“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.

+++

“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?

Should you wish to create a similar celebration:
My friend’s O Holy Night Party gathered seasoned dancers, writers, artists, a table maven, and a musician; great food, beautifully presented; stunning stories, each teller newly-luminous in remembrance, which happens when we recount aloud moments that changed everything.

“You were born from God’s longing.” Peter G. van Breeman, God Who Won’t Let Go
“Relax into the impossible.” Susan Cowger

*No gnomes were harmed in the making of this post.