by Heather Plett | Nov 14, 2011 | Beauty, change, Community, Creativity, fearless, journey, Joy, Leadership, Passion, personality, Spirituality, things I've learned
* I would rather teach people to think beautiful thoughts than to create grammatically correct sentences.
* I believe that beauty and justice are inextricably intertwined and I want to bring more of both into the world.
* I believe that the greatest inventions, discoveries, and solutions emerge when people start asking the right questions.
* I believe that you have to ask a lot of questions in order to get to the right ones.
* I am happy when I can help bold creativity blossom in those around me.
* A little part of me shrivels up inside when I find myself stifling creativity with too many rules and judgements.
* I am easily distracted by colourful markers and clean white paper.
* I believe that personal leadership is more important than positional leadership.
* I choose community over team, circle over hierarchy, and family over corporation.
* I believe that shared stories open doorways to transformation.
* I am less productive when I haven’t had time for deep contemplation and equally deep play. The two go hand in hand.
* I believe that our differences are important but that they should not divide us.
* I delight in making new connections with people whose ways of looking at the world intrigue me. I am open to letting them change me, if it’s for the best.
* I am committed to hosting and being part of more conversations and inquiries that follow spiral patterns (moving inward to deeper wisdom) rather than linear pathways.
* Deep and soulful listening is often the best gift I can give anyone, and so I strive to keep my mouth shut and my ears open more often.
* I believe in walking lightly on this earth, and hope to some day use fewer resources for my own personal gain.
* I want to be open-minded and open-hearted and to live with delight as my constant companion.
* I believe that vulnerability and truth-telling can serve as catalysts for deep relationships and profound change.
* I believe that in order to create one great work of art you have to be prepared to create at least 100 mediocre ones first.
* I believe that time spent in meditation, prayer, and body movement is never time wasted, and I hope to some day live like I believe it.
* I believe that God created each of us to do good work and that we cheat our Creator and our world when we let our self-doubt and fear keep us from doing it.
* I want to bring more colour and light into otherwise dreary spaces.
* I strive to be more courageous tomorrow than I was today.
* I believe in daily transformation, continuous learning, and growth that doesn’t end until the day I exhale my last breath.
* I am committed to doing my best work, which is at the intersection of creativity, leadership, community, and story-telling.
by Heather Plett | Nov 4, 2011 | Beauty
the cloth that covers the table at the centre of our story circle each week
A story has emerged for me lately that has helped me define myself. It is that of a woman carrying a basket and filling it with story threads as she wanders.
Last week I was on a conference call with a circle of women planning a women’s gathering for next summer. We’ve been wrestling with what to name our gathering, and someone mentioned the words “weaving wisdom”. We all liked it. I shared with them the fact that lately I have seen my role in life as “weaving story threads into a tapestry of wisdom”. Each of the women in the circle is also a weaver of some kind.
With weaving on my mind so much lately, it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that last night’s writing prompt was a spool of thread. I’d brought brown bags for each of the people in my creative writing circle and inside each brown bag was an ordinary item that the holder had to write about and possibly use as a metaphor for her/his life. I chose the last bag.
Here’s my story about the thread inside my brown bag…
The Weaver
For years she’d carried her basket, not sure what it was for or why she’d been gifted with it as a child.
Though she didn’t understand its meaning, she knew it was important. She knew she was meant to carry it.
As she went through life, she found herself attracted to colourful story threads everywhere she went. Each story thread that was offered her was lovingly tucked into her basket.
She was a wanderer, this woman. She could barely keep her feet from moving. Europe, California, Kenya, India, Nova Scotia, Ohio, Bangladesh… she went wherever the stories called her to go.
Everywhere she went, she added new threads to her basket. Stories of courageous young women in Ethiopia. Stories of devastated villages in Bangladesh. Stories of justice workers rescuing young girls from sexual slavery in India.
Her basket threatened to overflow with all the threads she carried, and yet it never got heavy. She loved those stories dearly and spent time with them every chance she could.
