Waiting ...

I’ve spent a great deal of time waiting the last two months.  Waiting can be exhilarating, tedious, a practice in patience, tiring, full of anticipation, frustrating.  It all depends upon the circumstances surrounding the waiting and whether or not the person waiting has any control over why they are waiting or what they are waiting for.

Waiting to recover from an illness is frustrating.  Your mind is ready to go full-tilt, but your body must have time to recover before it can run smoothly again.  Much of my waiting during the winter has been this.  It’s like taking the car in for service to have one thing fixed and being told there are three other repairs that have to be done now.

Waiting for a Gathering or Meeting (as in meeting another person) that is anticipated to bring great joy and delight is a practice in patience.  We can put our time to good use in preparing for the arrival of Joy.  We can be mindful of how we are proceeding with our wait.

Julie and Cathryn

Jessica Baris and me

Daoist Temple in Chinatown

Waiting for an Event that is sure to offer more than advertised is exhilarating.  Everyone loves getting a good deal, don’t they?  I waited all of January and a bit of February for such an Event.  It proved to be well-worth the wait.  Thanks to Storyteller, Cathryn Fairlee, for her invitation to spend Chinese New Year with her and my cousin, Peggy, for a great time in San Francisco!  Also while in San Francisco, I was pleased to meet in person Wakeful Storyteller, Jessica Baris, whom I had just met a few days earlier via Skype thanks to Buck Creacy and his World of Storytelling Radio.


Waiting for a well-deserved Reward that is having difficulties putting in an appearance is frustrating.  Most of us desire our promised rewards on time.  Come on, we deserve it, don’t we?



Waiting for a Gift is full of anticipation.  Anticipation is titillating, exciting and makes the waiting all seem worthwhile.  





Denver International Airport

Waiting in an airport as I was doing when I wrote this because flight connections did not work (the wind gods plotted on high resulting in a five hour wait) is tedious and tiring. But at least I had something to occupy my mind (my book to read was with me instead of in my suitcase and the internet is free!) and could take a walk to exercise my body. I could have been bored or surreptitiously eaves dropped on others' conversations and watched people scurrying about. Which is, of course, way more fun than being bored!  I wish I had known about the quotation from Diane Wolkstein which is on the window in the B Concourse (thanks to Regina Ress for letting us know about this wonderful tribute) because I would have gone to see it.  Now I must wait until I fly again!

So there are all kinds of waiting.  What do you like or dislike waiting for?

© Julie Moss Herrera, 2013

A Family, A Community

 

The end of last month (June, 2012) a magical place was discovered along the Ohio River, just south of Cincinnati in Covington, KY.  A hollow tree?  A magic carpet?  A cottage in the woods?  No, a riverfront hotel where the keepers of story and stories came together for almost a week of fun, frolic, telling, listening, sharing, hugging, meeting, greeting, reminiscing.  It was the NSN (National Storytelling Network) Conference to Remember.

Two years ago, for the first time, I attended the NSN Conference in another magical place not too far from the Pacific Ocean – northern LA area.  I went knowing very few people.  I met storytellers from all over, I made new friends, I told some stories, I listened a lot, I stretched and grew and grew, and continued stretching and growing once I left that magical place by the sea.

What a journey it has been.  With breath-taking stops in other magical places - several places in Florida, Abilene, San Antonio, Albany and Lake Geneva - along with hours of writing; so I signed up for another magical ride.  And now I know who my Community is. I know where to find them. I know how to achieve my goals. I am full to the brim with the Joy of Story and Storytelling friends.  And to top it all off, I felt as if I had gone home when I arrived across the River from Cincinnati.  My Family was waiting, welcoming me with open arms.

         

  Here, in no particular order, are a few of the people who have touched my life so positively in the last two years.  Thank you to them and to the others who are not pictured here.  All these beautiful pictures were taken by Paul Porter at that Magical Place on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River.  Thank you, Paul, for allowing me to share them with others.

Clockwise from the top David Claunch, Jim May, Noa Baum with Loren Neimi in the background, Lyn Ford, Charlotte Blake-Alston, Cathryn Fairlee, Mary Grace Ketner, Elizabeth Ellis and Megan Hicks just below.