whereas the male Aborigines went on Walk Abouts, it seems modern man is prone to Walk Aways. I suspect we unknowingly participate in that walk away when we censor rather than question, resist tears of compassion rather than open to sadness, ignore the embers of passion rather than risk rejection, react in anger rather than hold a wide angle and maintain silence and control when our insides exude excitement.

I could go on, but I don’t want to preach. I just want to share the gift the girl shared with me.

And I believe it's not too late.

May we all start turning toward and embracing the parts of ourselves we’ve ignored. May we fully see all children with their offerings of “Look what I’ve made” and share these precious moments in the beautiful world with them.

At least for now, that’s how I’m saved.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 23 September 2011

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Electrifying Times

(This Musing was inspired today by a postcard I came across from attending an exhibit in May at Nashville's downtown library.)

“Electrifying Times: How Power Transformed Our City” the postcard read. The library was hosting an exhibit of materials highlighting the bringing of electricity to Nashville decades ago. I went.

Photos and documents lined the walls. Prior ads read:

“Order your electric range now. Get $20 for your old stove.”

“Our electric appliances are labor and time savers. Let them serve your home.”

People were suddenly served from cable cars to vacuum cleaners, and oh, the lights, lights, lights. The power of electricity transformed lives.

I wasn’t alive then and I know the Great Depression was dark and maybe it’s just me, but it seems like electricity arrived, people got lights and the times got darker at least in some ways.

Did sex trafficking, hunger and homelessness exist sixty years ago to the extent they do today?

Can it be the lighter our loads, the lighter our lives, the darker the times?

I want to receive a postcard that reads: “How Power Transforms Lives” – not the power running through electric wires, but the power of the heart, the current of love.

That’s the exhibit I want to attend the one with ads that read: “Expand your heart’s range now. Give $20” and “Let love serve your home.”

Then I realize I am that exhibit and these times are grace. The power of electricity brings the needs of the world to my home, to my heart's door. The power of love allows these needs a place inside. What once would have been a heavy load is light. What once was dark is bright.

At least for today, gratitude runs through my power lines, gratitude for dark times, revealing quiet currents of love.

Dark times reveal love's currents. Dark times help turn on the light.

We are each exhibits to the power of love walking in the world. I'll be pondering the possibilities in this power for some time.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 22 September 2011

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Harp Strings, Heart Strings

In times past, I would be one to see a spider web collecting leaves outside the window and determine to grab the broom and dismantle the spider's construction. I now consider that odd and rude. Who do I think I am to destroy spider's home and grocery, especially when it's not even in my home?

This morning my desire is to appreciate its intricacy and beauty. My desire is to listen.

I'm reminded of the web through which we're connected, the internet web through which we're sharing this moment now, but more importantly the energetic, invisible threads shared by all living things.

I go outside to get a closer look at the leaf ballet suspended mid-air. We are leaves manifest from the Tree.

I stay outside to continue to look. The barely visible threads remind me of Spirit and harp strings woven between heaven and earth.

I see our bodies, earthen energy, held by Spirit's heart strings
suspended in the between, alive in the unseen field of energy.

I hear what I chose to not destroy, instructs me. Nature reveals how things work.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 22 Sept. 2011

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

The Little Girl As God - A Homecoming Story

Yesterday as I left the homecoming service at the church of my childhood, a little girl came up to me and enthusiastically said, "Look what I made." This wee one, not much over knee high, held up something that I knelt to her level to see.

Covered in a loose plastic sleeve on a sheet of lilac paper were a small plastic frog and tiny fish, a star, a shell and several fall colored leaves. I read aloud the Bible verse at the top: "God saw all that he made and it was good" then I named every item on the paper with such pleasure.

The former teacher in me realized later I should have invited her to name the things in her collage. Yet as one who loves Nature, I was just about as excited as she with her creation. This was the kind of thing I loved as a child. I still feel excitement recalling the tiny planter I made at Easter from an egg shell in which chic weed was planted.. as well as my hand print pressed into plaster in an aluminum pie plate my mother kept hanging above her ironing board for decades.

As I knelt in front of this child I heard myself exclaim, "This is a work of art. Earth is a work of art. You're a work of art." With each statement I grew more excited.