Still, though, she wondered… what was the purpose of all of this? What was the use of all of these threads? What was she meant to do with them?
She began to ask the wise people in her life. “What do you think I’m meant to do with my basket?”
“Hmmm….” those people would say. “It just looks like a tangled mess to me.” Or “You have to find the answer in your own heart.” Or “Have you talked to God about it?” Nobody could give her an easy answer.
And so she continued to wander and gather more stories. But her heart became heavy, for she knew that all of this was meant for something.
Then one day, there came a distant whisper. “Have you tried weaving those threads together and making meaning out of them?”
Hmmm… really? Was she meant to be a weaver? But these were just tiny snippets – how could she make anything meaningful out of loose threads? And… what if she didn’t have the skill to weave them properly, or even to know which colours to line up together? What if she messed up and damaged the threads that had been entrusted to her?
She picked up a few threads and played with them wistfully. Could she trust the wisdom in her hands to make something out of this tangled heap?
Soon she realized, though, that without much effort at all, she’d lined up those first few threads in a way that made the colours dance. Yes. That looked right. The stories took on new meaning and beauty when she placed them together. She added a few more… and then more. Someone slipped a new thread into her hand. Ooooohh…. that one looked so lovely with the others!
Before she knew it, she was weaving. The threads were slowly being shaped into a beautiful tapestry in her hands.
She worked for hours, lovingly caressing each thread as she added it to her work of art. When she finally looked up from her work, she saw that she was being watched by eager eyes. Several of the people standing nearby were reaching out to her. In their hands were new threads.
“It looks so beautiful,” said the people watching her. “Will you teach us how to weave?”
This shocked her. “You want ME to teach you how to weave? But… I’m just playing with threads…I’m not sure I know what I’m doing!”
“Oh but you do!” they said. “You need to trust the gift in your hands. The world is desperately in need of more tapestries.”
And so she gathered her willing new friends into a circle. Reverently, and in awe of what she had begun, she lit a candle and rang a bell. “Start by telling us a story,” she said, and slowly and tenderly the people in the circle began pulling threads from pockets near their hearts. The threads were beautiful and each one was different from the last. Some were sparkly and bright, others were rough and well-worn. All were rich in colour and texture.
Before the end of the evening, a new tapestry had begun to form. “We’ll come back next week and work on it some more,” said the friends, excitement in their voices.
And so they did, and each week the woman marvelled at what she had helped to shape.
by Heather Plett | Sep 16, 2011 | Beauty, birth, Community, Friendship, journey, Wisdom
just a few steps away from the finish line
“Are you sure you don’t want a ride to the camp? You can just skip the rest of the kilometres for the day, rest up, stay off your blisters for awhile, and start fresh tomorrow.”
We heard that often along the 100 km. walk. Well-meaning organizers, volunteers, and medics wanted to help us avoid some of the pain we were experiencing. They wanted to give us short-cuts, assuring us there was no shame in missing a few kilometres.
Every offer only set our resolve deeper, though. It even made us reluctant to visit the medics when the blisters got particularly ugly. We weren’t there to do 87 km – we were there to do 100.
Yes, it was painful. Yes, there were toes on our feet that were hardly recognizable as toes anymore. Yes, there were moments when there didn’t seem to be a single muscle in our body that was exempt from the overwhelming ache.
But we were there to complete the journey. We were there to test the limits of our endurance. We were there to be present in every painful step.
We live in a culture that likes shortcuts, especially when it comes to pain. We try to rush through grief, thinking that we’ll be better off if we can just put a bandaid on it and get back to real life. We over-medicate, thinking a dulling of the pain will help us feel “normal”. We short-circuit the birthing process (both literal and figurative), with unnecessary c-sections and inductions. We over-consume, thinking that shopping therapy will dull the ache of loneliness or heartbreak. We clamour over quick fixes and fill our lives with cheap throw-away solutions to our problems.
We prefer ten easy steps to one thousand painful ones.
