Angela's house
Since February 2010, I've been meeting regularly with a Conversation Circle, a group of women who get together to have intentional conversations. Our first round of conversations was about Community and after several months of discussion, we gathered two months in a row at Angela's, spread out art supplies, and made plates. The first symbolized what was on our relationship plate at that time and the next what we would like on our relationship plate. The whole process of listening to stories, reflecting on my plate, and deciding what I'd like to be on my plate was a very liberating activity. I've never had friends like them and I cherish our every interaction.
My first plate had lots of vegetables, a salad, a chicken breast, berry cheesecake, chocolate cake, and caramel apple. The majority of my plate had a blue background representing what I share with my husband and kids while a smaller purple piece was mine alone. We now share a new vocabulary. I will refer to someone as "the vegetables" or to a group as "a staple diet" or to a great conversationalist as "the chocolate cake." We also now update each other about "what's on our relationship plate."
My second plate surprised me by becoming about terrain- tropical rainforests and waterfalls and lone trees and mountains with an unexpected purple cactus garden in the mountain valley. This is about wild, untamed life, the unanticipated paths I take, and about finding myself in a purple garden, surprised to be there among friends. I'm still leaning into these images and find myself hearkening back to a drive through the rain forest of Costa Rica. I had left my American life to make dear friends in Costa Rica and was now leaving them, too. I looked out the window at the green, green, green of the jungle and God whispered in my heart that my life was not going to be a garden with tidy rows of seeds I'd labeled but that my life was going to be a wild, green tropical rainforest- full of life and death and waterfalls and who knows what- alive and rich beyond comprehension or controlling. I have seen this come to pass in the years since, sometimes alone, sometimes in vibrant life, sometimes in interminable climbs. And sometimes, for a season, with the cacti in bloom.
My Relationship Plate as of Spring 2010 and My Plate of the Future
