Very little margin this Advent Season

10
Dec

At the end of November we took an epic family road trip, something we’ve never done with our extended family.

We spent a week down south and it was glorious.

I know. I’ll shut up now.

To make you feel better, you should know we returned to this…

This is the project we’ve been preparing for since spring. And now that it’s underway, we’re glad…but surprised at how many questions there are, decisions to make, and conversations to have. It’s exhausting. And it’s definitely a first-world problem.

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It’s into these circumstances that I walk into Advent. Things have been hectic, then restful, then stressful, then lovely, then filled with annoyances.

In a word, it’s been Life.

In the midst of all this I’m trying to carve out space to be aware of Advent, if only for the resetting value of it. If only for the value of preparations, of waiting, of anticipation, and watching.

For example, in trying to find ANY time to sit quietly, even loudly, but to sit mindfully, I could get only this much done…

This sketch then sat in my car for a couple days getting creased and coffee-marked, until I gave up on trying to steal time in the midst of errands and brought it back inside.

One day I got this done:

Then a day or two later I was able to spend more time and I finished it (over the course of an evening and morning):

There’s probably an Advent lesson there but I’ve yet to discover it. What I know is that the effort matters. It matters that even if it’s in your own thoughts, you’re trying to pay attention and notice elements of peace, hope, joy, and love.

That might be the extent of how you mark the Advent season, and that’s good enough.

Establishing Patterns: finishing one routine and beginning another

5
Nov

Habits and routines are not my favorite things. Morning coffee is an exception to that, as well as finding my car keys. Other than those things, I have to work purposefully to establish routines to accomplish different goals — although, come to think of it, late evening snacking seems to come pretty easily. <– see! that’s the thing about habits and routines. If you’re not careful, you’re creating a pattern you didn’t even mean to create and you’d better hope it’s a good one because breaking it once you’ve made it? Well that’s almost as hard as making a new one.

Fall is a time when it becomes easier for me to turn over a new leaf when it comes to habits. School starts and we have all the best intentions of making our lunches the evening before, hanging up our coats and putting away our bags, exercising right away when we arrive home, you know the drill.

This fall, however, it’s been a little different because we’re in the process (the looooong process) of redoing our lower level. The amount of brain power and time it’s taking has really surprised me. That in addition to some different commitments for the kids and my aspirations of establishing certain good habits has been waylaid.

However, I’ve only misplaced my keys once and yesterday was the first time I drove away from the house without my purse. So I say we’re breaking even.

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One thing I did stick with this fall was a challenge from Get Messy to create something every day from Sept 9 to Oct 27. It wasn’t always pretty and not all my pages feel complete, but the energy was there and I showed up to the page for 48 days. Some of the pages I was quite proud of, some felt more like backgrounds that I should return to later, others were plain or ugly. But they exist because I put paint on the page.

In the middle of that, I took a risk and registered for my first writing class at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. The Loft is well known for being a hub of literary activity and they offer workships and classes for all different genres and levels.

Here’s the view walking up the main stairs to my classroom:

The class I took was for children’s fiction. It was every Thursday at 6p for six weeks. People, that’s a big commitment for a busy family. It took me 25 minutes on a good day just to get parked and yes, I was the student who rolled in a few minutes late to every single class. But I showed up, and discovered that I knew more than I realized I did. And I prioritized an investment in myself in the midst of a busy life season, which felt really good even if it was inconceninet. Sometimes those are the things that show us where our passion really is.

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The next crazy habit I’m trying to is take up National Novel Writing Month this November. It’s called NaNoWriMo or NaNo for short.

You’ve probably heard of this madness. Every day of November you try to write. The standard prefab goal is to write 1000/day for 50,000 words in the month to “win” NaNo. But you can set a goal of whatever kind suits you. And their website will help you track your progress, give you achievement awards and peptalks from lots of authors.

This is a pretty natural melding of the two above scenarios of the writing class and the season of habit. There’s something magical about making the commitment to show up, even just showing up for yourself, if that makes sense. The willingness to put your own interests into the mix, placing your own interests into the collective pool of worthy activities? That can feel like an act of rebellion, especially, dare I say? for women and particularly for moms. (Don’t worry, Guys, I see you too. But this is a moment for the ladies.)

