My dear one said she felt like we needed a reminder - and so she weaved beauty and peace out of words once again.

Here - go read: 

 

"Then reach for the door. Step out into the light. Step into Not Alone. Lay claim to the gifts you have been carrying around unused. Pull them from your filthy, tattered backpack, brush your crusty, matted hair from your tear stained face, and offer them up.

The world is waiting."

 

1. From the wise folks at zenhabits : Creative Inspiration: The Pulse That Beats Within Us All

"It doesn’t matter whether you are an architect, gardener, or bus driver, everyone has the ability to find the distinct beauty embedded deep inside their daily grind. The problem isn’t capturing our creativity, as individual inspiration is a steady pulse that beats within us all. The problem is keeping those embers hot once we have them in our grasp."

2. Worth reading sideways for: crush

3. Yes, that’s it exactly. Plus, extra points for being green.

4. From the delicious Jen Gray, inspiration, kick in the pants style: the not good enough lie

"this is your life.
enough already.
you have beautiful things to share with the rest of the world.
now giddy up and get a move on."

5. From Magpie Girl: Lessons from an Artist: On speaking with authority about what you do.

"The authority to name yourself lies within yourself"

6. And lastest but not leastest: from the no nonsense side of one of my most lovliest of love-love-loves in the comments section of my last entry:

"less talk. more do."

Damned if she’s not right…..

Two posts today, well worth your time:

bullseye, baby!
Moving Traffic Cones

Evenstar Art
Purpose Begins At Home

So much I would like to say about each, but no time to say it in - as I am currently writing my first research paper since 1997! That’s right folks, I’m back in school. Yikes!

I promise you not a moment will be lost as long as I have heart & voice to speak & we will walk again together with a thousand others & a thousand more & on & on until there is no one among us who does not know the truth: there is no future without love.
~storypeople

This week we simultaneously celebrate victory and mourn defeat. Around the country queer and queer-allied communities cheered as votes were tallied and the US elected a man who once gave this quote:

“Too often, the issue of GLBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. I look forward to working with HRC to end discrimination against GLBT Americans and to ensure that all of our citizens are treated with dignity and respect.”

But while we were lifted by our inclusion in Obama’s acceptance speech and by the potential for change created by a LGBTQ friendly White House, here in Arizona (and in California, Arkansas and Florida) we watched as propositions that sought to limit or remove our rights, status, and equality were ahead from the beginning and remained that way through the night.

How do you process so much joy and so much disappointment at the same time?

I can tell you how I’m going to do it. I’m working today, working hard, on transforming all those emotions - conflicting, heightened, and very real – into hope. A powerful, mind-blowing, consciousness-changing kind of HOPE. We’ve got to move now, before apathy and defeat set into the community. Now, while people are still buoyed by the tides of change that are set to sweep this country. Now, while the emotions are still fresh in our hearts.

Harvey Milk said:

“…know that there’s hope for a better world, there’s hope for a better tomorrow. Without hope not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s…without hope the us’s give up. I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living….you, and you, and you; you’ve gotta give them hope.”

For the past few days I have talked and listened and read and watched as the LGBTQ community across the country express – sometimes utterly unexpected – feelings of sorrow and grief and rage and betrayal at the losses we experienced on Tuesday. There is no doubt; we are feeling this at our very core. There were four states where our equality was on the line, and we lost in every single one. There is no way to avoid the repercussions of those losses. I know that personally I feel very different now than I did prior to election day, the knowledge that the majority of the citizens of this state consider me less than, not worthy of equal rights is a bitter pill to swallow. But it’s dangerous to wallow in those feelings, because they can so quickly turn to hopelessness – and that is the one thing we cannot afford.

