What are You Working For?

I love the Central Library in downtown Portland.

Whenever I am entertaining a question about my life I find my way there, immerse in the stacks and check out everything that calls to me.  Then I practice stichomancy (all of my former students know this word), literally:  divination from the lines.  I choose a book, stick my finger in the pages, and open to my answer.

Yes, I live my life this way.  It is interpretive, inexact, and definitely led.  I also take cues from fortunes I find on the sidewalk, from tarot and rune readings, from symbols and serendipity.  It is a participatory process with the Divine:  you speak to me, I listen, I ask of you, I listen.  It's a dance, and sometimes there are missteps or misinterpretations, but the more I have co-clarified my purpose, the easier it is to keep a rhythm.
This is the thing about the mystery.

We must participate.  We must co-create.  We must find our channel, our path, our point of alignment.  And when we lose it, we must find it again.

"Whatever do you mean here?"  (Something a former professor wrote in my margins once...)

The last time I was in the Central Library it was early summer.  My year of homeschooling had just ended, and I was trying to reengage with my business for the first time in a year.  I wandered into the business book section--a true yawner of a library corner...even the colors are all wan or "professionalized" as black, white, grey and dirty red.  No glossy action adventure or romance here.  

I started to pull every book I could find on women in business.  Most made me want to weep with boredom.  Some incensed my feminism (Boardroom Dominatrix?).  But I've learned to follow my instincts.

One of the books I pulled sounded terrible, The Secrets of Six Figure Women.  But I ended up reading it from cover to cover.  It was a little dated, but spiritual, compassionate, and clear about something I desperately needed in my work:  a specific exacting purpose.   You Must Work for More This year I have watched two of my Celebrant colleagues wander into fame through dedication to a cause.  

Both have committed themselves and their Celebrant practices to marriage equity.  And by having a direct and clear purpose:  to offer their skills and voices in the service of this goal, their businesses have grown past capacity.  

I support marriage equity.  I support many causes.  I work for many things, and for years I had many sayings about what I was working for:  to help people, to help people fall in love with the world, to help people tell their stories, to help people find their unique voice, to heal the world, to heal women....on and on.

The writer in me shakes her head.  
She knows generalities get us nowhere.
Anton Chekhov said, "Don't tell me the moon is shining.  Show me the glint of light on broken glass."

We need concrete physical details to define our sense of purpose.  We need visions filled with specificity.  And our purpose must be more than this, it must be personal as well.

My two Celebrant colleagues are personally invested in marriage equity.  One is gay.  The other loves love. She lives to celebrate the love of everyone, because it increases her own.

Purpose is not selfless, it cannot be.  Selflessness (Self-less-ness) literally means you are devoted to other's needs and interests but not your own.  It is a doctrine written by a self-debasing culture, by centuries of repression and hatred, control, coercion, limitation.  When we put ourselves outside of our purpose, we deny spirit.  We deny our right to the very things we want for others.  Like healing, justice and love. What I Found So I had to ask myself what I am working for.

And the answer has surprised me.  Ultimately, I am working for three things:

Autonomy:  personal independence from the systems and structures that leech my life force and prevent creation.  Autonomy means self law, so I make up the rules for my life.  I choose how I spend each day, where I put my energy, and my standards are crafted in the moment according to how I feel.  In short, autonomy means my life belongs to me.   I have been fighting for autonomy as long as I can remember:  the freedom to choose, the ability to say yes--or no.  And it is my hope that by risking my life--my worth, my reputation, my stability--for autonomy, I can help others actualize their own self-law.

Sovereignty:  authority, power.  Not that kind of power, silly.  Inner power, divine power, the power of connection to all life that tells us this is exactly where we are meant to be.  A sense of vast authority, guiding and loving your day, your step.  My sovereignty bends to no one.  I have lived in many places where I lacked or doubted my power, where I was afraid to express my uniqueness.  I especially work for sovereignty on behalf of children, who, for varying reasons, all have been challenged to be powerful and stand up for their rights in their young lives.  We must be powerful, we must claim our true power and put it to use.  This is what I work for.

The Land:  I love this earth with all of my heart.  I sing to it, I touch it like a lover, I have keened when I felt hatred or apathy or hurt toward this incredible complex of infinite non-humanness.  I work for the land, I serve the land.  I serve the land in me, the minerals and elements that make up my human body.  I love my body and treat it well, I love my home and keep it well.  Every patch of dirt I live on is sacred to me, and beneath it all is the blessed sacred heart of something much much older and bigger than I can ever know.  I make for the land, I create for the land, I tell stories for the land, I have spoken up and out to protect and save the land.  My work is as much about connecting people (clients, readers, viewers, myself) to places and bodies and stories and lives than anything else.  Ultimately I work for what will claim me, as the land claims us all in the end.

Whenever I am weary, whenever I have a difficult interaction, or feel I have lost my way, I can remember what I work for and ground into the paradoxical largeness-specificity of these three elements.  I can feel their resonance in my life and the lives of all around me.  I know, whatever I do, if I work for these, I am in alignment.

I would love to know what you work for...

Here's an exercise I used to give my college students:

What do you love most in this world (write it down)?

What would you change about this world (write it!)?

At the intersection of what we love and what we would change lies our work.

And, to take it a step further, to keep us self-full instead of self-less (only a full cup can offer), how does this intersection reflect in your own life?  What work feeds your spirit, heals your soul, and fills your cup as well?

Love--