Grief as Deep Activism

Tags

belonging, community, compassion, creating cultures of love, family, grief, sacred activism

Recently I was introduced to the idea of grief as deep activism and today I experienced it in action.

“What has become clear is the powerful role grief plays in enabling us to face what is taking place in our communities, our ecologies, families, nations, etc. What I mean by that is that grief is a powerful emotion capable of keeping the edges of the heart pliable, flexible, fluid, and open to the world, and as such, becomes a potent support for any form of activism we may intend to take, indeed is itself a vital form of soul activism.” Francis Weller

This afternoon I attended the annual interfaith memorial service for those on the streets of the Old Town community who died in the last year. Operation Nightwatch in collaboration with several downtown religious leaders (Christian, Muslim, Native American, and others) led the service with prayers, music, poetry, and a reading of the names/lighting of candles for those who died.

I went into it thinking about this concept of grief as activism. I didn’t know anyone on the list of over 100 names. I’m certain I will next year, as it turns out more than 20 were once members of our center. But each of those names represents a life, a person. Someone who was once a mother’s child. Someone who has brought moments of exquisite goodness into the world. I believe each and every one of them are worth honoring. Every one is worth taking an hour of my time to hold them in my heart and mind as if they matter. Because they do matter.

There aren’t very many of us, people who will take the time and heart to share in this celebration and grief. There aren’t many of us who say with our actions that these humans have value in our lives. In a city of more than half a million people, there were only 50 people in the sanctuary, less than half a person for each person on the list.

Fuck. I used to think I was invisible. Now I understand that I really have no idea what it is to truly be unseen. I have always mattered to someone, even if in specific moments it was only my crazy mother or my children. I have had many friends, lovers, mentors, and people who believed in me. I know people will show up to honor me when I die. I am blessed beyond measure in this way.

But because I do know the pain of feeling invisible, and I now know the joy of finding my place, I want everyone to be blessed with belonging. I want everyone to know that they matter to someone. I want my local community to understand that these are our people and we need to take care of them!

Whether you break it down biologically, through quantum physics, or through spirituality, it all comes down to the absolute Truth that this is our family. We are all connected and we are hurting ourselves by allowing our people to suffer.

We all deserve belonging.
We all deserve to be witnessed in our lives and our deaths.
Damn it, we can do better than this.

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Why I Adore Jesus – My Favorite Radical Mystic

Jesus Christ by k Madison Moore

I grew up in the Christian tradition, Baptist and Pentacostal versions, and I fell head over heels in love with Jesus. I loved singing happy birthday to Jesus on Christmas and I loved the stories and rituals of his life. I happily went to church 3 or more times a week, in addition to Christian school until 5th grade. Easter was hard for me because I felt his pain so deeply when I reflected on the crucifixion, and because I believed it was my fault, because I was told he would have died for just one of us. I couldn’t believe anyone could love me so much and I tried with all my heart to be a good girl for him. I prayed and talked to him regularly. I made sure I was “saved” by asking him into my heart over and over and getting baptized multiple times. I gave myself over to the powerful energies of Pentacostal practice and experienced altered states known as “being slain in the Spirit.” I spoke in tongues and shook with an emotional and spiritual power I didn’t understand, but enveloped me in the deepest love and connection I’d known. Even as a child and teen I was a mystic, driven by my longing for connection with the Divine.

Now I understand that I loved the archetype and mythology of Jesus intensely because he mirrors my own nature. Jesus loves God and commits his life to awakening others to their own Divinity. Jesus is so generous that he suffers great violence and gives his life for us. Jesus also prioritizes service and inclusion over money and social standing. He raises consciousness. And he embraces those on the margins of society. As a little girl and young woman, desperate to be saved from the traumas in my home, desperate for a sense of emotional safety and unconditional love, Jesus was a bright shining light in the darkness.

I know down to my bones that Jesus would have loved the communities I love – the tribes with piercings and tattoos who commune with the Divine through body rites; the single mothers on welfare or working minimum wage jobs, doing everything they can to raise their children to be healthy, happy and whole; orphans who have been ravaged by life and grief; the poor, the disabled and the addicted; lovers who express their longing for Divine union through their “alternative” sexualities; and so many more. Jesus was a Radical Mystic and Sacred Activist, rebelling against the status quo and striving for social justice in his world.

