Started this blog a few years ago but I never quite figured out what to do with it.

NOW I think I’m beginning to get a glimpse … it just needs to be a place for us to connect, share ideas and not have everything be so damn public. SOOO … this one will be by invitation only. You’ll just have to trust me about who’s invited and agree that whatever gets said here STAYS here unless you get permission to expand beyond here. But feel free to pass it around and have people get in touch with me if you think it would be of interest and fun to have them on board. I don’t need to know them personally, but by inviting them, you ARE vouching, sort of.

But that’s as far as the “easy” part goes.

Fish gotta swim is not only an homage to my musical heritage, but is a reference to my underlying relationship with most of my life … figuring out how to “swim” with integrity in some pretty murky waters.

Through most of my professional life I’ve engaged in redefining commonly held terms and paradigms … which seems to fit in well with being a dyke in 21st century America because, frankly, that’s what we all do.

I’m a MichFest worker gal and proud of it … proud of our diversity and the fact that we set the standard of care for a  lot of issues and movements (ADA, accessibility, inclusivity and the ever-important Berkerstocks!).

Godde (or however one refers to deity) is one of those places for me where I have to be able to “swim with integrity.”  Certainly Jay, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth is a part of that. I may be a Christian, but I haven’t always been sure that there was room for me in the pond, so to speak. And guess what . . .  I, too, have to swim, though in the last seven or eight years I have begun to realize that there is. AND that other people want to share my pond. What an unexpected joy THAT has been.

I identify as a Christian – Buddhist – New Agey neo-pagan who really DOES believe that life is like a Fisher-Price ball …  you know … the kind with a circle cut out of one face and a triangle cut out of another, etc. We’re inside the ball trying to find the opening that fits us so that we can get into the greater experience of the Mystery which is all the space inside and outside the ball. Christianity might be one opening … Buddhism another … and so on.   Whether talking “vibrational resonance” and quantum theory, or “Holy Spirit,” I am equally at ease with the reality that there is more than what we think we take in and that the holy, the divine, the sacred is found NOT in its description, but in its Mystery.

So it’s through all of those filters that I view and experience my world, sacred writings, people, nature, and myself and it’s through them that I’ve come to understand the most important parts of my existence are all relational. How I relate to:

the Mystery

Family

Self

the World

defines my existence.

I hope  this blog (as long as it exists) will be periodic reflections on anything from soup to nuts, from the arts to science, from scripture to ethics, and/or whatever else comes my way. I invite your writings, artwork, etc. and am excited about where the currents of transformation will us on our journey together. (And yes, I know this is a medium for extroverts, so you introverts just pull on your big girl panties and get right out there. Unless you TELL us who you are, nobody will ever know.  Well, except me, of course.) 🙂

I love it when discussions are thought-full and challenging as well as affirming and gentle. It is my hope that this might become a meeting place for ideas, visions and creative takes on the world(s) we find ourselves in. After all, fish DO “gotta swim” and it’s easier when we’re all swimming together.

Namaste …

 

10/3/2015