Showing up to the page

So I’m gonna try to make a sh***y first draft, as Anne Lamont would tell me to do. I’m gonna put my butt in a chair and write. It may not be good (let’s just say it, I’ll be happy if it’s mostly coherent). Heck, it doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be out of my head and on the page. Only then do we have something to work with. Up to that point it’s all theoretical.

I hope to give some periodic updates here so if you’d like to hear some of the story, be sure to stop back or subscribe to make it even easier for you.

Your turn! What kinds of habits are you cultivating or working towards right now? What time of year is easiest for you to start fresh? And what’s stopping you from prioritizing your own interests or dreams right now?

Oops! I almost forgot to share the flip thru of my most recent handmade journal, the one for the Season of Habit. The upload is giving me the business, so I’ll include the link below, and until later, thanks so much for reading.

Create-along art journal page: taking our emotional temperature

10
Jul

Today’s prompt and step by step is all about taking our own emotional temperature and checking in with ourselves.

As we begin working, consider how you’re feeling today. If you’d like to expand it, you can think about how you’ve been feeling lately, say in the past few months or so.

I mean it, it took soooooooo loooooooong. So what was my emotional temperature at that time?

Impatient. My emotional temperature was impatient. We sat there waiting our turn for such a long time I was starting to wonder if I should have packed a lunch and overnight bag. Glad I don’t have to go through that very often.

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Now that we’ve got our idea and focus for this page, I’ll show you where we’re headed, but keep in mind that every person’s page will look different. We are different people, we’ve been through different things, and we’re in different places emotionally. Please do everything you can to release any expectations of what your page “should” look like and allow it to develop naturally. Try to affirm your own willingness to show up and take a risk in doing this, and in so doing, know there’s no point in comparing your page to anyone else’s page. They are not you! Of course their page will be different from yours.

Art journaling is all about the process and reflection as you create. The end result is a byproduct.

Supplies

White paint
Glue
A couple papers that have a pattern on them. You can use old book pages, receipts, the insides of envelopes, scrapbook papers, sheet music, whatever grabs your fancy.
A couple tubes of paint in colors you’re drawn to.
Masking tape or patterned tape (washi tape).

Step by step

First, start by gluing down some torn bits of paper. Keep one portion in reserve.

Next, scrape a thin coat of white paint over your page. This will calm down the print of your patterned papers and give us a good base for our next layers.

The next thing you’ll do is plan to reserve a place on your page.

The flap of paper will go over how you feel internally, in contrast with how you appear to feel externally. I picked a mix of blue and purple, in part because I knew they’d be very different than the colors on the main part of my page. Later I added some scribbles with colored pencils.

Now, pick a couple paint colors that fit the external mood you’re trying to work with and put some of those on your page. (Avoid the spot you set aside, since you’ll be putting a flap of paper over that section.) You can use a paintbrush, your fingers, an old gift card, whatever you’d like. I chose some calm, pretty neutral colors and just scraped them on with a palette knife.

I’ve chosen to do one more thin layer of white. I used a brayer, a tool often used in print making. I like the effect it gives, but a thin layer of white scraped with a gift card will work as well.

Did somebody mention a flap?? It’s about time to put that on our page.

You can simply use a little masking tape (washi tape if you have it) on one side to make a hinge.

Finally, I always like to add a brief thought, a quote, or some journaling to my pages. You can put this under the flap to maintain some privacy, or add it anywhere on your page.

Here’s my end result:

If you decide to give this a try, good luck and I’d love to see what you make! Send me a pic or tag me online.

Starting from nowhere but not starting alone: a highspeed art journal spread

18
Jun

Over on Instagram, my feed is almost exclusively art journaling and art. There are a few family members and friends, of course, but it is really heavily skewed to arty goodness.

One thing I love to watch is process videos. I find it fascinating to see a page go from nothing to full of color and texture. It’s almost like one of those cool nature documentaries that show a flower sprouting out of the ground and blooming.

Flowers like these, for example

In making other videos I’ve discovered I take for-ev-er to complete a spread, even when it’s heavily edited. I’m happy as a little ant, hauling leaf bits back to the hill then heading out for more, but that’s my process. People don’t need to see me hem and haw through the whole thing. But with hyper lapse, we cut out more of that puttering and we get to the end result much more quickly.

