What are Your New Year's Resolutions?

A year ago at this time, I resolved that I was going to actually make something happen out of the vague longings I had had floating around inside me for several years. For quite awhile, I had wanted to do something to assist so many of the third world craftswomen I had met on the many trips overseas that I had had to make in my career. I was impressed with the creativity, spiritual tenacity and vibrant community I had witnessed among these women, so many of whom lived in poverty. At the same time, I was acutely aware that here in the United States, support systems for creative expression, growth in spiritual tenacity and vibrant community experiences for women are often lacking, and that American women often live impoverished lives of their own. 

I got thinking--what if you could mobilize American women to form and experience communities where their creative energies and dreams would be given scope, and where, as individuals or in a group, American women could experience the richness and the joy of partnering with and assisting third world women artisans?

Out of this longing, a modest little newsletter with the presumptuous name of "Global Women's Artisan Alliance" was born, and mailed out to a select three dozen women or so who I thought might be willing, fellow travelers on this particular journey. 

A year later, my modest little newsletter has gone from four to ten pages, and goes out to an ever increasing circle of women all over the globe. In August, I took the leap to try and make another dream come true, and started this blog.

Global Women's Artisan Alliance is still a very modest effort. It is my "hobby", in addition to my "day job" in hospital administration, and my other "avocations" of free lance writing and creating works of art of my own. But it is an immensely satisfying "hobby"--one that continues to connect me with women all over the world with a similar need to create things of beauty and create community, as well as to fight the economic injustices on this planet in creative and unique ways. I learn from these women constantly, and am always proud to be affiliated with them in any manner. Some have chosen to accompany me on this journey that is the "Global Women's Artisan Alliance" and some have become my friends.

This year, I invite you to embrace and live your dreams. What might this New Year look like if you took just one dream you're having, and then took one little step, and then perhaps another step, towards realizing that dream in some concrete manner? Would the world not perhaps be that much better for your efforts? 

I was once told that our deepest dreams and longings are God's way of telling us what our life's work should be, and that in living our deepest dreams, we are actually acting unselfishly, contributing to the good of the world. I invite you this new year to get bold and live the dream--and be sure to share the good news of your unfolding journey with us!