I have been slowly meandering my way through Brené Brown’s book “The Gifts Of Imperfection” for the past four months. The book makes me think, has me chewing on my own spirit and my own perceptions of reality. I find myself asking “what is this thing called life I am living” and “why do I do what I do.” You know, easy stuff.

There has been chewing, butt kicking, and the occasional moment of “uh huh.” There are exclamation points and stars etched in the edges, brackets and circles. This is a book I had to take notes in, not leave pristine. Will I loan it- yes, with the caveat that the next person do the same in their own color of pen.

In Guidepost 9 (it’s like chapters in part two), she asks us to examine what makes our work meaningful. For many years I have stood by the fact that I must have meaningful work, or else not do it. She argued another route… the slash.

You can be a poet/banker, carpenter/king. Any combination of thing is available if we dig in deep and listen to the fullness of our hearts. Listen to the silence that speaks at 3am and knows our best intentions at heart.

The funny thing is, knowing my ideal slash is an amazing tool for figuring out where to invest my juice. My spoons. My battery power.

I am an author/educator/performer/shaman.

Or perhaps an author/educator/shaman/performer.

Somewhere in there. I am called to reach out, connect, inspire. I have tribal affiliations. I touch hearts. I resonate in these forms through the guise of bard, poet, philosopher, blogger, priest, guru, and nice guy. But these four are the vocation known as my journey.

I keep being told to focus in. I mean really, does that shaman gig pay? If your income is really from the first two, do it smarter, do it wiser. Educate at intensives and big weekends only, do college lecturing mostly, write books that will sell 10,000+ copies only. Write that sequel to “Shibari You Can Use” already.

But a job is real even if we don’t get paid for it. Our juice fills back up *while* we are working instead of on the weekends when please oh please we are away from our work. I want my Work, not just my work. I want to thrive in my vocation.

The trick? Listening. I keep not listening, though I am getting better.

When I open up a file to write, what juices me up? What makes me feel juicy? Right now it is poetry. I am pouring it out of me like water, refreshing water that I feel like I am sailing on. The second is handouts and notes for how to teach, because there needs to be more skilled folks who can skillfully pass on information and wisdom to others. The third is my collaborative project with Mollena.

Note that “More Shibari You Can Use,” which has had the first 3 chapters and entire outline done for 5 months, has not moved in 5 months. Because today my spirit says no. It says it is not part of today’s work. Will it come out, yes, at some point. But right now, if I focused on it, I would not be listening to the authentic voice that governs over my slash.

So I let the words pour forth. I book gigs like Westward Bound, Fetish Fair Flea, and Kinkfest to teach at, that will fuel me. I stop and play, because sometimes my performance is for me. I sing and dance. I use my tarot card app for actual divination working. I love, and live, and dream as I work. Because I am Working.

I am Working, in my slash.

Time and time again I see individuals, myself included, have these amazing moments… and then do little with them.  Catharsis junkies attending the same shamanism or tantra 101 weekend year after year, having the same realization about their intrinsic sacred value, only to come back the next year to “wake up” again because they fell asleep again in the year between.

There are those for whom epiphanies are truly a tool for life transformation.  Having opened wide and seen the glory possible in existence, in their own skin and sighs and soulful spirit, they cannot fall asleep again.  They shake off the fetters and begin the Work on this planet of being the person they need to be.  And yet, the percentage is not so high.

Epiphanies are powerful… but only if we do something with them.

What epiphanies can be though are a way to start laying the lines for our daily Work. Let my clay be etched with a line by this experience.  The first line is so often the hardest.  Where do I long to etch my dreams?  Where do I go from here?  So often we scratch and scratch at the clay that is our being and add texture, add friction, add scars… but nowhere for the finger to follow, nowhere on the tile for the water to flow away and out into the world.

For those who have epiphanies early on, they can act as an initial strike line.  The hard water comes, and the line is laid.  As we continue our daily work, the line gets deeper and deeper, digging into our essence.  Our patterns become indelible, tactile experiences that can be felt upon our being.

And yet- there is the reflected route.  Instead of my daily practice be a thing to do after the epiphany struck… let the scratches become a pattern, the pattern be followed over and over again to become lines.  When epiphany strikes, the heavy rains have a place to flow, they dig deeper, the water finds its ways and lets it go where it is needed.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”
-Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD

“Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes you accident prone.”
-Zentatsu Richard Baker, American Soto Zen Roshi

My own clay is scarred and textured, and tells the tale of so many false starts.  And yet, wisdom therein.  Let us not bemoan the sorrows of relationships not followed or spiritual paths stepped upon but not taken.  Those scratches and lines into our clay set up the potential for our Work today, our work in the Now.  Sing me not a tale of sorrow, unless in welling up that emotion in you in inspires you to greater work.  Sorrow as fuel, yes, tasting of salty sweetness of tears and times past.  But a sea to drown it… no.  Fashion a raft from the debris and prepare to sail.

I examine my clay.  Look at the lines run deep, the shallow scores, the takes of my flesh and furrowed brow.  Look at the patterns in my etheric being, the land mines and easter eggs, the potential and passion buried in my story.

My finger runs along the clay.  That one, there.  There.  Yes, it is the path I long to follow.  And this one here, a journey to inspire, that is mine as well.  I find the dowsing rod of my spirit and work out the ley lines.  I lower my lips to the clay and breathe dust away, finding lines covered up with neglect of pursuit and forgotten promises.

Closing my eyes, I breathe in and hold.  Slowly, I let out my breath through my nose, lips shut in silent contemplation.  Focusing into the patterns, I slowly open my eyes and see the clay before me.

Here is the pattern for the daily Work.  Here the where I go.  Here is the sharpening of my vision into the passions for the future.

My fingernail follows the groove.  And again today.  And again tomorrow.  And again, again, again.  I do not notice as my finger finds the line again and again.

The Grand Canyon was dug out this way, and so is my heart.

In my well-laid being, let the lines run deep.

It will not always go the exact way I thought.  I may meander, the drizzle of water taking a turn and twist that leads not to a goal but simply to where it leads.  And yet, over the years, the awe of nature’s majesty emerges.

My line becomes a creek, a creek a river bed.  My bed, well laid, awaits the monsoon and wells to life.

Epiphany comes, and I am ready.

This skin suit we have is so full of information, capacity, knowledge… it picks up things we could never hear, never see.  It understands things our conscious mind is never aware of.  I am blessed by my body, blessed for my body.

