Dear Friends,When I was a little girl, I played intensely for hours at my grandparent’s home. Inside, we dressed up in all kinds of crazy outfits and developed an unending inner life of the imagination. We played house with elaborate scenarios, hosting dinner parties of saltine crackers and juice.
Outside, we rode our bikes up “the hill” and sped down and around the curve in the street. We raced in circles around my friend Patty’s driveway and I proudly carried a small scar on the little finger of my left hand from when my bike crashed. We rolled down the grassy hill in the back yard, and played in the drainage creek at its bottom. We made ourselves so dirty that sometimes we had to leave our clothes outside when we went back in the house.
One time, somebody found some small round pieces of burled wood with a small hole drilled in each one. I insisted that this would make a great “club” necklace. We found some string to make them into necklaces and then we had to figure out what the club was about. We never did.
That always bothered me. I thought it was cool for us to have these fabulous necklaces and I was sure we could have a special club too. What I didn’t realize was that we already had something better than a club. There was already an energy that compelled us to create fun projects together. We didn’t need a club to glue us together.Eventually, my mother remarried and I moved away and we all grew up and never saw each other again. All we really had in common was that little subdivision where my grandparents lived in Saint Louis.
From my earliest days, my gift has always been in starting the games and encouraging people to find and express their own voices. Sometimes, I think I keep trying to make clubs, but I have learned that you have to be committed to a greater good to make it a club where I want to be a member. Above all, I believe in creative free expression, and in whatever it is that makes people want to create and be together. I love to see people create together, and I believe in the healing alchemy of community.
And beyond that? I still seem to be trying to make necklaces out of those little wooden things.
Happy Labor Day,
See you at the club.
Peace out,
Jane
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Spirit Says to Sing Your Song
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Genius Bar!!!
You are a genius, you know. At our center, resides the Truth of who we are, and when we allow ourselves to live from that place, we are a conduit for the Divine and the brilliance it shares through us. To think that we are the Source of our genius creates a form of pressure that actually works against us. We are the ideal vehicle for our unique and perfect gift to the world. Actually we are each the ONLY vehicle for that gift, so competition with other people or ideas is a misdirection of our creative energy.
Rev. Karen Osit and I are looking at some archetypal stories and teachings from three depth traditions – the Torah, Buddhist precepts and Native American wisdom- that are potent and effective guides inward. As wisdom teachings, they can be understood on different levels but each path leads to the same place. Matthew Fox describes it perfectly with the title of his book about the wisdom path, “One River, Many Wells.” The wells represent different religions. The river represents the Source of all creation, upon which they all draw. It is communion with the RIVER that we seek.
Only you can be you. Trying to be someone else is not only futile, but robs the world of your beautiful gift, your song, your unique music.
Come join us this Sunday 2 pm at West Park – corner of 86th and Amsterdam in NYC.
We love to see your face!
Peace out,
Rev. Jane