But it’s the thousand painful steps that will change us. It takes those thousand painful steps for us to grow into what we’re meant to be at the end of the journey.
In ten easy steps, we can build little more than a house of cards, not the rich, beautiful temple we are meant to become. A strong wind blows away the house of cards, but the temple withstands the storm.
A fascinating thing happened at the end of our three day journey. We three women, walking together every step of the way, always within about 100 steps of each other, all began to menstruate before the end of the day. In just three days, our cycles aligned (though I wasn’t expecting mine for another week and a half and I’m not sure about the others). Interestingly enough, the next day was the full moon.
I’ve lived with enough roommates, daughters, and sisters to know that it is not unusual for women living in community to end up with cycles that are in sync. I’ve never seen it happen in such a short time, though. Three days of sharing an intense, painful experience, and our bodies were in tune with each other.
Extrapolate that story forward, and you have three women, living in community, whose bodies are preparing to go through the pain and glory of childbirth together. It’s a beautiful, poignant story. Expose three women’s bodies to shared pain and they find a way to support each other that goes much deeper than words.
Women, we are amazing vessels. We birth children and carry each other’s pain. Every month, we shed blood – our little painful sacrifice for the beauty we bear within us.
As an added element to this story, it was pain and childbirth that brought these three women together in the first place. Cath’s loss of Juggernaut led her to a place where walking helped her live through the pain. Christina’s deep compassion for her story and sharing of her pain made her want to support Cath on the journey. My own story of the loss of Matthew bonded me to Cath and made me want to be with her for the journey as well. It was pain that bonded us, pain that we journeyed through together, and pain that caused our bodies to align themselves with each other so that we could most fully support each other.
Our bodies carry wisdom that our minds know nothing about.
Our bodies understand the value of pain.
Without the pain, we don’t have the beauty. Without the blood, we don’t have the birth. Without the sacrifice, we don’t have the growth. Without the sharing of agony, we don’t have community.
We can’t shortcut through the pain. It’s not serving any of us. Shortcutting through our own pain makes us careless of other people’s pain. It makes us careless of the pain we cause Mother Earth.
Mark Nepo talks about pain as the tool that carves the holes in our bodies to make us the instruments through which breath blows and beautiful music is made. When we are present in the pain – when we don’t try to take shortcuts through it – our holes are seasoned and polished and the music comes out sweet and rich.
Imagine an orchestra playing on half-finished instruments, with holes that had never been polished and strings that had never been pulled tight. The music would be dull, lifeless, and out of tune.
Pain begets beauty.
Pain shines the edges of the holes through which God breathes.
The next step may be painful, but it must be taken nonetheless.
I only hope that your next painful step will be taken in community and that you will be supported in your pain.
And when the pain subsides and you can stand up straight again, let God breath through you and make your music beautiful.
“In stories and in life, pain is our friend. It’s an unwelcome friend, but a friend nonetheless. The good news is if we make friends with our pain, it won’t stay long and it will leave us with a gift. But if we avoid pain, it will chase us down until we finally accept the gift it has to offer.” – Donald Miller
******
Note: Full disclosure – I did take a few painkillers along the way, so I don’t want to paint myself as some kind of martyr. AND I do not want to stand in judgement of anyone who accepted a ride – we each must choose our own thresholds for pain and our own values and reasons for completing a particular journey. There is no shame in being supported through the roughest parts of your journey.
Another note: Cath has created a beautiful offering to help you walk through your pain, called Remembering for Good. She is letting her pain be turned into music.
by Heather Plett | Sep 13, 2011 | Community, journey
These are my heros. All three of us. Cath Duncan, Christina Greenway, and myself.
We did it. We walked 100 kilometres in three days.
This picture was taken at the end of the second day – the 38 kilometre day that we thought we couldn’t survive. The last 8 kilometres or so of that day were some of the most painful moments of my life.
