Becoming Shiny
So we were trying to move to Orcas Island, the year was 1995. The real estate market had been incredibly sluggish and we were wondering if we would ever sell our house. I don’t think we actually broke down and buried a plastic statue of St. Joseph upside down like my good Catholic parents suggested … but we were getting a bit desperate.
One day looking out from the deck at the back yard with the new fence posts I put in after a windstorm took down almost the entire fence. I noticed my wife’s garden was now just a weed patch in her absence. She has always been such an avid gardener there and this really stood out. So I decided a little more sweat might help a lot. It wasn’t long before I had black soil showing the promise of a new garden for someone else. Sitting again on that back porch with the satisfaction of a little stewardship and the gratitude of what that garden had meant to my wife. I realized in that moment, it was all somehow just as it should be. Sure I was still stuck in Spokane and she was alone on Orcas with our son, but right now I was grateful and a little sweaty from the stewardship.
Suddenly there was a barely audible knock at the front door. There stood two little girls. They immediately blurted out “we want to buy your house. That is our dad does.” They pointed out to the car and there was their dad on the phone. My first thought was that apparently, their dad did not share their burning desire. When he finally finished his call and started up the walk I immediately recognized him as an old friend from high school. On top of that, his kids went to the school two doors down. Those two little girls did buy our house; well, their dad paid the mortgage.
I went on to call this technique “the weaving of enchantment”. Just as weaving on a loom with the longitudinal threads being the warp and the lateral threads the weft, “the weaving of enchantment” is acts of stewardship woven with thoughts of gratitude. Try this out yourself and I can assure you great success, although perhaps not always as magical as this example.
This technique or perhaps posture combining the feeling of gratitude while doing any act of stewardship however unrelated has also resulted in many art sales as well. Even if it is sweeping the entry to your studio when art sales only happen out in the galleries, it’s all an energetic thing the mind need not grasp. Better still holding that space of gratitude while performing an act of service for another solely for their benefit seems to produce an extra appealing or shiny affect and who knows what benefit goes to the recipient. Like I said it’s an energetic thing, I suppose mothers have always known this truth. Maybe it’s simply love in action.
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