Transforming what we have been given

"How do we transform what we have been given?" I first heard this question from healer Orland Bishop a few years ago at a conference on philanthropy. His question never left me. I have been handed a lot-we all have- and there is much work to be done.

I remember running into my friend Frank one time on the train and he had asked me about the love of my life. I began to cry and I told him that I had a broken heart and that there was more work to be done. He said, "When there is more work to be done, there is more work to be done." He was right, he was absolutely right.

Money. There is work to be done. There is the reality that we require it to live and there is the reality that too many people identify themselves by it (either having it or not). There is the truth that much harm has been done in its name and then there is the truth that money has also fed people, supported people in making transitions that they would not have done otherwise.

In my home, money was the source of tension, it was the symbol of whose side you were on and it was a source of shame and grief, embarrassment and a source of validation that you had made it. Ancestrally, money is complicated. Were we not bought and sold? I am not sure that money is neutral. I don't know if money is simply a reflection of our intentions. Can individual intention transform a wound created by collective consciousness? How do you transform the wound?

Healer. That is what I am. I am the symbol of everything that you did not want to become in my family. My dad tried, "Don't you want a job on Wall Street?" He never could accept that I was an artist. I was thinking, "Sure, I can bring flowers to the brokers and tell them that their worth is not their work." I can just imagine running around wall street handing out flowers and saying, "You are beautiful just as you are!" I would be ushered out quickly.

Worse, I am a healer artist. As I slowly began to come out to my family, I remember one of my cousins said, "Okay, we need to sit down and talk about this healer thing, I mean....surely you cannot make any money from doing that?" I stuttered and tried to spit words here and there on terms that sounded like I could put spiritual work on terms that he could hear, but to him, I was just lost, searching. Spiritual work often does not fit into traditional models, yet it was also true that I did have a plan (just not one that he could hear): My plan was to listen deeply and move. As one friend put it recently, "You are walking the path of the mystic artist." What does that mean? I am broke.

What does it mean to be broke?

I tried working at a law firm one time and I lasted 6 months (was it that long? Hmmm not sure), tried to fit in, become a lawyer, embody the external indicators of success (clothes), but I truly believe that deprivation comes when we walk the path of denial of who we are and when I was working at that law firm, I had more money than I ever dreamed and was more broken than I could ever remember. I have finally come to a clearing, a space where I literally have nothing to lose and the understanding that I can only be who I am and to love how I am-in the world-even when it does not make sense to anybody outside of me. It takes courage to follow your heart, it really does.

Yet, I am tired of dichotomies: do great work for the world and have an empty fridge or work for some muckitymucks, sell your soul and prosper. As a spiritual leader, I find the dichotomies more pronounced: feed the poor and deny yourself in the name of God or preach prosperity and ignore the poor in the name of God. Who are we outside of either or? Do we get to have it all: our spiritual integrity, service and prosperity? I remember sitting on a plane once and as usual the person sitting next to me tells me their who life story. This time, the man sitting next to me was an older soul from NYC and we started talking about money. He challenged my fundamental belief that love wins when he said, "I'm telling you, kid only cruel people win."

I felt naive, idealistic and somehow in the face of his absolute certainty, I said, "Oh really? Well, maybe I should be cruel then?" I immediately felt silly as soon as I said it. He smiled and he patted my hand and said, "No, I think you should stay nice. We need nice people in the world too." My mom used to have a cup with a man with a screw through his body and it said, "This is what happens to nice people." I was sitting in an Irish bar in England one time and this drunk Scottish man meandered over to me and said, "You are nice." I guess I can only be what I am.

Well, I guess I am writing this blog to experiment with the notion that I can be who I am -a sensitive healing artist and all around nice gal- and prosper. I am writing to give myself permission to live outside the activist/capitalist and spiritual leader/prosperity preacher dichotomy and to reconcile prosperity with ancestral legacy.

I am committed to healing the inheritances that I have internalized, so that I may authentically be of service to others. I am healing the inheritances so that I may show up more fully- in my power- in the world.