Dearest Relatives
it is a perfect spring day in Pipestone the snow is melting the wind howling and the sun is brilliant
it is spring a time of change
todays blog is written by someone else I am adding a pre and post script
as many of you know if you have followed this blog from its inception or read back in its accounts that this note and notes originate at a house that the Spirits placed in my hands two years ago this house is being established as a teaching center and refuge and ceremony place for Grandmothers it is ultimately for the children of the future shortly after acquiring it a call went out to ask for resources to help with its establishment it needed much renovation not five months into its living transition I fell over the stairs and was crushed it was an event that changed the core of how this place and my life is cared for financially I never intended to have help or depend on others for money to establish and maintain either my life or this place however my plan wasn't the same one that the Spirits had in mind.
as hard as it was to ask for support for the house and for my life when I was unable to work i and some friends managed to do that and help came the help given to my life and to the house was always kept confidential and anonymous as was the request of those who gave it was and is my pleasure to know some of these men and women but it was my duty to keep their identities private if they wanted to let others know of what they gave it was their choice not mine. I can tell you that as a person who has worked since she was 17 and supported herself in this world it has been quite humbling, frustrating and instructive to be persistently on the end of needing financial assistance some people have been concerned with my physical well being and the journey of healing my body but what has been much harder was the long climb up the well of emotional trauma that the profound destruction and reconstruction of my life became after I fell it was singularly unreservedly the second hardest spiritual mental and emotional thing that I have ever had to endure like a class for extreme internal kung fu one of the things that helped me through this last 15 months was having not the internet per se but the monthly unswerving care and commitment that vote of confidence not only in me but in the world I give my life to create that came in the form of that payment every month without fail it is an extraordinary thing to be cared for with no conditions and no hesitation in this day and age
there have been three households who have stood by me thick and thin and this house and the gifts that came from it every month, every day for this time.
one of those persons who gave without fail without reservation and with a deep belief in a world that can be created daily is the grandmother who gave the internet connection to me and the blog for 15 months now her circumstances are changed as can happen in a life that is dedicated to the narrow path that finds its way to a new world
she has asked me to ask you if someone or a group of someones would commit to taking over her monthly gift of internet for a committed length of time i asked her to write a note about who it felt for her to have done what she did how she saw her gift to all of you and also to herself
so below you will find her note:
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In the Fall of 2012 when Grandmother Mary Brown took her
fall in the Grandmothers’ Home she was renovating and living in in Minnesota,
it felt to me like all of us GMa’s were being given a wake-up call. I only saw a bit of what that meant at
the time, but over these past months I’ve been given larger glimpses of how
this event is an ongoing invitation to all of us.
What I mean is that it seems to me that by having Mary taken
“out of the action’ for most of the following year, as she dealt with her
extensive injuries from that fall, we were being asked whether we really wanted
to come together as a community of caring, or not -- were our words about being a community just words, or
were we actually willing to take the actions necessary to back those words up
and make them real in the world?
So when Mary put out the call to us GMa’s asking for help
with some things, I responded by offering to pay for her internet service
because I felt that her blog and emails were an important lifeline connection
for her, and also the best way for us as a community to keep in touch with
her. I’ve been deeply grateful to
have been able make those payments over the past 15 months, and I’m writing now
to share with you why.
First, it’s been nearly effortless, as the amounts have been
predictable, consistent and automatically charged to my credit card each
month. So as long as I didn’t go
overboard with my charges (not a good thing to do in any case), I could pay
them as another “fixed expense” in my budget. Beyond that was knowing that with so little effort on my
part, I was making a big difference in Mary’s life, giving her this way of
staying connected with those who care about her without having to keep asking
for help, which none of us likes to do.
And I could, in reading her blog, very easily learn much of what was
unfolding in her life day-to-day with her recovery and healing.
So many times over these past 15 months I’ve asked myself
why this happened to Mary, but it’s only recently that any of this has made
sense to me. And these insights
have come thru my recent readings of the work of Charles Eisenstein, who speaks
and writes about our deep longings as humans to do work that truly has worth,
and for our connections with each other as family and community. These personal connections are the
pillars of true happiness, and our Western culture has largely eliminated them
by making paid services out of what have traditionally been what folks in
families and communities naturally offered to each other as gifts. Every traditional culture was based on
these pillars of inter-relationship, and the structures we replaced them with,
such as our systems of government, money and medicine are now crumbling because
their foundations are not rooted in the trusted connections between people.
Anyway, what I’m realizing is that Mary’s fall has been a
“wake-up” call for any of us who are willing to be awakened from our dream of
“independence” to recognize that none of us really can go it alone (and this
includes couples, too), but that when we join together, we can accomplish just
about anything.
So I see Mary’s “accident” as asking us GMa’s to step up to
the plate, if we choose, and form a real community with and for each other to
offer something of our selves when there is a call for that.
I understand you may feel that helping out would be just a
burden and, right now, nothing that you “need,” but in my small experience of
this over these past months, I can say that the rewards of being a part of
this, of being able to offer some real help to someone I care about, are so
rewarding and so satisfying that there’s no way to put a “price” on them. I have truly received way more than I
have given in doing this.
And I’m putting this out to you all now because it is time
for me to end my piece of this due to changes in my own financial
circumstances, and also, to open this opportunity up for someone else to join
and share in this process. So if
you have a space in your life now that would like to be filled with the deep
satisfaction of making a profound difference in someone’s life and helping
build a caring community, please let Mary know.
What do we live for if
it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
George Eliot
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