Imagine, with me, that you are putting together a jigsaw puzzle. One with many, many pieces. There are a couple of challenges. You don’t have a box with a picture on top of what the puzzle is supposed to look like and there are no edge pieces!
Perhaps you’ve noticed that life feels like that sometimes. At least mine has, lately.
For me it usually happens when I’m discovering new things and I can’t tell how they fit together with powerful things that have already claimed me.
Just now, it has to do with things like demo paintings and round two of a journey called Legend and a round-the-world perspective trip with something known as Motherboard.
All layered over the wonder of holidays with my girls and reading some things I wrote a while back.
Oh, and MLK, Jr. day.
Curious???
It happened like this…
I was still floating around in an inner tide pool after MLK day, watching Legend videos, squirreling away collage paper for a workshop demo, and pondering what Motherboard will wind up looking like in my world when – cliche’ but true! – I had a dream!
The dream led me out of bed, braving the cold and the dark, to retrieve a copy of my book, Grandmothers Are In Charge Of Hope. (The sweet faces, above, are my granddaughters, peeking out from the cover.)
Wrapped in a purple, faux fur wobbie and fortified by a cup of hot water and lemon in my favorite sunny yellow mug, I started ripping pages from my book.
Yes, ripping pages!
Collage material for one project. Inspiration to be transformed into symbols for a couple of others. And two answers to my prophets’ favorite question:
If we believe what we say we believe, what, then, shall we do?
Yes, there are a great many answers to this question. For now, these are mine.
Put Motherboard to work in my world. (You’ll have to stay tuned…)
And, wave at babies!
There it was, on page 73, my personal plan for world peace. Let me read you a story…
My favorite place for waving at babies is the big, international farmers’ market where we live. There are lots of babies there! Babies whose families come from parts of the world my 7th grade geography teacher never told me about. Babies balanced on top of cartloads of food I’d have no idea how to prepare.
Wave at the babies. Smile, too, of course. Tell them they have cool shoes. Become less “other.” Less “different.” More “same.” Wave at babies at traffic lights and in restaurants. Most of them are serious flirts.
It’s probably going to take a while, this plan of mine. Less, though, if we get all the grandmothers signed up. (And the honorary grandmother archetype folks, too.) Your kids will see you wave and they’ll start, too. And then the people with the babies will notice and just possibly smile. Pretty soon you’ve got a cart full of crazy looking produce, a nice pastured chicken… and some actual fresh bay leaves. And, if it’s been a good waving day, a couple of dozen fewer strangers in the world. All of which, one way or another, is a good thing for your kids to learn.
See, grandmothers are in charge of hope!
Oh, and just one more thing. Before the pieces of the puzzle begin to make sense, we have to take them out of the box and play with them! Often paper and pens and images are helpful!