Onward to 2011

Loving this jewelry (Esther Williams would approve). The article is inspiring me to start early on gifts for the year, find ways to repurpose and regift.

The holiday went ok. We stayed under budget and I feel good about the purchases we made. I also witnessed first hand how overwhelming gifts are to a little kid. We opened several gifts at once and, in a lesson for the parents, he stayed focused on some stacking rings for half an hour. I witnessed how stressful all of this is for many of my family members and I'm just going to take the lead next year. I'm resolved to how I want to celebrate the holidays, and being a parent seems to have given me the permission to do it the way I want, no apologies.

So here's to ingenuity, creativity and repurposing. To breathing in and seeing fresh. Cheers to a clean slate with which to dabble out a life.

Ah, the holidays

This year officially marks my entrance into the holidays as an adult. The kind who creates merry and bright for the children, who runs around meeting the demands of family, friends and in-laws. The kind who desperately trys to stay engaged and present in order to savor the spirit without losing spirit. And coming to some kind of agreement with my husband about how this all goes down is a whole new level of conversation. It all starts with how we were raised as kids and what traditions we want to bring forward and which we'd like to leave behind. I was like any other kid that enjoyed opening present after present on Christmas morning. The anticipation and then excitement in having all new stuff to play with and wear.

Yet, when I look back I can't remember a single gift (save for the Atari that our parents had convinced us wasn't going to happen just so it could be a significant surprise when it did). I remember TV trays on laps at my dad's parents house. Everyone in jeans with a beer or a cigarette in their hands. Older cousins practicing disco moves in the basement and Grandma's pumpkin pie. At my mom's parents house it was looking for Rudolph's nose blinking in the sky on the way home from Christmas Eve mass and tromping out into the snow for a walk. It was getting dressed for dinner at 5pm in the formal dining room and playing cards with Grammy Ruth's chocolate chip cookies as chips. And it was about singing in the Christmas pageant and slowly moving the three wise men down the stairs each day on their way to greet baby Jesus. I want a Christmas that reflects on how blessed we are, how thankful we are, and that provides an opportunity to slow down and prepare for how to be better in the new year.

It's just hard to get around the gifts. Giving should feel good, should feel like you've really seen someone. Right now it feels like meeting a quota. In the past I've found great joy in making things for people, giving them experiences or small tokens. I've never had a lot of money to spend and I refuse to go into credit card debt. This tends to put me at odds with my family who equates gift giving with how much you love them. I'm being difficult when I suggest we draw names. And don't even get me started about the reaction to the 'craft' Christmas idea.

So Christmas 2010 is making me very sad. Where I take this sadness though, that's the looming question. How do you create a holiday that brings joy to those around you as well as to yourself? And now this question carries greater weight because I know the way I live my life through the holidays will serve as a template for how my child expects Christmas to be. I'm workin' on it. But in the meantime, this is a great piece on changing the way we approach this season. Enjoy!

It's ArtsEd Washington!

As mentioned in a previous post I'm joining a board of directors, and I'm happy to announce it's ArtsEd Washington! I had a meeting this week with the executive director and board president and will be officially voted in next Wednesday. I'm excited to sink my teeth into this topic and learn more about what we need to do to provide comprehensive, sequential and sustainable arts education for all kids in Washington state. I'm most intrigued by the thought that the conversation we're really having is about how and why we're educating our kids, and I gotta say I am jazzed to be joining that conversation. I anticipate there will be lots of thought about this on the blog in the coming months as I work through some ideas about how we can provide leveraged funding for arts nonprofits, go beyond bussing kids to one-off productions as their 'art experience', and work within the current curriculum to promote creativity.

Beyond that however, I think I'll also be exploring education itself. One of my favorite thinkers, Peter Senge, has said that 'secondary education is a more purely industrial age institution than any business', and yet we cannot shake it. It no longer successfully serves its purpose and we're attempting to cobble together piecemeal solutions to get different outcomes. Kids are struggling, dropping out or worse, making it through the system only to come out the other end without much intellect. I had the opportunity to see Senge speak a couple of years ago and his talk centered around how we must change our educational system. It inspired me to think deeply about what an education is, how it's different today than it was when I was a kid, and what we want our kids to learn in order to be leaders and thoughtful citizens in the future. Our environment and our culture depends on it.