And yet, how often have I not listened?

I work contract projects.  I get hired to come in, do a thing, and leave.  And yet, to teach that class, run that ritual, facilitate that discussion, drive that intensive… there is hours, days, weeks or even months of work in advance.  A 2 hour class is more than a 2 hour class.

But how do I choose what classes to do?

I’ve been relying on my intellect and cerebral knowledge.  Balance out calendars, look at flows and finances, debate what will work out for all parties involved.

But I have to now start listening to my exhaustion.

This weekend was fueling.  I fed my heart, my body, my mind, my spirit.  I connected on profound levels, fired up my imagination, and unlocked awarenesses within me.  I am grateful and blessed.

And looking at future experiences… it is not the case.

Yes, it’s a fair package.  Yes, it will open up a market to me.  Yes… and yet my body feels heavy.  I pick up the phone to talk with that specific organizer, or send out that one email, and I feel exhausted.  I feel drained, on something that has no reason to be draining.

My body knows something I do not know.  My body is aware of something that I am not aware of.

I have believed over the years that my mental adventures are a gift, if only I will become aware of that gift.  That my supposed physical disabilities are gifts, if only I will wake up to their potential.  I know this.  My tongue tastes this as truth.  My lips hum knowing this to be so… and yet, what do I do?

I flounder.  I lash out at the fact that some days I am “broken” or “can’t work.”  I do work, I just am unaware of what it is I am doing.  I am percolating, I am simmering, i am polishing.  If all I do is take in, or if all I do is DO, what space is left for these refinements, processing points, and the growth of my unconscious self through the act of being?  Of hitting lows and in the shadow finding the texture that brings my world to life?  By hitting highs and lighting up the world?

This body suit, my Fetch, my sticky one, this that I am and am not, this shapechanger skin… I see you.  I hear you.  And I will endeavor to implement your wisdom more regularly.  You are wise, with years and tears.

The gift of fear is not our only body gift.  I also feel the gift of arousal.  The gift of panic.  The gift of awe.  The gift of exhaustion.

Body emotions, inspired by body memory.  This body has been around before… we are not just reincarnated beings of spirit, all three of our selves come back around.  My skin has been carbon in another form before.  My thoughts have been thought before.  My spirit has shone before.  And all three will shine again.

Energy is not made.  And nothing goes “away.”

“Why are people starving in the world?”

“Why did they die?”

The child mind wants to know and understand the world.  Why, why, why?  Tell me more, let me absorb knowledge, let me understand.

And yet, when the adult mind hears the question Why, it seems as if it triggers an egoic reaction.  If we do not know Why, to whatever the Why is, we can feel ignorant, uninformed, or as if there was some sort of cheating that took place in the world.  “I don’t know why the sky is blue” the mind says, and wonders if they should know why the sky is blue, it’s a science thing, right?  It can feel as if the 3 year old is calling us stupid- when the 3 year old just likes the sky and wants to have a better understanding of this thing they think is pretty neat.

“I don’t know why people starve” the mind says, and it riles up feelings of social injustice.  People should not starve!  Does God hate us?  The emotional body reacts in pain, and the child who asked us the question can see the pain.  They see us suffer, and the suffering becomes a viral emotional experience.  After all, what is more contagious than an idea or feeling?

And when people die… that Why, well, the answers never seem like enough.  We can give the technical reasons- the drunk driver, the faulty heart valve, the disease that took them from our loving arms.  But even if that is what the child wanted to know, it evokes deeper questions that we see reflected within ourselves.  Why does the Goddess take good people from us?  Why did she have to go so soon?  Why did he leave me behind?

Why is a challenging word.

It is a word I cherish.

I and my child mind love the question Why.  I find it to be a nourishing word, one that demands I dig deeper.  Let me analyze, look in, deeper, deeper.  Why is the sky blue, the words refract out, and ask the scientific theory questions, but also the aesthetics of divinity.  Why did they choose blue instead of green, the old joke goes- so that we would know when to stop mowing.  It echoes in my bones with an awareness of our tamed life, where mowing is the norm and living in the wild is considered uncultured.  It whispers words beneath and within.

I adore analyzing.  No, that is not true.  I find analyzing to be a useful tool for staying sane in a mad world, and understanding how to traverse the universe with grace.  If I can understand, perhaps I can some day understand myself.  I dig into myself with a spade, and process, till, churn, through the shit until I find the soil beneath and within, until I can figure out a way to grow the garden of my own desires and manifest it here on this plane and beyond.

Analyzing can trigger others.  It can feel like an attack, or a questioning of capacity.  “Why did you leave the dog outside?” can feel like “Are you an idiot, the dog will freeze out there!”  But there are those of us who ask the first question because we just want to know.  Why is the dog outside?  Give me information, let me know what I missed, tell me more.  Share your world with me, help me understand.  And yet, we hit the language of our childhood, and the unspoken assumptions of our own mind.

“If it pleases you” becomes “I hate this, but I love you, so I guess if you have to I will tolerate your choice.”  We echo, transform, transmute the gold back into lead.  And the irritating fact- sometimes our translations were correct!  In a world where we pad out our feelings into words that will not hurt our loved ones, what do we do?  We hurt them in subtler ways.

“Why do you love me?”
So many translations…
I am broken, who could love THIS?
I am needy, tell me I am okay
I have a thousand reasons I love you, prove it is reflected back!
and then of course… the child curiosity.  Let me look through your eyes.  Let me see what you see, let me understand. Bless me with the truths you see there… because what I see there seems so rich.

Why can be a judgement, a curiosity, an accusation, a dream, a desire.

Why, oh why….

Why?

Relationships that are built on dominance, submission, power exchange, control and surrender are profoundly radical not because they are non-egalitarian.  Non-egalitarian relationships are as old as time itself, and as someone who was raised with firm feminist ideologies, I can clearly see the destructive and corrupt nature of non-equal dynamics.

What makes consensually constructed non-egalitarian relationships radical is that they are constructed.  They are built.  They are designed.  With eyes wide open, two or more individuals set out together to make the relationship of their dreams.

In the face of misunderstanding, media messages, and homogenized relationship structures available, individuals engaging in these relationships are building what is actually right for them.  Whether you are in a Master/Slave, dominance/submission, or other power dynamic based relationship is not the point.  You are radical even if you choose never to build this type of relationship- because you are building.

You are constructing.

You are making your dreams a manifested reality in the here and now.

