The Real Street of Dreams Ch2

The Blue Star Gazette

	The REAL STREET OF DREAMS Chapter 3: Rising Courage by Jai Tiger Reed, Editor The moment had come…there he on his knees, his fingers resting lightly upon my wrist. These were the words I had longer to hear since I started seeing him over three years ago. These were the words that were the motivation to carry out the changes that our relationship required and now, unexpectedly, that special moment in every woman’s life had come. He looked up at me, his compassionate eyes twinkling with love and caring and said, “Jai, you have beautiful liver qi!” “I’m a miracle of Chinese Medicine!” I replied to Piper Dunlap, my TCM Practitioner. “Yes, you are! Quite a change from when we first started!” he answered. “Your liver pulse was barely perceptible. Who would have thought then that you would be so fully in your own authentic life and even building a house now?” “You!” I answered, for Piper’s faith never wavered, even when mine did. Yet I held to the body’s ability to heal itself, made the changes, drank my herbs, and learned to appreciate needles. The formula for Rising Courage consists of two parts faith and three parts perseverance, Zhu ru, Zhi shi, and Ban xia. “Doubts make Bricks” It was just something he said during our training, but it went deep into me as I tried again to perform the move correctly. ‘Doubts make bricks.’ The next day out building I thought, “Oh, how I had walled myself in!” But that was the past” I said to myself as I scraped the ice from the rafter with the claw of my hammer before nailing the drywall blocking to it. I looked at Megan in her red winter cap and down vest, climbing deftly like an elf between the roof trusses her tool belt dangling, her breath icy in the winter air. “Jai, could you have ever imagined that the second floor of your home would be covered with snow and ice? Look at your bedroom floor!” she laughed. I looked and took in the full view. I love the snow and there it was, piles of snow and ice, filling the inside of the second floor of my new house who stood bravely without a roof against the high winds and freezing temperatures. In this kind of cold, it was exhausting just walking up and down the stairs of the house. We longed for hot chocolate and made slow progress. Most of the ice was scraped and most of the drywall blocking went up that cold cold cold afternoon on Shasta Place. Rising courage takes trying. 6 feet is 72 inches The entire group was feeling the pressure. The housing authority managing our program needed us to complete our home in eight months (usual time is one year) or they were at risk to loose their funding. Our building supervisor was at his end with the pressure they were putting on him to get us to be ‘more productive’. Yes, two snowstorms and a hurricane had slowed us down but our faithful group and excellent regular volunteers persevered. Still, after the meetings everyone tried to dig a little deeper. One of the jobs that had to be completed by the end of the weekend was to finish the garage walls on Kristina’s house. I enjoy framing and had gotten skilled at it so I led the work on building and setting the three walls. The first wall had to be connected to the existing wall. Kristina and I hesitated. “Can we do it ourselves?” we wondered. “Let’s try” we decided and soon we had the walls pinned together like two pro carpenters. “Wow. Look how perfect that looks! You can’t even tell its two pieces!” Kristina said. “Remember when we were first learning to use the saw? Did you ever think we’d be able to do something like this all by ourselves?” I asked. Tuesday Megan met me with an unsure look on her face. “Jai, there’s something I have to tell you. You know the garage walls you worked on? You know the little one? Well, you cut the 6 foot studs to 60 inches...but it was expertly crafted!” Mrs. Vicious (my inner critic) really got a hold of that one. I walked our street reciting, “6 feet is 72 inches” to fend off the barrage of negative self-talk. I gave her one last rant and ended it. The formula for Rising Courage is allowing your mistakes. “No doubt’ in the natural world.” I had waited months for him to elucidate the teachings on doubt. “Doubt is not natural. There is no doubt in the natural world.” I tried to picture a lion with doubts. We each looked into our unique sources of self-doubts – negative thinking, fear, trauma, childhood voices, life experiences seemingly too difficult. Doubt comes like cast iron prison balls and chains - firm statements like “I’ll never be able to do that.” “I’ll get sick if I work so hard.” “I can’t handle this.” Master NuNu now adds his third sentence: “With doubt, there is no action.” I am thunderstruck of how this truth captures the dark years where I was so stuck and my liver qi was dying. Later he continues, “Uncertainty is natural. In uncertainty there is action.” I realize