Nancy M. Thurston's Blog, page 9

Death in a Season of Birth

The call came in the middle of the night—a shrill ring startling me awake from a dead sleep.

It was Dad calling to tell me that my mother was “gone.” He couldn’t yet say the stark word “dead.”

That call came twenty-seven years ago last week. This holiday, I heard of one death after another—Richard, Skipper, Gabe, Brian, Shirley, Nelson and people whose names I only know as Dad, Mom and Grandpa. None of these people were in my inner circle of friends and family, yet all were people I cared about or were loved by them.

Each of these deaths involved phone calls no one wants to make or receive. Death here in the season where we celebrate birth.

I know the light is returning on this side of the winter solstice, but in the dark of night, the ever-present reality of death has settled deep in my bones.

In this upcoming year I will turn sixty, the age of my mother when she died.

My knee aches. Howard’s hearing diminishes. What will aging take from us?

Death and loss pace just outside the door of my life, and at this moment I’m afraid that someone I love dearly might be next.

Several years ago, I selected songs to honor Howard’s and my thirty-five years of marriage. One, “Nothing Lasts Forever,” was based on a poem by the mystic Rabindranath Tagore:

Nothing lasts forever…

keep that in mind,

and love.

To live with an open heart, loving others and life itself, will lead to the sharp pain of grief when death comes. And yet, paradoxically, full-hearted loving despite the fact that “nothing lasts forever,” it is only path to joy.

It takes courage to be awake and present in our lives. Rather than push my fear of loss away too quickly, I sit in the dark of night and let it soften me. Now is what we have each been given. Tomorrow is mystery.

Writing is one of the ways I make sense of my life and my feelings. Putting these words on paper didn’t make the fear evaporate, but it reminded me once again of the solid foundation that trust and courage offer all of me, including my loving heart and frightened bones. Someday soon, my fears will settle as they have many times before.

When that happens, I will remember that life and death are two sides of the same coin. And both are normal and safe.

Khara Scott-Bey

I’d Like to Thank the Academy

My favorite part of the Academy Awards is the thank you speeches.* I love watching someone take the stage amid cheers, take a deep breath and say a big grateful wow to all the work, support, energy and heart that led to that moment.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be on an awards show, but I think now, more than ever, I need to pause and give a big grateful wow.

Our world seems to be rocking and rolling and groaning. Fear spreads like wildfire across the surface of our globe and narrow bricks wobble beneath our economic towers of Babel. But there are deeper truths and wider foundations.

And the way to find them is through gratitude.

So here’s my acceptance speech, my list of thank yous and a big, grateful wow:

* I am grateful for the perspective of the horizon, that bigger picture that contains the close up details of each day. When the rocking and rolling and groaning of the world around me get loud and crazy, I can raise my eyes to the place where heaven meets earth and remember the long term view: generations in the future who will reap the harvest I help plant today; the mystery of Spirit that transcends and infuses everything; the new sprouts that grow even as the old crumbles.

* Unable to see the path ahead on this journey of life, I am grateful for my growing courage and tr

ust to take that next step. Mary Jo Leddy’s poem sings in my heart:

“We walk on the waters of gratitude

knowing there is nothing there

trusting there will be enough

to go on.” **

Khara Scott-Bey

* I am grateful for this flesh and blood and bone body that I was given at birth. She carries me through every day. When I slow down to notice, I feel the tingle in my feet when I am grounded, a cloud of confusion when something smells “off” and I need to pay close attention to what is happening around me or a tickle on the top of my head when something feels right on. My wise body has much to tell me every time I stop to listen.

* I am grateful for paradoxes that meet me at every turn, and keep showing up even when I fight them. Paradoxes like living personally and globally at the same time or my conflict about putting my book in an online bookstore while supporting independent bookstores (as I spoke about in this blog).

* I am deeply grateful for every one of you and to others around this globe. We were born to be in community, to work together across our diversity. When each of us contributes, we have everything we need for equity, justice, joy and creativity.

