A Butterfly Mission Statement

“Why should I pay attention to you?” asks the friend who has volunteered to give Sarsa and me constructive criticism to help Mariposa survive. She’s read my bio and wants to know more about my credentials and experience. I get it; the bio is pretty blah. I just threw something together to get us started, and it doesn’t really say much about me. I wasn’t sure how to craft it - to fit in - to what? To best match myself to this position, I guess. Wait, didn’t someone say that “fitting in” is the antithesis to belonging?* Let me chew on that.

We also need an overhaul of our mission statement. It’s just that we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of something, trying to figure out what we are doing here and how to keep the thing alive. How the mission we inherited collides with what we bring to the table and what we ultimately want. How to participate in a way that feeds us, figuratively… and literally. 

I am realizing that I need to streamline at this stage in the game of life. Mariposa’s mission must merge seamlessly with my personal mission, if I am going to continue doing this. I no longer have the bandwidth or available energy to compartmentalize my work as I have been doing. It needs to be one big, juicy thing rather than a bunch of little things strung together exhausting me with running from one to the next. I need to eradicate all pretense as much as possible, including the contortions I have adopted in order to better fit in - into the workforce - while keeping alive my inner search for juice - and true belonging - on the side. 

I am revisiting my personal mission statement. Currently it consists of two parts (two wings, if you will). The first wing I came up with shortly before moving to Paonia: “I am available to co-create a joyful, meaningful experience of Village life with you.” I capitalize the V to represent the knowing I believe we all carry in our bones from hundreds of thousands of years of human experience encoded in our DNA, of what Village life is. This mission statement is radically feminine, open and receptive, the matrix fertile and unformed, ready to create and sustain life. The boundary words are “joyful and meaningful,” which are left up to me to interpret, based on my internal guidance system of embodied feeling. 

The second wing of my mission statement became more clear to me through Joel Glanzberg’s Pattern Mind retreat in April. He gave us the prompt: “To __________, so that ____________, in order to _____________.” This points toward the masculine, goal-oriented counterpart to my first statement. How about this: “I want to hold intentional space for community, so that we can discover and develop our individual gifts and paths of purpose, in order to help grow us ever further along an initiatory path leading through adulthood into true elderhood.” That feels about right. I want to hold space for humans to engage in remembering how to Human. I want to catalyze the exploration of the concept of “interthrival,” a word that came to me shortly after I moved to Paonia. It is an adaptation of “survival,” where all members thrive, but none at the expense of any of the others. 

I have been guided through life along an initiatory path to connect with and grow into my purpose. The inner compass has two magnetic poles: one compelling toward through feelings like joy, freedom and even longing, and the other repelling - through the opposite feelings. I have been led to learn from living indigenous wisdom, from the land, and from ancestors. Much of my guidance comes from the unseen world of Spirit. I am not claiming any one clear lineage, but am influenced by multiple paths of wisdom, because that is what my soul and my life purpose have required. 

So what could I do to makeover that bio? Maybe something like this: 

Hi, I’m Amber. My guiding job title is Collaborative Experiential Artist. I am trained and have years of experience as a Waldorf teacher. I have studied and sat intentionally in ritual with Dagara teacher Sobonfu Somé. I have studied Plant Spirit Medicine with Eliot Cowan at the Blue Deer Center. I have danced for years and found mentorship through Coalessence Ecstatic Dance in Eugene, Oregon, and I have been facilitating a monthly Ecstatic-style dance in Paonia since 2023. I have attended and led songs at many song circles stemming from the Singing Alive movement, and I have listened and received songs beside creeks and rivers over the years. I founded and led a Red Tent Temple-inspired women’s new moon circle monthly for years, culminating in a Red Tent House where we held many creative Village-building events: some for women and some for everyone. I have collaborated and helped organize young men’s and young women’s initiations, coming of age education and peer mentorship circles for girls, ancestral skill sharing events, seasonal theater and seasonal community ceremonies, dream sharing and active dreaming circles, individual and small group rituals for life transitions and healing, community grief rituals, and conflict resolution rituals. I created and led a couple of yearlong ceremonies consisting of five weekend immersions I call “Five Pilgrimages,” based on a Chinese medicine five element worldview, in collaboration with place, as a group exploration of life phases and initiatory process. I’ve put together several websites to communicate about what I am up to in the world. The latest is Heart of the Village Paonia. I have two Bachelor of Arts degrees, mostly as a byproduct of my younger self’s deep seeking for understanding of the current world and my place within it. One is in creative writing with a minor in French; the other is in environmental studies. I traveled abroad for a semester in Paris, and I participated in the Tahoe-Baikal Institute’s summer environmental exchange program, spending five weeks each at Lake Baikal in Siberia and Lake Tahoe in California. I have studied the equivalent of four years of college level Russian language. 

I’m probably leaving out something important! Yes, I have also gardened. I am most drawn to grow three sisters - Corn, Beans and Squash - as a sacred, relational garden. This is my third season working alongside Sarsa with the Mariposa Ascendente garden. It’s been an incredible journey so far. We are going to need a lot of help if we’re going to continue tending our relationship with this Being of a garden.

Please join us to help dream in what is next.  

*I believe this was also something Joel said during the Pattern Mind retreat. Thank you. Still chewing…