First, Context!
After weaving some stories together in my dreams, I woke to the news that the iconic Norman Lear has passed at the age of 101. MSNBC suggested that Lear was “50 years ahead of his time with All in the Family.“
And, he was… “bringing America to real Americans in their own homes.”
If your family was anything like mine, this was not a universally agreed upon blessing! And we are there – in the same arguments, now.
Which is an ironic lead into our conversation for this day…
It started yesterday when I stopped by my doctor’s office for a couple bottles of nutty-crunchy stuff to make my upcoming pre-holiday travel Covid booster easier to manage.
A staff person I hadn’t met before reached to shake my hand and introduce himself. Then, with a big grin on his face, he said, “I love your button!”
This button…
Well, I knew I had a new friend! A new friend who asked where I got the button. (Probably Etsy.) I unpinned it from my jacket and told him that I had more and, if he’d actually wear it, I’d gladly give it to him.
More grinning. And a story… “My wife,” said my new friend, “teaches 5th grade. She has lots of banned books! She’d totally love and wear this!”
This is major bonding in the land of John Lewis! And my brain was off on an adventure, ironically having to do with an old story about the thing commonly known as behaving.
I’ll bet this is a word you recognize, too! It’s also kind of an iconic word in one of my favorite family stories. To follow along you need to know that my beloved son had some language challenges back in the day.
He talked “late” according to the chart in the pediatrician’s office. And he reversed a lot of words and had a big challenge with verbs. One of those words was, indeed, behave!
Don’t look at me! It was a daycare/pre-school thing!!! And it had to do with a place known as the side bench, where those who needed a time out went for a bit.
One day, on our way home in winter traffic – Think slow-moving tourists, not snow! – Dave was telling me about his friend who had to sit on the side bench. Then my boy hurried to assure me, in Dave-speak, that he was not on the side bench.
I be’d-have!
Why, you may be asking, this story in this moment?
Well, if you boil all the news down, it has a whole lot to do with whose notion of being-have will win!!! And the impact of the battle is a whole lot bigger than time-out in daycare!
Which, as you might suspect, brings us back to the late US House Rep, John Lewis (D-GA, 05) and the notion of Good Trouble.
And, oddly, to Our Lady of Guadalupe!
I had to do a bit of homework on Our Lady before I could paint her at the request of my dear friend, Laura, who has been a huge character in the saga of my Intentional Creativity® journey.
(We didn’t cover saints in nursing school or seminary!)
My first question had to do with the part of the painting you see above…
What was the story behind the little being with wings at the bottom???
Thus, research!
Full disclosure… I’m sending the academic/journalist who lurks inside me still, on a tea break, while I admit that I can’t, in this moment, find the exact citation for what I learned in my research. Here’s what my heart learned…
That little winged figure at the bottom of the painting represents “an intermediary” being between Heaven and Earth and brings knowledge and inspiration in times of trouble.
At that moment in my journey… around the time Lewis passed on and in the early days of the Taliban’s accelerated war on women, that being insisted on wearing John Lewis’ face!
Here’s the big picture…
All of which, intrepid reader, brings us to the seeming conflict between being-have and Good Trouble.
So, here’s the question… what if – maybe just maybe – being-have MEANS Good Trouble???
And the even more important question…
What might that look like for you???
ps… curious??? The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe… Tradition and Transformation, by Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.
pps… ready??? Let’s talk! 45 min. My gift. Your chance to get in on my Big Work! (This!!!) Fair warning…. the calendar thing is going to be a bit of a challenge in this moment. Hurry!