voice

This is a magic lantern... my most recent double page in my altered book. I have been thinking about magic, miracles and expectation for the last couple of days since I watched the DVD, The Secret, last week. Also today, I went to see my spiritual director, as always a treat for me as I never fail to come away with this view of my rag-tag life as a whole organism moving in a purposeful direction.

We talked about art, my life at school, and the movement of the holy. I showed her my book so far and told her about the staff-meeting discussion I've had with my principal, told her about my vision board and my recent journaling. This discussion turned toward expectation and the role it plays in my life. I told her about a Jan Richardson quote from her book Night Visions: it is, "know your anger. use your voice. expect resurrection." This quote has always had a strong influence on me, reminding me to find the power in my anger, the energy, and to harness it with my voice, always expecting rebirth and redemption.

I hold onto expectation. hope. I look for things to turn out well. I expect them to. Yes, I have a short list of personal expectations, but I told her this is not really what I mean here... then I told her of another quote I think about often.... from The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer; "We all spend so much time not saying what we want because we know we cannot have it.... Go on. Say what you want."

I told her I have been practicing saying what I want. Not just for me, though I say those things too, but I say things I want for the world. I want peace, real peace, and I want to see the people of the world to be fed both nutritionally and spiritually, I want to the earth to thrive, to see disease and suffering to end. I said that there are plenty of people out there who do not want me to say these things, who tell me they are silly and can't be had... there are people like my dad, whom I love, who see the world divided up into those Democrats, those minorities, those freeloaders, those sexual deviants who only want to see the cup half empty and are slightly put off by my Pollyanna-ish ways. There have been people who have told me peace is an idea that will never be because all the nuns and priests pray for peace and still there is no peace. there are folks who have asked me to listen to reason, see the world their way... and I have tried it from time to time, but it is just too damned grim.

We need to say what we want. We need to expect what we want. If we never say in unison that we want peace, will pray for peace, will live for peace we will never have it. Miracles are not things we can just leave up to the nuns. We have a responsibility and until we become one voice saying what we want that we have been told over and over we cannot have, we will never have it.

Me? I choose miracles. I choose expectation. I choose the happy ending. What I want might not happen in my lifetime, or even in my grandson's, but if I do not voice my want loudly and repeatedly then it will be as if it never was.

There is a magic lantern. rub it and ask for what you want.