“Relax” — perhaps not your first title for this image.
How long has this homely garden gnome kissed the dirt? Someone seems pretty lax in their landscaping.
Re: Lax.
Lax can mean slipshod. Slapdash.
Lax also denotes loosened muscles and limbs. Deepened ease.
Perhaps it’s a continuum?
Test Case.
A dear friend is throwing a party. She wants my help.
Guests will retell their conversion experience, 3 minutes per person.
An artist assigned to each table will take notes on their stories.
- ~20 minutes for listening
- ~25 minutes to create something, in response
- ~5 minutes to present it … publicly
Large room, long guest list.
Her request—seemingly impossible—suggests … extraordinary possibility.
Can it be done?
Keen attention and presence must marry crunch-time spontaneity.
Seat-of-the-pants is not how I roll.
Relax … how?
The party-room vibrates with expectation.
Pacing, I roll my neck and shoulders. Must lighten up, loosen my mind, let the nerves go lax.
I’d drop right now like a jazz dancer, collapse face-down, if I could, like the garden gnome—preferably under a table—let everyone carry on without me.
Relax. Now.
Gnome comes from an ancient Greek word, meaning “to know.” Despite my fear, I know grace has my back.
I choose a table. Memorable stories unspool.
Afterward, we artists retreat with our notes to another room while the guests eat.
Help me help me help me
25 minutes evaporate.
Showtime.
I cradle my efforts: the distillation of 5 stories rich with surprise and hope, rife with my cross-outs, arrows, and asterisks. My version is slapdash, yet deeply felt.
I teach the crowd the refrain, and we speak it aloud between each section:
“You were born from God’s longing. And here you are.”
They hear it. I hear it. Together, we relax into the impossible.
GNOME
What is a face plant but a dance,
staged alongside possible ruin,
another garden-variety hero,
toppled, among the shrubs,
clownish, inept. Unarmed.
Face-down is one nosedive
prayer embodies: the sudden
gravity, slapstick’s kissing cousin.
Practice pratfalls. Lean into the spill,
each bruise an inside turn, toward grace.
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“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” —Rumi
What helps you relax into the impossible?