This is the trouble that I have with how spirituality has become just another commodity in our culture. With our plethora of spiritual and self-development teachers, I don’t see very many people like Jesus today. The people who teach, even the ones I respect, only teach to those who have significant privilege. Most of them are not serving, they are selling to people who are mostly white, mostly straight, and are all wealthy by global standards. Jesus would not ignore or neglect those who suffer from poverty, illness, violence, and addiction. Jesus would not abide the oppression of queer and trans people. Jesus would not sit on the mountain meditating while thousands die in the atrocities of war. Jesus would not focus on building his brand while millions or billions of his human family go without the basics of food, shelter and safety. Jesus wouldn’t be interested in teaching people how to make six figures with their gifts. Jesus would be inspiring them to take their gifts to the streets, to the margins, where they are needed most.

While I grew beyond the church and the dogma of Christianity by the time I was 20, I find that I still carry a deep abiding love and respect for Jesus Christ. Although I honor and find something to resonate with in all belief systems, Jesus remains my favorite spiritual teacher. He is my role model. The work that I have found – with an organization that serves the people in my community who live on the margins with relationship and spiritual community in addition to physical resources – helps me see that this is where I belong. I didn’t succeed with an executive coaching firm that charges several hundred dollars an hour for their services because those are not the people I am called to serve. I will not become a creative entrepreneur because I’m not interested in selling anything. Money never has been and never will be a motivating force in my life.

Like Jesus, I am driven by love and a desire to alleviate suffering by providing sustenance and belonging for all that are not getting their most basic physical and emotional needs met. I can no longer try to emulate the bright and shiny stars who spin where the spiritual and entreprenurial worlds meet, because I am not driven by the same fire. My new role models are those spiritual leaders who take their love to the streets to alleviate the suffering of others. Sacred activists. Radical mystics. Those who are willing to put everything on the line, even their lives, for a more just and loving world.

Joyful Connection in Sex Positive Events

Tags

authenticity, creating cultures of love, joy, sex positive events

I just found this draft of a post I originally wrote on April 1st, 2012 for my previous blog, when I was one of the hostesses for The Impropriety Society. Apparently I never published it and I should have because it speaks to a significant piece of why I was so motivated to co-create sex positive parties, both public and private, for five years. And it tells the stories of two super special scenes I was privileged to be a part of. It makes my heart happy to remember these moments and trust that I will have them again.

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Awhile ago I hosted a going away party for a friend, that included turning her into a chocolate sundae. I was one of several women, as well as a couple men, who played with and tasted ice cream, home made whipped cream, candy, chocolate syrup, and other goodness on a beautiful woman’s naked body lying across my dining room table. We painted her in designs. We splashed each other as we played. And the laughter was out of control.

At the Imps holiday social, I was the spontaneous bridge between two fiery scenes on either side of our double cross. On one side was my partner, Eros, doing an impact scene with a friend of ours – a scene that I had initiated because I really like playing together as a couple and was interested in being a sensual top to a woman I adore in opposition to his meanie top. As we were getting ready to begin, another scene was coming together on the other side of the cross. Since I intended to stand in the space in the middle of the cross, I wanted to get consent to be so close to the other scene – which was three gorgeous women topping another gorgeous woman (someone who has flirted with me) for her first BDSM scene of any kind. Amazingly we ended up negotiating that any of the women were free to touch one another. I spent most of the scenes standing between these two women lost in pleasure, kissing them, touching them, and soaking up the energy flowing between 7 people having a joyful and incredibly hot experience. There aren’t even words for how magical it was.

By opening my home and my heart to holding space for people express themselves authentically, I am honored to be witness to and participate in a plethora of intimate, connected, deeply pleasurable experiences.

We shouldn’t need permission to be joyful, playful, deeply intimate, and really connect with one another in profound ways through our vulnerability in shared experiences. This is why I facilitate(d) events and gatherings – both with the Imps and in my own home. I seek to create spaces where people can be free – free to be their emotional selves, their creative selves, and their sensual/sexual selves with each other. There isn’t a lot of space in our world for people to be fully integrated humans in relationship to one another. I strive to create spaces that allow the most profound freedom possible.

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I don’t know that I will continue with sex positive specific events in Portland, but I do know that I will continue creating spaces for people to be the fullness of themselves. Spaces where spontaneous, magical connections can happen between community members, as well as deep intimacy.  Re-reading this post reminds me how much bliss I experience in these spaces, both as a creator and a participant.