The girl walked away with her family as I felt the gift I had been given. This child allowing or commanding that I see her art reminded me of the child I was and still am. She allowed both of us to experience the heart and art of appreciation.

I wonder how many folks realize what a beautiful work of art Earth and our bodies really are? The beauty to which I'm referring isn't the outer kind but the work of great beauty of cells, blood, breath, lymph and organs working in unison, imbued with consciousness. And likewise all around we've trees, bees and birds, rain and rivers, soil and sun, from bacteria to buzzards all working together on this beautiful planet Earth.

I wonder if God's a child like this happy little girl or at least has her attitude wanting to show and share creation with us. What might shift if we pressed pause for a moment on all our images and deeply held beliefs about creation from the Caucasian, gray bearded elder man God to the Big Bang? What might happen if we could for a moment in that pause, ask ourselves, "What have I done and what am I doing to this home that is body and Earth?"

My intent isn't judge, blame or shame, but to curiously consider how it is that we treat our bodies and Earth.

I wonder at times if whomever or whatever is behind Creation doesn't think: "I should have stopped after that fifth day" or "I knew I forgot something" as he or she holds the switch intended to stop evolution just before humans arrived on the scene.

Personally I could do much better. My pattern of self-care is black and white. I'm either eating healthily, walking daily and living gratefully or I'm on auto-pilot just getting things checked off the list, moving through my day like I'm a machine.

Thanks to the encounter with the little God girl, I pause to imagine a Creator running up to me exclaiming, "Look what I made!"

I want to live from the place I was in yesterday. I want to enthusiastically respond: "Wow! I love it. This is a work of art."

A day later and miles away, I now think, 'There's homecoming every day on Earth whether I'm aware of it or not as creation shares, ripples flow from the appreciative heart and I've the opportunity to come home to who I really am.

What brings you home to you?

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 19 September 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

A Woman on the Run Finds a Divine Light

Last week I grabbed my keys at the last minute and dashed to the Frist Center for the opening talk on two new exhibits, "A Divine Light" and "Woman on the Run" I felt like a woman on the run as I hurriedly left home wearing a t-shirt and pair of tights with a significant hole front and center in one leg.

I later read that Tracey Snelling's installation, Woman on the Run, suggests "a keen sensitivity to the tensions hidden in narratives of ordinary life." Within minutes of walking into the Frist auditorium, I definitely felt a keen sensitivity to a very present tension created by the fact that I had worn my ordinary yard work and walking clothes to the opening talk specifically for museum members. Now I'm a Frist member but if I had realized this was a member event I would have delayed the tension related to the fear of attracting critiquing glances. I would have not shown up.

After the talk, I ventured upstairs in the short time I had, not expecting to linger over Northern Renaissance paintings from Bob Jones University but curious as to the title "A Divine Light." Truth be told, this woman on the run must confess, I've never been drawn to religious art and thought a sampling of the works might suffice.

Surprisingly I found myself drawn to a glass case at the exhibits entrance. The sensation of feeling pulled toward art wasn't new, but it was surprising since the objects of my attraction were binders, brushes and colorants.

Yes, I found myself unable to take my eyes off an egg, flax seed, feathers, walnuts, minerals, bones, roots and a glass vessel of oil. These gifts of nature were samples of ingredients crushed, stirred and alchemically turned into paints hundreds of years ago.

These objects of earth found in my kitchen and yard cast a spell on me. There I stood intending to rush through the exhibit and I couldn't walk away from an egg. To ease the awkwardness of feeling unable to move, I asked nearby patron's questions and kept standing, paying attention internally to this unexpected experience and sensation.

I felt such awe in relation to nature and the process of teamwork involved hundreds of years ago as each artist had multiple assistants to help make paint and produce a work. These simple supplies were the source for these master paintings that I later discovered do exude light.

Nature as source. How beautiful that gifts of nature feed our bodies and our souls.

Then my mind made a strange but perfect turn. Standing before these simple objects, I came upon what I consider two missing aspects in the environmental debate. I've often thought it curious that people get locked into polarized positions debating whether global warming is or isn't occurring and what role if any we humans play.