Anyhow ... passionate, yes. Excited by this opportunity at ArtsEd, yes.

Simplicity

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks:
I want to host simplicity retreats, particularly focused on women and girls finding the space they need to truly create the lives they want. Not just for themselves, but the lives they want for everyone they love, their communities, this world. So my brain is aswirl today. I had time yesterday, driving while the baby napped, sitting at a coffeeshop while the baby played with Grammy, and all these ideas I've had gelled for a moment and I think ... maybe ... not just another idea but really something? Providing the space for women to take some time out to find their own philosophy of compassionate living, to eat well and laugh, talk about how they will simplify and possibly create some real change in how our culture supports families.

I'm energized by the thought of a retreat in the woods, wine and cheese, silent walking mediations, discussions about saving money, creating an altar, baking bread ... would anyone be interested in doing this with me? I wonder. I was reading Alicia Silverstone's website The Kind Life because I had seen her talking on Oprah about going vegan. Her approach intrigued me (as you may recall, dear reader, which I think is just my husband at this point (hi) I have serious concerns, philosophically, about eating flesh anymore) and on her website she said something that stuck with me this last week: she created the kind diet and the website to create community around it because it was a need that she had and she wanted to fill that need. Somehow the way she phrased it, maybe because it hit along with everything else going on, looking for a house, reading about the anxiety of motherhood, joining a board to promote creativity, stumbling across my m-in-laws book on women's sacred spaces, wanting to find a community that will discuss things like Bucky Fuller's concept that death is just another perspective humans have yet to tap into ... it all just came together.

blending chaos and order

I've decided to use the library like it's never been used before, slowly working through a list of books that I've been meaning to read for years. Management theory and community building type stuff, which, I will admit, I tend to devour like they were romance novels. Three days and I'm halfway through Dee Hock's Birth of the Chaordic Age. I first came across this book when I was studying systems theory at Antioch and its a welcome find at this point in my life. I'm most hit by his personal story, feeling out of sorts with institutions and a bit out of step with his family growing up; and I'm particularly moved by his realization that VISA was not where he was supposed to be and abruptly leaving for no good reason, because some voice inside him told him he had other things to do. All of this feels like a crackling fire and a cup of cocoa right now. I needed Mr. Hock and his story of scrambling and struggling to make sense of it all. I was looking for a mentor to help me push forward on my non-linear path, which at this present moment feels like I just took a side trail into brushy woods, never to be heard of again. Every transition in my life resembles chaos while I walk it, but order when I reflect back, and I'm incessantly puzzling how I can better balance these two poles in order to stay more present in the journey.

How to recognize that chaos is the natural order of things ... it's a call to the wild. We forget this natural order when we're not exposed regularly to nature. And reading back over this post, the answer is sprinkled throughout in my language. So off I go, today I will go for a walk in the woods and reflect.

10.10.10

I wanna go to TEDxRainier.

See? It's that easy ...

I came across the website of a friend's business in Seattle and the tagline resonated with me: connects brands to tribes
by telling stories that matter

I recognize this language, so similar to community foundation taglines across the country: connecting people who care with causes that matter. People and stories and connecting ... it's as simple as loving life and sharing that passion by injecting it into whatever work you do. And the words that matter are very significant because they get to an authenticity which is core to the everyday philanthropist.

What matters to you? It's probably a lifelong pursuit, to discover this thing that matters to you. And certainly what matters changes as we transition from student to professor or vice president to mother. But at our core each of us holds an answer to that question. Sometimes the voice is soft, hopefully it is also persistent. How do we dig deeper into our stories of what matters and make every simple gesture a word in that novel? How do we breath more passion for life into what we're doing?

It can feel so immense, trying to be a good person every day, trying to do good things in the world. Yet in a nugget, people and stories and connecting ...