that action moves doubt. This is the place of real courage – between frozen in doubt to the tentative lands of first trying. In faith and trust, we push into something healthy and life giving – uncertainty. Like building the second story on a house, we raise our courage and our life qi. There is uncertainty in trying and it raises our life force. Through action, through trying, through persevering through uncertainty, we can find certainty, confidence. This gives courage a solid structure, a concrete foundation. The formula for Rising Courage is clarity of what your doubts are clouding. In the Hole It was one of those days when even the most inspired artist would be too dull to take out her camera. I was teamed up with Bryan, my son, and Sophie, my 17 year-old friend. While I was talking to someone else, Sophie had volunteered us for the concrete job. “Well, I’m interested in learning to work with concrete. I think I’ll like it.” She replied to my wide-eyed look. “Common, it’ll be fun!” she adds as I glare. It was barely 30 degrees and the hose we needed snaked across terrain that looked like tundra. Before we got to have ‘fun’ with the concrete, the three-foot pier pad holes for the deck supports had to be dug and widen, the wooden boxes set into the holes and leveled. The shovel I drove into the dirt felt like I had struck rock. “Get the pick axe the dirt is frozen.” The belief “There’s no way!” has become something more pure and naïve, the ‘just doing’ of a thing. But on a day like this one, my mind kept itself busy singing songs of misery. As I climbed into the first hole it offers solace “At least you’re not in a woman’s prison.” As I dig out the second hole and try to level the box, it offers “Imagine what it would be like to be in a woman’s prison and be forced to work like this everyday for nothing.” By the time I try for the ninth time to level the box in the third hole, my being believes I am in a woman’s prison work camp with no way out. I am covered in mud and freezing and I cannot get the box level. Tera walks by, catches my mood, looks at me and laughs, “Why Jai, where’s your camera?” she teases. “Fun” with the concrete became breaking the ice chunks from the hose, hauling 60 pound bags of concrete into the wheelbarrow, breathing through masks as we stirred it into Ken’s descriptor of ‘oatmeal’, wrestling with the rebar, and shoveling the concrete into the boxes at the bottom of the holes. Finally, as dark began to settle, we finished. “Who would have imagined that would have been so miserable?” Sophie asks me. “Do you think this will come off?” she adds, as we look down at the ‘oatmeal’ covering her brown suede knee high boots. For rising courage all need knee-high brown suede boots. The End Through two snowstorms and a hurricane we persevere, from doubts to uncertainty, into the new feelings of certainty that we can do this – we build, we dig, we shovel. New homes, new relationships. Today, as we raise our fourth home, there is a sense of certainty in the group. We have passed the tests; the worst weather and the hardest parts of the project are over. The seasons are turning, spring is a certainty and without a doubt summer will come and a warm sun will shine on our moving trucks. Despite the pressures and projections upon us, our group remains true to each other. Not a word of disloyalty among us. I never imagined that the group dynamic would be the best part of this experience! We are like a band of children who have secretly made a blood brother/sisters for life pack in their tree fort out back. Can you imagine such a thing? From Ejay the DJ; to Brenda the bus driver: to Richard, direct descendent of the Elven Kings; to our dear ‘Professor’, Peter - it is as great a gift as a home to have such as these as neighbors. The Answer “Jai, did you ever think that you’d be doing this?” Master NuNu asks as he swings. Like Neo in the Matrix, I make the move with perfect precision, as the blade of his sword clears my neck. “No doubt” is my answer. About the program, you can learn more about the Mutual Self-Help Housing Program at Kitsap Consolildated Housing Authority's website, www.kccha.org. The run the program for Kitsap and Jefferson Counties. The program is through the USDA's rural development program. WANNA HELP? Volunteers and groups are more than welcome to speed us on our journey. Just contact Jai at jai@earthdancepress.com. The Blue Star Gazette Your guide to an naturally inspired, magical lifestyle Brought to you by a community of those involved in the healing arts. Please contact the authors and sponsors of the Blue Star Gazette on-line (www.the bluestargazette.net) and tell them you saw their work here! Don't miss an issue! Subscribe and receive each edition for only $21. Just send your editor an email and we'll get it set jai@earthdancepress.com. Feel free to call me at the office at 360-379-blue(2583).