The world deserves a world full of people choosing the relationships they are in.  Choosing their shape, style of interaction, size, appearance, and the specific individuals involved.  We have been stumbling into our connections with humans, and even if we stumbled in, we have the power now to decide if and how to continue forward.

Through examining the concepts and ideas of those who came before, analyzing our personal desires, and listening to the whispers of our unconscious mind, we might find for ourselves a set of blueprints.  A set of tools to use in construction.  A network with which to gather resources.

And from there… we build.

We will build the consensually constructed relationships we deserve, be they egalitarian, non-egalitarian, or something else entirely.  Because you, and the world, deserve our full presence, our full attention, our full passion, and our fully engaged awareness.

At least- that’s what I have thought for some time.  But today, talking with sexuality educator Scott Thomson, I realized that no- I am really quite good at actually negotiating.  Getting my needs and desires out on the table, and hearing the needs and desires, limits and frameworks offered by others.  The issue is that I play jazz music, and play in a culture that has evolved to appreciate sheet music and classic composers.

In the public kink scene, a fetish has evolved for intellectualized, verbalized, formalized communication of needs, wants, desires and frameworks/boundaries.  We fill out profiles on online systems, state our labels, declare our identities and desires for a mass consumer audience.  Over coffee we have three hour discussions about the details of desire, and then dive straight in.  We rifle through stacks of sheet music, choose a song that appeals to everyone involved, set the music up on a stand, and immediately start playing.  Our negotiation styles have become homogenized.

Formal concert musicians impress me.  I have always been awed by the capacity to lay it all out, agree to who is playing what in advance, and then immediately follow the form set out.  The notion of sitting down with someone, “negotiating” in such a manner, and then going straight into playing- it wows me.  It fascinates me.  And I am often fairly crap at it.

I thought this meant that I was crap at negotiation- because the community I am so often based in kept telling me in every single kink 101 class (including those I teach) that we need to have this skillset.  That we need to be able to communicate our desires lest misunderstandings happen.   If we can’t, it is said, how can someone else know what we want?  Do we expect our partners to be psychic, we laugh?

But my reality is that I have major challenges suspending disbelief.  I cannot agree to be forced to the ground, and then be forced to the ground and still believe it, if it was only 3 minutes ago that I agreed to it.  It feels false, contrived, and inauthentic to my monkey mind.  Or more accurately, my monkey mind stays engaged during the encounter and I do not get to dive into the depths of my spirit and flesh.

As a top, a rigger, or a dominant partner in the dance known as power exchange, it leaves me feeling like someone expects me to perform on command.  Just because I desire to play with you does not mean that I can turn on some sort of magic “on button” and go the moment we get the safety discussion out of the way.  I am not an erotic vending machine, and neither are you.  Do not just hit all my buttons, top or bottom, and expect me to shoot out an orgasm.  Unless, of course, we are having an erotic vending machine scene

I negotiate in many ways in my personal life, ways that are usually not part of the 8-page checklist model or the long-talk-then-immediately-play model.

• I have some friends and lovers that I have “carte blanche” arrangements with.  We discuss health, desires and realities far in advance (sometimes years in advance), and build a framework for desires in both directions.  I then say “cool, come find me and take me if you want, any time that is appropriate,” or they will offer similar statements to me.  And I have no expectation that anything will ever happen.  Ever.  I cannot have resentment if nothing happens, and I have to also inform said friends if the rules and realities ever change.
• I flirt, checking as I go.  I pick up a piece of rope, and wink.  They wink back, and walk towards me.  I reach for a hand, and they offer it up, as I bind both hands.  I kiss lightly on their neck, and they moan.  I kiss harder, kiss more.  I may have known them for years, or may have met them that night.  I must stay attentive, constantly, for new consent comes with every breath.
• I share information as I go.  In the midst of making out, his body pushes against mine.  As we move towards the bed, I say “let me go grab some condoms and gloves.”   Or as I have someone kneel before me I say “you look so hot like that, I would love to see you bound like that.”  I pause and wait for responses.  If someone says to me “I don’t need condoms,” my default retort is “if that’s going anywhere in me you do,” with a smile.  This dance requires players who can share their reality as they go.  If someone is in a deep altered space, I have no interest in “buyer’s remorse” the next day.
• I share health concerns, hot stories, flirtation and more online, and then in person see if there is chemistry.   I endeavor to make it clear that the flirtation and information sharing is not a guarantee to play, just an interest and desire.  I do the same thing between events- sharing health realities, desires, fantasies and friction building at one event, and share that next time I look forward to diving in with them if it feels good for both of us.  This gives me days, months, or even years, between the bulk of detail sharing and a hot encounter.  The day of, we both have a chance to touch base and update each other with changes to reality, but not hours’ worth.  If there are dramatic changes, I may choose not to engage.

Oftentimes, this means I find musicians with skills in jamming.

The music I play as a kinkster is often improvisational, based on 15+ years of erotic exploration, and yet being shown new riffs every time I dive in with someone new.  I had a period of time where I was learning classic music, following the sheet music and playing in cover bands mimicking the greats.  And you know what- I still can.  In fact, sometimes I really enjoy the artistry involved in finding that perfect performance partner, or putting together a whole Ska band, complete with horns section, and planning, and planning.  But I am really skilled at jamming and love it.  I am pretty good at sheet music, but am only sometimes passionately fueled by it.  I am decent at dedicated danced with formal scripts.  And I am only just now learning at how to make a Ska band stick together on the same track.  It’s a lot harder than it looks.

Just because I play jazz does not mean I don’t enjoy classic rock.  Yes, there are a number of folks who only have Country in their collection, and that is all they are interested in.  If you flip through my iPod, you will see how diverse my musical collection is.  And yet, I spend the bulk of my time with S.J. Tucker, Amanda Palmer, Lady Gaga and CeeLo Green right now.  So it is for my erotic journey.  I might spend windows just going back and forth between the 3 songs stuck in my head, or I might pull out my old Wu Tang Clan and Ice Cube CDs and scream out for one night only.

Not everyone wants to jam.

Not everyone wants sheet music.

And I have realized that I felt bad about my negotiation skills because the mythology in the kink community is that good kinksters can both read sheet music and enjoy it.

I want to dance.  I want to play music.  I want Rockabilly and Bluegrass.  I want Aretha Franklin and Dolly Pardon.  Introduce me to your obscure French Punk Band.  Show me the variety out there of tribal rhythms that have been pulsing through the earth for a millennia.

And I may not like it all.