* I am grateful for my partnership with Harvest Time , Be Present, Inc. and Community Wholeness Venture where I have both received and given in one smooth, continuous motion. And for Khara Scott-Bey, illustrator for Big Topics at Midnight and the drawing above. Her creativity invites me to delight and ponder. Working together with partners like these gives me great hope for the world.

So there’s my list. If you’re in the mood to share, I’d love to read yours.

Now is the time to celebrate how far we’ve journeyed, to fan the flames of creativity and joy that fuel our sight and work, to drop to our knees with a big grateful wow, knowing, as Rumi wrote, “There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’”

Blessings to each of you as the light of 2013 fades to a close and soon gives way to the dawn of a new year.

*This was a newsletter I wrote last month. As the year nears its end, I find that gratitude fills my heart. I am posting it here for those who missed it in the avalanche of emails that filled our inboxes just after Thanksgiving.

**Leddy, Mary Jo, Radical Gratitude (New York: Orbis Books, 2002) pg 38

A Definitive Guide

Mother told me to define my terms. So here goes …

Big Topics

1. Issues, subjects, matters great in dimensions, bulk or impact, not trendy topics, but those at the heart of the injustice. Melatonin in the skin. Bottom line in the bank. Y chromosome in the cells.

At Midnight

1. The moment between the end of one day and the beginning of a new one.

2. A dark time when most people need or would like to be sleeping.

3. A time when it gets quiet enough to consider the Big Topics, or when one wakes up whether or not one wants to, with Big Topics on the mind.

4. Culturally, midnight marks the moment where the crumbling of the old way meets the unknown—the dawning of a transformed culture or the deepening darkness of environmental and community destruction.

5. Now.

A Texas Girl

1. A young woman born and raised in Texas, the 28th state in the union.

2. Who I tried not to be within a few years of moving away from Texas in my early 20s.

3. The person I am since I realized I couldn’t run away from my roots.

Wakes Up

1. Emerges from a state of physical sleep, opens one’s eyes and steps into the day.

2. Emerges from a state of slumber or a fog of unawareness induced by assumptions, unconsciousness or limited perspective, and sees other ways of being and embraces bigger picture of life.

3. An action that often leads to more action.

Race, Class, Gender

1. Three Big Topics that have cut through our globe for generations.

2. Topics riddled with assumptions, mostly unconscious and often unhealthy, that must be explored to create listening, learning and partnership building.

And Herself

1. A reflexive form of she

2. In this case, Nancy Ann Mathys Thurston, a fiery, hopeful, determined (also see “stubborn”), loyal, curious woman who has learned she must love all of her parts in order to love others (also see “not as simple as it sounds”).

Mother, you were right. It is good to break things down.  I had fun playing with the definition of each part of my book, Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself.

What Is Your Theory of Social Change, and What Does That Have to Do with Money?

Rosemary Feerick
Director of Harvest Time and author of this guest blog

“What is your theory of social change and what does that have to do with money?”

That was a key question that emerged on the first day of Harvest Time’s annual board retreat. Knowing that our plans need to be anchored in a clear vision, John Bloom asked the big picture question.

A rich silence ensued.  Then, for the first time, I was able to see and understand clearly what it is that we do at Harvest Time and why.

I remembered a talk at the 2012 SoCap conference in San Francisco. John Fullerton of Capital Institute (www.capitalinstitute.org) distinguished between three paradigms of social change.

One way that people and organizations try to effect social change, Fullerton said, is by working to solve specific problems.  For example, we work to solve hunger in a particular community by creating a local food bank.

Another way to create change is to shift systems.  For instance, we might work to prevent the injustice and environmental destruction that are consequences of capitalism by working to shift capitalism so those problems do not occur.

Yet another approach involves trying to shift consciousness.