So let’s give it a go, shall we? [Edited to add: a couple of the videos are jiggly at first but they quickly calm down. I hoped the hyper-lapse element would help them be smaller files so let’s hope this works.] I’ve got this in a few parts, four I believe. Here’s where we end up after the layers and adding some words:

Here’s video One:

And then Video Two:

https://tclarson.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/img_4393.mov

When I started I really had no idea where I’d end up. I didn’t set out to include a person, and when I got to the middle of it I actually thought it might be good with a simple quote in some of the white space. And it could have worked that way as well. Because I got the inkling to carve out a person, and where she ended up, there was this secondary pocket of color that asked for a second figure of some kind.

Here’s Video Three, where things start to come together:

https://tclarson.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/img_4454.mov

And finally Video Four:

https://tclarson.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/img_4456.mov

You’ll have to tell me what you think. Do you enjoy process videos the way I do?

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Here’s an added challenge for you…

Start.

Start somewhere.

Whether that’s pulling out your yarn, dusting off some old sheet music, trying a new recipe, downloading that design app on your device, it doesn’t matter what your area of focus is, just start one thing. Take one step into your own creative expression. You don’t have to have an end product in mind when you begin. You can enjoy the process of discovery and experimentation.

I promise it gets less daunting the more you do it.

And here’s the thing to know…as you try it, you might very well discover a whole community of other people who are also into that activity, especially if you use social media in a useful way. Explore more hashtags, follow a couple people who are a couple steps ahead of you, and just see where it all leads. It might surprise you. (And keep me in the loop if you do!)

A larger table

11
May

This week the world of Christian writing and thought and theology lost a pivotal figure in Rachel Held Evans. She went into the hospital at the beginning of the Lenten Easter season and passed away over the weekend of May 3. She was 37 years old. She had many books still to be written, many years with her family still to be lived, and many creative pursuits still to explore.

Almost immediately after she passed away news outlets and online sources wrote articles about her impact on modern Christianity. They talked about the way she articulated disenfranchisement with the current church, and the impact that she had in being a prophetic voice, “prophetic” here meaning one who reflects reality to the people around her and then calls them to something better.

One of the places that should have done the best job of memorializing her was the magazine, Christianity Today. This is the publication that is most frequently viewed as the voice of the majority of American Christianity and its trends, interest movements and culture. And the fact they bungled it speaks volumes.

There were also many people online who were harsh and insensitive. And even hateful. These are people who describe themselves as Christians and they celebrated her passing. This is a real problem, especially when you consider Jesus’ words in the Book of John that said love is how people will know someone is a disciple of Jesus.

This is something that is larger than just a one off anomaly in regards to a potentially divisive person within the church. This is reflective of the attitude of many Christians towards anything that does not up uphold their exacting uber-conservative demands. To see it all you have to do is look at all the ways Christians are known for what they’re against rather than the positives they’re for. It’s hard to want to be associated with a group that would be so dis-compassionate they’d be glad someone had died.

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To understand why Rachel might have been seen as divisive, it’s important to understand the environment she was responding to. It’s an environment where the Bible is inerrant and everything is tested against it. It’s an environment where men are generally seen as being the leaders and women are frequently the ones who do the heavy lifting of implementation. And this is all just the start of the things Rachel addressed in her writing.

Here’s the problem, particularly with the inerrancy of the Bible and the insistence that it be taken as literal: Those who claim to be Bible believers rarely realize they are not actually taking the Bible literally. And I don’t mean “literally” in the exaggerated sense as when you’re talking to someone at lunchtime and they say, ‘I literally couldn’t get out of bed today.’ I mean literal as in taking each word with it’s direct and intended meaning. Western people with the highest respect for and knowledge of the Bible are rarely observing the law of the Old Testament. They’re rarely, if ever, taking literally the proclamations of Jesus about loving your enemy or taking care of the alien or widow among you.

And guess what? Neither am I.

Everyone who lives a modern life is doing some interpretation of the Bible, wittingly or not. There’s history and traditions and interpretation thrown in that we’ve become blind to, and not by some underhanded scheme to deceive anyone, but simply by being immersed in the culture of “church”.

