Category: Wholeness - trish hermanson

What Kind of Culture Are You Making?

12/4/2020

Meet my cousin Jan, a quilter who told me she “auditions” pieces of fabric to see which patterns work best together. Her sister Judy is a pianist who can resonate a room with a pipe organ. Another cousin excels in hosting. Another is a whiz with words. Another is an artist. Another has developed the skill of encouraging others. Another raises exotic birds. And my sister is a master gift-giver. We are all “culture makers.”
     I’m talking about the potential we each have to do something that changes our immediate world. Author Adam Savage explains, “Whenever we’re driven to reach out and create something from nothing, whether it’s something physical like a chair, or more temporal and ethereal, like a poem, we’re contributing something of ourselves to the world.”
     When we do that, he says “we’re not putting what we make into the local culture, what we make IS the culture.”
     What a privilege. Because I carry the image of God-the-Creator, I can influence the culture around me for good. I may do this by lifting up someone with a word, sending an encouraging text, sharing a meal, or shoveling a sidewalk. When I do this, I’m putting myself into the world to make it a better place.
     Yet what a responsibility. I can choose to make the world a worse place by my words and actions, too.
     So what kind of culture am I creating?

The Flip that Flopped

11/13/2020

A few years back I’d tried to flip a house for profit. I tore out orange and green shag carpet and repainted faded walls to transform an eyesore into an invitation.
     But the market was sluggish. The only serious buyer asked for money towards closing costs, a home warranty, and a backyard fence. So in order to move that property, I gave in. And what did I get? Nothing but a cheap plastic pen from the title company that I was using to scribble my name at closing.
     The buyer, a young woman, sat across the table. “I have an eight-year-old daughter,” she whispered. "You understand how important a fence is.” “Uh-huh.” I clutched the pen as I hunched over the pile of papers. “I finally got out of debt, and here I am going back in again,” she said, staring off into space. I glanced at her hand. No wedding band. “But it’s a good debt,” I said quietly. “We had to move,” she continued. “A guy in our neighborhood was threatening us with a gun.” I swallowed hard.
      We finished signing papers, shook hands, and I walked to the parking lot and sat alone in my car. Maybe this wasn’t such a sour deal after all. Maybe it had gone just as it should have.
  Because sometimes someone else’s gain will cost me. Is that really a problem?

Surviving Wrecks in Our Lives

10/23/2020

I don’t know whether this accident was caused by a student driver or by someone who rear-ended the driver, but either way, someone was crunched emotionally - and perhaps worse. I’ve had wrecks that wrenched my neck and totaled my car. In a similar way, I’ve experienced crushing times from crashes in my career, my economics, my health, and my relations.
     I’m working through some long-lasting collisions these days. I think it's baloney to believe that "time heals all wounds." What heals wounds is forgiveness of others - and of myself.
If you have long-standing pain from life’s collisions, please know I’m sending a prayer your way that you will heal well.
     Because we’re all fragile.

Clearing the Tangle Out of My Life

9/25/2020

Marie Kondo, the professional declutterer, would smile about all the clearing out I’ve accomplished since Covid has kept me homebound more than usual.
     It started with our chopping down two arborvitae trees in our yard that died. After that I trimmed dead branches deep in an eight-foot-tall shrub; pruned scruffy undergrowth in a thirty-foot-tall blue spruce; and lobbed off thorny limbs from a Russian olive tree that threatened to reach out and grab me.
     Then I moved indoors, culling shelves of books I’ve never read and never will (sorry, you bibliophiles); tossing decades of paperwork (sorry, you archivists); clearing out bric-a-brac (sorry, you sentimentalists); and donating clothes I never wear (you’re welcome, you fashionistas).
     Someday my kids will thank me.
     Everything looks cleaner. And what’s left “sparks joy” in me, as Kondo says our environment should. But I wonder if there’s more going on. Perhaps I’m clearing out the tangle in my life to make room for new growth.
     Because if my surroundings are cluttered, my mind and soul are, too.

Meet the 'Late Bloomer'

8/27/2020

Compared to other plants, this is a late bloomer. This agave americana was a squatty thing for several decades before it suddenly shot up and burst into outrageous yellow flowers. But it doesn’t blossom until its internal resources tell it to, which is good news for those of us who feel like we’re still squatty plants while our peers have shot ahead of us.
     Most of us don’t really “take off” until the second half of our lives because our intelligence doesn’t fully develop until we reach our thirties to fifties, says author Rick Karlgaard. That seems to be true with our skills, too. Take, for instance, actor Morgan Freeman, who didn’t achieve name recognition until his early fifties and he’s still going strong in his eighties. Or Abraham Lincoln, who had more failures than successes until he was elected president in his early fifties. Or Julia Child, a failed author until she co-published her book on French cooking when she was forty-nine.
     Karlgaard, who wrote “Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement,” says flourishing “is all about finding that perfect intersection of your deepest talents and your deepest passions.” This can happen multiple times in our lives because we live longer these days.
     That’s been true for me: one metamorphosis after another as I dared to allow my God-given passions mingle with talents I worked to develop.
  What about you? What passion do you want to develop?