September 2nd, 2010 by Michele McHall
Finding the connection to the energy desire we want to live in is something a lot of us are after; finding the flow between giving and receiving sounds nice, doesn’t it? And yet a lot of us have our needle stuck in resistance, distraction, or pushing.
My Con Artist gave me a nice cocktail of all three last week! I found myself in a zone all right, and it wasn’t the zone of flow! Given the work I do, I had these amazing resources to work with, but I still felt like a Stepford Life Artist on automatic pilot. It took me two days to break the spell. It takes willingness, courage, and curiosity for any of us to begin to recover our true sense of being a Life Artist; however, in receiving some guidance, I discovered that my Con Artist had hijacked my Spirit’s connection to receiving inspiration and dreaming. My to-do list was driving my life. Sound familiar?
When I finally shred my to-do list and asked for help, I opened to receiving the true energy of inspiration and found my flow again. Like finding several shiny pennies glistening in the least likely place, I began dreaming again—and bingo—the cosmic winks started coming. One of the biggest lessons I learned again this week is do not isolate. Do not find yourself in a Barbara Walters interview with the Con Artist being led to think this is your fifteen minutes of fame!! Wherever our the Con Artists go after hours, I can assure you they’re watching us on their version of Candid Camera and laughing their snarky little grimaces off their face.
Whatever you do this weekend, be in good company. Connect with the flow of inspiration and let it graciously guide you to the source of your highest dreams.
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September 1st, 2010 by Robert McDowell
A fire broke out in Ashland, Oregon, last week. A neighborhood was evacuated and eleven homes burned to the ground. Amazingly, no one was physically hurt.
A day or two later, investigators determined that the fire was probably started by a homeless man who’d been using an abandoned shed in the area for shelter. Who knows what he did, exactly. Was he cooking something? Smoking? After the fact, it doesn’t really matter. The loss and the trauma last, and probably some anger, too.
Some of that—the anger—is misdirected. I know some neighbors who are angry that the homeless man was in the area at all, and some of them blame the man himself for his condition and his carelessness. Homeless himself, he became the instrument of creating homelessness.
I see it a little differently. Thinking of that hapless fellow person, I think of the many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, across our land who are sleeping in their cars tonight, if they’re lucky enough to have them, or sleeping on the cold ground, or in abandoned structures like that ticking time bomb of a shed in Ashland. I’m thinking of the many who won’t be able to sleep at all tonight, who will just wander. Who can begin to imagine what they’re thinking or feeling?
I see them as a vast, new, movable American city, perhaps only the first of more to come. More will come if we can’t figure out how to express our compassion with more creativity and constructive success. As a government, as a people, we need to build homes for the homeless, even if they’re just safe, sound rooms with a bath down the hall. We need to open our arms wider, embrace with more ferocious love, and invent new ways for people to support themselves and those they love.
I’m imagining all of us slowing down a little to dream this and make it so, just as I’m slowing down thinking of this and talking to you while I mourn the death of the poet, painter, playwright, actor, editor, publisher, and social activist, George Hitchcock, one of my dearest, most cherished friends and teachers. Thinking of him not so long ago and missing him, I wrote the poem that follows.
Reminder
I remember running into his house on Ocean View,
Full of myself as usual, chattering on and on
About all of the important things I’d done that day.
George sat in a red wingback chair and listened,
Never interrupting, like a man serenely waiting out a storm.
When I ran out of things to brag about he said,
“Today I planted a single row of beans.”
I felt so warm and foolish as he smiled.
I felt calmer, centered, good!
May we all slow down, take a fresh look at who and what we are, and may we fearlessly open our arms to the wide world.
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