Embracing the Shame Demon

Tags

shame, vulnerability

I woke up this morning with lots of energy and in an unusually good mood. To be honest, that I’m sitting here clear headed, motivated, and writing at 9:00 a.m. is mind-boggling. My heart tells me this is because I finally shined the light on the shame that was holding me back from community. Just the simple act of writing down the experiences that cause me to feel shame yesterday has lightened me. I feel stronger, bolder, more willing to be vulnerable.

Shame and vulnerability expert Brene Brown says the following in her book Daring Greatly:

“There are a couple of very helpful ways to think about shame. First, shame is the fear of disconnection. We are psychologically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually hardwired for connection, love, and belonging. Connection, along with love and belonging (two expressions of connection), is why we are here, and it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. Shame is the fear of disconnection – it’s the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection…

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” 

Shame is the number one factor in keeping us isolated and unable to experience the connection that surrounds us. I’ve seen shame in action – in my mother, my ex-husband, and other loved ones. I’ve seen how shame causes us to withdraw, hide, make ourselves small, and isolate ourselves from connection. Being disconnected makes the shame stronger as we become lonely, depressed, addicted, etc. Our behaviors in response to our shame make us more ashamed. It’s an endless cycle until we’re willing to drag our shame into the light and say, “I did this thing or have this behavior that is wrong, foolish, inappropriate, or harmful to myself and/or others. I am sorry I hurt myself and/or others with this and ask forgiveness. I am showing my vulnerability now in order to experience that I am still a human worthy of love and acceptance. I did something wrong, but I am not wrong and know that I can do better.”

Being able to face our shame is a significant aspect of resilience, a quality that defines our ability to pick ourselves up after trauma and/or failure. Before we can recognize someone else loving and accepting us despite our flaws, we have to be able to love and accept ourselves enough to look our shame in the eye. To name what we are ashamed of and be able to continue perceiving ourselves as a good and lovable human.

Facing shame is facing our humanity. We are such complicated systems of nerves, hormones, neurons, thoughts, and emotions. Learning how and why we behave the way we do empowers us with awareness, compassion, and an opportunity to change something we don’t like about ourselves.

I’ve often said that I believe my mother died of her pain, but really, I think she died of her shame. She died completely alone, having driven away everyone that ever loved her. In the months previous to her death, she manifested her shame physically as a skin condition in which she said “fibers” were growing out of her body. She picked at herself mercilessly. Initially it was only on her scalp and she choose to shave her head and wear a wig. Then she began creating sores visible on her hands, arms, and face, so that the school where she taught first graders was planning to let her go because she looked too sick.

I can see now that it was her shame, her belief that her flaws made her unlovable, that prevented her from healing and building connection with others. I know she was ashamed of traumas that happened in her childhood and she was ashamed of being a less than perfect mother. I know that she was ashamed she was in poverty most of her life and received more help than she thought she deserved. I imagine that she was ashamed of being mentally ill, an addict, and being a co-dependent partner with an addict for years. I imagine she was ashamed for being unable to find a secure job that didn’t make her miserable until she was 50 years old.

I will not live or die like my mother.
So here I am, making myself vulnerable by illuminating some of my shame.

What I am ashamed of:

1) I am ashamed of having a relationship with a man who later became a community joke for foolish and immature behavior. I am ashamed that he rejected partnership with me because of my emotional and hormone challenges. I felt I must be too crazy to be lovable.

2) I am ashamed of a relationship with a couple who compared me to a feral cat and gave me a two page of list of things I did wrong on our last date. This time I was too rough around the edges to be lovable.

3) I am ashamed of a power exchange relationship with a man who objectified me in every possible way, including emotionally (which was non-consensual). I still don’t know why I wasn’t worth anymore than a fling to him. I am ashamed that I chose that relationship over Eros for a couple months. I am ashamed of how that relationship literally brought me to my knees as I hit rock bottom with my addiction to emotional masochism.

4) I am ashamed of being publicly humiliated by multiple community members who put my flaws out into the world in unkind ways.

5) I am ashamed because I was judged and put down by friends and lovers as too emotional, too loud, too woo-woo, and too irrational. I am ashamed of every time my emotions have led to violent communication, even if I was provoked. And I am ashamed of backing down when I should have stood up for myself and/or others.

6) I am ashamed of compromising my integrity and self respect by having sex, or certain kinds of sex, when I really didn’t want to on several occasions.

7) I am ashamed of the number of rejections I experienced in my relationship explorations and the circumstances around some of them.

