Chaos and Birth

At the coast, sitting on a boulder along the beach I was watching the waves crash into the rocks and roll ashore across the sand, each wave pounding and foaming, rolling forth and retreating. I felt the salty mist spray my face and the sunny wind dry it away. I took in the great explosions of energy and re-energizing ions where these two great bodies—earth and sea—meet and felt calmed by them.

And then I noticed that while the sun glistened through the lovely translucent green, white-capped peaks of the waves, at the base they were dark and murky with churning sand and seaweed, bits of shell and who knows what else. I thought "chaos." Here I am at the conjunction of the vast Pacific Ocean and the North American continent, and it is chaos. Beautiful chaos. Great explosions of sound and energy and churning and turning, water rolling and retreating in constant motion. And it is murky and chaotic. It isn’t clear or orderly or well-defined where the land ends and the sea begins.

Doesn't chaos always give birth to something? Isn't chaos a medium of creation? Whether it is life itself, life-affirming, or life threatening, something is always birthed from chaos. Think of human birth. Now that’s a chaotic experience! The body seems completely beyond one’s control. Stars and planets are birthed from chaos. And from the chaos of a collapsing or overthrown government arises a new government. From any failure arises new ideas, attitudes, or efforts. Out of floods, fires, and hurricanes arise new structures and a new sense of connection and helping one another. Art arises from chaos; it doesn’t come into being in a neat, orderly fashion, does it?

And here at the shoreline, the buried, bubbling clams feed on the chaos. And where there are pockets of calm, tide pools and puddles cradle new life. So this chaos thing, the murky times with which we are so uncomfortable, just what might they give birth to? Granted, no one wants to live in a constant state of chaos, but if we are always running from it, will we ever allow ourselves the chance to find out what wants to be birthed?

Constellations of Hope--I was there!

I attended remarkable three-day conference this past weekend called Constellations of Hope. It brought together 60+ women who lead organizations that support women. I was delighted to help with the administrative end of it and designed this logo for the printed materials. The purpose of the conference was to explore organizational collaboration. From the website www.constellationsofhope.com:

How do we Begin?
There are thousands of organizations large and small working on behalf of women and women's issues around the world today. Each one represents a source of valuable insights, experience and wisdom; each one could benefit from a thoughtful exchange of resources, information and ideas with the others. Millions of women in countries around the globe would benefit from the resulting synergy... and the world would be moved closer to a model of healthy balanced leadership that incorporates feminine principles.

Shared Intentions and Assumptions
The co-creators of this event have come together around the following shared intentions and assumptions:
* We have witnessed a spirit-filled activism that is calling women to a new way of thinking and being.
* We have witnessed a growing desire among organizations to collaborate, recognizing that they are ready to effectively create something together that they cannot do alone.
* We have witnessed that inspiration for tangible new projects and initiatives emerges organically when women come together to dialogue around a shared intention.

At the conference, we sat in circle much of the time—the most diverse, and challenging, circle in which I have ever participated. Women of all colors sat in circle comparing, contrasting, sharing, and protecting individual and cultural belief systems and practices. What we discovered was that we could not move much beyond exploring our differences and attempting to find a common ground. The fire of these interactions was hot--it was no work for sissies! That heat was reflected in a major conversation near the end of the conference called “Into the fire, deepening the conversation.”

We stepped into the fire, burning away assumptions and obstacles to understanding and collaboration. Perhaps that was all that could happen in such a condensed time. Although we were barely able to step into exploring collaboration on an organizational level, some did happen. Healings took place, heart connections happened, disillusionment and anger was experienced, but most certainly, a web of connection was established among all of us. I know that I came away a changed woman.