We did a double take at one another in the vitamin section of Wild Oats. It had been more than a decade since I'd seen Dawn Kirk. She sported long gray hair. She'd become a hippie and went to great lengths to let me know how much she'd changed. For years after that encounter I chuckled to myself musing: "Does she think she's the only recovering Southern Baptist who flew the religion coop?" We'd met during our just-out-of-Baptist-college days at a Baptist church singles group. A lot of spiritual journeying had taken place and we'd both experienced divorce. She had become a psychotherapist. I had hired the services of a number of psychotherapists.
Another decade passed and we again saw one another. This time across a table of vegetarian manna at Art & Soul Studio–evidence that once again, our paths had mutually wound the alternative route. A few years later we began connecting over lunch, where we'd laugh and commiserate about our younger selves.
I've loved watching my old-new friend merge into the blogosphere and encouraged her as she boiled down snippets of heart resonating words paired with Instagram images of captured nature. I watched her champion environmental and animal causes on Facebook. I had borne a child in our earlier years apart. She had not. But, I'm convinced that Dawn is a mother-nurturer of the souls she helps tend in her counseling practice as well as to the animals and other children of our Great Mother Earth. She is creative, that one. And so, I'm thrilled that she's bumping into one of my causes and melding it with one of hers.See below. I've featured Pacesetters on "The Journey with Grace," here. Go, Dawn!:
Did you know 15,000 Sandhill Cranes winter in
Tennessee?
Join us and learn more while enjoying the
imaginative artistic creations of the Pacesetters.
"When Heart & Art Take Flight:
An afternoon devoted to Tennessee’s Sandhill Cranes &
Art
Reception
and Art Show
Sunday – December 16, 12:15 pm to 3:00 pm
Radnor Lake Visitor Center, Nashville,
Tenn.
“Introducing Tennessee’s Cranes,” presentation by Melinda Welton, 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Art Show – Pacesetter artists from Cookeville & Sparta
Pacesetters
is a non-profit organization formed in 1971 to empower and support special
needs adults and their families in 14 counties east of Nashville. In 2000,
the art program started with a grant from the Tennessee Arts
Commission. Pacesetter artists have had their work displayed at the
Frist Center for the Visual Arts, as well as the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. The art program is
taught collaboratively by Cookeville Artists Merritt Ireland and Ramie
Nunnally and storyteller Marcia Donavan. More info at www.pacesetterstn.com
Plus: Save the date! Jan. 19-20, 2013, The TN Sandhill Crane
Festival & “ Dinner with Darwin.” More info at www.tncranefestival.org
The Crane above is the work of
Pacesetter artist Mike Rewis. You can check out Dawn Kirk via her
website, http://www.imaginetheshift.com, and her blogs: imaginetheshift.blogspot.com, Busy?Be and Little Farma.