Creativity and Education

I've been asked to join the board of directors of a nonprofit I've worked with in the past (details to follow). It's an opportunity for me to network and use my brain for something I'm passionate about; because, if I've learned nothing else this past year it's that, although I am passionate about my baby, I am not passionate about diapers, yams and picking cheerios up off the floor like it's groundhog day. I have always been drawn to the idea of working with the educational system, but in a systemic, recreate it kind of way. And I'm a strong believer, based on my first hand experiences in theatre, music and film, that creativity is a key component in educating intelligent, gusty and compassionate young people. Needless to say I'm excited that I'm being given an opportunity to explore these topics with other adults who care deeply about these issues as well.

So after attending a board meeting as a guest this week I stumbled across this talk given by Sir Ken Robinson at TED. A lot of the points he makes were familiar to me, and are things I inherently agree with, but there was a simplicity to his argument that got me fired up again.

Plus, I can't resist wry.

I took the summer off. Obviously.

It's hard for me to not constantly be doing something. If I'm not in process with something I feel like life is passing me by ... like, quite frankly, my existence is meaningless. My therapist has asked me over the years to ask myself why this is, and it's an ongoing conversation I have with my head. "If you were to slow down, to not make plans or start businesses or create projects, what would you have?" I know it's an attempt to pinpoint the fact that if I peeled away the layers of 'doing' I would have to just 'be'. Who am I? What is my purpose? Very zen, I get it. Much harder to act upon than to pontificate about however.

So the fact that I set up this blog thingy, with every intent over the last year to write a couple times a week and use it as the backbone to starting a consulting business and whatever else that might bring, and then struggled to keep up with it and just stopped writing altogether last spring ... well, I consider this a huge success. Here's why:

My goal this year, the one that was hidden in my heart, was to truly let the experience of the first year of life wash over me. To live in the moment with my newborn. To catch all the precious little changes and monumental awakenings that happen to a human being as they move from completely helpless to walking and talking. It has been fascinating and it has completely absorbed me. And even though I've still beat myself up periodically for not 'doing enough' this year, in reflection I can see real progress. The infrastructure was being built, the steel girders on which I can now apply concrete and glass. And things are again moving along. Networking has started, ideas are percolating and I have the energy to apply myself beyond myself again. I realize, one year out, that a year is such a short time. It is just one season in and of itself. This year was about sowing - and truth be told I think I've got another solid year of sowing ahead of me, not to mention if we have another baby. But all of that energy and seed is going to come to fruition and there will be plenty of time to create.

And even as I type that it cracks me up. Because what have I been doing this year if not create. A little person rose up onto his own two feet because I've been here nurturing him. What better foundation could I have been building this year?

Thank you for letting me say hello to you.

A young woman in a revealing sundress swooped down as she walked past the stroller and started talking to Liam in a singsong voice, “oh babeee, don’t cry, nothing to be sad about, babeee”. He tucked his chin into his shoulder and rolled his eyes up to me, smiling. Glistening tears still set on his cheeks, rosy from the brisk walk here. I was marveling at how a stranger can calm your baby when he is bored and frustrated with you, stupid parent, and thinking that I needed to figure out the protocol of how to ask young women to come over and play with my son for $10 an hour. She stood up to walk away and the man standing behind me said, “Beautiful baby, what’s his name?” I was still looking at Liam, thinking about how picking up babysitters reminded me of a Seinfeld episode. “How old is he?” the man continued, followed by, “So beautiful, you’re doing a really good job, you can tell.” This is turning into a lovely day, such nice interactions with strangers. So unlike yesterday when I was pulled over by a motorcycle cop who, as far as I could tell, just wanted to show off his mustache. The man waiting to order his coffee stretched out his hand and introduced himself, “I’m Joe, what’s your name?” As soon as I reached out to take his hand I noticed how scruffy he was and how weathered his fingertips were. Oh my, as I glanced down at the duffle bag at his feet, a sudden shift in the kind of conversation I was having. The barista gave me a look and called to the guy, “you want another refill?” in a tone that said hurry up and outta here. I finished shaking his hand and told him my name. He smiled, head down a bit, “Thank you for letting me say hello to you.” He took his refill and headed for the door.

