Note: To listen to the song One Constellation.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of spending a weekend camping with girls 5 - 16 years old as part of a local Maine Girl Scout “camporee”. I was the staring attraction for Saturday evening, with tired but expectant girls arriving at a large campfire just as darkness descended. Mind you, I couldn’t compete with the traditional “smores” that were planned, and tried to keep my guitar away from all that — GOO — while 60-some girls went to and fro the roaring fire with marshmallows in various darkened stages. It began to be funny, this “keeping the guitar safe”, with the scout leaders joining in and forming a wall of safety.

At long last, satiated by sweets, the girls settled in to soak up the warmth of a fire and share song and story.

I began with some songs everyone knew. For example, “The Bear Song” (”The other day, I met a bear. A great big bear, in the woods out there….”) I fear those of you who know this song will not be able to sleep tonight as it will be playing over and over in your head. Sorry! Others: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, and “On Top of Spaghetti”….

Next, each troop offered a song of their own. Quite a delight.

Finally, my troop leader contact, Karen Hinchliffe, began to ask me some questions about the art of songwriting. “Which comes first, the melody or the words?”. I turned it back to the girls and asked them: Have you ever made up a song in your head? Which comes first? As with many things in life, it is never predictable and always different. Sometimes a phrase haunts me for days and then suddenly emerges as a melody and song. Sometimes a melody pops into my head seeking words. (I’ve been working on one dynamite blues melody that came to me — still don’t *feel* the emotion enough to convert to a song with lyrics!)

Next, she asked me, “Can you help us write a song?”. Why yes! I said, swallowing hard. Why not? And so I described that all songs are fundamentally written about “what you know”. In that approach, lies authenticity and truth. So, given this weekend’s theme of Astronomy, I asked them to think about what they’ve done or learned that they might want to write about.

And so it began. One girl boldly offered that “We’re all stars in the sky.” So, I strummed some common chords: G, C, D. Then, I advised that most songs, though not all, rhymed. So, we want to rhyme with the word, “sky”, I urged. From the fire lit darkness I heard a voice, “How about, ‘One Constellation…um, uh, … ‘ And then another voice, “Way up high!”.

And in that moment, a song began. It is a simple song, exactly the right kind for sitting around a campfire. But the theme — about each of us being different in our own special way AND at the same time being a part of One Constellation — carried with it a wisdom greater than our own. The experience of creating something unique in the world was enchanting. So much so, that the Girl Scouts decided they wanted to record the song. And so, we now have a beautiful version — recorded at Port-Media, with Michael McNerney, the co-Producer of my own CD, Feed the Tribe.

I leave you with a note from my good friend and wonderful scout leader, Karen in her email to the troops:

72 degrees, balmy beautiful

Oh glorious day!

your blue jean skies and sapphire seashore

glittering like a New Year’s gown

your racing plovers chubby from summer’s feast

and warm white sands littered with dried kelp;

your stony, tidal islands

protecting us from ourselves.

A lone seagull stands

sentry at my blanket

as I count five last boats–

a vestige of summer’s crowds.

Rhythmic waves pause in meditative breath,

slipping noiselessly to shore.

When Mars was close in our late summer skies

and I depleted from hosting hordes,

September dawned

a glorious chapter

in the long book of my life.

A Meditative Walk at the Franciscan Monastery in Kennebunkport

I stroll to an outdoor shrine

in honor of Our Lady’s visit to Lourdes.

Two elderly women occupy

space on the sun-bleached benches, lips

moving, eyes closed.

I ease down in the front row

and gaze upward at Mary’s white marbled

likeness. The serenity here penetrates

instantly. I begin

to relax as tears of release spring

from my eyes.

On a woodland path I pass

an Erma Bombeck look-alike in pink;

big sparkly cross dangles

below her breasts. She emits

a shy hello, her heady perfume

trails along like a bride’s train.

Mushrooms – honey and golden, sculpted

like stacks of pancakes — rest

atop nature’s platter, made punky

by last week’s rains.

To the coastal trail

I go where mosquitoes

cannot fly in the quickening salt breeze.

In the sun

now on a grassy point, absorbing

the heat from a green wooden Adirondack chair

I watch a blonde in her canary yellow kayak struggle

against these stiff winds. I am facing

west

my most auspicious direction says the ancient

Chinese Bagua. I conclude

a friar must come to this sacred

spot each evening, to watch

the sun slip below the trees

(at least that’s what I would do).

If I close my right eye

and squint my weak left, the inlet

looks like a razzle dazzle Christmas light show

that never

never

ends.

Kylie’s Chance motors by chock full of sightseers

listening to the helmsman’s steady cadence

of interesting tid bits about The Port.

