My Custom Homestead: Step 3

Step 3 of Jill Winger's Your Custom Homestead (www.ThePrairieHometead.com) is to develop a mission statement for your homestead.  Drawing on all of the things you listed in Step 2, create a platform for which all of it will come to fruition. 

photo by Katrina Rodabaugh via Pinterest

I am fortunate to have an amazing supervisor at my creative arts therapy internship.  She recently sent all of the interns an email with words of encouragement from Rob Brezsny.  The message starts out, "Lately, I must admit, our work has seemed almost comically impossible.  Many of us have given in to the temptation to believe that everything is upside-down and inside-out.  Ignorance and inertia, partially camouflaged as time-honored morality, seem to surround us.  Pessimism is enshrined as a hallmark of worldliness.  Compulsive skepticism masquerades as perceptiveness.  Mean-spirited irony is chic.  Stories about treachery and degradation provide a visceral thrill in millions of people who think of themselves as reasonable and smart.  Beautiful truths are suspect and ugly truths are readily believed."   So what is a person to do with all of this pessimism poisoning our souls? Brezsny suggests, "We have to be ferociously and single-mindedly dedicated to the cause of beauty and truth and love even as we keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free....We can create safe houses to shelter everyone who's devoted to the slow-motion awakening of humanity...."  After reading this, I felt so validated.  I have often thought of giving up and giving in to the "reality" of the dreary lies that society serves up to feed hungry pessimism.  I am exhausted from the fight already.  Can I be the only one who believes that we are all beauty and truth inside and even the most corrupt human heart has an opportunity to heal?  Sometimes it feels like standing in front of a tidal wave and looking it straight in the eye.  But Brezsny's solutions of creating sanctuary to "hospice what is dying [lies] and midwife what's being born [your beauty and truth]" equally validate my mission.

As I have gained clarity in my personal vision and work for this life, I have come to embrace that my job is to create beauty and a safe place for living things to do the work that Breznsy describes.  About a year ago, frustrated and foggy-headed from not knowing how to put all the pieces of my authentic-life-puzzle together, I asked the question, "What am I supposed to do with this life?"  The answer came immediately and clearly, "Offer a cool drink of water."  I felt such relief. Finally, a clear mission.  I knew what these words meant for me and I knew that I needed to create a sanctuary that offers literal and metaphorical water for weary and thirsty creative spirits who are facing the same tidal wave every day.  And so in that moment, I midwifed the birth of Soaring Heart Acres.

To be continued....