Standing in the Frist, I viscerally felt one facet of the role we're built to play, a vital activity in which we're here to engage the experience of reverence and awe as to the divine light in everything and our relatedness with Nature. Imagine the shift in our world if like the artist's teams of old, we momentarily stopped our debating and agreed about one thing as participants for Team Earth. Imagine if regardless of zip codes, status and dress, we all started feeling appreciation for Earth.

I had a musical commitment to keep, but I parted the Frist thinking we're here to be grateful, to realize the energetic binder tucked in our bodies, hearts and minds, the vibration of appreciation for living on this abundant Earth.

How often I forget to hold in awe Earth's capacity to freely give with no demand for return. Nature divinely mothers us in the masterful painting that is life on Earth.

An hour later the "narrative of my ordinary life" found me listening to Tim Grimm & The Hay Wagon Gypsies at East Nashville's Family Wash. The hook in the final song I heard that evening was the perfect book end to how my evening began. A young woman playing mandolin sang: "We are holy."

I sat there in holey tights knowing we are holy. We are master paintings brought to life by light, by the energy in the very foods of which the holy works at the Frist were made. We are holy works in the masterful painting that is life on Earth.

Awe, yes. I can imagine that!

-Dawn Kirk, The Good News Muse, 16 September 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

* The Frist Center is open 7 days a week. Hours vary. Click Frist Center for info and hours. Both exhibits above are on display until early February. Opening also Oct. 7th is "To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum" and Maria Magdelena Campos-Pons: Journeys. In the entrance gallery presently, Connecting Cultures: Children's Stories from Across the World, 200 participants from ten of Nashville's cultural organizations created artwork telling their cultural stories.

Moon & Bloom

Hidden among the heart-shaped leaves on the trellis, I've found unopened moon flower blossoms, blossoms that carry the same energy as the recent full moon overhead. Whether open or closed, waxing or waning both fed by the sun reflect and carry the light.

From above and below, moon and bloom in their continually shifting phases remind me: Savor all phases of life.

Moon flowers open at night and like the moon remind me: Light often shines brightest in the phases seeming darkest.

Imagine. Be fed. Shine. .

-Dawn,The Good News Muse, 16 September 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

The Nest of We

(This piece follows the prior piece titled "The Nest" from Saturday, September 10th.)

The nest today reminds me of a container, a bowl from which I’m fed as well as the container that is the body, this flesh nest into which soul drops for a day in time's span.

The angel still stands her hands together in prayer. Her hands are such a contrast juxtaposed to the bowl's openness. Closed hands beseech. Open hands receive. Who invented palms closed in prayer? Isn’t it more fitting they be open to receive?

Open is certainly more vulnerable. What happens when into my bowl nothing comes, when my bowl isn't filled? People all around the world know this. Empty bowls, empty bellies. Death.

What happens when into my bowl lands sorrow and grief? People around the world experience this. Pained bowls in our world often become drugged souls leading too to death.

I use to want to shove my bowl away until I realized this bowl within is fed not just by food but by feel. My soul’s bowl is filled by feeling all that comes its way.

Yet still there are days, I walk around absent, not unlike the drugged, disconnected within.

What is trying to be born in this nest of Me?

Beneath the angel’s praying hands, still sits the nest on Earth, the precious global nest we've been given, this gem of bounty onto which souls tumble to be tumbled.

Empty and open I want to accept the tumbling, yet when my bowl’s pain becomes too much, my own hands beseech. I cling to the rough edges I know, as polishing I resist, forgetting in coming here we make a pact with loss and bliss.

How the tumbling intensified ten years ago as our collective bowl was filled. Into the nest of our innocence arrived sorrow, anger and fear. I question how it is that I write innocence when from our country’s collective nest we have visited war on other countries and on one another in the civil war which was anything but civil? How is it we felt so innocent when our kin killed Natives by the thousands not that long ago here on this same land? Yet the events that day shattered part of the collective perspective that harm of this magnitude could not come to our nest.

Hands clasped in prayer while others turned to fists. Grasping for power and to make our point, soon we went to war for getting revenge, forgetting the power in vulnerability, forgetting the power of opened hands.

Ten years have passed and our nest has been stretched in more ways than we would have previously conceived. Maybe the angels clasp their hands in prayer hoping we’ll still get it and open to receive.

What is trying to be born in this nest of We?

-Dawn, The Good News Muse at Imagine the Shift, 12 September 2011

dawn@imaginetheshift.com