faithfully doubtful

“There can’t be any true faith that isn’t susceptible to enormous sieges of doubt. ”

— Adam Gopnik on On Being - Practicing Doubt, Redrawing Faith

March 29, 2016 - Daily Notes

Last night before yoga, I was sitting next to a beautiful woman. I know her a little. We've spoken before, about art school. She's attending. She is not in her twenties.

It was a brave thing to do, leaving her job and going back to school to study art. One year ago I remember she was questioning whether she had made the right decision.

So last night I asked her, "How is art school going?" She told me the first term had been filled with self-doubt but this second term is different, better. I could see it it in her eyes and to me it looked like confidence.

I asked her, "What is your favorite part of the experience right now?" She thought about it, then told me it is the slow unfolding of making something that happens by simply showing up for it every day.

The hardest part, she told me, is really just getting there. Once she is at school it is like being on a slide and everything glides down into form. Day by day.

She said it feels like faith and doubt. As though her faith in her own ability to create is being formed by and could not exist without her uncertainty, her hesitation, her insecurity.

I thought about an interview I heard last autumn on OnBeing with the author, Adam Gopnik. Something he said struck the chord in my heart that often says, "write this down" and so I did. He said, "There can't be any true faith that isn't susceptible to enormous sieges of doubt." 

Sitting there on my mat, my mind instantly wound from this woman's story to my own. Yes, there are days I feel confident that starting Lucia was the right thing to do. I do have faith it will succeed. Sometimes. But there are also days when I have enormous sieges of doubt.

So I come back to my journals, my circle of women friends, my heart. I sit at my computer and write a small blog post before starting my "real" work day. I do my best to get to myself to my version of art school. I show up. This is my faith. It is in motion, in progress, fluid, and full of doubt. Faithfully doubtful.

Maybe the questioning of our own abilities is what causes us to look for something larger than ourselves. Maybe that "something larger" lies in the simple act of showing up for our work each day. Bit by bit, we make. We practice faith and we create.

xo
laura

slow clothing and a silversmith

March 12, 2016 - Daily Notes

On Saturday mornings I ease my right foot from the gas pedal of life and gently begin to apply the brakes. I try to slow down. This morning, I am thinking about the beauty and power of slowness and how it applies to growing Lucia.

Lucia Issue Two : Perfection was released this month and the mysterious woman on our cover is Shelli Markee. She is a silversmith and a deep breath of busy gratitude, clean imperfection, and the slow making of worn magic. A few days ago I received this email from her:

"I'm sitting in this beautiful new clothing shop on Beacon Hill. The owner is an amazing woman. She is taking on my collection for her store. I showed her your journal and she would love to sell it here. Her name is Mia Fioravanti."

The next day, I found myself sitting in a vintage armchair in the spacious, light-filled, on-street studio storefront of Fioravanti. They make slow clothing and just opened a few weeks ago. 

Across from me was Mia, the founder and designer, whose silver-blue eyes told me the story of a lifetime of experience, creativity, and vision, without words. Her daughter, Wysdom, sat across from us, the youthful face of a twenty-something design apprentice enmeshed with the presence of an old soul. A stack of Lucia was in my lap and we were discussing the excitement of starting something new and the power of starting something slow.

Mia's father owned a 100-year-old multi-generational woolen mill before it closed in 1968. She grew up watching her mother get dressed in clothing made from fabric her father had produced. Mia and Wysdom's sewing machines, worktables, and reams of fabric take up the back right quarter of their combination studio boutique. Seeing their gorgeous (and affordable!) clothing hanging in the front of the store and, with a soft sweep of my eye, gazing at the seat and machine where it was all made...filled me with inspiration.

Fioravanti feels like an absolute right place for Lucia to be found. I am proud and honored to have them join our growing little family of stockists.

In a warm display near the back of the store are Shelli's exquisite pieces. Her jewelry evokes a sense of what is essential and unseen. Slight flaws in the hand-forged copper, silver and brass conjure vitality the way freckles bring an Irish face to life. 

When we met last summer, Shelli told me both of her grandfathers were blacksmiths but she didn't start this work until she was forty. Now, a decade later, she is creating incredible work and still going slow. She said:

"I want to focus on that eighty-year-old woman. I want to look back on my life and feel happy with the way I've lived instead of thinking, 'I wish I had.'"

I like this slow feeling. The right people seem to be discovering Lucia this way. She is finding her tribe, her home, her circle, her place in the world as she grows. We all are, aren't we?

Go slow, breathe deep, connect sincerely, and they will find you, too.

xo
laura

p.s. Go visit Mia and Wysdom in person or online at miafioravanti.com.

p.p.s. Go visit Shelli Markee in person or online at shellimarkee.com

a new container

March 9, 2016 - Daily Notes

“It’s like all in one weekend I outgrew my old container. Now I’m sitting out here in the open air wondering how on earth I’m going to build a new one big enough to hold my life again.”

I said this to a best friend on the phone last night.

She said she feels it too. Vulnerable. Excited. Full of potential. Terrified. Do you know this feeling? I think it is also called "growth." Which makes sense because it is March. Spring is arriving. The plants are doing it too. We are all outgrowing our containers. It feels fast, but in truth we've been stirring in the dark soil for the whole long winter. It's time now.

I came home from Orcas Island on my birthday Monday afternoon and it felt like I had dreamed the whole thing. I found myself sitting in an ever-widening circle of women on Sunday night, listening to stories, making connections, and feeling myself become part of a healing that runs deep and wide, from Eastsound to Washington, D.C., and beyond. I sat with them for five hours. I was exactly where I needed to be.

I had not told any of these beautiful women who gathered one by one around a little table in the back corner of the New Leaf Cafe that my dream for the past three years has been to one day have a home and a partner and a life on the island. It's a tender vision, an early-stage composition with only a few sweet notes drawn onto the music page. Too personal to detail or mention in passing to strangers for fear it might get lost before I can write it down. But they knew. They knew.

I do not know how to build this new container yet. Last weekend the old one fell away and my friend on the phone last night reminded me this uncomfortable feeling is not bad, it's good. It's necessary. It's okay. We must witness our growth stages for what they are, not straight lines protected by the same four walls until completed, but winding roads and stop-start-stop-start sensations. There are going to be moments, months, maybe even years where the vision is not completed, so we shed old shell after old shell, like a snail moving forward through time.

Breathe, I remind myself. Go slow. Go fast when it's warranted. Pay attention. Say yes when it feels right. Say no thank you when it feels wrong. Building this new container will take time. Composing our lives is the work of...well, it's the work of a lifetime.

Happy Spring.

xo
laura