In fact, some of it might rub me the wrong way.  But if someone had told me years ago that one of my guilty pleasures would be listening to Eastern Block Surfer Bands, I would have laughed (Bambi Molesters for the win).  But I would not have known unless I had been given the CD by my uncle.

I am not saying that folks who only listen to Thrash Metal are bad, wrong, or inappropriate.  But I don’t want to connect with them (unless, to break metaphor, they are watching DethKlok stuff).  I respect their negotiation and play styles, but it’s not for me.

For that matter, just because I tend to negotiate and play Jazz in public does not mean I am not interested in learning that amazing Vivaldi piece for the right person, or might slip on some Luther Vandross behind closed doors.

Some folks want all their information out and on the table- all of their fantasies laid out to examine and choose from.  Let me order from their menu.  Others say simply “Hey, wanna do some stuff” (thank you Phillip the Foole).  Let me gauge my body and energetic response, and say “sure, how about dinner” or offer play options.  It could mean anything really.  It is a dialogue opener, rather than ordering from the menu.  And others- they just give me free range to the kitchen and we see what we can whip up together.

What is your negotiation style?  Your play style?  What music do you create?  How do you like creating it?  Do you practice the same number for years, perfecting Mahler’s 10^th symphony until the crescendo of your spirit is audible in every note?  Do you enjoy the dissonance of the beat poet saxophone and obscure poetry that fills the night of smoky bars?  Is your calling that of a single djembe playing out an earth beat, or thirty drums at the bonfire moving in and out of echoes under the group consensus of goat hides?

Come and play jazz with me.  Behind closed doors, we will rock out once in a while to rap and r&b.  And for you, here, see my collection of Canadian Comedy music… I love you, I love you.  The music soars, and we each find our rhythm.  Our volume.  Our treble and bass.

We find those who dance to our style, and we tear up the floor.  Put me at the top of your dance mix, today my friend, today my friend.  Let us dance, and tomorrow, I will understand when you switch from Jazz back to Ani Difranco and Phish.

Let the drums beat.

Let the music soar.

I am good at negotiating, and getting better each day.  Getting better my way.

As a young queer creature in the 90s, and an active one in the 00s, I grew up with this mantra.  Come out of your shells, declare your differentness, have your family of choice take you in with big open gay arms.  At 13 I came out to my parents- a triangle pin on my leather jacket and an anger burning in my belly that I was different, that no one understood me.

I sit here now, 31, a palindrome of my former angry self, and wonder at how much pain I put my parents through.  I wonder at how angry I was, and why I did what I did, how I did it.  I wanted to have my parents love and understand me, a hunger to not hide these key elements of myself from those who purported to love me.  And yet, I did it from a place of anger.

Anger does not grow love.  Anger is a powerful emotion, one often anchored in a desire to connect, but it does not grow gardens, it does not bridge the divide between us.  It expands that divide- and I divided my parents from me by how I came out.

When we communicate with another human being, it takes not only knowing our own mind and desires, but their mind and desires.  When words leave my lips, they reach across an open space and find the other set of ears.  Those ears take in my words and run them through the filters of a life lived.  What is heard and what were intended, let alone said, are often far different beasts.

“The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.”
-George Bernard Shaw

In my early twenties I found myself in New York City, on my way to a kinky sex conference.  I had devoured breakfast early, but friends had not, so I sat with our giant heap of luggage while they ran into a greasy spoon.  A while later they came out, and I was in conversation with a petite African American woman in her 70s or 80s, beautiful and grey haired.  She asked where we were going with all this luggage.  One of my friends started to speak up, but I beat them to it by saying “We are off to a relationships conference, to go learn about how to better communicate with the folks we love.”  The woman was so happy- her husband of 50 years, rest his soul, and she had to work at it all the time, and good for us for starting young to learn that stuff.

After she left my friend was frustrated- how could you lie to that old woman?  I didn’t, I argued.  I just spoke in words she would understand.  If I had said we were going to a kinky sex conference to practice bondage, we might have seemed scary.  Our intent, at the end of the conference, was to connect, communicate, and form relationships (if temporary) with others.  Thus, my intent of going to the conference was communicated, even if the details were different.

A year or so later, also in Manhattan, I was being tied up by my friend Mortis on a subway platform, ropes flying in all directions as he bound my elbows back.  Dov was shooting pictures of our escapades when a couple in a similar age range as the woman before asked him what was going on.  He paused and said- “You’d call it a Happening.”  The woman lit up- “Oh honey, I haven’t been part of a Happening since the 60s- we are part of a Happening!”  Long before flash mobs, happenings were guerilla art and performance.  Dov spoke in her language, because “we are doing a bondage photo shoot” would not have parsed with their life experience.

These are not lies.  This is communication in the tongue of the listener.

So when a young man a few days ago asked me how to come out to his family as being both queer and kinky (though he thinks his parents already knows he’s queer), I asked him why.

Why do you want to come out?

Well, to be honest with them, he said.  Because I want to be closer with them.

And what do they know about queer stuff and kinky stuff, I asked?

Well, I don’t know.

So this young man and I teased out what he knows they know.  And how to build upon their framework to express what he means to express (that he is a well adjusted college kid who enjoys a variety of experiences) rather than what could easily be perceived (he is part of a cult, he is a self-injurer, he is crazy, he is an outsider/freak, he is leaving them to be with new family, that he is just like scuh and such famous person, etc).

Those who care for us want to know we are okay.  If our personality, behavior, dress, demeanor, name, pronouns, and more shift dramatically (for them) overnight (or what seems to them like overnight if they have not seen us in a while), it can feel like someone abducted their child/friend/colleague/family member and replaced that person with a changeling child.  Even if I have been sitting with my gender/sexual/spiritual/personal/cultural/emotional/etc identity for years- if I just started wearing it on the outside, it may be the first time those who care for us have seen it.  And if its spoken in our insider language, words like Top, Bottom, Gay, Queer, Trans, Poly, Kinky, Leather… we can alienate using insider words, cult words.  We may alienate, or we may paint a picture based on whom else has used that word- saying we are Kinky painting a picture of murders on CSI for example.  When we use niche words, those words can act as a wall, a barrier- or a filter that is hard to see “us” on the other side of.  When I become a Gay Man, or a Queer Man, or a Poly Guy… in English we put the adjective before the noun, as if someone must see the gay, or queer, or poly- before they see the man on the other side of those words.  We put our adjetives, our labels and identities, before our human-ness.  And for some, this can be hard to work past and through.