The fear that’s perpetuated is that if you ask hard questions about troubling passages, where will the questions take you? Where will they lead? If you question the inerrancy of the Bible, they say, you will start down a slippery slope that will probably lead to an unraveling of your faith. Better to leave those questions to the grown ups, who are most decidedly not you.

Start at 1:15 to hear what they say will happen if you question ANY of the Bible

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One of Rachel’s first books was called A Year of Biblical Womanhood . In it she tried to put into practice the laws and directives the Bible placed on women, such as sitting on her roof when she had an argument with her husband, baking bread a certain way, or even removing herself from her normal routine and sleeping in a separate tent one week out of the month.

What she accomplished through this experiment was to gently point out the absurdity of the claim while still respecting the underlying validity and importance of the Bible. She respected the Bible, felt it was full of truths and wisdom, even if it didn’t have to be used as a step by step rulebook to follow, such as Robert’s Rules of Order . That didn’t scare her, she let it be fine in its own self, rather than trying to force it to fit external set of criteria.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. She amplified voices of those who have been underrepresented, repressed, and discriminated against. She saw Jesus as building a bigger, longer table that could include more people, not fewer. Think about the way Jesus turned things on their head by hanging with those the established religious folks wouldn’t have consorted with by light of day. That’s who Rachel wanted to make space for.

My friend once described my parents as Jesus hippies. That made me laugh and I felt very comfortable with that idea, and I think they did too. I want to be a Jesus hippy. I want to be more concerned with the way my life communicates God’s love to the world around me rather than excluding people. And I want to be courageous in speaking up for those whose voice has been silenced.

Love, grace, and peace be to the memory of Rachel Held Evans, and may we all build longer tables to accommodate a larger feast.

Here’s a lovely article remembering Rachel Held Evans by Sarah Bessey

If you want to read one of Rachel’s other books you could try Searching for Sunday or Inspired , which came out less than a year ago. And if you read any of her books I’d love to hear what you think.

It all counts

28
Mar

Things here have been busy, probably as they have been busy for you as well. I’m not saying I don’t know how it happened, this being busy. This year has been very different from the standpoint of a new work schedule, and finding the syncopated beat of that new rhythm has taken some concentration.

In the middle of that song, I am still compelled to make art. It still allows me to process life and connect to something bigger than myself. But I don’t have the same time-space to work on it as I did when my schedule was more flexible.

It would be easy to just throw up my hands and decide to invest my time in watching something good on Netflix but that doesn’t serve the same purpose as making art, even little art, even speedy art.

To that end, I’ve started working in more bursts, fewer layers, and in journals that are a bit smaller than I’ve loved in the past. These pages aren’t as richly textured as I’d like, but compromises have to be made. 🙂 It’s become my mission to find pockets of time in which to work, and then be prepared for those by keeping certain things on hand should the need arise. I’ve started to pay closer attention to the patterns of regular life, in order to streamline processes and become aware of repeated tasks and what kind of time commitment those require.

This is not my normal interest or skill area. Because I value create endeavors though, it’s worth it to go through the (boring) analysis necessary to make the most of these new rhythms.

…All in time for the school year to end and the whole routine to go out the window. Ha!

Here are a few pages I’ve worked on recently in these small pockets of time…

I went back and added a stamp to a background I’d already created.

Quick, small page that feels done even though it’s pretty simple.

Side A

Side B

The thing I keep coming back to is rather than bemoan a lack of focused time or wring my hands about entering into a different season of creativity, it’s better to celebrate the ways you can still continue to be committed to exercising that creativity. Maybe it will lead to more efficiency. Maybe more percolating will happen away from the page so that when you do get there, you’ll be able to jump right in without puttering around to warm up.

It all counts, no matter how much time’s available to invest in the actual creation. There’s much more to creativity than the time spent creating. Your whole life informs the creative process…and vice versa.

Snow Days for the Record Books (or the Epic January 2019 Polar Vortex)

31
Jan

It’s been a crazy week of snow days here in the great tundra of Minnesnowta. Yesterday it was so bad they actually cancelled mail service. The US Postal Service, whose unofficial motto is: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” CANCELLED the MAIL because it was so cold.