How easy it is to engage in the simplest acts of connection; yet so often we let our initial perceptions of people interfere with an opportunity to interact. I forget that an off-the-cuff moment for me might be meaningful to someone else. We all want simple interactions with strangers, to be seen by other people. And how would it feel if people didn’t let you say hello to them? As I was pondering this reality, and vowing to be better about slowing down to see the people who enter my life every day, I saw this message spray painted on the street:


So easy really.

Right now mama

I’m in a transition and I don’t feel connected to my environment. I am distant and complacent. I’ve been thinking that if I could extract the essence of what brings me happiness, I'd have trail markers to get me back onto the path again; an exercise to provide direction for the next chapter in life. I was trying to narrow the list to 5 moments but we’ll see where there’s overlap:

•Walking and writing around Queen Anne, particularly the fountain near Intiman
•Riding the subway in NY by myself on my 30th birthday
•Working in my apartment office in West Seattle
•Hiking in Patagonia
•Cross country road trip with my girlfriends
•The evening of my 35th Birthday Dinner
•Beachcombing on Lopez Island
•Dance Off Pants Off New Years Eve
•Doe Bay solo retreat

So over the next few days (or at the current writing rate, the next few weeks) I will dissect these occasions. My hope is that by unearthing the core elements that bring me closer to that fire, both creative and warming, I’ll be able to recalibrate. Or at least find a modicum of balance during this time when the baby needs me ALL THE TIME, RIGHT NOW MAMA RIGHT NOW.

Happiness Only Real When Shared

We watched Into the Wild this weekend. I remember being so moved by the book when it came out; I was 24 years old. Watching the movie at 36 gave me new perspective. I went to bed thinking about the relationships we make and break throughout our lives. The feelings of isolation we can feel when surrounded by too many people. There are such elements of naïveté in Chris’s story. It’s tragic really that he wasn’t more prepared because he seems to have been a really great guy, just young and a bit overly confident. He was the type of person who could have come out of the wild and made a significant impact with the rest of his life. Yet perhaps his impact was meant to be made through death. In death he became a beacon, a reminder that there is a raw wildness that exists in each of us, a wildness that most of us are disconnected from, a wildness that we need to find our way back to.

This time as I watched the story unfold a pit formed in my chest. Children make their own choices, they blame you for how you raised them, they die. Sometimes they die. Swirling ache moved from my chest into my shoulders and down to my knees, thinking of all the mothers who have had to let their babies go. I sighed deeply, trying to release this grip of fear, “I don’t know if I can do this. This parenthood thing is going to be too hard.” Slade leaned his head down to my chest and said, “It’s going to be wonderful” and resumed watching the movie. It’s going to be wonderful.

And by the end of the movie I had come full circle. It became clear to me that our babies aren’t really ours; they never really belong to us. Ultimately, our babies belong to another mother who calls each one of us back to her one way or another. Letting go, giving up control, over and over again. We are children of the universe; we belong to no one but her. Deep breath, feel the extent to which we connect. This whole deal is about leaning into the experience, pushing up against life and feeling it intensely. And I’m reminded of a quote from Dawna Markova: “I will not live an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me.” Let the heart break wide open …

Jump

I've just decided I need to jump in and write every coupla days. Not so much editing, it's not like this is going into a major publication. Otherwise I won't get more than one post up a month and that is not satisfying my experiment of writing about philanthropy as it occurs to me on a daily basis. Part of the problem is that I need to be more conscious about it during the day, while changing diapers and going for walks and fixing dinner. It's a little like poetry, finding beauty in the shadows and intricacy in the stillness.

And it's about clearing space. It always comes back to clearing space. I tend to clutter up my brain with inconsequential details in an attempt to avoid being present. This year at home with Liam was supposed to be an opportunity to unclutter, to see my breath and feel the weight of life ticking through me. It's been 8 months ... but what I also need to remind myself is that there are seasons of creativity. I am sowing right now, I am tending to the daily drudgery of doing in order that something will blossom. Yet to get the blossom you have to remain diligent in practice. So this is me stepping into the random abyss that is my mind, a jumbled jambled bramble of thought. Unedited.