For years I have known that Harvest Time is not a social activist organization.  Our goal is NOT to move x amount of money to organizations that serve people who are poor (though that often happens as a byproduct of our work).  And the organizational impulse to move to “scale” in order to have a wider impact has never grabbed my passion.  Why?  Because what I am most interested in is shifting consciousness, and I believe that happens best in small, committed, authentic spiritual community.

But how does this make social change?

My fundamental assumption is that Christ is present and active in history, working, among other ways, through individuals whose hearts have been opened and transformed.  For me, the most effective way that we can transform society is by supporting people who seek their own conversion so that they can participate in the flow of Christ’s love and energy as it moves through the world.

This support begins with helping people learn to recognize the presence of Christ moving through their lives and hearts.  That is a function of spiritual direction and of spiritual practice.

We then create opportunities for people to support each other as each finds the courage to participate in that presence.   We need this support because the way of Christ’s love is not the ordinary way of the human ego or of human culture.  In other words, there is a transformation process that needs to happen if we seek to align our lives with Christ, and in this transformation we need one another’s help.

That is the work of authentic Christian community and of transformative spiritual practices. When hearts are converted and open, the Holy Spirit can then flow with ease through the individual into their relationships and communities as love.

The conversion need not be dramatic.  God can work through any of us at any time, no matter where we are on the journey.  But I do believe that the more we are able to open our hearts, the more effectively we can be channels of God’s love.

I love the way Rumi puts it: “Our task is not to find love, but to find everything in us that blocks love and remove it.”

For us at Harvest Time, money is the practice place.  It is a great practice place, because money sits at the intersection between the person and society.  It is exactly that place where so much individual and collective shadow is acted out in our culture.  If you want to find your blocks to love, start paying attention to money and your relationship to it.

And there is more.  Because money is a symbol of our interconnectedness, the more we are able to shift our attitudes and relationship to money, the more the love of God can move into the world through us through our money.

What we do with money, what we value through it – how much we hold onto, how much and how we give, how we spend, how we invest – all of this changes as our hearts change and are opened.   Money becomes more and more an expression of love and an agent of grace as God works through the converted heart.

This is why I think what we do in Harvest Time — gathering people in small circles to talk about money and engage in spiritual practice — is key to social change.

What do you think?  What is your theory of social change?

This blog was written by Rosemary Feerick, Director of Harvest Time. Seeking help to align my heart and spirit and money, Harvest Time was one of the first places Howard and I turned after my family financial inheritance came to me. We have been in one of their retreat circles ever since, and both of us have served on the board (that is still true for me). Harvest Time is a ministry of “Christians of wealth engaging with money as a doorway to spiritual transformation.”

One Author’s Paradox

I want to live my values, yet so many of my choices are complex, multi-layered. I will never be able to avoid this paradox, but it is important to me to keep asking the questions, noticing my inconsistencies, always seeking to bring my values more in alignment with my actions.

For example, I buy locally; shop predominantly in neighborhood stores; support small businesses; and hire individuals doing a service or producing something that flows from their hearts.

These are important values of mine.

And yet a huge online bookstore is also part of my life. Big Topics at Midnight, both paperback and eBook versions, are carried in that store-without-walls. Occasionally, I purchase a book there myself.

This cyberbookstore is often where book buyers turn to when looking for a specific book—including mine. Their selection is vast. Drive-less shopping is convenient. Prices are often discounted.

And this business is hurting local bookstores.

How can I reconcile this paradox?

Initially, I begrudgingly put my book on their virtual shelves. I didn’t want to be there, yet I wanted my book to be available there. Whenever I could, I directed people to buy the book from my website, local bookstores or at my Big Topics Conversation workshops. I was on their “shelves” but I didn’t want to promote them by advertising that fact.

In essence, I was trying to go two directions at the same moment. Stepping in while holding back put me in conflict with myself. That was neither good for my health nor for selling books.

Since neither removing my book from their stock nor being in conflict with myself is an acceptable choice for me, what can I do?

I am searching for the deepest foundation where I can stand solidly, with integrity, amidst opposing values.