8) I am ashamed of my last time on stage in front of the Imps community, as well as leaving the event early. I was exhausted and couldn’t find my joy or mojo (I didn’t know I was having such a hard time because I was pregnant). I am ashamed I couldn’t finish the job. Then when nobody contacted me after to see if I was ok or say they missed me, I felt more ashamed because it seemed like no one noticed or cared that I wasn’t there.

9) I am ashamed of letting my partners down (I actually have bad dreams because of this one).

10) I am ashamed of having Fibromyalgia and how it limits me and what I have to give to the people I love. I am ashamed that my life mirrors my mother’s in this regard, that pain plays a role in my experience of life every single day.

11) And most recently, I am ashamed that I haven’t found a job after 8 months of applications and interviews.

Writing these things down is hard, but it’s not so big and scary as my lizard brain told me it would be. With all of these situations I can see where to have compassion for myself because of factors that were/are out of my control. I can see that I am so much more than any person’s perception of me, or any of the judgments people make about my emotional and flawed nature. With all that’s evolved in me the last couple years, I am reaching a place of less reaction and more compassion, both for myself and others. Each of those experiences and relationships was a building block to the amazing life I have now that only promises to keep blowing my mind and take me into deeper experiences of love. But that can only happen, I can only deepen these connections, if I shift my shame to resilience and my failures to opportunities.

What about you? Consider where shame may be preventing you from connection. Take the risk of pointing a light in that direction. While whatever you are ashamed of may appear to be a lonely black hole you’ll get lost in, it’s actually an opportunity bring connection and love into your life.

Thank you for listening.

The Devil and the Queen of Cups

Tags

archetypes, community, tarot

There has been magic around my word of the year already. Within 24 hours of getting the word Community, I pulled a Tarot card for the year, as well as a card to show me where to find my strongest support. The card for the year is The Devil, which I have to admit made me throw up in my mouth a little, and would be easy to interpret in a hard and/or negative way (it generally represents the ego, the small self that wants to stay safe). However this line in the meaning of the card stood out for me, “One’s inner darkness and shame must be confronted, otherwise it becomes a chain.”

I recognized in recent months that I allowed my inner darkness and shame to prevent me from nurturing deeper relationships with my tribe, as well as resist building community in the ways I feel called since moving to Portland. After my year of Vulnerability in 2012 took me to my rock bottom as an emotional masochist, I’ve been hiding (duh – I was resistant to the word thing at first because I’m scared of having a word!). As a result, I have deep fear of being vulnerable, as well as shame related to my actions and experiences that year. In 2014 I have been taking what feel like tiny steps to start putting myself out into relationship, into art, and and public dialogue again.

I can see in hindsight this quiet and introverted time was needed to process and heal the heaviness and wounds of the last 6 six years, but now I am getting a resounding message that it’s time to turn toward the future I desire to create and step into my bigness again. Which leads back to community. I need to face my darkness and shame so that I can find my capacity for vulnerability again. It’s both exciting and terrifying (who wants to look their shame in the face?).

I also spent the last 8 months researching, gathering information, and planting idea seeds in the soil of my creativity, all in regards to radical mysticism, sacred activism, building resilient communities, creating belonging through radical inclusion, and the power of gift economies. The momentum is building and I am feeling sparked, fired up with inspiration. I have a notebook full of thoughts and information I’ve collected. When I reviewed it last night, I started seeing the bright threads that are weaving themselves into the foundation a web project and series of community art projects. So while this time being unemployed has been quiet, boring, and seemingly unproductive, it has actually been a time of incubation, the building of new life. (Huh – interesting to realize how similar it looks to the time I was pregnant with our magic baby.)

Anyway, the other card I drew, my support card, is the Queen of Cups. Which is perfect, because she is me. I bought the Universal Tarot deck specifically because I saw the art for this card and new I was looking at myself. Her description includes the following, which are my greatest strengths! “Emotionally based in a stable way. Powers to receive and transmit feelings with great subtlety, indeed she reflects those around her so precisely that it is hard to perceive her own true nature (empathy!). Pure soul, benevolent and receptive.” Empathy is one of my strongest gifts and is also one of the most powerful values needed in building community. Now that I am emotionally stable and have my needs for belonging met, it’s incredible to feel the power of turning to my greatest strengths as a means of support for this journey.

I am feeling a sense of magic and support from the Universe as momentum grows and I become more devoted to what is growing inside of me. Community is going to be a driving force in my life this year. Honoring that and guiding my choices by my values in relationship to community may be a powerful catalyst for a more vibrant existence as I enter into this new stage of my life.

