OK Melissa Ferrick fans, doesn't my employer Denise Attwood look a *little* bit like her in this picture (modeling a hand block jacket that SHE designed using the material from a women's co-op in Nepal)? Today (OK yesterday) I was totally grateful for Denise. I have been working on a big project at work and she came in and set a deadline for me based on "Mercury going Retrograde". LOVE it. It's cleary superstitious, and we both know this, and yet there's a little part of us that is willing to take this important information into account! I am grateful for Denise for her ability to start with where a person is at (producer in Nepal, her employees, her son) and encourage, them, with enthusiasm and creativity, to reach their potential. I love and appreciate her commitment to "being naughty" and refusing to use the paradigms handed to us through culture and society, and helping those around her to embrace the possibilities we must uncover ourselves. I was grateful to have a conversation about the meaning of gratitude, and grateful that from that converation she sent me off with a beautiful quote from Rilke and an inspiring book by the Quaker and activist Paul Farmer for me to read on the plane to Portland. I am grateful for her to be able to work together, in collaboration to design and create! I am grateful for her ability to bridge our work with the producers in Nepal whom she has worked with for 24 years and make their lives more real for us so that we can carry that into the spirit we bring to our work day.
1 comment:
Which Paul Farmer book are you reading? I read Tracy Kidder's biography about him, Mountains Beyond Mountains. The man is inspiring but I don't remember reading that he is a Quaker.
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