A silver wedding band, made with love, to express love, intentionally shows the markings that occurred during the creation process. A pure acceptance of life's bumps and beauty. A beloved pair of black boots bought because they fit perfectly...and felt great from the first moment. Previously owned shoes are wonderful that way. Broken in, they are ready, just for me. My daughter's JV hockey team says thank you...I love watching them play, going fast, falling down, passing perfectly, missing the puck entirely, they play with joy and a commitment to each other. It's about showing up, learning something new and laughing just because. Love is silly, really. It's amazing how I can use that word to express feelings for such a variety of things. There is love for a life partner, love for a pair of boots, love for a child's hockey game and love for a mixed and mingled set of discarded scraps of cloth. It seems that the more open I am to this strange emotion, the more I am able to feel and notice it - everywhere. When refinishing this child's cabinet my mother made for me and my sister in 1971, I can feel her love - - it's embedded in the yellow and green flowers, dots and letters. I wondered, when I put on the first coat of primer, if I was somehow erasing that love. But it turns out that the act of transforming this wooden structure 50 years later and giving it new life magnifies that emotion. I could have easily thrown this 'toy' away, but for some reason I couldn't. So here it is, getting a makeover and, in the process, shedding light on the transformative power of love in its many shapes and sizes. And here I am continuing to mend my favorite 27 year old t-shirt while waiting for my mother-in-law to return from PT. Love for a t-shirt is nothing like love for my children's grand-mother, but it's love just the same. And when a dog curls up in his bed on a cold winter's day, knowing he will be fed and walked and have his needs met, he knows he is loved. And how can we not love such faithful creatures? It's a two-way thing. So why not love my compost pile? I feed it and it feeds me. And why not love it when a group of people gets together to laugh and learn together during a Community Climate Conversation? Although I find the play of light in this particular scene compelling, it is the gathering itself that fills me with joy. It, too, is a different kind of love. I think the love I feel for a group gathering to cope with climate is like the love I feel for the earth when I witness snow-covered mountains rising above the clouds. It's an abstract kind of affection, one that satisfies a non-specific but core need to share the gift of being... ...together
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Evelyn R. Swett
reframing the narrative in community and with myself, finding transformation and joy in the mess of it all Let's ReFrame!
is a somewhat regular 'viewsletter' that hopefully inspires joy & transformation. It will include links to recent blog posts & updates about my work. Oh, and I promise I won't share your information (that would be so uncool) and I don't actually do promotions, but that text is required. Archives
March 2021
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