Thank you for listening.

What a Strange Year It’s Been

Tags

community, family, transformation

Hypnagogic Memory by Louis Dyer

In the most important and deepest heart ways this has been one of the best and happiest years of my life. Between strengthening the relationship I have with Eros and sharing a home with the Mamas and our son, my deepest needs for love, partnership, and belonging are being met. For the first time in my life I don’t feel like I’m operating from emotional deficit because I’m giving far more than I’m receiving.

After 23 years of doing everything mostly on my own, and giving all of myself to support other people, 2014 is the year I was utterly and completely supported. Someone else provided my home and my meals and my warmth and my entertainment and my very expensive medication, and every other aspect of my existence. Instead of doing it all on my own, three people co-parent with me, partner in life with me, and support me in finally making my own dreams come true.

And yet it was also a lonely year, moving from my hometown of 22 years to a new state and city, moving away from nearly everyone and everything I know and love. Even moving away from my partner for six months. I spent a lot of time alone and bored. But now I see how there was healing and growth that happened in that quiet time.

I was also lonely because at the same time I’m deeply drawn to building community, and even know that it’s the next big thing I am creating in my life as art, I haven’t been reaching out to try because I’m afraid. So many woundings from the previous 5 years still needed time to be processed and healed. Now I can feel that it’s time to leave the fear and heartache behind.

This year was also hard because money is tight and I am still looking for employment after 8 months of resumes and interviews. I’ve learned to happily live simply (making dreams of a non-consumer-oriented, tiny home life totally viable!) and I’ve felt big shame for “failing” to get a job. I haven’t really failed before. This is new and deeply uncomfortable territory for me. Although, yesterday I applied for a dream job, one deeply related to community building. I believe it’s a good omen for the new year that a dream job showed up just after weeks of only finding so-so jobs on the boards. Whether I get this one or another, I know there are amazing options out there and it’s really all about finding the right fit.

With the new year the family is working together to be more conscious and intentful about managing our finances and our home. I am also introducing five Guidelines of Cooperation that I picked up from an intentional living community that I believe will guide us in healthy communication and relating.

My Word of the Year 2015 is Community. I desire for community to guide every choice that I make this year. When I was inspired with this word, I recognized immediately what it is I need to leave behind as I move into a new year of life.  Fear regarding building new relationships and community. I have a friend who says that she knows she’s found her word when it makes her want to throw up. Because I can see the fear and shame I need to illuminate and transform, I know that this will be an intense journey and demand a new sort of courageousness. So much of my courage has come from necessity – surviving violence and oppression, raising children alone, moving forward in my career to better support my children, etc. Now I have to be courageous to claim the life I most deeply desire. I could choose to stay where I am in my professional and personal development and have a content life for awhile. Or I could step out of my comfort zone into the big visions I imagine of creating connection and leading the development of resilient communities.

If you know me at all you know what I’m going to choose. I always choose the adventure. I can’t help it. No matter how my life transforms with each new year, I remain committed to living a Radical Life, as if it is a work of Art or a Dance with the Divine.

New Year Blessing

If you are in the dark, may you see the light.
If you are lost, may you find your path.
If you are silent, may you speak your deepest truths.
If you are afraid, may you know your capacity for courage.
If you are confused, may you know your heart’s longing.
If you are alone, may you know connection.
If you feel unloved, may you know that I love you,
and I believe other unseen souls in our world do, too.

Crazy Amazing Abundance

Tags

abundance, community, family

For someone who is unemployed and poorer than I’ve ever been as an individual, I have some crazy amazing abundance in my life. Not only are ALL of my material and emotional needs met, but I get the perfect amount of extra that helps keep my soul fed (the occasional Fleur de Sel Dark Caramel mocha (heaven on my tongue!), soft scarves to keep me warm, books I can learn from, art supplies for creative blessings I can give away, cultural experiences to inspire me, a website for my new project, essential items of stylish clothing for interviews/work, and my daughter home for x-mas).

I realize as I am writing this that I feel like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life (yes, I am one of those sentimental people who watches it every year, because it’s all about generosity and community and those are my favorite things about being human). After 20+ years of giving all of myself to my family and community, I am being held in love and generosity in ways I would have never even thought to wish for.