In addition, when coming out, in a desire to be heard, I have sometimes overshared.  The reality is that my mother never needed to hear about the details of my piercing play.  Ever.  My intention was good- to connect with her and share my life with her.  But I could have stopped with “I got to have an amazing retreat weekend with my husband,” rather than hearing that it was a group sex party weekend.  No, really, Mom did not need to hear that- even if she is understanding.

So come out, if you are called to.

But what really needs examined?  What needs highlighted?

Will wearing a giant rainbow pride flag tee shirt really make my grandparents get my personal journey and struggle, or does it make me look like a cult has taken away the individual they once knew?

Have I embraced my “new family” in such as way as I have put up a wall with my old one?

I am not trying to belittle the experience of those who were kicked out- who came out and were told to leave.  Your embracement of a new family, a new life, a new journey is real and powerful and beautiful.  But as I look at gay/queer/poly/kinky/trans/other sexual population stuff… I wonder what power we gain in alienating ourselves from others.  In explaining our journey only in our own niche words of cis, mono, les, bi, fluid- words that sound medical and other.   In creating ghettos and corners of the world where we have to eke out an emotional existence surrounded with only our sexual population peers, rather than being full thriving individuals in the world at large, with our sexuality only a part of who we are.

I have flown my rainbow flag, my blue black red and white flag, my pink and blue flag, my infinite love flag… I love them.  I love the sense of community and pride they have given me.  And yet, when my flag becomes all who I call to stand with me- is that me being the authentic and full creature I am?

I don’t want to come out.  I want to draw others in.  I want to have them hear my story, by speaking it in their tongues, in their words, so that I create commonalities, bridges, and connections with the world at large.  With my great aunt.  With my mother.  With the old couple on the subway.  With the woman at the bus stop.  I feel like coming out, pride parades, gay neighborhoods- it’s a segregation that enforces my identity as other.  As freak.  And yes, freak can be a fun flag to fly.  I’m not against flags.  I’m not against coming out.  I just wonder if it serves my intent.

My intent to build love, rather than build anger.

So I am moving towards a voice of drawing others into my story, to find what we have in common.  Because we have something in common.  Every one of us.  We just need to find it, and use those supplies to make the world a better place- for all of us.

A video will be released on the speech down the road, by the amazing folks at Kink Academy, but for now, I wanted everyone who longed to hear it to get a chance to read or listen to it.

You can download the FREE 35 minute Mp3 here, thanks to Mystic Productions Press and Lulu.com.

Did you enjoy the Keynote?  Consider making a donation here.

The following was the original speech… the actual speech was minimally modified from the below written work.

Growing Beautiful Flowers at the Intersections:

From Complex Ecosystems to Interstitial Collaboration

By Lee Harrington

In his pivotal work Omnivore’s Dillema: A Natural History in Four Meals, Michael Pollan travelled around the united states examining how food gets to our table.  He followed four major food chains in America today- the industrial food complex, organic industrial food, post-organic and foraging… the last one hard to do, but not impossible, his nails caked with dirt as he dug for morels.

As he was examining post-organic farming, he interviewed and spent some time working with the owner of PolyFarms Chicken, Joel Salatin on his farming practices and the psychology of sustainable farming.  And yes, the irony of their company’s name does not escape me as I stand before you, a delightful array of poly, kinky, queer, academic, trans, and other fabulous individuals, a blessing to my eyes. Joel Salatin was describing to the intrepid explorer of the wilds of commercial farming that he had 550 acres of land, 100 or so of which was active farmland.

Michael Pollan asked how much production he had on 100 acres of farmland.

No, the man who raises chickens, hogs, cows, rabbits, tomatoes, sweet corn, berries and more said.  No, I have 550 acres of land, 100 of which is –active- farmland.

As he explained, he pointed out that in sustainable agriculture, the whole 550 acres mattered.  Without that forested land and space run wild, the system would fall apart.  That land provided protection from winds.  It acted as shade in the summer for his hogs.  It was space for voles and other small animals to live, and in turn for foxes to hut them- instead of hunting his chickens.  He was trying to reach out to a city dweller and explain that if all a farmer has is active farmland, the land is not as productive.  There is no space for the real complexities of nature to take place.

Reading Omnivore’s Dillema, I was deeply taken in, examining in the chain of supply for our food chain the truths of the complex ecosystems at play.  When we don’t work with the reality of what is present, with the –whole- of a system, we have to constantly compensate.  Industrial food growers dump truckload upon truckload of fertilizers onto the land to compensate, to build up supposed peak efficiency, NPK based chemical fertilizers that wash downstream and have left large swaths of the gulf of mexico choked on overgrown algae that withholds the sunlight from the ocean and has killed much of the rest of the life in the area.

Sustainable farming is more work than opening up a bag of NPK and dumping it on the land.  Every few days the cows are moved from area to area around the land, and after the cows are cycled out, a few days later the chickens are cycled in.  They eat the larvae out of the cow patties, peck at different parts of the grass than the cows did, and the chicken scat is eventually crushed underfoot by the next round of cows that come through, adding nutrients back into the soil.  Joel Salatin actually describes himself as a grass-farmer, not a raiser of chickens or cows.

It is more work, and it might seem to cost more, but that is because the price is up front.  The price and time spent is there from the beginning, instead of being tacked on twenty years down the road in the form of land stripped bare, dust blowing across open Oklohoma soil and seas clogged with poison.  The cost, it seems, can actually be less in the long run if we actually price it all out.

So here I am, curled up reading Omnivore’s Dillema, and it hit me.  It hit me hard, square in the face, the reality of my own quest.  It hit me that I too live in a complex ecosystem.

I, you, me, we- we all live in a complex ecosystem of being-ness.  Just as Joel Salatin’s shade land and forest gave space for his active farmland to function, my connections with deity provide the space for me to do my work with my multiple loves.  My polyamorous relationships provide me with the fuel and support to do my work as an author and educator.  My work as an author and educator help me touch lives that inspire me to do activism both subtle and direct.  My activism feeds space for me to connect in new and different ways with my biological family.  My ties to my biological family help me find hope and faith- and bring me back to my conncection with divinity.

It’s not just a chain, but a series of lines that tie us all together, weaving a web that creativity and beauty has the capacity to get caught in.  I realized that I live in a complex ecosystem of the heart.