Grebes paddle this way and that

sucking the grasses near the rocks. A pair

moves near me as if to visit; and then

away again.

Hinckley’s, Zodiacs, Boston Whalers and the double-masted schooner Eleanor,

cruise by with colorfully dressed

families, happy

against a deep blue sky. A waft

of fried clams drifts over from Arundel Wharf.

Ummm. My stomach responds.

But

I make no move

to leave. I feel

deliciously pinned to this spot,

to this

stillness.

My body and spirit have been

waiting for this

moment for an eternity.

On the way out I stop at the statue

of Kateri Tekakwitha, ‘Lily of the Mohawks’.

Beneath a granite rock on her alter

I place a note, a declaration

of my state

of mind: “I am drenched

in Your grace and it slows

my pace.

I know

I know

I know.”

Suggested Practice: Meditation Walk

Carve out some time to meander in a favorite place.

Have no destination in mind.

Simply allow whatever catches your attention to guide your pace.

Move when you become aware that it is time to move.

Pause when an inner *something* asks that you pause.

There is nothing that needs to be accomplished.

Notice what happens to your breath; your mind; your body; your spirit.

Inspiration for this walk: Sabbath ~ Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, by Wayne Muller, ©1999, Bantam Books.

©2008, Jennifer Comeau. All rights reserved.

Last week I got 1,800,000 links when I googled “Chinese opening ceremony girl singer”.

It has been all over the news, with Chinese and international voices crying foul over the “lip syncing incident” at the beautiful opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in China.

Yes, it certainly seems “unfair” and “disingenuous” to show a “perfect” (the Chinese have used that word a lot) Lin Miaoke singing “Hymn to the Motherland”, rather than the real singer, Yang Peiyi.

The Chinese have a saying: ‘Gold and jade on the outside, but just cotton on the inside’. Hmmm. Is that applicable here? Perhaps. What strikes me is how quickly the world jumped to criticism and what appears to me to be hypocritical judgment about this incident. This happens everywhere. Obese people are continually discriminated against. A study published in the June 2004 Journal of Applied Psychology demonstrates that tall people make more money. (“The results suggest that tall individuals have advantages in several important aspects of their careers and organizational lives.”) The plain fact is that in spite of pithy sayings like, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts”, the world’s current definition of success seems to give merit to physical qualities more often than what lies beneath.

David Cooperider, founder of Appreciative Inquiry states: “We grow in the direction of the questions we ask”. With that in mind I ask the question: What is possible if each of us were only to see the beauty inside?

Are your avant guard friends coming to dinner and you’re looking for something different and meaningful? Does the weekend call for a rainy day? I’d like to share with you a fun activity that may also give you an opportunity for dialogue and discovery about what has meaning in your life.

I created this activity as part of a Human Resources Conference workshop I gave in May. The workshop centered on the theme of individual contribution within the broader organizational – and global – whole.

The premise is that in these past two decades of stress, where decision making is speeding up, work hours are lengthening, and there has been a breakdown of commitment between employer and employee – we are losing sight of the perspective of the whole. We’ve tended to hunker down in an attempt to slow things down, and yet, there is a deeper, persistent intra-planetary drumbeat that cannot be ignored.

You may be thinking: Why should I care about global issues? I can barely manage my own work hassles and family life? For some, the best coping mechanism is to disengage with the larger world. Although our industrial era culture may have taught us differently, we are all a part of the delicate web of interrelationships called the planet earth. While perhaps not always seen or even recognized, the global landscape is having and will continue to have an impact on each of us. It remains only a matter of when this reality becomes figural for us.

Have you disengaged from the larger conversation around you? What is the box you have built around yourself? To create an opportunity to see differently, try the following activity.

Steps:

1) Download and print (2-sided) the Global Landscape Cards. (Don’t look at the back side if you can help it. That has the “answers”.) Note: you will notice several blank cards. Add some of your own data to the deck.

global_landscape_cards_front

global_landscape_cards_back

2) You won’t want to play this alone. It’s not as fun. Find family members or friends, or work colleagues to “play”. This won’t take more than 30 minutes. (Caution! It could catalyze long, pleasant or unnerving conversations.)

3) Divide your group into teams. Each team gets a deck of Global Landscape Cards.

4) Play “true/false” with each of the statements on the Landscape Cards. Keep score of which ones and how many you or your group get correct.

5) Set up some competition – hey, that’s the Western culture way. Perhaps the first team who finishes with the most correct answers wins. Offer fabulous prizes to the winner. Or not.