Breathe (with thanks to Alexi Murdoch)

I was reminded the other night that the whole world begins and ends with how you treat yourself. I spent last week in California helping my sister with her two week old baby, while also taking care of my 7 month old baby, who decided because he was in a new place he would go back to waking up 3-4x during the night. I came home exhausted with the start of a cold, which over the course of this week has unleashed a fury unlike a cold I’ve had in years, in part because I haven’t been getting the kind of sleep you need to really fight one of these things. Tossing and turning, listening to Liam crying out at random intervals because, yes indeed, he’s now coming down with it, I got up and put on the kettle. The kitchen was quiet, it was 12:30am and every time I swallowed my throat burned and my head filled with snot so that it felt like I was drowning. “I am miserable,” my brain raged, “I am tired and frustrated and I want someone to take care of me right now.” Lower lip puckered, stomping of feet. I sat down on the stool in the kitchen sipping Throat Coat tea and breathing in menthol. My head continued to dial out all of the things I should be doing and all of the things I was failing at, including getting a cold. I plugged into the iPod to block out the brain, like a teenager locking the door on their room and turning up the music. In the quiet of the shadow In the corner of a room Darkness moves upon you Like a cloud across the moon resonates against the cranium making the deep quiet around me all the more palpable. The nuances of the music are thrilling when listened to through earphones. It provides invisibility; you’re inside this bubble looking out with your own sound system. I needed to be reminded that I can get there without going anywhere.

I am alone here, I am always alone. I’m looking around the kitchen in the soft glow of the moonlight and realize that man, I am so loved. I am incredibly privileged to be alive. I came across the thought in some reading recently that people are dying every moment and so many of them would give everything to be you, alive, regardless of your current situation. I have a cold. It will go away tantrum thrower, and you will feel better and it will be Spring and life will go on. I am reminded that how I treat myself is what I am able to project out to others. I calmed my breathing down and finally was able to get some air in and out of my nose. If nothing else, a cold is just a reminder to slow down and take care of myself. Not a reason to get mad at Slade for putting in ear plugs so that he could avoid the cacophony of his family, or to toss and turn with dramatic aplomb to show him how really sick and miserable I am. And I heard the voice, sad and small: be nice to me. This is where everything starts. It’s hard to remember to do this simple thing when you get caught up in the day to day. But day after day, if you aren’t nice to yourself you stop caring. And if you stop caring about yourself there is no way you can care about others. This is the lesson I constantly touch back upon, a buoy bobbing in the water that I bounce against as I race by in my speedboat life. It just doesn’t work any other way.

Good Gracious

An important part of being an everyday philanthropist is graciousness. Being gracious with your time, with your thoughts and with your judgments provides a space that allows opportunities for fresh insight and collaborations to grow. When I was reviewing grant proposals and visiting with nonprofits to evaluate whether we should award funding, I considered myself a guest peering into another world. And beyond making sure there was fiscal responsibility and alignment of their mission to our goals, my job was to be gracious and take on the role of a curious visitor. It becomes easy in positions of power to assume you know more or can do something better, but maintaining a gracious manner reminded me that I didn’t. With graciousness I learned more about my community, could make better connections, and viewed the complexity of the issues through the lens of a shared future.

Setting the stage for graciousness can be taught. In fact, I was at an award ceremony last week to support the Center for Ethical Leadership in Seattle, a nonprofit that builds collective leadership capacity for individuals advancing the common good. Part of their work involves using gracious space as a tool for change. This term resonates strongly with me because it is the way in which I go about my work as a philanthropist: suspending judgment, listening deeply, measuring what matters, and working across boundaries. It was a privilege to be in a room full of people who are creatively challenging the status quo and highlighting the crevices where social justice flourishes. The evening gave face to our common humanity and rekindled my passion for personal and community integrity. Being gracious is a gift that we give to the problems that surround us, and when we are gracious with adversaries it transforms them into stubborn allies. The potential in this is that we do not get the future either party envisioned but rather a creation that could only exist through shared experience. Living with intention and speaking your truth is political; doing so with grace creates the framework for sustainable change.

