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Today, as I write this, one of my deariest dear friends is in surgery for a double mastectomy. Prayers and blessings and visions of super hot healing are going strong and you are invited to join in.
Hey! What kind of party IS this?! This does not sound fun (are you thinking that?). Maybe you’re thinking: I don’t even know her.
Ah, but whether you know her, love her, care that her beautiful body is restored to its best health is not the point of the invitation. Here’s the point:
This is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, all decked out in pink ribbons. This is the month we have multiple and great opportunities to get really alert to signs, to clues, to taking action, to getting care, to becoming advocates. (It’s a great month for men, too. Education and consciousness build, don’t they?)
But I’m sitting here, on this day, knowing that in just the last two years, I’ve had three others of the dearest people to me get diagnosed. You, too? Maybe, in fact, you?
Here’s what else I know. Sorrows ride in on cancer – fear and anger and the weight of acting brave, just to name a few. Today, we’ve gathered to lift those away from my friend to make room for the most potent healing. And frankly, I don’t see why we can’t take that concentrate of love and light and essentially say: Go. Fan out. Radiate. Use your wings & find others. Wrap them in love, too.
Oh, yeah. In a month dedicated to breast cancer awareness, I think there’s definitely room to concentrate on the love and healing part.
We can do that for everyone. Can’t we? We can.
Imagine it. Really. Imagine that we made a world rich with love and laughter and fun. For everyone. Imagine that we want that for everyone.
Imagine that we don’t wait til we’re besieged or struck down. Imagine that we don’t wait to get wise and filled with grace. Imagine that we agree that simple, true happiness and beauty spreads out to all of us. Without much effort at all, we KNOW what it would feel like. Great love will soothe us, all the stuff that heals will find easy purchase. Yippety-yip-yipee.
How? you ask. How would that work? (You obviously need another party cocktail, oh you who can’t stand easy breezy answers. Relax. This isn’t any new agey quick fix. I can guarantee it, because I’m allergic to those and I don’t feel any symptoms.)
Let me try it from this direction:
We know that only one among us with anger, fear, despair can affect us all. We can turn away from them, but we can still feel their stuff. (Oh yes you do, don’t even pretend you don’t. You’re affected. That’s how it works. Butterfly wings and all that.)
The great, great thing is that the reverse certainly has to be true. One blissful heart, one heart rich with love and delight lifts us all. Really, how cool is it, to BE the blissful heart?
How cool could it be to be the blissful heart among loads and loads and loads of OTHER blissful hearts.
That’s the invitation. To do what we can do – not just pretend to imagine it for everyone. No, no, no. We can REALLY imagine it. We can aim for it, act on it, live for it.
Let’s choose the story that helps our loved ones heal and the whole world along with them.
I hope you’ll join us.
If you can’t think how, allow me to suggest starting by including some new stories in your life or sharing stories that lead others towards the idea. I’ve included several below, including ‘Lifetime’ – all profits of which go to cancer research.
there came a moment in the middle of the song when she suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room & after that she never forgot she was part of something much bigger
Connection by Brian Andreas (click to buy it right here …)
(It can be changed in barely a blink into a man’s version.)
We’re he
re to end it, I said & she said, No, we’re here to begin it &
then she turned & opened her arms & everywhere I could see,
there were people,
like bright birds,
calling with a thousand voices
& suddenly I understood.
Here is where it begins.
With all of us, together giving our daughters
a world worth loving
for a lifetime to come.
Lifetime by Brian Andreas (click right here to buy this print)
All profits from the sale of this print, both here on the site & at our gallery partners worldwide, will go to fund breast cancer research for as long as it takes to find the cure.
A few years ago, a friend bought a number of StoryPeople prints for gifts. For each person on his list, he found a perfect story and we marveled at how easy it was.
And then he chose a print for himself. Or rather, it sort of chose him. It seemed to cast a spell. I watched him return, over and over to it. He had to have it. Even though he didn’t understand it. Not at all.
‘At all?’ I didn’t quite believe him. He managed high risk projects in emerging markets. That almost pre-qualified him for understanding it. Besides, anyone can take a stab (and sometimes, a punch) at interpreting. ‘At ALLLLL?’
‘Not at all.’ He read it one more time. ‘Nope. What does it mean?’
Well, I couldn’t explain it. Or maybe I wouldn’t. One of those.