And this is probably why I’m still unemployed. Because I NEED to experience this. I need to experience being loved without having to earn it or work to deserve it in some way. I need to experience the reciprocity of generosity. I need to fill up every cell of my being with this rocket fuel of love so that when I am ready, I can go back out into the world in and serve in even bigger (and healthier!) ways. What my family is giving me in these first months in Portland is fueling new visions and inspirations of ways I can contribute to my new community as an artist, a community builder, and an activist.

I can imagine the flame of this love we are living spreading to each person we touch as individuals and as a tribe. I imagine our Fire sparking other Fires, communities of people coming together with the intention to be real and hold each other in all the complexities of our humanness. I imagine more alternative families, chosen families and tribes. I imagine various sorts of intentional communities that provide the belonging, support and resource sharing that allows everyone in the community to thrive. I imagine networks of communities that are prepared to step in to support one another if infrastructure falls apart in our cities and towns. I imagine our children, disabled, elders and dying being honored and included for their places in the community and cared for with compassion. Every single one of them.

I imagine places where we can speak the truth about injustice and actually listen to each other. I imagine restorative justice. I imagine places where we practice ways to nurture connection and empathy. I imagine places where we figure out how to include EVERYONE – no matter their physical, intellectual, emotional or other differences.

As my tribe holds me in this uncertain and culturally defined “unproductive/unsuccessful” place, they are actually putting me back together, healing me in the deepest possible ways, and making me whole. My intuition tells me that when I finally burst out of this cocoon, it’s going to be a blazing revelation. I have returned from the Heroine’s journey and I am bringing the story of my transformation back to my community. I descended into the Underworld and not only survived some gnarly emotional landscapes, but turned every single one of them into gardens of love and beauty. I have something to share about how to navigate those dark, chaotic places. And how to rise from the ashes. And not just how to navigate the process of transformation as individuals, but also how to hold each other as we travel through it.

My point is that this abundance I am experiencing is just going to keep growing, far beyond me and us. As we share with each other, we are exponentially growing the goodness we share out in the world with others. The people we work with. The people we socialize with. The people we circle with.

I am humbled and my heart is exploding with gratitude for being one link in the spectacular chain of love and generosity that grows with each new connection.

P.S. I think I just wrote the beginnings of a manifesto for the project that I’m incubating. And the beginnings of a proposal for a session at a conference-in-the-form-of-a-summer-camp that I want to attend next year. That’s awesome! That’s more abundance from you to me! Thank you for listening and being a link in the chain with me!

Shaping My Art – Grace Hearts and Transformation Dolls

Tags

gift economy, Grace Hearts, The Conspiracy of Blessings, Transformation Dolls

Transformation Doll and Grace Hearts Progress –                                                       Sewn, Stuffed and Awaiting Embellishment

“All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.” J.L. Borges

It seems I am still struggling to find the words and/or the motivation to write. Instead I have been hand-sewing like a mother fucker. Hand-sewing blessings for others nurtures life-sustaining needs in me – the need for productivity (I’m visibly accomplishing something more than keeping the house clean in my long unemployment), the need for creativity (I am making with my hands and piecing together unique items based on intuition and aesthetic), and the need for emotional cleansing (I am transmuting my feelings of sadness, frustration and helplessness into beauty, joy and love).

For the last 11 days I have been spending nearly every waking hour with my fingers pushing and pulling a needle through fabric. I am shaping my art – hand sewn Transformation Dolls and the new Grace Hearts – from my challenging emotions, both past and present. As I try to establish my place in Portland, I am still processing situations that injured my heart over the last six years, especially in regards to work and community building. Then there is the shame that is growing in me for being unable to find work in 8 months, for repeatedly making it to 2nd or 3rd place yet never chosen. It’s actually the first time I’ve experienced anything that feels like failure.

I start with the raw materials of confusion, rejection, humiliation, and betrayal. Through my hands the needle, threads, fabrics and beads transform my pain into beautiful blessings of generosity and sparkling light. I am healing myself, one literal stitch at a time. I am sharing my healing with others, hoping to touch their life journeys with my love and gratitude for all that I do have.

I am being held and financially supported by my special family. I am living in a home full of love and a sense of belonging. I am heard and seen and trusted and appreciated for all that I am. And I am blessed over and over again by friends and family so that I don’t miss out on anything that really matters in life (like a winter coat and having my daughter home for Christmas and seeing Amanda Palmer when she stopped in Portland for her book tour earlier this month).