That’s sayin’ somethin’.

(By the way, you can read some of its history here — just remember, we’ve had four snow days, so these are the things one does when granted four consecutive snow days with inhuman windchills so nobody can even go outside to enjoy the snow we finally got. We research the motto of the post office.)

We do other cool stuff too, such as:

That time we made snow from boiling water.

That time someone else tried it in their skivvies and it didn’t work out as well.

And games. We’ve played so many games. We played Battleship and we played Risk. We played card games like Garbage, Kings Corners and some card game my kids claim is real called Sandwich (I’m not convinced).

One of the sweetest things we did was make some hot chocolate, put in some of that special marshmallow creme, get a cozy spot in the sunny living room, and read from Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World. I had those kids in the palm of my hand, I tell you. My husband and I both remember loving that book, so this was the perfect opportunity to introduce it to the kids. They’ve all read BFG by the same author, so when that concept made it into Danny the Champion of the World the theories and speculation went wild. Which book came first? Did the author put it in this book and then decide it was a great idea so developed it? Was it put in as a plug for his BFG book which needed some more interest from readers? We have yet to satisfy our curiosity on this matter, but I’ll let you know what we find out.

Sometimes these little moments are ones you’ll return to in your memory. At least I will.

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When the kids had full stomachs and a chance for some screen time, I made some time for art. Here are a couple recent pages I’d love to share with you…

Please tell me you saw that giant moon about a week ago? It was fantastic. I made this soon after, and added some writing this week. The writing says “I speak the language of the moon”, and includes some yummy iridescent ink on the moon to make it shine.

This one’s all about texture. It’s a bit hard to see without having it right in front of you, but there’s quite a bit of texture and the play between the dark and light helps convey some of that winteriness we’ve experienced this week.

I’ve got one more to share, which is not even trying to pretend it’s holding back…

That was a joyful exploration of slow and fast inspired by my friend Divyam, who’s beautiful work you can check out here with the slow being the line on the lefthand side, and the fast being the explosion of color on the right. Sometimes you need some color to brighten up your winter whites!

I’d love to hear how you handled the weather this week, since the cold was forecasted to attack so much of the US. Even my southern friends were uncomfortable (we smile knowingly at them and try not to pat their heads too patronizingly since they are not prepared to deal with temperatures lower than they’re used to, temps in which we’d still be wearing shorts and flip flops).

Read any good books? Start any previously unplanned projects? Tell me all about it in the comments below! Stay warm, friends!

Third week of Advent: we could use a little joy

23
Dec

We’re falling a little behind now, but I think it’s still worth it to write about each of the weeks of Advent rather than skipping one in order to catch up. Plus I like joy — who doesn’t like joy?? [Note: if you want to read posts on joy from previous years you can read one here, and another one here. If you’re behind on the Advent posts from this year, you can read Hope here and Love here.]

The thing is, in the past I’ve been taught that joy is a long-lasting dispositional quality, as contrasted with happiness, which is situational. I don’t disagree with that, and we all know people who are almost never positive about anything, regardless of the circumstances good or bad. So what does it matter if someone is joyous or happy, if someone is filled with joy or with happiness? I mean, are these cows joyful, or just happy (or on the verge of a stampede) and ultimately does it matter?

I suppose one could argue that they’re happy, because they’ve been released into the spring grass and they will acclimate and probably won’t continue bouncing around with glee. All I’m trying to suggest is that we don’t need to have disdain for their happiness. It’s not “less than” because it’s circumstantial. I feel much the same way as these cows when it comes to springtime sun and fresh air. Or this dog who learns to be a dog…

Again, is it happiness, is it cultivating joy, and aside from being in a healthy safe place, how important is that distinction?

I only watched like the first 5 minutes of the Paul McCartney video above, and it made my heart all warm and fuzzy, so I hope you feel the same way after watching some of it. There’s an aspect of gratitude in it that seems conducive to joy. In my experience, more grateful one is, the easier it is to find joy.