I survived them (and every other painful kilometre) mostly because these other two amazing women were at my side. We held each other up, we laughed together (rather hysterically sometimes) when laughter was the only thing keeping us from tears, we hooted at shirtless cowboys together, we applied moleskin to blisters together, we tried to write a marching song to help us take those next few steps that felt like the hardest thing we’d ever done in our lives, and we crossed the finish line arm in arm.
These women are the REAL THING. They are pure gold. They are the kind of people you want by your side when it feels like the next step is too painful to take alone.
Two days later, I am still processing the big-ness of this accomplishment. It’s the kind of experience that I know will grow in meaning as time passes. In the middle of the experience, your primary thought is “I just have to live through the pain of this next step. And then the one after that. And the one after that.” You don’t have a lot of head space for big thoughts or meaning-finding.
But then the next day, the immensity of it begins to sink in. And the biggest thought that sticks with me right now is this…
If you’re going on a journey that will involve many painful steps, find good people who will walk the journey with you.
Community. That is the biggest lesson I will take away from this journey.
I found community in the hearts of these two women.
Even though I’d never met them in person before, I was confident enough that I could trust them with my painful journey, and that trust was not misplaced.
Find good people. And be that good person to other people who need you. And when you find each other, and you hold each other up along the sometimes painful and sometimes glorious journey, do not take each other for granted.
Cath and Christina, thank you for being my two good people on this journey. Your account at the Bank of Heather is full to the brim.
by Heather Plett | Sep 8, 2011 | journey
I’m in Calgary. Yesterday I drove for 13 hours to get here, and tomorrow I’ll be awake very early in the morning to start the three day walk.
This commitment is not for the faint-of-heart. Right from the moment I said to Cath “I want to walk with you,” I’ve know that it would require a lot of me. First I had to take the risk to say to someone (whom I’d never met in person), “your story – the loss of baby Juggernaut – has touched a vulnerable place in me and the only way I know how to respond is to drive half-way across the country to walk 100 kilometres with you.”
Then I had to commit the time to drive across the country, the time to train for all this walking, the agony of a dozen or more blisters on my feet, the cost of driving here, the time to fundraise and promote the Kidney Raffle, the cost of new shoes, socks, and blister-prevention aids, and, last but not least, the emotional energy to care about and offer compassion into other people’s stories.
No, it’s not for the faint-of-heart.
Lest you think me an altruistic do-gooder, though, let me admit… there’s a part of me that is doing this for entirely selfish reasons. For one thing, for an adventure-loving wanderer like me, it doesn’t take much to convince me to travel anywhere. Driving 13 hours across the prairies all by myself? Delightful. What’s not to like? Especially when I get to stop at dusk for photos like this one:
But there are other, deeper reasons.
Reasons like these:
– It’s a pilgrimage. Walking for hours and hours feels holy to me. It’s sacred time, when I find those “thin places” that the Celts talk about, where the veil between God and me gets thinner than usual.
– It’s a time to connect deeply with beautiful people whose stories already have special niches in the corners of my heart. We will have deep and honest conversations and we will change each other.
– It’s a vision quest. I know that the deep meditation of putting one foot in front of another for three days in a row will bring clarity and revelation to me that will surprise and challenge me. It will be yet another journey that will help reveal to me my unique medicine in the world.
– It’s part of my personal search for beauty in the world. We will walk in some of the most beautiful surroundings in the world, with the Rocky Mountains always at the edge of our vision. Beauty opens me – it cleans me.
– It will challenge me – push me to the edge of my endurance. I honestly don’t know if I can finish 100 km. After walking 32 in training, my feet felt like they were ready to give up on life. I am interested in seeing how I will handle this challenge, and I know that if I conquer it, I will feel invincible.
– The connection with Cath and her story will re-connect me with my own story of personal transformation through baby-loss. For three days, I will be remembering Matthew, whose 11th birthday/death-day is coming up on September 27th, and little Juggernaut, whose 1st birthday/death-day is only a few weeks later.
And so you see, the commitment is worth it. Yes, there will be moments of pure pain and exhaustion, but I know the experience will change me and I’m ready to be changed.