The REAL STREET OF DREAMS
Chapter 3: Rising Courage
by Jai Tiger Reed, Editor

The moment had come…there he on his knees, his fingers resting lightly upon my wrist. These were the words I had longer to hear since I started seeing him over three years ago. These were the words that were the motivation to carry out the changes that our relationship required and now, unexpectedly, that special moment in every woman’s life had come. He looked up at me, his compassionate eyes twinkling with love and caring and said, “Jai, you have beautiful liver qi!”
“I’m a miracle of Chinese Medicine!” I replied to Piper Dunlap, my TCM Practitioner.
“Yes, you are! Quite a change from when we first started!” he answered. “Your liver pulse was barely perceptible. Who would have thought then that you would be so fully in your own authentic life and even building a house now?”
“You!” I answered, for Piper’s faith never wavered, even when mine did. Yet I held to the body’s ability to heal itself, made the changes, drank my herbs, and learned to appreciate needles.
The formula for Rising Courage consists of two parts faith and three parts perseverance, Zhu ru, Zhi shi, and Ban xia.

“Doubts make Bricks”
It was just something he said during our training, but it went deep into me as I tried again to perform the move correctly. ‘Doubts make bricks.’
The next day out building I thought, “Oh, how I had walled myself in!” But that was the past” I said to myself as I scraped the ice from the rafter with the claw of my hammer before nailing the drywall blocking to it. I looked at Megan in her red winter cap and down vest, climbing deftly like an elf between the roof trusses her tool belt dangling, her breath icy in the winter air.
“Jai, could you have ever imagined that the second floor of your home would be covered with snow and ice? Look at your bedroom floor!” she laughed.
I looked and took in the full view. I love the snow and there it was, piles of snow and ice, filling the inside of the second floor of my new house who stood bravely without a roof against the high winds and freezing temperatures. In this kind of cold, it was exhausting just walking up and down the stairs of the house. We longed for hot chocolate and made slow progress. Most of the ice was scraped and most of the drywall blocking went up that cold cold cold afternoon on Shasta Place. Rising courage takes trying.

6 feet is 72 inches
The entire group was feeling the pressure. The housing authority managing our program needed us to complete our home in eight months (usual time is one year) or they were at risk to loose their funding. Our building supervisor was at his end with the pressure they were putting on him to get us to be ‘more productive’. Yes, two snowstorms and a hurricane had slowed us down but our faithful group and excellent regular volunteers persevered. Still, after the meetings everyone tried to dig a little deeper.
One of the jobs that had to be completed by the end of the weekend was to finish the garage walls on Kristina’s house. I enjoy framing and had gotten skilled at it so I led the work on building and setting the three walls. The first wall had to be connected to the existing wall. Kristina and I hesitated. “Can we do it ourselves?” we wondered. “Let’s try” we decided and soon we had the walls pinned together like two pro carpenters.
“Wow. Look how perfect that looks! You can’t even tell its two pieces!” Kristina said.
“Remember when we were first learning to use the saw? Did you ever think we’d be able to do something like this all by ourselves?” I asked.
Tuesday Megan met me with an unsure look on her face. “Jai, there’s something I have to tell you. You know the garage walls you worked on? You know the little one? Well, you cut the 6 foot studs to 60 inches...but it was expertly crafted!”
Mrs. Vicious (my inner critic) really got a hold of that one. I walked our street reciting, “6 feet is 72 inches” to fend off the barrage of negative self-talk. I gave her one last rant and ended it. The formula for Rising Courage is allowing your mistakes.

“No doubt’ in the natural world.”
I had waited months for him to elucidate the teachings on doubt. “Doubt is not natural. There is no doubt in the natural world.” I tried to picture a lion with doubts. We each looked into our unique sources of self-doubts – negative thinking, fear, trauma, childhood voices, life experiences seemingly too difficult. Doubt comes like cast iron prison balls and chains - firm statements like “I’ll never be able to do that.” “I’ll get sick if I work so hard.” “I can’t handle this.”
Master NuNu now adds his third sentence: “With doubt, there is no action.” I am thunderstruck of how this truth captures the dark years where I was so stuck and my liver qi was dying.