If I were only a hedonist and sexual explorer, or if I were only a gender radical, or if I were only a believer in the fact that love is not a finite quantity… I would not be as rich a creature I am.  I am not one label.  I am not one thing.  I am many things.  I am the being living at the intersections of all of my identities and truths.  And they are -all- me.

And yet, when I come into community after community, they ask me who I am, and they only want to know how much active farmland I have.  When I open up and list my labels and identities, share the complexities of my truth beyond a few words, I often find that I am not giving them the easy answers they desire.  I am faced instead with “yes, but are you a Top, or a Bottom?  Are you a Man, or a Woman?”  How can they box me, one way, only one way, in the truth that matters most for their current filter.

I am not 100 acres of farmland.  I am 550 acres of land, 100 of which happens to be active farmland.  The whole of me is needed to meet you at the table in my greatness, because the sum of my parts is of more value than slicing me apart and asking me to show up broken or hidden from you.  The price of it may seem higher at first, having to reach outside comfort zones, learn new terms or truths or ways of being, see that no one on this planet is only one label, one truth, one way, one point of being.  We are all complex ecosystems.

It might seem more expensive energetically, like more work to meet me as me instead of one dimension of my identity, but that is because the price comes up front.  Like that whole organic chicken purchased at the farmer’s market, I may seem to take more- but that is because we don’t have to pay for the fallout down the road of my meltdown when I realize I can’t fit the one-dimensionality any more.  So many folks I meet heap on the fertilizer into their life, cover up the bareness of the soil of their spirit with another bag of NPK, not realizing that someday, down the road, it will come to light how much they have killed downstream in their being.  And the cleanup is expensive, hard work.

I would rather pay up front.  I would rather, in my journey, acknowledge my complex ecosystem, and feed all sides of me, see all sides of me, even the sides I never expose to the neon light of analysis or offer up for the world to examine.

My richness comes from my ecosystem being in balance with itself.  This does not mean that more complicated ecosystems are any better or worse that straight forward ones.  This does not mean that all parts of the system need equal weight.  Just as in nature, different parts of an ecosystem have more weight than others- based on the time of year, migratory patterns, temperature, outside influences, and so much more.  But each day there is a possibility of balance, my balance, whatever works best for me and the ecosystem I live in.

Every year I spend anywhere from 2-5 weeks at a beautiful piece of land, a delightfully complex ecosystem in Maryland called Ramblewood Retreat.  I started going there back in 2003 for an event called Leather Retreat, a human pony role player exploring that part of me in public for the first time, and the event was beautiful, painful, delightful, horribly sad, deliciously sensual, perfectly what it needed to be.  And the next year I came back.  I came back to Ramblewood.  Not just for Leather Retreat, but for Sacred Sexuality Beltane, Free Spirit Gathering, Primal Arts Festival, Dark Odyssey.

Bordered up against the Susquehanna River, Ramblewood has a number of different types of land on the property.  Thick woodlands.  Open fields.  Steep hilly terrain with thick roots and loose rocks.  A lake.  This is of course not counting the human-constructs on the site- cabins, swimming pools, barns, basketball courts, a labyrinth dedicated to a departed activist who gave so much.

I have a photograph of me taken by Barbara Nitke from an event I did at Ramblewood.  I am on my knees with a huge field of orange flowers behind me, wearing boy shorts, leather boots, my breasts bare in the sun, long hair pulled back, tears streaming down my face.  It was from one of those perfect moments, tears of suffering and bliss alike, a scene that continues to have ripples in my life each time I reexamine it.  But when I looked at the photo recently, what caught my eye was the flowers.

Rich, deep, orange blooms.  The orange of a summer sunset, the orange of a perfectly ripened tangerine dripping down my throat.  Flowers blooming in a precarious area between the lake and the woods.  On the edge of each identity, each label, each ecosystem.  On the intersection between these two pieces of Ramblewood.  Flowers that take my breath away, existing in an indefinable region –between-.

That same orange appeared recently in the form of a luscious corset insert on a friend of mine who appeared on stage, S.J. Tucker.  Sooj, as she is affectionately known, is a folk singer, songstress, siren, priestess, and a complex ecosystem all her own.  I met her through Author and creative being Catherynne M. Valente, at her birthday party in Cleveland.  Cat, Sooj, Cellist and songwriter Betsey Tinney, Jewelry Artist Kythryne, Fire performer and organizer extraordinaire Kevin Wiley, Computer Programmer Dmitri Zagadulin… and so many others- we have become a group of ecosystems bumping up against one another.  And just like those orange blossoms growing at the edge between ecosystems at Ramblewood, so many beautiful blossoms, impossible flowers, have grown because of the spaces between us, the areas we have overlapped, crossed paths, blended.  Stepped outside ourselves and became more.

There is a notion in so much of the world that there is only so much to go around.  So much love.  So much money.  So much intellectual property.  So much beauty.  So much potential.  So much possibility.  When we work with this notion, as I have done at various parts of my life, we fear the success of others.  If they succeed, in a world with such finite qualities, I by definition must be failing, I must fail.  If they are with, I must be without.  For this reason I see artists, activists, community leaders, authors, business people, lovers, friends- all work from a place of fear.  If I share my dreams, my ideas, my passions with you- what will I have?  If there is only so much to go around, I’m sorry, I just can’t share.

But then I was reminded by my mad Palimpsest crew, my Strowler delights, this strange artistic cabal I am part of, of the concept of Interstitial Collaboration.

Interstitial is a fabulous word, rich on my tongue.  It means “between genres” or “between comfortable, known, boundaries.”  Interstitial fiction is a piece of fiction that falls between easy labels like horror or fantasy.  It is vampires in faerieland, brutality in deep space.  In the visual arts, interstitial art is things that are –both- or –neither- on categories- paintings wrapped in three dimensions through space, violin players dancing with slide shows projecting upon their flesh.  Interstitial architecture is pieces of a building that are neither -inside- or -outside- – vaulted awnings with outside access and decorated for living in.

To work interstitially means to work at the intersections of possibility.  Not only can a single artist create interstitial work, poetry woven into rugs, but two or more artists can engage in interstitial inspiration.  Cat Valente was writing her novel The Labyrinth while listening to Sooj’s song Come to the Labyrinth.  My thoughts earlier about complex ecosystems of the heart are an interstitial inspiration from Michael Pollan’s work.  My performance later, Creature on a Quest, is an interstitial inspiration from a line in Valente’s work Under In The Mere:

Funny how “question” contains the word quest inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.

