Two years of work culminated yesterday. Two years of fear and stretching and learning and giving up and getting back up and despair and fierce hope. After two years of work, I helped our local food co-op open its doors in a new space that is more than twice as big and is day to the night of our old church basement space. I am gently proding myself in the aftermath this morning, being very still yet exploratory, looking to find how I feel under all of constant thoughts of the next thing to be done on the long list of things still not done.

We had a private opening for our members Friday night. The entire staff and a big team of volunteering members were running around until the literal last minute until we opened our doors, putting things away, getting price tags up, straightening produce and everything else. It was all far from done, but it was good enough. And the members streamed in to see the store that they had built with their dedication, donations, loans, sweat-equity, and devotion.

It was pretty clear they were in love with it. The board showed up in lovey skirts and slick button up shirts and greeted all the members at the door as they came in. Our produce manager changed into a pretty outfit and wandered around the store greeting her friends and tearing up with happiness. The register rattled and hummed constantly. I tried to enjoy myself but I was still in the dirty clothes I had worn as I hustled around since 4:30 am trying to get the store ready in time for the 5pm opening, I was sweaty, unshowered, and still running, trying to keep up with all the the things that were found wrong and fix them fast so that the evening seemed seamless.

More than once in the evening I ran into something we needed help with and asked a board member for assistance and got a cold response or I was approached by board members to share member concerns and just felt crushed. Obviously I was exhausted and stressed and that makes anyone emotionally touchy, but there they were, turned out pretty and basking in the accolades and congratulations of their community at the table by the door or lounging with them on the porch, and here I was, toiling away with sweat on my brow to keep fixing and addressing and making right. I went into the utility closet at the back of my office at one point and just sobbed. Its not that they had never thanked me profusely for my work or given me my portion of the credit for getting us to that day, but the chill of acting like I was being a child when I asked for help or heaping piles of things members want changed on me while I was giving everything I had since 4:30 in the morning to make this night a success - I need the safe warmth of a hidden closet to cry in until I felt I could hold it together again and get back out there to keep working well into the night.

I worked until 9:30 and then I went home to make lists of all the things I needed to do between 6 am and 8 am the next day, when we would open to the general public for the first time. Walking to work at 5:30 the next morning, I was despondent, I felt bruised everywhere. After all this work, after how hard I tried, I felt kicked and I wasn't entirely sure why. But walking to work with the crows yelling at me from the trees in the early morning light, I felt spiritless. There was no moment at which I stopped last night and let myself think, "this is it, we did it, its beautiful." Some said I should, but how could I? There was still so much work and the constant needs of my staff and of our members coming to me which it is my job to meet?

How like me, to pick a Cinderella job. A job where even if you are the one who did a ton of the work to build the ballroom and make it sparkle, you are still the one who can't dance at the ball. I suppose some might have had it in them to have seen all that work that night as dancing, but all I heard in it was that my work was not enough and would never be done. Thing is, that is the nature of retail, which is why I need the hell out of it.

I did get to sit with my beautiful husband and son for 15 minutes on the co-op's porch near the end of the night - but what more could that be than catching my breath and taking a quick desperate drink of the people I love most in the world. Even when I love my work the most, I hate how it takes me from them. I can't be committed to work that is never going to let my life blend with theirs except on the weekends.

Many members did speak to me about their love of the store and gratitude for my work, how piss-poor I am at drinking that in. But I do know the members truly appreciate me, I always feel very supported and esteemed by them, despite my deficiency in ability to take it all in and drink it.

But there was one moment of the night that saturated me despite what a desert I can be. One of the board members came up to me at the end of the night with this smile of sheer happiness and gratitude and saying not a word, hugged me. And hugged me. It was a all-encompassing hug, strong and long, despite my prickly edges that make me afraid to really open to and enjoy such things, it took this in about me and accepted it and embraced me anyway. Then he leaned back with his hands still on my shoulders, and beamed such joy at me. No words could have said what that hug did, its gratitude, pride in our joint accomplishment, heart-felt fullness at what we had created for our community. And I think that hug is still working its way into me.