It’s been a shocking realization that I wouldn’t actually have a lot of time to do the work I want to do once I quit working. I’m finding it pretty challenging to write just one post a week. And it’s more than being constantly busy taking care of Liam during the day … it’s that I just can’t get enough of him. When he’s awake I want to sit on the floor and play. Or ya know, stare into his eyes and try to make him giggle. I haven’t felt like this since I was in high school, lying on my bedroom floor listening to music and daydreaming about my life. It’s fabulous. I’m sitting in the presence of wonder and potential and it feels like I’m being remade from the inside out.

When I left my job people kept saying, but make sure to keep something for yourself, don’t lose yourself in this experience. And although I get it, the importance of not just becoming Liam’s mom or Slade’s wife, something about these comments has been bothering me. I’m the queen of losing myself in an experience. Certainly I need to find balance when I encounter something new, but I don’t dilly dally when I want to throw myself into something; and damnit, I want to lose myself in this. Isn’t that why I quit my job in the first place? I began to hear this little voice and it’s coming through stronger and crisper now that I’m a few weeks out of the office. I only have one opportunity to be completely, naively gaga about my child; to assume that he is the first baby in the whole world in all of time to reach up and twirl my hair while I’m feeding him. And if the days start and end with us staring into each others eyes, well, how many days do I get to do this before he’s running off to join his buddies on the playground. I’ll deal with that reality when it comes. Right now, this is the reality I want to inhabit.

I discovered Brene Brown this week and I’ve found great inspiration on her website. In discussing the importance of connection she said, "Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we'll ever do." It made me realize that this is my story right now, this relationship with Liam, and I want to delve deep down into the ocean of connection with him. I want to lose myself in it, knowing that by losing myself I will find myself anew. And it takes courage to do this well. I can’t gain nearly as much by holding back a part of myself. What I’m called to do right now is to allow myself to feel this much love and give myself permission to immerse myself in this new story. Wander into the woods without a plan to get out, trusting that I’ll find the way when it’s time.

I wonder why people are afraid of being present in something that is bringing great joy and feels immensely bigger than them. It certainly touches on our fear of losing control. It challenges the way we view time and how we measure success. I also wonder if we’re afraid that we’ll be left behind when that joy transitions or shifts to something else. Brene’s comment made me realize that I have to own this choice and not be afraid of being completely present in each day. She asks how we practice courage in a culture of fear and I see that I can do this by paying attention to the little things that are weaving my story as a woman. In this, I am becoming exactly who I am supposed to be. The wonder and potential I feel with Liam is as much about me as it is about him.

First Week Home

Last week I resigned from my job to be a full time mama. Of course, as soon as you get pregnant you’re full time, all the time, for the rest of time; but last week I embraced the role of stay at home mom, thereby reducing my job load to one full time position. It feels good. I feel streamlined, like all the pieces are buzzing together rather than randomly bouncing off the walls. Not to make light of the processing that went into actually walking into the president’s office with a resignation letter shaking in my hands. I struggled to justify my desire to stay home after achieving success and great enjoyment from my career. Wasn’t I the culmination of what all those women before me fought for? How could I walk away from an opportunity to lead an organization in order to do laundry, make casseroles and schedule play dates? I felt like I was letting down all the women whose shoulders I stand on, while also making the journey more difficult for the young women rising up behind me.

I had dinner with a girlfriend this week who made the opposite decision, to continue with her career while her husband stays home, and we were discussing the extreme pressure on women with young children regardless of the decision they make about their career. This isn’t a new conversation, certainly, but it is constantly evolving as our society changes and women shift and buck with current trends and family demands. We were both struggling to prove ourselves and not appear too ‘emotional’ with male colleagues, the fine line that defines us. We also wondered at several points in the conversation why women make it so difficult for each other, placing such judgment on the individual choices we make (from breastfeeding, lordy, to childcare). And I was voicing my guilt that I had let down our organization, that now those in positions of hiring might think twice before considering another woman on the cusp of starting a family. It feels like I burned them, although there was really no easy solution: burn them, burn my family, burn myself … burn-out. Ultimately I had to make peace with the fact that all those women before me paved the way for me to have a choice.

