What the world needs

A guest post by Christine Mason Miller for the Creative Harvest series

{October 31, 2011}
I had another post all ready to go for Roots of She, and then something happened over the weekend that inspired me to go back to my keyboard. Today is the day I kick off my weeks-in-the-planning marketing blitz for my next book ~ Desire to Inspire: Using Creative Passion to Transform the World ~ which is a series of events, posts, and other goodies created in celebration of a dream made real and the nineteen extraordinary contributors that have been on this journey with me. It is a happy day, a joy-full day, the day when I officially release this latest creative endeavor to the world and let it flit, flutter, and fly wherever it may.

In other words, today is the day I officially let it go.

The synopsis of Desire to Inspire is this:

In Desire to Inspire, readers will be introduced to twenty extraordinary women – writers, artists and entrepreneurs – all of whom share a unique example of how they create a meaningful life and, in turn, make a positive impact on the world. The stories and examples explore the roots of their desire to inspire and how they manage to pursue their passions in the midst of all the twists and turns life has given them. In addition to a beautiful collection of quotes, stories, and anecdotes, readers are given substantive, encouraging exercises aimed at supporting their own journey towards a meaningful, mindful life.

When I set out to write Desire to Inspire, the last thing I wanted to do was present a series of stories, ideas, and platitudes that gave readers the impression that if they just did as we did, all their dreams would come true and they’d change the world! What I wanted to do instead was offer substantive, down-to-earth examples of women who have accomplished extraordinary things even as they have juggled all the commitments, obligations, and sudden u-turns that are the stuff of life.

Messages of easy fixes and formulaic paths to “success” never interested me; I am always more moved and inspired by stories that present the whole picture, and don’t try to sweep things like laundry, illness, traffic, failures, disappointments, and flat tires out of the picture. Those details, no matter how grand one’s dreams are, matter. To deny their role in our lives and, yes, our dreams, would be to present a false front ~ all shimmer and no truth; all surface and no roots.

What happened this weekend is that a dear friend passed away in the midst of one of the many rounds of cancer treatments she had endured over the past three years. I found out less than 24 hours ago, and the news is still sinking in. I am having those thoughts that everyone in my position has ~ wondering why her, and how is that fair, and what is the purpose of this loss? I am not angry as much as awed ~ by the way life’s beauty is so often brought into such sharper focus right at that point of extraordinary loss and sadness. In the first hour or so after I heard the news, the sight of my chocolate lab bounding about our yard in the late afternoon sunlight made me almost breathless. My friend had passed on, but here was this light, this energy, and this precious, perfect moment.

Later that evening, as I double checked my email newsletter and finalized the blog entry that will kick off a month of giveaways and contributor interviews, I thought about my friend, and all the ways her creative passion transformed the world.

This was a woman with a passion for ceramics, who opened a tiny studio in Mar Vista, California and proceeded to create what we loved to call a “vortex of creative magic”, where the mood was always light and a community of incredibly devoted, generous, and kind human beings were drawn towards her love, light, and creative passion.

I thought about all the ways her light will continue to travel and have an impact on the world even though she is gone, and this thought gave me great comfort. And I recognized that this was one of those moments that I was determined to share in Desire to Inspire ~ a moment when an unexpected, shocking turn of events suddenly added a poignant, strangely beautiful patina to all the grand plans I had for online confetti and fireworks. I am still wildly excited to begin the big publicity push for my book, and I am also wishing my friend were here to be a part of it. These experiences don’t cancel each other out; in fact, they are making this day, this week, this journey, that much more whole, that much more full of all that life has to offer.

Desire to Inspire is a book of stories, and these stories are about life.

There are stories of fun-filled adventures, disappointments, false starts, unexpected gifts that seemed to fall out of the sky, quiet conversations, friendships, small steps, and wild dreams come true. I wrote this book because I believe passionately in the idea that our actions matter.

I believe that every time we honor our hearts, our dreams, and our voices we do the world a great service, because we then set an example for others of what it means to live an authentic, passion-fueled life, an example others will follow (whether we realize it or not.) I believe that all the details of our lives that accompany our creative passions ~ the sweeping, the dishes, the gardening, the children, the marriages ~ play a vital role in the fulfillment of our dreams, because it is in those day-to-day experiences where we have the opportunity to practice the values we strive to live by, particularly when doing something such as pursuing a dream.

And I believe that these actions, and a devotion to being a force of good in the world, create a ripple of inspiration that is capable of traveling farther than we can ever imagine ~ farther in space, in time, and even beyond our very existence.

I did not share the news of the loss of my friend to hang a veil of sadness over this blog entry or over the release of Desire to Inspire, but in celebration of the example of her life, which was a life fueled by her desire to share her creative passion and live in joy. And to illustrate something else I believe, which is that no matter how much or how little time we have in this lifetime, our actions matter, and the world needs our light. All we need to do is let it shine ~ brightly, wildly, with utter abandon.

{For Linda}

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Christine Mason Miller is a writer and artist and you can keep up with her at www.christinemasonmiller.com.
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Her latest book ~ Desire to Inspire: Using Creative Passion to Transform the World ~ was published by North Light Books and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com and will begin shipping at the end of November.
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