Yesterday morning, still in the thick of my sense of hopelessness, me and the produce manager went to the farmers' market, which is right across the parking lot from our co-op, at 6 am, before any of the customers are there and when the workers are still setting up their tents and putting out their wares. We took a giant cart and traipsed into the market aisles, stopping at one farmer's stand after another, picking up fresh plums, peaches, green beans, melons, eggs, meats, and apples. As our cart got fuller and fuller, my heart started to lift. We chatted with the farmers, each one a different character, and we pulled our rattling trolley full of bounty behind us, making people look up from almost every booth to see and smile. There was something we all seemed to feel, something that was pride in the bounty of our land wrapped up with pleasure at seeing a very human-scale economy at work that enriches us all. It was a little piece of something many of us yearn for.

And then I felt more myself. We opened to streaming crowds of customers and soon lines filled our little store's aisles until it was hard to shop at all. There were food samples being passed, conversations happening everywhere, carts being filled. And the whole staff and I were running every minute, trying to make it all work. By midday, it lost that desperateness it had the day before, though, and there was some point in the afternoon where, still bustling about every minute and working our asses off, we all realized it was going to work. A minute where we could see a future where we would not have to be complete slaves to our work and yet could work to make our store successful. There was a turning point, unmarked, where the work was still intense, but the level of its intensity became doable compared to the few days before. We started to be ourselves again, not the desperate deer in headlights we had been, and the feeling of staff unity returned too. The laughter became sincere again, not day before's laughter that tinged with edginess and ribbing that was a bit too hard, but laughter of relief and camaraderie.

I want out of this job, I haven't really made a secret of that. I love the people and I love doing something that enriches the community, but I am tired as hell of retail. (Margins, sales, and labor costs, oh my!) But I contain this paradox in me - I want to step away from things but I can't resist a challenge, even when I honestly don't want one! A general manager from a successful co-op south of us came to see our opening yesterday. He's been serving as a mentor to me through all of this, he's been managing food co-ops for over 20 years and is a font of knowledge on all things co-op, well connected to the larger food co-op industry.

He loved our location, was impressed with the execution of the project and was thrilled that we have an option on the space right next to our store. While taking, I mentioned that our expansion consultant said to not expect to be able to afford expanding for 4 to 5 years. A very calm and understated person, he said, "no, I think you better be ready for the fact that you're going to need to expand in 2 to 3 years. You are going to outgrow this space quick. Your sales projections are modest for this store, I think you are going to find you well exceed them."

Expand in 2 to 3 years? The expansion project was hell! And I plan to be waaaay gone by then. So why was I so energized by what he said? I had suspected the same but wanted to be cautious of saying anything out of my ignorance. I was proud, I felt that sparkle in my eye that I get when I am in pursuit of a goal. I really don't understand myself at all some times. But a exciting as that would be, I am not interested in *ever* doing work that takes me that far from my family ever again and I hope in 2 years to perhaps be the mother of another child - I couldn't possibly handle the stress of something like that again while pregnant of with an infant and I don't plan to ever try. If I am blessed with the ability to have another child, my family will fucking come first this time. Its a lingering, irrational bitterness with this job - that it almost always had to come before my family and my time to bond with my son. There is still even a bit of anger - if I had not quit my much less stressful job to come to the co-op and a job that was nothing like it had been billed when I was 6 months pregnant, would I have even had the complications? How much did I really sacrifice for this job? I know that Spirit moved through all of this, but sometimes my child mind still wonders and there are certainly parts of me that still grieve over the way Eli's birth happened. I see tiny newborns wrapped close to their mother's chests as they walk through the co-op doing their shopping, the child no more than a week old, and I can't trust myself to speak, I feel such longing and sadness. Maybe time will heal it.

While writing this, Mike left with Eli to get us fresh local eggs and muffins - from the co-op. I am proud, the pride comes out when I think of these simple things - a co-op that is now open early in the morning on Sundays, to provide folks with good eggs and handmade muffins.

I am doing my best to just turn the whole thing over to Spirit and to not need my moment, as I felt the board got theirs on Friday night. Let the work be enough and let the future take care of itself.

'Tis a Gift

In meeting today, I was led to sing "Simple Gifts." My voice was shaky at first, but strengthened and swelled, dozens of other voices slowly joining mine until I felt wrapped with light and uplifted by the divine in that space we shared together as the sacred community.

I was a lazy kid and a rather lazy young adult. I could hustle if something really inspired me, but nothing much ever did. I hated to clean and do mundane things, I did my best to wiggle out of them and leave all such tasks on my spouse. I like to buy tarot decks, books on astrology, magazines about interior design, clothes and food. I liked to buy in general, it always felt good and distracted me from how listless and hopeless I felt all the time.