It’s great when we meet art, whatever kind, and have instant sympathy. But a whole lot of art gets a whole lot of better when we invest in it, when we explore it, when we learn enough to understand it (you know, like The Wasteland. Which is why I’ll never EVER believe ANYONE who pretends they just picked up a little James Joyce for light reading. STOPPPPPP it. You are KILLING me!)
And then there’s the art, the literature, the music that we have to do something a little special for. It doesn’t need, or even want, a PhD. It doesn’t get better if you can recite all the obscure names ever associated with it.
It just seems to want us to open up, be freely curious, hear it, let it lead us out of what we expect into what we can imagine. Oh, I don’t know. Hard, isn’t it, to describe it exactly.
Either way, he got it for himself. ‘Imagining World.’
And now, especially now, at this time in the world, I really do wonder if he’s come to understand it. I imagine he has.
I’m so happy to sneak back in here between Brian’s blogs and twitters to introduce our little series of cartoons celebrating graduates and, well, anyone else who’s heading into the future. I reckon that’s most of us.
Graduates can be forgiven for thinking it’s all about them, what with all those diplomas and caps confusing the issue.
Well, the rest of us have been waiting a long time for them – not postponing any fun or adventure – no, no, no. Just waiting. Waiting for new members of the club, players at the table, voices in the choir, chefs in the kitchen, ideas and talents in the mix. New ingredients always make things interesting.
We call it change. It is THE best game on the planet. Of course, it can be scary, but it’s also invigorating and exciting and guaranteed to push open the borders of our minds (the very borders that’ll snap shut just as quickly, so we like to send the nimble young ‘uns in first. Ha!)
Welcome, graduates! Let’s start playing!!
And to start us off, one of my personal favorite stories: Air Juggling.
When I was 20, I spent a summer working at Jordan Lake State Park near Raleigh, North Carolina. It was a beautiful summer and as I worked to help maintain the park, I increasingly spent my days speculating about where I wanted my life to go next. As I prepared to leave at the end of August to return to college in Minnesota, I thought I had it figured out. I told my sister (who I’d been living with) that I was going to meet a nice guy with a cabin in the country, someone I could live a simple life with.
Three days later, I met the man who is now my husband. He owned an acreage and had built a small cabin on it. The cabin was (and still is) off the grid and powered by solar panels. He had been creating the same things in his life that I had been dreaming up in mine. We lived together in that cabin for four years before moving into town. I think we would still be there if I had only been able to keep my head in a positive place, but I started to obsess about how small it was and how hard it was to keep clean. We had a baby and I complained constantly about having no running water or washing machine. I eventually spent all my time dreaming about a house in town and all the modern conveniences it would include.
So here I am now, sitting in our house in town eight years later. We have hot running water, a dishwasher, unlimited electricity, six times as much living space… Does that mean I’m happy? Not necessarily. At times I am. As long as I refrain from focusing on what is lacking or what I wish was different, I feel content.
But it’s funny, now I often wish life was more simple and I miss the quiet time in the country. I tell myself I could have been happy in the cabin, too, if I’d only been able to adjust my state of mind. I’d actually found the Dream Life I’d predicted in our simple cabin and then a few years later I’d created an unhappy life there.
When things take an unexpected turn in the wrong direction it’s easy to come up with a million excuses and start pointing a finger of blame. Mostly, now I appreciate how reflecting on these experiences inspires me to work even harder at being present, to witness my thoughts so that when they turn negative, I can redirect my mind back to what is good and true. Back to the things I really do want to create.
Robin
Decorah, IA
“Is willing to accept that she creates her own reality except for some of the parts where she can’t help but wonder what the hell she was thinking” (Almost New Age by Brian Andreas)
After all our love poem cartoons, my mind was on a roll, ready to explore the multiple ways of having a romance with life. I don’t know why, but that topic just never ever gets old. 
Well, the best laid plans and all that … after this weekend, I could hardly avoid writing about women (and I did it over at our other blog). Things are changing, of course they are. They’re just not changing with much … gusto. This year, though, some of those things are going to change. At least in this woman’s life. (Me. I’m that woman.)
I don’t particularly like separating us into Men Do This/Women Do That categories – and not because I’m so politically correct. I don’t like doing it because I’ve always started the day thinking, ‘Well, here I am, a human being, so what should I do?’
It doesn’t take long before someone will help you out and remind you of what you are and how you should behave. Luckily, I like being a woman very much, so it sort of all works out.
But not always. And those are the times that deserve to be changed because, for this woman? They’re just not that fun.