Within a few weeks of trying to juggle the demands of work and family I quickly discovered that there was no way I could do it all. I felt selfish voicing this because I recognized that the component that would get lost in the shuffle would not be the career that I loved or the child that I loved, but myself. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice myself to this endeavor and this made the choice feel selfish. I have friends that I believe would echo this sentiment as the reason they decided to return to work, in order to maintain their individuality. The problem lies in the belief that we do have a choice, because the pendulum seems to have swung the other way. Most families nowadays cannot afford to have a stay at home parent even if they want to. So what will it take for our society to value the role a woman (or man) plays in the home? Isn’t there enough documented support that having a family member as the primary caregiver for the first year of life is the ideal situation? What will it take for our nation to get with the program? The paradigm of value itself must shift and I’m not sure how or when this might happen. I know that every choice we make in our life is political and affects the stream of history, so I’m acutely aware that my choice to stay home to raise my son was a political move in my community. I’m just not sure what the repercussions will be. What I do know is that it has given me a whole new level of empathy for working moms, single moms, moms in abusive situations. What will it take for us to place real value on the role of the mother in nurturing the cohesiveness and strength of our communities?

Good Bones

We’ve been researching buying a new house so I’ve been pouring over real estate sites, looking for that sparkler, priced too low for the neighborhood it lives in. A lot of houses in our price range are described as having ‘good bones’. I love this phrase. Basically a nice way of saying, “not much else”, but it makes me want to run to them, step inside the walls and say, ‘I know you!’ I’m certain I could settle into a really nice conversation with these houses, the kind that would build over time and grow with me. Good bones are truly all you need. The structure, the integrity of a thing, is what matters; everything else gets filled in as it comes into relationship with others. I remind myself of this as I approach each house. I’d rather work with what I’ve been given and come up with something unique, than be given perfection and have no where to go.

Coming into relationship with something is spectacular. It pushes you to become more than you were when you met and it doesn’t back down until you have both been transformed. I think of my hodgepodge of friends, all split levels and four squares. I didn’t pick them because they were a complete package but because they had good bones. Together we fill in all the space between and over time this space between becomes a home that we inhabit together. I experienced this when we first moved into our current house. I had never had a yard before and I was overwhelmed with the shrubs and flowers and vegetable garden that needed tending. There were rose bushes that our neighbor would scold me for letting grow over the fence onto the sidewalk but I was hesitant to prune anything for fear I would kill it. Over the course of our first year here I grew more confident and I felt the yard slowly approach me. I could sense a trust growing between us, based on my willingness to listen and observe before imposing my will. I came into relationship with the yard by acting as a steward for its potential.

And so we wait, my husband and I, to find the house that needs a little time to get to know; the house that wants to hunker down for a long conversation and allow us to mortar relationship into the walls. I’m happy for the reminder, a familiar motif, that the only way to create right relationship is to start with a solid foundation.

2010: local, seasonal food

Philanthropy has become a loaded word, a lofty ideal for wealthy people. Yet in its simplest definition it is the love of humankind and the desire to contribute to the health and vitality of humankind. Being philanthropic is merely aligning your intentions with action. It’s becoming involved, being thoughtful, engaging with your neighbors and participating in civic dialogue. You are a philanthropist if you are a member of the art museum, or if you buy your vegetables at the farmers market. When I worked at the Community Foundation I met a man who would occasionally leave a $100 tip on a $5 sandwich because he would learn that his waitress was putting herself through school. For the majority of us, this is the kind of philanthropy we can manage, promoting the welfare of humans one person at a time. Philanthropy is being mindful of the singular act that tugs on the entire web of humanity. If you act with compassion and intellect to take action and make the community a better place, you are an everyday philanthropist. And in being such a person, I believe there are commitments to be made.