Grace Heart I Made For Amanda Palmer

I hope that by sharing the abundance I find when I am financially poorer than I have ever been and feeling like a failure for the first time in my life, that I can help others see the blessings that abound in their lives. If you are reading this as you sit in a home with food in your refrigerator, if you have the time and tools for digital entertainment, you are actually one of the richest people in the world. If you have one or more people in your life that you know have your back when the shit goes down, you have an emotional abundance that many others never know.

We are blessed, it’s merely a matter of where we put our attention.
Is your attention on your abundance or your scarcity?

I am continually striving to turn my heart and mind towards abundance. While the Transformation Dolls are already promised, I am brainstorming ideas for what to do with all the Grace Hearts I am making. Holiday gifts? Leave them as random acts of creative kindness around town? Give them in appreciation to the staff of the local domestic violence shelter? Do you have an idea?

Transformation Dolls and Grace Hearts Ready to be Sewn Together

A Spontaneous Reflection on Community

Tags

community, creating cultures of love

This week brought another final interview and another rejection. I could easily slip back into frustration and insecurity. It’s sitting there in the background, that bit of darkness. But when I look around me, at the other ways the Universe is providing, all I feel is love and gratitude.

On the same day I was rejected last week, my partner got an under the table job on Saturdays slinging pastries at a Farmer’s Market and our housemate added another day to her bagel slinging Market job (same employer), so more money is coming in, alleviating the stress of adding another person to the household. The other housemate’s college financial aid came in so we have a buffer if we need it. We’d like to save it for a deposit on a house, but it’s there if things get rough. And my partner has an interview with the bakery after Market tomorrow for a possible full-time baking job. He was treated pretty crappy by his last two employers, so it’d be super awesome for him to get this opportunity with people we already know we like. And he already made a DJ connection, so he has a gig next Monday night. While my right fit is taking it’s sweet time in coming, my partner is already making active connections for work and for his art.

I am amazed at positive changes that are happening in our relationships as we finally learn how to live all together, as couples and as a collective. We are navigating road bumps imperfectly, but with increasing amounts of grace and forgiveness. We are all looking at our stuff and willing to work on healing and growth. I love them all more than ever. This is the (mostly) healthy, interdependent and empowering life partnership that I’ve been craving all my life.

I read this week about how loneliness is killing us and how we need villages to thrive and recognized even more profoundly the gift I have in my life with my family and community. Beyond our household of two co-parenting couples, we started a Fire Tribe in Portland with our other platonic-life-partner, a friend who was in our Fire Tribe in Humboldt, and two Portlanders new to our tribe (8 total). Having Fire in my life again makes my heart incredibly happy. It’s an active community building practice, which is pure bliss for me.

What is Fire you ask? We gather around the Fire on a regular basis to bring intentional depth to our relationship as a community. The original fire met every Sunday between May and September for two years in a row, formed from 20-30 volunteers in our sex-positive community, The Impropriety Society. Everyone contributes something to eat, drink and/or burn, as well as takes responsibility for cleaning up after themselves. All first timers introduce themselves to the Fire with an offering of some kind (story, poem, song, etc.), as the Fire is the one consistent presence at every gathering. We often focus on an intention for conversation, sometimes based on spiritual holidays, sometimes driven by someone’s story or someone’s need to share. One fire was a mini-Burning Man (the man constructed on the spot was rather ingenious). A couple of fires involved boisterous celebration and topless dancing. Most Fires involved a lot of laughter. Some involved a lot of tears. Every fire was different, and yet it was always a space to feel connected. It was a place where we felt like we belonged. Do you know how important that is? The sense of belonging? It’s really fucking important. It literally makes or breaks people.

Intentional conversation is a practice we are striving to deepen in this Portland version of Fire. As well as the ability to hold space for each other’s process and create a safe container for challenges to be addressed, especially between members of the tribe. We want to take community building deeper than we’ve taken it before. We desire to be vulnerable with each other in ways we haven’t been before, which is crazy to imagine with a bunch of people who have already experienced so much intensity together (as is the nature of a community based in sharing sexual expression and relationship).

This time we are choosing each other from the start and choosing how we grow the circle. We aren’t interested in exclusion. We are interested in shared values. This isn’t a time to party. Some of us drink and some smoke weed. But never in excess at Fire. We are agreeing to be conscious of the energy and presence we bring to the Fire. We are striving to bring all of ourselves to each other. No masks. No defenses. No distractions. Just love. Love, love and more love. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

Beyond the personal experience of belonging, I am excited because I see opportunities to practice what I’ve been learning about facilitating circles and community conversation. I’ve been researching community building on and off my entire adult life. The Imps were my first experiment in bringing some of what I learned to life, but it had limitations because not everyone involved was interested in consciousness and depth and the “woo.” This time my community is based in a sense of love, family, and a shared desire to grow together as individuals and a collective. Even the one atheist in our midst desires to go deeper in this way and respects everyone else’s perspective, as we respect hers.

