I was re-reminded of my purpose (for want of a better term) while reading this via Time magazine about J.K. Rowling's new online venture, Pottermore:
Sadly the reporter admits they don't perceive miracle and magic abounding. But hey I've been there too.
Even as recently as a few months ago, the world seemed confining, and confounding. Now, suspending belief and lies, a boundless radiance is present.
BTW, that purpose I'd nearly forgotten... it's called ENCHANTMENT.
Let me back up a bit, okay way back.
When I was starting a freelance consulting business in 1995, I went it alone for a year (this was before the virtual watercooler now known as Twitter existed). It's not that I absolutely needed peers, but there was an undeniable desire to have playmates to chat and bounce ideas with that might understand what I was navigating too.
Most of my buddies had jobs, and couldn't relate (nor care) to the uncertainty and other rewards and challenges of free agents. Also, I was starting an online magazine at the time (long gone now, it was called AwesomeWomen.net) and hired a part-time researcher/writer to help me with that side-gig too. To make a long story short, that's how I became actively engaged with the local Women's Business Center and National Association for Women Business Owners (NAWBO).
For many years, those were my peers--we had diverse businesses, yet fundamentally a common journey that isn't necessarily a mainstream journey forged deep bonds between us.
Another time I created a peer network rather than seeking a ready-made group. About two to three months after surviving one of the largest natural disasters of the last century-- Indian Ocean tsunami, I roped my housemates at the time into co-creating a weekly group that met at our home on Sunday evenings called Daring to Live an Authentic Life. Among the messages (many others as well--outside scope of this post) that I grokked through that experience was one that insisted, "Don't settle." Steve Jobs summed up that message a few months after Daring to Live an Authentic Life group sprouted:
"Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." - Steve Jobs, commencment speech at Stanford University, June 14, 2005
At that time, I was yearning to have some mutual support in applying spiritual principles and simply being true to myself in a world that seemed (to my perception at that moment in personal history) not to necessarily reinforce a natural, unique direction of being.
"Living is my job and my art." - Michel De Montaigne
That hints at why fairly recently I began forging a virtual roundtable called Encanto.
It's not Hogswarts--as that'd be a bit more of the old-school-lecture do-as-I-say-model. Hogswarts however does provide, in my opinion, a way for Harry to have even more fun (and mischief) with playmates Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger than he may have had in a hermitage. My intent is to lean more towards King Arthur's Roundtable where we're surrounded with fellow peers on a common journey of self-mastery (and I'll dare say self-wizardry).
Blogs, as most websites do, tend (certainly not universal, just tendency) to invite skimming more than diving. Also blogs, being public websites available at a click of a mouse to anyone that can rustle time on a computer anywhere anytime in the world, tend to invite passersby through on their way to another destination. I know loads of people alight on Crossroads Dispatches looking for an image of stardust chess, faerie truffles, a diagram of a medieval alchemical crucibles, an essay on an essayist, or an article on Google's internal product development process--and then, poof! move along on their merry way.
Alas, as much as I'd adore public blogs (as a format), they don't match my wish for depth, intimacy, delving, diving--they aren't designed as a prime vehicle for a circle, or a roundtable, of explorers delving into the magical realms of infinite existence itself.
Encanto's intention is to be a vital, lived, engaged experience rather than a passive, drive-through experience. This Friday, July 1 midnight ends the introductory pricing ($25/month) to the Encanto circle. Then an entirely new chapter in delving into the magic of life begins ($58/month unless I hear a whisper from a griffin that it ought be otherwise). The number of magicians at any one time enchanting and engaging is capped at 25 to sustain its intimate Roundtable look and feel (there may be ebb-and-flow and circulation of members).
As always, the public blog shall continue its own unique expression, and I am honored that you are part of that journey as well, whether this is a stepping-stone from a Google search or you are a long-time confidant.
ART CREDITS: Thought of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party since a roundtable need not be round; illustration "Knights of the Round Table Summoned to the Quest by the Strange Damsel" by Edward Burne Jones (via The Textile Blog: Edward Burne-Jones 'Quest for the Holy Grail' Tapestries--they're all beautiful); a still of the Hogwarts dining hall from first movie with Harry Potter's companions on the journey--Ron and Hermione
Hi Evelyn, this posting made me somewhat self-conscious about my behavior. i come, i look, i read, i enjoy, i get inspired, and then leave, without a comment. Well, recently, i have been on a different page. i look around me to try to find people who believe in the magic of life. i get "age of miracles expired long ago." well, i dare to believe otherwise, and i come here to replenish my belief through your writings. i have started an arabic blog, just recently, and my intention for it is to create a place where believers in magic can come to be inspired as well, to move into enchantment, which is indeed a place inside ourselves. Thank you.
Posted by: Doaatoday.blogspot.com | Jul 03, 2011 at 01:59 AM