Serendipity and the Interdependent Web

Sometimes I can’t remember if I’ve blogged about something–or just meant to.  The search box above was no help on this one.  My apologies if I’m repeating myself!

Call it the luck of the Irish.

Almost five months ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, I published a post here on nagoonberry that I called “The Ministry of Reading.”  I wrote:

We live in a time of information overload.  Some of us have that time and inclination to sift through that information, gathering up the parts that interest us, the pieces that seem valuable, important.  And that is a ministry, a ministry of reading.

My great-grandmother from County Cork must have sprinkled fairy dust on that post.

In that week’s Interdependent Web, Kenneth Sutton wrote, “Turns out Nagoonberry is a UU after my own heart.”  He also sent a Facebook message to me, asking, “Are you Nagoonberry?”

At that time, very few UUs knew that “nagoonberry” was Heather Christensen.  But I’d outed myself on the UU Growth Lab list of UU bloggers, and that’s how Kenneth found me.

UU World magazine was looking for a freelance editor for their blog of blogs, the Interdependent Web.  ”Your post about reading as a ministry made me think you might be a good fit,” Kenneth said.

Less than a month after St. Patrick’s Day, Kenneth introduced me online as the new editor of the Interdependent Web.

In one of our first conversations about editorial perspective, I told Kenneth that I bring an outsider’s perspective—relatively new to UUism, a member of a fellowship way up in Alaska, far, far away from Boston.  He said, “You’ll be surprised how soon that outsider status will go away.  People will start assuming that you’re in the inner circle.”

Last October when I met with the RSCC in San Francisco, one of the committee members asked how I planned to get to know UUism outside of Alaska.  I talked about reading blogs, and connecting on Facebook.  She didn’t look convinced.  Little did either of us know how strong these virtual connections would grow in less than a year.

Thank you, Kenneth, for paying attention, for extending a hand of possibility.  And thank you, too, to our wondrously mysterious universe–creative, serendipitous, and interdependent.

Rousing Confidence

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast from the Interdependence Project, a talk given by Susan Piver.  Podcasts are my housework incentive, but I had to stop loading the dishwasher, dry my hands, and find pen and paper to take a few notes.

Susan talked about “rousing confidence.”  Not striving, not inflating the ego, but rousing confidence.  She quoted her teacher, Sakyong Mipham, who taught her these five ways to rouse confidence:

• Live in a clean, tidy space
• Wear good clothes
• Eat good food
• Spend time with people who make you feel uplifted; avoid those who don’t
• Spend time in the natural world

Sometimes it helps when someone ties together simple things, all of which you already knew, but not in connection with each other.

Want confidence?  Want that self-reliance that Emerson wrote about?  Then do these things, the teacher says to me.  Don’t want to do them?  Then maybe you don’t really want confidence, self-reliance.  Your choice.  It’s up to you.

Gotta go now.  The floor needs sweeping.