Note: In spite of the rational, linear set of steps I’ve outlined above, I would suggest that you and those involved abandon all expectations of what should happen in the space you create together. There is no right or wrong way to use these cards. Be present to your individual and joint sense of what wants to happen in the moment.

Post activity thought starters:

What card was a surprise to you?

What did you notice about the cards?

What did you notice about your reaction to the activity?

What part was most difficult or easy?

Now reflect upon the following:

Who am I uniquely in relation to this global conversation?

What role will I choose to play in creating a higher vision of human purpose in the 21^st century?

I’m curious to know how the activity works for you. Keep me posted.

I left a very large consulting client in March for two reasons:

Reason Number One: The work there no longer served me. That is, it did not stretch or challenge me in a way that gave meaning to my life (Note: I even wrote a song about it: Reference: “Baltimore” on my music CD.); and Reason Number Two: I wanted time to launch the CD properly and afterward, to grow and expand my personal retreat business.

So here I am in the afterward. For the first time since March, it hit me. What I have traded away to follow my heart has a value in the six-figures.

Does that feel heroic or just plain foolish? Depends upon when you catch me with that question. Today I wonder: What if I had continued to earn that money and taken a goodly part of it to give to my two philanthropic causes? They would have LOTS more money sooner than it will take for me to sell my music CDs and give them the proceeds. In that light, it indeed seems foolish.

And yet.

There’s Reason Number One to remember. Finding meaning in my work is all about a desire not to be a statistic. In a Cornell study of Varieties of Regret, most of us, about 70%, expressed regrets of INACTION when looking back on life. That is, steps not taken, things not done. Do you want to be one of those people? I certainly don’t. It’s what drives me to move through my fears and ignore the mind chatter that wants to tell me how foolish I was for leaving that large client.

What will be the price tag I am able to put on a life well lived? I imagine myself an old woman. My toothless smile stretches widely as I sit rocking in a chair, arms folded over my ratty blue sweater. I am a trifle smug, knowing that upon waking up in my forties, I didn’t cop out. I didn’t sell my soul. Knowing that I kept putting myself out there and being open to whatever appears.

And then there’s Reason Number Three: My music gets to live in the world. Each song is, in my view, a being – alive with story and emotion, vibrating in its own resonance. Each song can change our hearts, can shift us to a new place of awareness or understanding. And what a thrill it is to know with each purchase of a CD or an mp3 download, another person receives the product of my creation (or more aptly put: “The product of the Divine blowing into me the words and music I claim as my own”). Now that’s priceless.

So here I am today, feeling steadfast in this afterward. Yes, I’ve reefed in my spending sails a bit. No, I do not know what stormy seas await. Nor do any of us, be we doing meaningful work or otherwise.

I look into his youthful 71 year old face as he says, “The hardest part is getting quiet, isn’t it?” This, in response to my informing him that I too am a creative type: A singer-songwriter with a debut CD, Feed the Tribe. A CD only weeks off the injection molding replication machines.

Oh yes, Martin. Over and over again it’s the hardest part. He reaches into his knapsack and carefully selects a poem: Blue Lesson.

An excerpt: “how to come home again and again with what look like empty hands, the gift – and there is one, even when I don’t see, don’t listen – how to hold this nothing, loving its flavor, the scent”.[1]

Thank you, Martin Steingesser for your gift of beauty and insight.

On the heels of completing the artistic accomplishment of a music CD (a huge undertaking), and what by many accounts would be considered a successful launch – sold out CD Release, songs played on four local radio stations, and press galore – I am asking, “Now What?” And experiencing unsettledness, a lack of certainty about the ways my music is manifesting for some greater good. In short: I have to get quiet and BE, letting go the drive to DO for just a little while.

One would think I’d be better at getting quiet after experiencing the richness and honesty that emerges as a result. Songs have poured out of me at times like these, where I am simply holding the pen and staying out of the way. Why is it always a struggle to get to that wellspring, I muse. Because your mind fears what your inner voice will say. It doesn’t have control over that source. Bingo!

Perhaps it is because I crave the wisdom that lies there – in spite of how difficult it is to receive at times – that I host a retreat workshop entitled, “An Exploration with Women at the Edge”. It is a time-out-of-time experience with women who are pushing their own comfort zones; women who are changing the world in the way they uniquely can.

During the workshop, we explore what it means to hold the nothing — the not yet manifested — with intent and allowing. With grace. Or at least we TRY! As a host, I am also a full participant. Like the lead climbers on Himalayan mountain expeditions, I still have to do the work myself, even though I’ve done it before and I have a map of the terrain. Sometimes I’m better at it than others. One thing is for certain: I’m still learning to get quiet, to love the flavor of nothing.