Online publishing options, bookstores and social media platforms are central marketing arenas for today’s author. Part of me resists offering Big Topics at Midnight in eBook form. I love reading books printed on paper, underlining favorite quotes, leaving colorful tags sticking out to note cherished passages and sharing a favorite read with a friend. But my deepest value was to offer Big Topics at Midnight in a variety of formats, both paperback and eBook (and, I hope, an audio version sometime in 2014).

In a similar way, I love to meander through a local bookstore, touching books as I walk down the aisles, flipping through ones that catch my eye. When I purchase a book, I know that I am also supporting a business I want to remain in my neighborhood. But I also want to offer Big Topics at Midnight to readers at the huge online “bookstore” where so many routinely shop.

That is where I have landed. For now. My preferences remain, but my choice is clear: I want to reach readers through a diversity of formats and locations.

As I type, I must admit that I am a little afraid that writing about my issue with huge online stores will result in their refusal to sell my book.

But silence in the face of fears of retaliation by a powerful corporation also violates my values.

Paradox again. Nevertheless, my choice clear. I will click “publish,” and this blog is released to cyberspace.

Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey

Listen Up, Honey-Bunchkins

I was stuck. Defeated. Hiding under Mom’s blue afghan.

Luckily I’d “met” a character that could give me just the shove I needed—Hectate, my own combination of the goddess Hecate and my wise inner guide with an attitude the size of Texas. Hectate, never one to mince words, demanded that I get up and do what was mine to do.

She had me put Helen Reddy’s All Time Greatest Hits in the CD player, crank up the volume and sing at the top of my lungs. Hectate wanted to “write” me a letter, so I sat at my computer, fingers poised over my computer keyboard, took a deep breath and waited. My fear and trembling disappeared as Hectate began to “dictate” this:

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Church night in the South

Listen up, Honey-bunchkins,

Your singing sounds great. How polite of you to close the windows first. Still afraid someone will hear you and Helen singing together? Being loud still too wild for you? …

You belted out “I Am Woman” while you danced with the vacuum cleaner as a young woman back in Boise land. Funny how your wildness came out a bit when you cleaned house.

Welcome home to the fullness of your life as a woman. It took you long enough. Fifty-two years old is no spring chicken. The power of the lie is so strong it is hard for women to break through much younger. Especially strong, intelligent women like you.

Like many women of your time, you’ve lived out a strange combination of falling asleep and feeling invincible. You thought you could do it alone, right? At times you almost sank from the weight of your strength. You tried to play by enough of the rules that you could sustain the illusion of your independence from things as messy as sexism and patriarchy. You got a little constipated trying to hold it all in while not noticing. …

$#@* invincibility and strength. They damn near drug you under a few times. …

This society does its little jig, pretending everything is just peachy for everyone. You are living in an insane world. That is not the whole picture, of course. Life’s beautiful, too. But it is the insane part that put you to sleep and is causing such havoc these days. Are you ready to wake up? Are you ready to open your eyes and see things as they really are? …

Time, it is a wasting. Midnight’s near, and it’s hard to see the way. But I need you human women to WAKE UP NOW. You must claim your wisdom and live it in the world. If women continue to remain silent, there is little hope for this little planet. …

You were created with just what you need to thrive, to live fully. You were not created lacking. Quit acting like it. Believe in your greatness, your magnificence and your power. Yes, most of the current world institutions embody a distorted power, dangerous “greatness.” $#@* that shit! You are talking about another kind of power. Don’t be so afraid. Live. NOW. …

If you try to hold back, I’ll drag this out of you. That will really hurt. So get on with it. Generations of women have your back and add their spirits to your breath.

Find that voice of yours, that WOMAN’S voice, and speak it. Living with only part of your wisdom is a luxury the world can no longer afford. None of us. Not men. Not women. Not trees or plants. Not rocks or stars. Not water or flame. Not air or animals or the cosmos. …

Amen, so be it, just do it, have fun along the way and all that. You are never alone. Don’t forget, you have a heavenly posse leading the way.

