Everywhere I go these days someone is talking about the importance of listening. While I'm in full support of this, it does make me chuckle every time anyone talks a lot about listening- that, in and of itself, has some irony right?

A group of female chefs and bakers in Portland have been busy baking cookies this week. Eleven thousand, five hundred and fifty cookies to be precise. The Cookie Grab was conceived as a way for women in Portland's culinary industry to come together and use the skills we have to contribute to our community.

Over the next couple days, 550 people will collect beautiful pink boxes filled with cookies from some of their favorite Portland restaurants and bakeries, and Planned Parenthood will get a $27,500 donation. Totally amazing. Hooray!

But there's more...

On January 1, 2016 a wonderful person asked me if I had any resolutions for the year. When I replied that I didn't have a track record of sucess with resolutions so I had given up the practice of making them, she offered what I think is a kinder, gentler consideration for a year's beginning:

Can you think of anything you would like more of in 2016?

Ahhhh. That's what my entire body did in response to this question; it had itself a deeply relaxing, releasing sigh. My brow stopped the furrowing it does when I'm trying to figure out how to make my life better (aka the foundation for new year's resolutions), and I experienced a moment of open-minded wondering about what would make me feel better, in a more general way, in the coming year.

As I read all the weather predictions last night I grew hopeful that we'd be closed today (we are!), that the weather would mean an entire day of tucking in with my pencils and my laptop and writing my heart out.

We got the snow day. Expectantly, I nestled into some blankets, got a glass of water, sat down to allow the magic to happen and then, ugh.

I pressed up against the dreaded wall of nothing.

It has been a rough couple weeks to try and think about doing things. Nothing seems as important as all the big things, right? Our daily lives are overflowing with insignificance. The outcome of the election was a surprise—regardless of which side you’re on—and the dust is taking its own sweet time to settle. I have read many moving, and inspiring suggestions for ways we can move forward from what feels like a very dark place where we see differences more clearly than the threads of sameness that binds us together as members of a nation.

While there is desperation in the air, our current situation also feels like an opportunity for a powerful reckoning. A moment where I/you/we can own my/your/our part in this situation that is tremendously larger than me/you/us.

Over the past couple weeks I've been thinking a lot about Staff for the upcoming issue (No 6) of Communal Table- the online publication I'm collaborating on with my friend Adrian and a band of talented designers, artists and writers she has recruited over the years. The issue will have stories about staff as in staff of life, staff as in a team of people who support a project or business, and possibly staff as a physical support. For me- the word always makes me think of the people who have floated in and out of employment at Cyril's- likely because I've spent more time with them in the past four years than anyone else in my life.

A couple years ago I got an email from a friend announcing the launch of her book. This is a person I'd been in regular communication with and yet this was the first I had heard about a book. A book! That's a big deal kind of thing. So I sent her a one word response: BOOM!

She wrote back immediately: There is no boom.

I am not a big consumer of news. I have a tough time taking in the troubles and complexities of the world and then plowing ahead with the day to day stuff of my life; if I had to sum it up, when I allow myself to absorb not just the facts of the news but what those facts translate to in terms of impact on actual people I feel powerless.

Liminal: (adjective)

1. of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.
2. occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

You have all experienced liminal time, the kind where you're somewhere between a Here and a There. This can be very much a matter of logistics like being on an airplance, or slightly less well defined like the time between making a decision (to move, take a job, have a baby, take a trip, quit a job, commit to/end a relationship) and the first moment where it feels like that decision is manifesting in the world.

I woke up a couple Saturdays ago with the words "Practice Resurrection" already there- in my mind as if waiting for me to wake to consider them. This kind of thing has never happened to me before so it got my attention. 

While I love the idea of resurrections with all of their inspiring potential and implied perseverance, considering practicing resurrection lead me to an obvious yet surprising conclusion: in order for one to practice resurrection (bringing something back to life or back into one's awareness), things have to have gone a little sideways...like there is usually a death of something.