The difference between interstitial inspiration and stealing of intellectual copyright is about everyone coming out richer for the interaction.  What one of us does inspires the next, credit is given where credit is due- and all of us are greater for it.  Interstitial inspiration is about working creatively and with honor, about owning our integrity and where we got that idea from, as compared to “stealing” an idea.  It is me, telling you, to go out and buy Cat and Michael’s books, Sooj’s music.  Go out, and make us all better for it- emotionally, socially, physically, energetically and to be transparent- financially.

Interstitial collaboration, however, is when we directly work with the other artist of another genre to create something that would have never existed before.  When strange and beautiful flowers are bloomed in the space between the expected and definable.  When Catherynne’s book In the Night Garden was set to come out, she and Sooj worked together to release an album of music and readings from the book- songs that would not have been birthed into the world without being interstitially inspired by Cat’s work.

Two years ago I did an interstitial collaboration with Morpheus NYC for the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists, AASECT.  We both wanted to do something for them, but did not know what.  So we came together without expectation, and started putting stuff on the table.  His passion is the Pleasure Positive movement, and mine is all things Passion and Soul.  But as we both started putting ideas out on the table, we both realized we had a history of being profoundly affected by self-injury.  This would never have come out as a common point if we had stuck to our easy labels.  With his passion for conversation and interviews, and mine for bringing information to light after analysis, we embarked on a qualitative study of the intersections, similarities and differences between self-injurious practices, kink desires, and body modification.

Oftentimes, in our varied alt-sex, kink, queer, poly, trans, bi, gender radical, faerie, and otherwise fabulous populations, I often see us working from a starvation mentality, a fear mentality.  If the gay community gets a one up, then obviously they will and have to throw the leather community under the bus.  But I wonder- what would happen if we worked towards a greater use of interstitial inspiration and collaboration?  Can we somehow think interstitially, with each of our movements as a genre, and create new works we might have never dreamed up?

Just as each of us are complex ecosystems, so our each of our communities.  And just as each of our communities is a complex ecosystem, so is the health of all of our communities, together.  The health and wellbeing of the kink community affects the health and wellbeing of the queer community, which affects the health and wellbeing of the polyamory community.

Together we can grow beautiful, unexpected flowers, between the lake and the shade, between personal and global, between queer and trans and every other identity.  Deep rich orange blossoms, the color of enthusiasm, creativity, determination, success.  Orange is one of the healing colors, a color of vitality and endurance.  And we have endured, so long we have endured… I think it was time we started talking more about thriving, of succeeding- with enthusiasm and joy.

Together we have the opportunity to become grass farmers.  We are not raising chickens or cows or tomatoes.  We are not growing a richer single community.  We can work together to create a richer soil, for all of us, instead of dumping another bag of chemical fertilizer of the spirit onto the challenges we face, a quick fix for our needs, politely ignoring the toxins that are washing downstream from our logic of “just helping our own” or “they can fend for themselves.”

When we oppress our fellows on the fringe, we may meet our needs in the short term, but we add fuel to the fire of hate for the next generation, a layer of algae growing in our world fueled by our own hate and rage.

And there is enough of that already.

It is time to fully acknowledge our complex ecosystems, both individually and within our communities.

It is time to come to the table with an open heart and be inspired by the work others are doing, instead of being scared of it.

It is time to rise together, having laid a rich soil for us all to work from.

It is time for our greatness.

Together, we can grow beautiful flowers at the intersections.  At the intersections of our own internal identities.  At the intersections between individuals.  At the intersections of the communities we are part of.  At the intersections with the world at large, and beyond.

Because I see before me a field of possibility.  I see before me hearts and minds ready to grow.  And together, together we can create a garden that can bloom, year after year, into a greatness we have not yet dreamed of.

Go out and dream.

Go out and collaborate.

Go out and build, with sustainability in mind.

Go out… and bloom.

It is time for our greatness.

I froze mid-bite, staring at him wide-eyed.

Stop and taste it, he instructed me.  Slow down and let the taste fall on my tongue, on the the front, on the sides.  Savor the meal, take it in, enjoy it for all it is.  Close your eyes and try it again.  Be with the meal, be here with me, be here.  Otherwise, it feels to me like you have somewhere better to be.

I did.  And to this day, I am grateful.

Food is an important part of my lexicon of experiencing life.  A cabinet full of unusual spices, that I know how to use, is a metaphor for my experience living life as a person with many tools in my bat belt.  I have many spices in my cabinet.  I know how to not only use them in stir fry, but in baking, in open flame cooking… I am decent at making a variety of things, and others I am downright excellent at.  I have had friends fight over my Tom Ka Gai soup.

But sometimes I get cravings.  I recently have been eating a lot of yogurt and kashi.  Every day, yogurt and kashi.  I also have periods where certain foods just aren’t on my palate.  Recently I just have not been eating a lot of meat for example.  I have not gone vegetarian, it just hasn’t come up.  Its not that I don’t like meat, and if its on the menu at a restaurant I might order some, and have my tongue be delighted for it.  But its just not my day to day right now.

The fact that I currently have a lot of yogurt does not mean that it is the yogurt that has come between me and meat.  Just because I am not eating as much meat does not mean I have more space in my belly for yogurt.  The two just happen to be food, and happen to be food-related experiences in my life right now.

So it is for me with love.

I recently have been spending a lot of energy immersed in the love of my Boy, Aiden.  Every day, Aiden. That does not mean that I do not still love, cherish, adore, appreciate or find myself deeply sexually and emotionally attracted to other people in my life.

The fact that I currently have a lot of love for Aiden does not mean that it is that love for Aiden that has come between me and other things that delight and tantalize me.  Just because I am not spending as much time with those individuals does not mean I love them less, nor does not mean I have more space in my heart for Aiden.

Love is not a numbers game.  I do not have twenty points to spend a day, with the fear being that if I love Aiden worth of 12 points, there is less room left for you.  It does not work that way.  I honestly and sincerely believe that love is not about a single point pool for all people to have to pull from.

Nor do I believe that I can say I love Aiden a 9, and my friend and love in England, Ian, a 5.  That is madness.  I love Aiden as yogurt with kashi, and Ian as tekka maki.  I cherish Janice as gummy bears, Warren as lamb tika, Dmitri as tiramisu, Sooj as a salad of doom.  Together they are a feast, and yes, some go better classically together than others.  But my adoration of gummy bears does not mean I adore fried chicken any less.  My relationship to tiramisu is independent of any scale I may have for feta cheese.