Civil rights battles are not won quickly, or easily - they are won over time and with great effort and sacrifice. They are won with a million tiny, infinitesimal shifts far more often than they are won with great seismic changes. The ultimate success of this movement does not hinge on one election, or one act of discrimination, or a single protest. Just as the battle for racial equality did not begin or end with Rosa Parks, the Gay Rights movement that began with Stonewall does not end with Tuesday’s election results. We don’t slink off in defeat now, with our tails between our legs, letting the Christian-right dance with glee on the 18,000+ marriage certificates of same-sex couples in California.

Not a chance.

As Matt Coles, ACLU Director of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project says:

“If you run up an unbroken string of victories in any battle for civil rights, that simply means you waited too long to get to work. Change that matters is never smooth or easy.”

The writing IS on the wall. This IS going to happen. Our community IS going to succeed. But it’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to happen if we don’t lay ourselves on the line and work with everything we have to achieve it. True, we don’t have a Harvey Milk figurehead to rally around, there’s no one person to pin our dreams to – the way the nation did with Obama during this campaign. But this only means we have to take it that much further. We have to rally around each other, we have to create that movement, that wave, that sea change that we so desperately need.

As President Elect Obama himself said – in his masterful speech on race last March:

>“What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part–through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk–to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.”

Make no mistake, the gap that Obama spoke of - between the promise of our ideals and the reality of our time - widened this week. There is not point in glossing over the truth – we took a huge step backward in the path to equality, and our hearts and spirits took a beating along the way. But because we were pushed backwards, it is more important than ever to be sure that we are not knocked off the track, that we keep pushing forward, that queer and queer-allied people across the nation stand up, dust off, link arms and keep on walking, and writing, and talking and demanding change.

As Milk famously said “Hope is Never Silent”.

So let’s get loud folks. Let’s get real hopeful and real loud. Everything depends on it.

I just stumbled on a treasure trove of peace, grace and inspiration. This blog, Evenstar Art, is a magical, comforting, soul-filling space…

It Is Enough

“Today, it is enough. It is enough to know the sun awoke. It is enough to know my waning cats stayed one more day. It is enough to know I am loved.

I lack nothing today. Money, food, praise, warmth. Large amounts of anything hold no meaning. The right amount, the balanced amount, the amount I can fully use today, it is all here. I lack nothing today. Tomorrow, regardless of my mood, I will lack nothing as well.

I am cared for and I care for others. I give and I receive. I speak and I am silent. Water flows. Leaves blow. Clouds roll in and out. It is enough.

There is no wanting. There is no yearning. Passion settles. Peace floats. My walk is grounded, steady. I am loved. And it is enough.”

Right now, in this very moment, I am soaring high on possibility and potential. After months of transition and uncertainty, equilibrium is finding me again. It’s not over yet, changes and endings and beginnings are still rolling through. But I’m not resisting, not putting up walls, not trying to control. Right now it just feels good to drive down the street with the window down, music blasting, a smile on my face and peace in my heart.

No, nothing is perfect. My life is still more upside down than right side up, and there is a long road ahead – but I am full of hope, full of optimism, full of faith that it will all be as it should be.

Yes, it is enough. It is more than enough.

Check out Catherine’s lovely post today over at Everyday Life As Lyric Poetry. She talks about perspective, and these quotes in particular reached me;

“Almost everything that has been done in the world - the most beautifully healing and the most horrifically destructive - has been done by normal people who hold strong values and wanted to do what is best.”

“I have never met a fairy-tale-style bad guy who really wanted to do the wrong thing, for no reason. What I have met are hundreds of hurting people trying to make sense of things; and when I find out why and how they were raised, what they’re up against today - all the rest makes sense to me. Where once I saw lack of ethics, now I see strongly held values. Where once I saw ignorance, now I see deeply engraved experiences. Where once I saw hardheartedness, now I see a feeling, living soul.”

After you soak in Catherine’s wisdom, take a quick peak over at Jen Lemen’s again and see a small sampling of the love notes she made to leave around her city. She is a woman who takes action instead of just talking - any wonder she’s one of my heros?