For me, 2010 will be about honoring the land and the creatures that provide us with food. Inspired by Michael Pollen’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, my intention is to eat local, seasonal food as much as possible, with a de-emphasis on meat. Although the thought of going vegetarian has occurred to me many times throughout my life, I can’t seem to give up a nice medium-rare steak. This is the year however, that I might be pushed over the edge. I have a new son, and whether it’s the hormones still circulating or the way his eyes resemble a tiny bunny or lamb or calf, I’m having a really hard time stomaching the thought that this flesh I am eating was a baby to another female creature on the planet. So I say de-emphasis, which to me resembles a bridge to get me out over the water. I will be researching local farms for humanely raised and butchered animals as an alternative, yet I realize that if this becomes a philosophical shift for me, how they were butchered may not matter so much.

So the commitment to eat local, seasonal food provides the foundation for my philanthropy this year. I look forward to seeing what other philanthropic interests this will awaken: preservation of farmland, feeding the hungry, community gardens, childhood obesity … endless possibilities.

... a bandage, a wish, a promise

Nuts are my stepping stones from one moment to the next. Nuts carry me from downtown Seattle to a beach sidewalk in Zihuatanejo to a hillclimb in Valparaiso. Splices of a life, displaying the commonality of humans. We all need nuts yet they remain mostly invisible: in cars and desks and bicycles and cell phones, big nuts on tankers and little nuts in glasses. The mysterious hidden helpers that hold it all together, and then you find these guys strewn all over the street, discarded. So I collect them. I have an orphanage of nuts, a bowl of senior housing, nuts that have served their purpose and found the gutter. Each nut, with the same essential look, looks completely different. It’s a lesson in getting to know something so well that you understand it intrinsically.

Nuts have become my folklore, my own talisman of good luck. Finding a nut always causes me to pause and reflect on what I was just thinking. Each one becomes a sign of grace, that I’ve been touched by the intricate pattern that connects everyone. Having an awareness of the individual nut isn’t the point, I’m interested in the connection – the moment of spotting one, stuck in the mud between a crack in the ground, bending over to dig it out, maybe stopping traffic for a moment, giving me pause to smile and think another one, what a great day. It’s a Thoreau moment, a chance to part the curtain and see the matrix. This isn’t walking with my head down, scouring, searching, demanding that they present themselves to me. It’s being one with the walking, being one with the pavement, being one with the nut. They appear to me because I’m not looking for them. I’m talking, I’m walking, I’m appreciating the clouds, and then I glance down right at a nut. And so far, without exception, I feel childlike, a simple joy in spotting a new old friend. Once in my hand it gets turned over and over, feeling of it, the weight, the texture, the caked dirt from the road slowly falling away.

People will ask what I’m doing, what I plan on doing with this nut. But it’s not about what I’m going to do with it; it’s what it does for me. It no longer serves its original purpose of holding a tangible object together, it has passed over to the symbolic, the iconic, the metaphor. Now it holds everything together. By looking at a nut I’m reminded that the whole world can be found in the smallest piece of the world. When I can’t get my arms around the big picture, I see the nut and realize the simplicity of the issue. A book is made from words, all different, but all words, like a string of nuts.

When I bend down to pick up a nut, it starts a conversation with the person I’m walking with. It becomes a point of entry into a deeper discussion about the world. With some people we’ve veered into discussing materialism, how wasteful our culture is. With some we’ve begun discussing idolatry and how religions divide us. With others the conversation turns to what they collect and what those items mean to them. Each nut carries its own story waiting to be told. Some are bandages, given to friends who are going into surgery. Others are wishes, given to friends celebrating birthdays. One was a promise, given to a boy that I asked to be my husband. The cool thing about these nuts is that even if they drift back into oblivion, slip behind the cabinet or wiggle into a space between the molding and the hardwood, they are still bandages, wishes and promises. They will always carry their purpose. Let go of the object, and finally own the meaning deep inside of you. No matter how useless they may appear strewn across the pavement, they hold our dreams and radiate our stories of moments passing.

I have begun to put these words together to form the story of the nut, which I believe is intimately intertwined with the story of the philanthropist.