Blessings, honey-bunchkins, Hectate*

While I still hide under Mom’s afghan now and then, humming along with Helen now and then helped me to remember Hectate’s straight-to-the-point guidance and put a little kick in my step.

Hectate has made it clear that she wants to share some of her wisdom with a larger audience.  She will “take over” Nancy’s facebook author page for her own posts.

*Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself (Portland: Rosegate Press, 2012) page 264-266, slightly adapted

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey, Illustration from Big Topics at Midnight.

Fracking

How do I begin to write about something as overwhelming as fracking?

I have good reasons why I’ve been silent on paper so far. Swamped with Big Topics at Midnight and opening Big Topics Conversations. Overwhelmed whenever I remember that right now rock formations are being fractured through blasts of chemical-laden water in order to free up trapped natural gas and oil. Troubled that this is happening in gas wells where I own a .01562501 royalty interest.

What am I to do with a paradox that wide?

Sell it and walk away, clean? Just like I could give away all of my family money and walk away, clean?

What is “clean”?

If I sell it, the practice will still continue and I will still be who I am. I won’t be absolved from responsibility. One way that money has made my thinking stupid* over the years is that part of me wants to escape from my complicity in a system I disagree with by pushing away my family financial legacy. I’ve tried to do the same thing with the privilege I receive merely because my skin is white. But I am still the same me.

Don’t get me wrong. I have sold stocks and mutual funds that aren’t in alignment with my values. But something more is required here.

I first heard about fracking in 2006 when I was visiting my grandfather’s ranch on a pilgrimage back to my homeland of Texas (where I am now a partial owner of the “mineral rights” but not “surface rights”). The journey was one part of a larger pilgrimage into my ancestral history to Germany, North Carolina, Texas and, now, Oregon during the writing of Big Topics at Midnight. I set out on those trips when I realized I’d spent far too much of my life trying to cut out parts of myself that embarrassed me. Knowing that I need all of me to live the life I was born to live, I returned to the land of my family hoping to find clarity, healing and right action.

On the ranch seven years ago, I knew nothing of the actual geological impact of this drilling practice. Nevertheless, it felt to me as if fracking was cutting out huge holes in the body of Mother Earth while spewing toxic chemicals into our farmland and drinking water. As far as I could tell, fracking waste would be added to nuclear waste, piling up for future generations to deal with.

It didn’t make sense to me.

Gas prices are currently low. If we frack now, what will happen when high prices tempt us?

Is there no end to what humans will do to make money and exert control over the natural world? This is an escalating conquest that we won’t win.

My work is to open Big Topics Conversations on things like money, gender, race, power, justice, generational healing and soul. These topics are at the core, like the magma at the center of the Earth. Hot, molten topics. How we are in them—personally as well as in families, communities, organizations, systems, nationally, globally—is the underpinning of our decision making and values. My focus is rightly there.

Yet I can’t ignore fracking. It is hurting our shared homeland. In addition, it is part of the flow of money that pays my bills, funded the writing and now marketing of Big Topics at Midnight, finances my travels to open these conversations and is the source of my financial support of three organizations dear to my heart—Be Present, Inc., Harvest Time and Community Wholeness Venture.

My work continues. Fracking continues. There are only so many hours in a day. I continue my spiritual practice of standing in partnership with a diversity of people right in the midst of the deep gaps that cut through our world.

Giving words to this hot topic is the next step on my journey.  I’m listening for guidance about the following step.

* I play with the ways that “Money Made [my husband] Howard Stupid” in Big Topics at Midnight, page 241 after he made that comment about himself. From time to time, money has indeed made Howard’s and my thinking stupid.  The important thing is how we work with that before it translates into stupid actions.

