I have a dream

This morning from my luscious bed office I pulled out an idea journal I keep in this messy pile of bedside books. Surprising me was this quote by Walt Whitman, one I wrote down after reading Lois Palken Rudnick's book, Utopian Vistas : The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture.

"We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake."

In light of our electing the first African American President of the United States, do you think that we are, as Americans, more than 100 years after he wrote this, finally seeing? How hopeful this feels.

the life you save may be your own

I am back in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the little house on the creek I call Belle Rive, after Blanche Dubois's homeplace in Tennessee William's 1947 play, A Streetcar Named Desire. It is a little house, made of cedar, in a bustling city of where lots of bankers live. The economy has me back, from Edisto Island, my dream diminished there by the squeeze of this economy. Dreams deferring.

I have been buried in my bed with all my books, Callings, by Gregg Levoy, which is all too worth another read, Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the marvelous collection of stories that illuminate truth. Lately I have been completely reimmerced with midwives and birth. I used to teach childbirth classes and my own childbirth experiences were mind blowing doors to strength and self. My journals are filling with penciled pages rapidly, as Julia Cameron taught me to do. And I awake in the night to write down my dreams, with hints of what new door is opening for me. Yesterday morning it was "Women are dying!" ...the mortality rates worldwide for women in childbirth are indeed atrocious - a woman dies every minute from pregnancy related causes. And this morning, when I awoke, I had written in my dream journal, "Are you a nurse?" No I am not. I am an ARTIST midwife. I just walked into my library and staring at me was the spine of the book, whose title read, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own".

Socrates said it best. Know Thyself. THEN give. I am on to something about giving where I am supposed to, to a bigger place. I am awed and grateful for grace today.