Practicing Flexibility

Dear friends, 

For most of my life, my body has been quite flexible. This has changed over the last several years and for the last month I've been in physical therapy because I have a frozen shoulder, though I'm not sure what I did to cause it. When I've told people about the diagnosis, I've heard numerous stories of other people's experiences of frozen shoulders. I've concluded that, as these things go, I've been pretty lucky. My shoulder didn't start quite as frozen as other people's and I've steadily regained the ability to move it in directions it wouldn't move a month ago. 

A couple of days ago I gave a presentation to young people. The organization I was working with asked me to create a session on a particular topic. I put together the presentation, shared it with someone from the organization, who said she liked it. And then came presentation time...

Let's just say it didn't go how I hoped it would. Still I persisted in trying to give the presentation I had planned. A handful of kids were with me the whole time. A lot of kids were done even before we started. As I thought about it afterwards, I noted that the number of young people was much higher than expected, the presentation was late in the day, and also, it is late in the school year. Given those circumstances, it would be difficult to keep kids engaged about any topic, let alone the serious one I was talking about. Oh, and did I mentioned I was giving the presentation in Spanish? I used to teach Spanish, but it's been a while since I've been immersed in a fully Spanish-speaking context. 

I have several more of these presentations to give. I've thought a lot about how I can change the presentation to engage the kids more and how I can be better prepared for what is out of my control. 

I've been asking myself: How can I build in more flexibility to begin with and how can I increase my agility so I can adjust course in response to the audience and circumstances? 

Flexibility is a practice. Everyday I have the opportunity to learn anew how far I can move my arm in one direction or another. It keeps changing. 

Flexibility is a practice. I gave a brand new presentation for a group I've never worked with to an audience I didn't know in a language that I haven't used regularly in awhile. All of these conditions felt contraining.

With more presentations to give, I have the opportunity to practice flexibility here, too: to stretch in relationship with the organization I'm working with; to bend the content more to the interest and willingness of the audience; to flex my Spanish skills; to learn, to learn, to learn.

Other areas of my life are giving me the opportunity to practice flexibility, too. Stretching, I've decided to offer a facilitated process of The Artist's Way starting later this month. Additionally, I'm being extending myself in new directions through other work that is coming to me.

All of this is also teaching me about my limits. My physical therapist knows when he's stretching me past pain I can tolerate by the way my breath changes and my face scrunches. In other situations, it's up to me to state clearly: I cannot or will not bend that way. This doesn't work for me. I will do this, but I won't do that. 

And now I wonder about you:

Where is your life encouraging you to practice flexibility? 

In those areas, how does it feel to stretch?

Is it a welcome lengthening, a hurt-so-good feeling, or a pain that's beyond what you're ready for? 

What limits are becoming clear to you? 

I'd love to know. 
      

To learn more about The Artist's Way and other offerings, visit this page. If they speak to you, I hope you'll join me.  If you know of others who'd love this work, please share with them!

With love, 
Cory

The Origin Story of Heart Portraits

Heart portraits were born in 2018.

I was studying Reiki and learning that I had intuitive gifts I had not known about.

Wanting understand these gifts, I met with a wise woman. I brought two hearts I had created for her, one 2 years prior, the other that morning.

When I gave them to her, she asked me, “How long have you been tuning into people’s hearts?”

That question began my conscious journey with Heart Portraits.

Two days after our conversation, six years years ago, I wrote in an exercise of Julia Cameron‘s The Artist’s Way: I would like to draw peoples hearts.

Immediately in my dreams, I started receiving heart images meant for particular people. I didn’t necessarily know the people well, or have regular contact with them…

Leaning into trust that I was doing what I was called to do, I created the images and shared them with the people they were meant for. I learned quickly that the images also had messages for the recipient:

• always affirming

• always supportive

• often surprising

• often instructive.

I am honored to have been given the sacred gift of seeing peoples hearts in this way.

Without exception, every heart has been beautiful,

• even the broken ones,

• even the hurting ones,

• even the uncertain ones.

What would your heart reveal to you?

What would your beautiful heart look like today, next season, in a year?

Learn more about Heart Portraits and commission yours here.

Hope

Dear friends,

I took the above picture about 7 years ago- sunrise in Hebron, a city in the southern part of the West Bank, where over the years I've spent many months as a human rights defender. I turn to the beauty of this photo now and remember my friends there, who have also brought such beauty into my life and our world. I know they are hurting right now. So many people are hurting. 

Recently I was in a conversation about activism and different ways of practicing it and expressing ourselves as we advocate (a conversation, as someone noted, that is a result of the privilege we have since we are generally safe). In the conversation, someone said "Rage is the voice of the oppressed." I've been thinking a lot about that statement and keep coming back to this: 

Rage is a voice of the oppressed. 

So is hope.

So is grief.

So is joy.

I find myself wanting to recognize the and of it all. I find myself wanting to let all people, including "the oppressed," to be fully human in all its waves and ways. As I watch what is happening in Gaza, I, and probably you, have seen rage, grief, despair. I've also seen determination, joy, beauty, love, and even sometimes hope. I've also felt all those things myself. In my life I've been in places of devastating poverty and with people who've been subject to horrific violence and I’ve experienced in them a bent toward life, joy, and hope that seems elusive among some of us who've suffered much less.

We have a choice. 

If I ask myself, "What energy do I want to turn toward?" my answer is hope. I don't mean this in a Pollyanna or head-in-the-sand sort of way. Rage, grief, despair are healthy responses to what is happening in the world and they certainly arise in me. When they come, I try to give them attention and care and ask for help when I'm stuck in them. When I am able to let them move through me, I am not devoured by them. When they get stuck, I am consumed, immobilized, and exhausted.

When I am able to turn toward hope, my body relaxes. I am energized in a way that is sustainable and sustaining. When I turn toward hope, I can see the world I want to create instead of playing on repeat the painful parts of the world that is. When I turn toward hope, I turn toward other people, the potential of our collective power, and action. When I turn toward hope, I am more able to receive and support others who are in a different place than I am.

A few years ago I wrote this Advent piece invoking hope for JustFaith Ministries. If you are Christian (and maybe if you're not), it may speak to you. I don't claim to know the path toward the fullness of peace I wish to see in the world. But I do know how to turn toward you and toward others so we can practice together. I know that every time I've been in circles of open-hearted people, even when we've started in rage, despair, and grief, I have felt myself expand and my hope expand. 

We need each other. 

And so I turn toward you, toward us, believing that, like the sun, our hope and our action will light the world. 

With love, 
Cory