For more information on Fracking check out the following links: Pro Public webpage devoted to fracking: http://www.propublica.org/series/fracking (multiple articles on this site) and IRRC report, Discovering Shale Gas: An Investor Guide to Hydraulic Fracturing: http://www.irrcinstitute.org/projects.php?project=56 (Long downloadable report, but page 5 has Key findings)

Little Topics in Wild Times

Life seems wooly and wild these days. Friends in crisis—financial and otherwise. Political polarity. It feels like the earth is shaking under our feet and the waves are crashing at the shores of our lives.

I believe we are in a transition toward a new paradigm that is better than the old, but my question today is how to stand in a time when the old is crumbling but I can’t yet see the future. As summer fades into autumn, I feel drawn to the small details of life.

The bright red leaves on a few trees.

The scurrying squirrels gathering nuts.

My sit-bones as I sit in the chair.

The sounds of birds or scraping as the neighbors clean their grill in preparation for a barbeque dinner.

Noticing these little details of life helps keep me grounded as I learn how to ride the wild shifts and participate in Big Topics Conversations. As we leave the blue moon and August behind, I want to feast on the abundance of delights that are all around me when I stop long enough to notice.

Rummaging through my computer, I came across this short piece (slightly updated) that I wrote for Jen Violi’s September 12, 2012 newsletter. Jen is a writer and book coach extraordinaire.

 When I wrote those words I was just beginning my journey walking out into the world with Big Topics at Midnight. Much has happened since then, but the wild and wooly times continue. Before I dive back into preparation for my role at November’s Be Present, Inc.‘s upcoming event “Moving Forward in Action: Collective Leadership and Social Justice,” exploring “The Role of Collective Leadership in Community Organizing and Public Policy”–a rather big topic conversation–I stop to appreciate the flickering of the candle beside my computer and the brilliant orange and yellow leaves outside my window.

Photograph by Brenda Wills.

 

What Kind of White Person Are You?

Reblogged from formations. // living at the intersections of self, social, spirit.:

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I’m thinking about Malcolm X today.

Remember his famous response to the white guy in the car? The guy who leaned out his car window, grinning, and asked “do you mind shaking hands with a white man?”

Malcolm X responded “I don’t mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?”

Now, I’m not one to quibble with Malcolm X.

Read more… 1,471 more words

Jennifer Harvey is in the middle of an excellent series on white people (like Jennifer and I). She walks straight into the middle of the big topic of racism without flinching, with huge compassion and with powerful ideas for change.

Standing in the Gap … Together

I suppose we could stack one on top of each other, the way one piece of my collage illustrates, as one way to “stand in the gap” together. One house on top of another on top of another. It is an efficient use of ground space, even if climbing from one house to another is a bit daunting with my middle-aged knees.

Not to mention my fear of heights.

There are all sorts of gaps or crevasses that cut through our world. We are divided by the color of our skin, how much money we have in the bank and all sorts of stuff about our gender.

I can’t wiggle my nose and make these gaps go away, so I want to get inside them along with others to do the work of love, compassion, justice, equity, spiritual transformation—those things powerful enough to build something new, together.

However, I don’t usually think of standing in the gap together as a stacking game. If I stand on your shoulders and someone stands on mine, we will fill up the gap vertically, but we’ll also be exhausted in the process.

I often feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders without anyone perched up there. I don’t really want you up there, too.

I know that our world is set up to climb ladders. The ladder to success—until you hit the glass ceiling. Jacob’s ladder on the spiritual journey. We’ve tried to build buildings and corporations higher and higher, and our world groans under the weight.

That is not the world I want to help build. I’d rather move with circles or waves or flow. Something more curving, connecting and inclusive. Feminine.

If not one on top of the other, how shall we then stand?

In a circle? Standing side-by-side with linked arms, supporting each other? Is there a way we can share the burden and the gifts?

Playing with images to explore big topics may seem like child’s play, but don’t be fooled. Imagination holds the power to clarify our thinking and propel us to action.

Anyone want to stand in the gap with me?

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey. Houses photo from my collage box. I explore more about “standing in the gap” in Big Topics at Midnight.