I’ve been working on an art page for a while, and I think it’s done enough to share now. I was trying to capture that feeling of joy and elation, while also using specific materials that I felt were important but challenging. There’s something about the childhood joy of getting a choice swing all to yourself without anyone pressuring you to give them a turn, when you can go as high as you want, day dreaming and imagining all sorts of adventures. If you notice something unusual about the chains on the swing, it’s because they’re made from insulin pump tubing. 🙂

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The coming of Jesus is an event of gratitude and joy, especially when Jesus is viewed as the great healer, the reconciler, the one who calls all people unto himself. In the United States the white evangelical church focuses so heavily on humanity’s fallen-ness, God’s wrath, and the idea of Jesus as a blood sacrifice to atone for people’s sins, there’s not much room to pay attention to how Jesus lived his life…we’re too focused on his death.

There are other positions, such as the role of Jesus as example of how to live a life, how to treat people unlike ourselves, and even as a great unifier of all things. Richard Rohr has some interesting things to share on this concept — Jesus as the Cosmic Christ. [He’s also written about the idea of the first half of our lives being all about building containers for meaning, and the second half of our lives being a process of dismantling those containers. That’s a wonderful head scratcher for anyone over 35!] But again, the evangelical church in the United States doesn’t talk much about that, since the going theology is the exclusivity of Christianity.

However, how much more joyous is it to think of Jesus as making all things new, including humanity? Definitely something to think about.

What’s bringing you joy this season?

Essential wholehearted Humanness

14
Nov

It can be instinctive to try and make sense of situations, to look for connections between things so we can identify with what’s happening around us.

However, for some people that comes with more difficulty when faced with unfamiliar situations or world views. They might shut out people rather than looking for that point of connection.

It’s important to remember that while there are vast differences in backgrounds and beliefs, there are some characteristics which are universal.

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I have a tutorial up on the Get Messy Art Journal website today, and it’s all focused on living wholeheartedly. Human development theories tell us some of the things which are desired at the core of all people, such as connection, to be known, and to be loved. More recently, Brene Brown has studied what it looks like to live wholeheartedly, and in my mind her work goes hand in hand with the season of ubuntu.

Here are a couple pics from my tutorial on wholeheartedness (and from the past couple weeks)…

Another couple pics not related to the tutorial but circling the idea of ubuntu and our connected humanness.

Seriously, have you been watching the midterm elections here in the US? What’s up with that , meaning with the barriers to people having their registrations purged, with closing polling stations, and with trouble counting the votes?

Bringing it in closer to home, a friend of a friend had an almost unthinkable tragedy happen recently and I just can’t wrap my head around what things must be like for her right now. Working it out in my art journal gives me a good place to focus my thoughts.

The words on the left side say “you are not alone” which I feel is so important when walking through a very dark time. This is a difficult month for our family, with difficult anniversaries and birthdays and mile-markers of those who are no longer with us, and we grieve them deeply. Knowing we are not alone in that grief makes it a fraction easier to bear, and as you know if you’ve ever been there, a fraction is still significant.

Then finally, just a parting thought of love to you. Maybe you need to hear it today, so just know that your presence in the world matters. We should all keep chugging along, doing the next right thing, sharing love with those we come in contact with, and slowly things will change for the better, if only because we have become more wholehearted in how we approach the world.

If you want to see the whole tutorial for the wholehearted page, it’s on the Get Messy site. To see it you need to be a member, which is just fantastic fun. Click here to get started. And as always, thanks for visiting!

Interconnectedness

25
Oct

Right now it’s very easy to feel disconnected. Disconnection happens in subtle ways, whether that’s doing our own thing without checking in with our partner, letting too long go between phone calls back home.

It also happens in purposeful ways and can be positive, like when we no longer wish to be associated with a certain philosophy or worldview. It can happen when we leave a dysfunctional or toxic relationship. That’s healthy growth.

And disconnectedness is most definitely happening all over politics in the United States, where holding a different position becomes a moral judgment of your character. On both sides.

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We are in the season of ubuntu for Get Messy and it’s been a trick to wrap my brain around the word. It’s the concept of our deep humanity, the qualities of compassion and interconnectedness.

We are as a society in a period where loud voices are promoting fear and scarcity, which make our brains close down and send us towards tribalism and mistrust.

So this season comes at a perfect time, a chance to recalibrate and make deliberate observations about our connectedness and shared h umanity .

In the spirit of ubuntu I’d like to share some of my pages so far…