My idea of community is sharing our lives and taking care of each other. Healthy interdependence. There is the kind of intentional community that shares life through sharing a home. And there is the kind that shares life through making a commitment to regularly share time, food, conversation, heart and life transitions with each other. We celebrate each other’s joys and we grieve for each others losses. We increase our experience of abundance, and lessen our stress, by sharing resources of every kind. We show up for each other. We all know, down to our bones, that someone has our back, no matter what comes. People used to get this from extended families of origin, but that is rare now. Many of us have to build our families and tribes. We get to choose who shares this life with us and how deep we’re willing to go together.

Building and nurturing these relationships is work, but it is a work of the heart that brings more rewards than we can possibly imagine before experiencing it. I know because with all my research, I only experienced dysfunctional and violent communities when I was young. While my intellect knew something else was possible, my heart had no clue it could be like this. And we’ve only begun this chapter. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

The Gift of Adaptability

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community

I am grateful that one of the tools I was born with is adaptability. Change is rarely difficult for me. I do not fight it. I do not suffer because of it. I adapt to new information and new situations very quickly. It can actually be a source of frustration for those close to me, because sometimes my mind changes on the spot and they’re still reacting to where I was a minute ago.

The gift in adaptability is less resistance to what is, which equates to less suffering. If I don’t resist change, then I don’t suffer. That doesn’t mean change isn’t painful. It often is. But there is a difference between pain and suffering. While I may have to live with pain, I do not have to create suffering out of it by resisting change, fighting what is, or wishing things were different.

Today I am adapting to new ideas about where Radical Mystic is headed. While I’ve had frustration with my lack of writing lately, I have also experienced multiple epiphanies regarding my next creative project over the past few weeks. I realize now that I am in a state of pregnancy – forming something new that has yet to take its full shape. It takes time, patience, and a lot of work in the unseen to birth something new into the world.

I believed I wanted to write a memoir, yet I’ve been struggling with getting into the nitty gritty of planning a book. I thought I was merely experiencing typical resistance. However, now I believe I’m in incubation and a bigger idea is just starting to take a distinct shape in it’s development.

When I was a young University student, even though writing was my primary form of expression at the time, I always desired to do something more complex. To combine styles and forms and create in multiple dimensions. To bring writing and theater together in performance art. To bring theater and visual art together in a community art experience. All of my former projects were multi-dimensional. The Yoni Endeavor was sculptures, digital paintings, web design, poetry, essays, creative non-fiction and blogging. The Conspiracy of Blessings was multi-media art, blogging, and community building. The Impropriety Society was multi-media art, graphics and web design, writing, blogging, event production, leadership, and community building. After these years away from actively creating something other than a child and family, I needed to remember that I am turned on by complexity.

Another factor I needed to remember – I’ve always been an immediate gratification artist. I enjoy creating a collection of small creative projects that take hours or days each, leading to a larger creation based on the cohesion of the pieces. The idea of taking months or years to produce one object is really rather horrifying to me.

So the idea of writing a book – words only, crafted over months or years of time – does not ignite a fire inside of me. But planning a project – designing a website and graphics, writing content in a variety of styles, discovering the possibilities of video and audio and collaboration with others, all with an on-going production schedule – this ignites me. The last few days have seen pages of development notes, full of inspirations from nearly everything and everyone I engage with.

Developing a project, in real time online, without a direct intention to make money from it, is also in line with my super power of Creative Generosity. I have never and will never create with the intent of getting paid. I can’t. That’s just not how I work. That doesn’t mean I won’t develop ideas for exchange or accept money for creative work that I do; it just means that I operate from generosity first. I create and give away what I create because it makes me happy to do so. Generosity is both my bliss and my rebellion, a significant aspect of my radical mysticism.

I am rediscovering and following my passions. In response, I feel the Universe dancing with me through serendipity. In adapting to the Divine’s lead in our dance, I am experiencing the magical support so many teachers have claimed is out there, waiting for us when we get clear on our creative desires. It’s been a long time since I felt this way and it feels fantastic.

Next step: my own domain name.