When I try to compare these things, I set them up as competitors for resources, set myself up to having to choose.  Yes, my budget (financial, energetic, and space in my belly) may affect choices I make.   If I am at the grocery store and my budget is tight, I may only have space for some things over others.  I only have so much time in a day to be fed, no matter how amazing it is.

But for myself, as someone who deeply believes that love is not a finite quantity, and loving one does not mean I can not love others, I am aware that for my personal health, physical, energetic and emotional, I need all of it.  I need the variety.  As much as I adore lamb tika, if it was all I had, I would not be fueled for my greatness in the world.  I am best served in this world with yogurt and kashi, spinach salads, a variety of dinner foods, home made salsa, surprise desserts, random gastronomical adventures about town and cooking at home alike.  As a culinary spirit, I have my daily delights, and my exploits around the world.

Give me the flavors of love.  Give me variety.  Let me come back to those that sustain and delight me fully, and remember the one time I ate spicy pickled beef tripe in Xi’an, China, with a smile on my face.  I loved that meal, but I do not expect it to grace my lips again.  And so it is with love.  That I can love profound and true for one night, one afternoon, one month, one year, one life, one soul to soul contact burning through time and space.  They are not greater or lesser than other loves.  Golden eyed David and the night of thunderstorms was no more real a love than 7 years building a life with Adam, my red earth man.  They are not greater or lesser.  They are not a 4 and a 7.  I am not called to choose.

They just are.

And I sit with each love.  I sit with it, close my eyes, and taste it with the whole of my tongue.  The front of my tongue, the sides.  I savor.  I take it in.  I absorb the fullness of it.

Because I have a spice cabinet full of possibility, and this meal, today, this love today, will never be the same again.  Tomorrow, even the same meal, will not be identical.  This love, will never be identical ever again.

Today is unique.  Savor it.

This story is pervasive in our culture, a hubris of not wanting or needing to take handouts from the world.  That we stand up on our own, are self-sufficient, worlds unto ourselves.  Self-reliant, independent, strong on our own.  What need have we for others?

Self help books speak about only needing ourselves, that a well-balanced person should have people add to their world, not be necessity.  People and connections are decoration, not core.  If they become a need we are labeled needy, co-dependent, broken, mal-adjusted.  Poor dear, she needs people so much, that must be hard to have so little internal value, the story goes whispered in snarky tones.

No, granddaddy did not have welfare, welfare did not exist.  But know what did?  Church groups.  Union and civic groups.  Extended families.  Strangers willing to give a sandwich to a human who landed on their doorstep.

During the great depression, random people who could did for others who could not. It’s how some people survived, and others did not- based on the interconnectedness of humans to one another.  This was not seen as co-dependent because the work and the challenges were shared communally- this month is tough Bob… it’s okay Tom, here, have a few loaves of bread we have extra of.  Next month rolled around, and Bob finds himself struggling… and Tom, without being harassed in any way, offers up a few pints of milk.

With the advent of more formalized systems of charity and assistance, a culture has risen up of “not my problem” when it comes to our own family, friends, community, neighbors and culture as a whole.  That’s not my job, if they need help they can go get a handout, they have someone to turn to.

On September 12th, 2001, I was invigorated and inspired by the land I live in, by the United States.  We had not retaliated in hate, not just yet.  No- random people… helped.  People stopped and asked strangers if they were okay.  Individuals raised funds for total strangers, others went down to ground zero to offer gallons of tea, or a hand to hold.  This was the land I live in, I thought to myself between arranging prayer vigils, a world full of helping hands.

We talk about the notion that it takes a tribe to raise a family, but I think it takes a tribe to raise up each of us.  That in a balanced eco-system the energy flows back and forth- between us and our lovers, our lovers and us, our friends and strangers, our family and the world at large.  The web pulls and the spider responds, moves to where its needed- not with a litany of woe or a scream of “why does no one love me,” but with a “oh, of course we will help.”  Because they are part of us, and we are part of them, a complex web tied together.

In trying to stand alone, I also forget that when a hand is offered, it may not just be about me.  That is ego speaking, that is me as the center of the world mentality.  No, when a hand is offered to me, that hand may be wanting to hold mine because it needs held too.  Those trembling fingers long for another palm to press against, to not be as lonely in their own journey.  Together, we are not alone.

Namaste- I see God in you.  When I help you, I help God, I am God, I am love, I am loved, I am helped.  It is a feedback loop, a system that helps itself.

Yesterday a woman in front of me at the store was fiddling in her pocket, trying to find extra change to buy something.  I pulled out a quarter and gave it to her.  She smiled and asked “really?”  Absolutely.

Was this enlightened self interest to have her move along so I could shop?  Was this me feeling good about myself by being the kind of person who helps strangers?  Was this me doing a random good deed?  Was this a prayer offered in return for strangers who have done the same for me, a prayer that if I need it in the future the universe will remember what I did here today?  Was this a handout?  Was this a hand offered in support?

Does it matter?  She smiled, I smiled, the shopkeep smiled… and the burdens of the world lessened, if for that moment.

Sometimes I struggle with having others help me.  Gifts I take with grace, things I “need” I sometimes handle less well.  But I breathe in, and in doing so understand that a holding hand holds back, and that by being gifted with pieces from others, I have the capacity to help the world and help others in turn.  A quarter from me may not be a big deal, to me, but to another it could mean the difference between eating or not eating.  Each of us come to the picture of the universe, this gem called life, from a different angle or view.  I see it from my side, but my side is not the only side.  Thus, what may be simple to me may be a miracle for others, and visa versa.  When someone offers me a gift of their energy, time, resources, or something else entirely… what may be exactly what I needed may have been an easy thing.

In the world I am working towards living in, the world of 9-12 as compared to 9-11, there is a sea of compassion and love.  That the waves roll back and forth, and the tide comes and goes without any one organism feeling like they bear all the work.  I am working towards living in a world where gift economy is simply how it is, and we gift back as we are called to gift.  I am working towards living in a world where we are each conscious enough of our actions and desires so that balance can be found for all, if in the rolling waves, and words like “mooch” and “freeloader” find no grip to hold onto.

I am not in that world yet, but with each quarter I can give, each blessing I receive fully in my heart, I am a step closer.

Because Namaste, I see God in You.

Because I can offer my hand to you and help you stand up, and you can turn around and help your friend, and some day, when I stumble, there will be a friend’s friend’s friend with a smile, holding out a hand for me.