Today a young girl from India named Anita spoke to me. She told me something that literally made me get butterflies in my stomach, because I knew it was true. "You Lead the World" she said. "Me?!?!" I answered from the deep pit of my stomach. "I am not ready," my rant began. "Let those other people lead the world. I am not smart enough, I don't have the contacts and besides that, I barely have time to parent my children, clean my house, go grocery shopping and do my life work. I am not ready, Anita. What makes you think it is I who lead the world?" I kept seeing her brown eyes and her clearly spoken words, in a different language than mine, with subtitles. "You lead the world." I did what many other busy American women would do in such a circumstance. I headed to the kitchen and bit into a stashed away Hershey's miniature for a quick burst of chocolate energy.
I had been reading blog posts from a number of my friends (Julie Daley, Jen Louden, Dian Reid)about a project called The Girl Effect. Naturally, given my work with a variety of projects like Eve Enslers VDay movement for the past seven years and my ongoing work with the women's movement, I was intrigued.
It is through the efforts of bloggers working on the Girl Effect that Anita and I found each other.
And then I did something not as many American women would do in such a circumstance. I started to create art in response to what I heard from Anita and what I had seen on the Girl Effect video, right after I took off the overflowing trash in my kitchen and put on a pot of coffee.
I mindlessly put the trash in my outdoor trashcan and came back inside, rolled up my sleeves, grabbed some paint, my notebook and camera to document my internal, creative listening and outward expression when all of a sudden something completely off topic gripped me. "The bug. The little fly on the trashcan this morning. Ohmigawsh, ohmigawsh!"
Earlier today I had walked past my out door trash can and spotted a fly on its way to death. It was unusual to me: yellow and black with intricate wing detail. At first glance I thought it was dead already. I briefly thought to take a photo but decided to do that later after I got Samuel on the bus to school and after my morning routines were out of the way.
I ran to find the dying fly after my trash-fest and saw it was no longer there, where it had been earlier. I actually surveyed the drive way with my eyes, looking for the dead insect. I felt an obligation to it, I wanted to witness its colorful, unique, highly detailed wings and before I could be awake enough to remember, it was gone. Perhaps a meal for a bird, perhaps it flew away in a final attempt to let life force take it to its destiny, maybe it was copying its marsupial kin and playing possum when I first saw it. Maybe it was dancing in the autumn breeze.
I just knew it was lost to me.
Just like I could so easily ignore Anita's call to lead the world. Just like we, in our comfy, cushy, many-steps-removed-from-Anita's-earlier-visceral-poverty-life.
I poured a blob of paint on paper and I used my hands to smoosh it around. I wanted to be intimate with the paint. I didn't want to be separate from it by using a brush or a sponge or any of my usual tools. I wanted to dive into the paint. I looked at my hand and used it as a print.
I got a nudge to burn the paper's edge, so I did. At first it looked like the paper wouldn't burn and wasn't burning. The embers, the edge of the paper, was creeping along. It was burning, invisibly. I blew it out. I used the soot as a second layer of paint. I used the soot to write YOU on the paper. I painted a second, deeper toned YOU. I got another nudge to burn it.
I struck the match. "Burn right under the YOU." So I did. I went directly to YOU and touched it with the flame from the match.
It started visibly burning. It was a fast moving flame. I couldn't blow it out quickly. It was too much for the water I had brought to the table. I ran to the sink and turned on the water, putting out the fire of the YOU. The fire of the center of the art I was creating, the fire that threatened and in a very paradoxically way, celebrated, all what the Girl Effect and Anita's words spoke to me this morning.
It took a moment to catch my breath. I held the burned paper in my left hand, heaving. So close. So dangerous. So strange to purposefully burn, to create danger. To enter fear's sanctuary and take a moment to worship there to come to know it intimately.
My kitchen smells like fire.
My creative space is burned, crisp, with sooty remnants from the fire on the edge of my table, by my laptop computer, my coffee mug, my telephone.
Anita told me "You lead the world" so I invited fear into my chest.
It was my RSVP, this new relationship with fear. The power of presence in the fear sanctuary. Being in its center, feeling my own presence as the fire took over the "U" of YOU and the "O" of YOU and now the "Y" stood, alone. Brave, scarred, filled with expectance.
I know passion in a new way.
I touch my face.
I hadn't noticed I am crying.
I heard you, Anita. Today, I am saying YES.
I am not sure exactly how my world leadership will help you and the other millions of girls in poverty across the planet, but I will soon as I live the question, "In what way am I leading the world to end poverty for girls across the world today?"
And what excites me even more, that you - out there, reading... have the chance to make an important choice today, too.
Listen to Anita now.
And see what it is we are working toward here, one girl at a time across the planet.
The Clock is ticking.
The best way to stay in touch with me and seeing how I continue to take on Anita's challenge is either through my blog - right here, or via my ezine, Daily Passion Activator. To subcribe to Daily Passion Activator, click here and sign up for free on the Yahoogroup page.
Or feel free to follow me on twitter: @juliejordanscot
Let's show Anita and the other girls we are with them in our own Girl Effect efforts. Let's cheer each other on and change the world - Lead the World... together.
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