Later he continues, “Uncertainty is natural. In uncertainty there is action.” I realize that action moves doubt. This is the place of real courage – between frozen in doubt to the tentative lands of first trying. In faith and trust, we push into something healthy and life giving – uncertainty. Like building the second story on a house, we raise our courage and our life qi. There is uncertainty in trying and it raises our life force. Through action, through trying, through persevering through uncertainty, we can find certainty, confidence. This gives courage a solid structure, a concrete foundation.
The formula for Rising Courage is clarity of what your doubts are clouding.

In the Hole
It was one of those days when even the most inspired artist would be too dull to take out her camera. I was teamed up with Bryan, my son, and Sophie, my 17 year-old friend. While I was talking to someone else, Sophie had volunteered us for the concrete job.
“Well, I’m interested in learning to work with concrete. I think I’ll like it.” She replied to my wide-eyed look. “Common, it’ll be fun!” she adds as I glare.
It was barely 30 degrees and the hose we needed snaked across terrain that looked like tundra. Before we got to have ‘fun’ with the concrete, the three-foot pier pad holes for the deck supports had to be dug and widen, the wooden boxes set into the holes and leveled. The shovel I drove into the dirt felt like I had struck rock. “Get the pick axe the dirt is frozen.”
The belief “There’s no way!” has become something more pure and naïve, the ‘just doing’ of a thing. But on a day like this one, my mind kept itself busy singing songs of misery. As I climbed into the first hole it offers solace “At least you’re not in a woman’s prison.” As I dig out the second hole and try to level the box, it offers “Imagine what it would be like to be in a woman’s prison and be forced to work like this everyday for nothing.” By the time I try for the ninth time to level the box in the third hole, my being believes I am in a woman’s prison work camp with no way out. I am covered in mud and freezing and I cannot get the box level. Tera walks by, catches my mood, looks at me and laughs, “Why Jai, where’s your camera?” she teases.
“Fun” with the concrete became breaking the ice chunks from the hose, hauling 60 pound bags of concrete into the wheelbarrow, breathing through masks as we stirred it into Ken’s descriptor of ‘oatmeal’, wrestling with the rebar, and shoveling the concrete into the boxes at the bottom of the holes. Finally, as dark began to settle, we finished.
“Who would have imagined that would have been so miserable?” Sophie asks me.
“Do you think this will come off?” she adds, as we look down at the ‘oatmeal’ covering her brown suede knee high boots. For rising courage all need knee-high brown suede boots.

The End
Through two snowstorms and a hurricane we persevere, from doubts to uncertainty, into the new feelings of certainty that we can do this – we build, we dig, we shovel. New homes, new relationships. Today, as we raise our fourth home, there is a sense of certainty in the group. We have passed the tests; the worst weather and the hardest parts of the project are over. The seasons are turning, spring is a certainty and without a doubt summer will come and a warm sun will shine on our moving trucks. Despite the pressures and projections upon us, our group remains true to each other. Not a word of disloyalty among us. I never imagined that the group dynamic would be the best part of this experience! We are like a band of children who have secretly made a blood brother/sisters for life pack in their tree fort out back. Can you imagine such a thing? From Ejay the DJ; to Brenda the bus driver: to Richard, direct descendent of the Elven Kings; to our dear ‘Professor’, Peter - it is as great a gift as a home to have such as these as neighbors.

The Answer
“Jai, did you ever think that you’d be doing this?” Master NuNu asks as he swings.
Like Neo in the Matrix, I make the move with perfect precision, as the blade of his sword clears my neck.
“No doubt” is my answer.

About the program, you can learn more about the Mutual Self-Help Housing Program at Kitsap Consolildated Housing Authority's website, www.kccha.org. The run the program for Kitsap and Jefferson Counties. The program is through the USDA's rural development program. WANNA HELP? Volunteers and groups are more than welcome to speed us on our journey. Just contact Jai at jai@earthdancepress.com.

The Blue Star Gazette

Your guide to an naturally inspired, magical lifestyle

Brought to you by a community of those involved in the healing arts. Please contact the authors and sponsors of the Blue Star Gazette on-line (www.the bluestargazette.net) and tell them you saw their work here! Don't miss an issue! Subscribe and receive each edition for only $21. Just send your editor an email and we'll get it set jai@earthdancepress.com. Feel free to call me at the office at 360-379-blue(2583).