Persistance in Everyday Ramblings

I still haven’t heard about a garden plot yet; every day I open my email I think today might be the day and I have been visiting the garden at least once a week to say hello.

When I was in my early thirties a friend encouraged me to go to a church service at this big rowdy Methodist church in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. I had recently quit smoking with the help of a 12-step program and the word was the church was “recovery” friendly. The energy in that sanctuary was like nothing I had ever experienced. It was kind of like a rocket readying itself to take off.

After I had been going a few times they had an adult dance performance during the service. I was taking adult ballet at the time. Let me tell you, anybody who has ever been to say a school or church dance recital knows the energy is so supportive and encouraging and relaxed and fun and I saw that here, so different from my effortful (sometimes I would cry) ballet classes.

The movement itself was hokey, kind of modern, kind of interpretive but cohesive and properly thought out. Not professional but with elements of…

Sitting in the pews watching I said to myself… “I want to do that; I am going to join this group!”.

When I inquired everybody told me the group was closed, sorry try next time, the group was a pet project of the minister’s Japanese wife. I don’t think they wanted another white woman: it was a very multicultural church, and I was blond, blue-eyed etc. etc.

I made an absolute pest of myself. Offering to help, anything and eventually group members told me when the rehearsals were, and the director caved and let me come watch and hang out and learn the moves.

Maybe three rehearsals in she caved again and called me over to join in.

This was how I got to meet Mia Angelou because the next piece the group was doing was a gift for her as she was friends with the minister and his wife, and she came to services when she was in town.

The whole reason I am telling this story is that I am beginning to feel about this community garden the way I felt about that dance group. My ballet teacher could tell by the way I moved in class that I was doing some other type of movement and did not approve but I knew I wasn’t going anywhere with ballet, and this group thing was a crazy mash up rush.

It is the “Never-the-less She Persisted” thing.

I may not get a plot this year, and I am scared because I am basically clueless about gardening and learning new things and being bad at them as one “matures” gets more difficult but still…

Mrs. Sherlock has promised to provide all kinds of support. I took her down last weekend and showed her the garden.

Our lives move in mysterious ways. We’ve been talking in yoga-teachers-land lately about the place where “Being” and “Becoming” meet and from that grounded integrated place letting one’s purpose or intention arise. And making a commitment to it once it becomes clear.

I wrote on the top of the “Things I Don’t Want to Do” list that I have hanging on my wall here next to me… Move the Ship Towards Kindness, Which Requires Presence.

This garden plot thing in my mind and body is moving from a thing I am kind of interested in to whoa, I am actually ready to take this on, pandemic and all…

So, hold thumbs for me and the possibility of joys and disasters ahead and this small new direction I might be turning toward.

I understand “the law of attraction” is a big thing with the young people these days on the Interwebs. While I work on my powers of manifestation, I think I might also just make myself a bit of a good-natured pest. :)

Last updated January 29, 2021