A place in me began to make itself known in my mid-twenties that craved after something *solid*. I wanted to garden or something. I wanted a place of my own that I could take care of. I wanted to own less things. This was all very perplexing to me. I was surrounded by people who liked to buy things and I had been raised by people who like to buy things and I had always been a person who liked to buy things too. My spouse obstinately fought my urges to have less and insisted that every book, magazine, CD, video and t-shirt (he owned dozens and dozens of t-shirts he no longer wore) were completely necessary to his existence. I floundered, I've never been good at doing something so hard as giving up an addiction to things with no support and many days the urge just seemed silly anyway. If I didn't buy things, what would I do?

That sounds like a joke, but its not. I'd try to buy nothing on "Buy Nothing Day" and, ironically, I often just couldn't make myself do it. I couldn't eat the food in the house, I didn't want any of it, you understand. And it felt true, it felt like a compulsion I could not avoid. I stopped buying presents at Christmas for people who already had as much as they needed and told them to stop buying me things too, but when the gifts were piled in front of me, I was sick with how happy they made me.

After my divorce from Jason, he took 90% of our "stuff" - the books, CDs and such we thought we had to have. I found that I missed some of the stuff (going for a book you suddenly need and finding it not there can be so frustrating!) but mostly, it felt cleaner. I got together immediately with my next lover, and she loved stuff. She loved buying stuff, she loved giving stuff, she loved shopping for clothes, but, most of all, she loved to travel. Not that she could afford big trips, but we'd drop money on a hotel in Chicago for every little occasion we could find to celebrate and then go to as many good restaurants as we could in our day or two there. She particularly loved hotels and, I found, I did too, I had just never indulged in them before. I still *love* hotels, I don't really know why.

My urges for simplicity simply made my lover feel guilty and ended up at the root of many a fight. She loved spending her money, thank you very much. We broke up for many reasons, but simplicity was definitely a factor.

And then I met Michael.

And then we bought a house.

And then Michael left his day job to be a daddy and his days became less structured. And he started to build the garden I was always talking about and we worked in it together in the evenings and I'd research how to dig beds and what to add to the soil and such. We fell in love with the farmer's market together and got it into our heads that it would be wonderful to buy in bulk from local farmers and can as much as we could. We started brewing our own wine and making our own jams. We found joy in making things as presents for our families who have too much stuff but love getting our salsa for Christmas. We started finding new uses for what we already owned and, most delightful to both of us, finding free stuff and making use of it.

My idea of a wonderful day has evolved into weeding the garden, weedwacking the yard so it looks nicely trimmed (how I love weedwacking!), making a light lunch from local ingredients arranged on dishes made by hand by potters we know, folding laundry while I sing to Eli, stitching quilts with Michael and talking about life and faith at the same time. I get a thrill out of having the time to sweep my kitchen well every day and look forward to organizing the spice cabinet. I want to learn how to better keep root vegetables all winter in my basement (I fantasize about a root cellar but don't know where we would have room to build one), I want a rain barrel for my birthday, our newest hobby is fermenting everything for health and preservation. The most enjoyment I've had in the whole past week? Having time to hand-make a pot of gazpacho teaming with local vegetables, many from my garden, along with some polenta made with locally grown cornmeal and delivering it to some dear friends that are going through a health crisis right now and are in need of the physical and spiritual sustenance.

I long to live simply, but often feel to stressed and frazzled to do so. And then, in meeting today, Spirit moved me not only to sing "Simple Gifts", but to speak of John Woolman.

John Woolman was a very talented business man who's young business was growing and opportunities for business growth were everywhere for him. And, at the hight of his growing success, he sold or gave up all his interests except a small tailoring business and tending his orchard part time because he felt that business was beginning to come before the call of the Spirit for him. He simplifed his life so that he need little and need work little to maintain it so he might follow that call that to live in the Light. And he spent his time ministering to others, spiritually laboring with others and leading Quakers to open their eyes to slavery, to work to put an end to it.

After the ministry poured through me, which always leaves me very tender-hearted, I felt wrung by this example of John Woolman, of a Quaker gifted in business who put down that gift to follow a deeper in the Spirit. One of simplicity. I am a Quaker talented at business. And I am a Quaker that wishes she could put down some of it and live simply, following Spirit's calling.

The work I do is meaningful and the people I have met through it have blessed my life. There are so many beautiful members of my community that I would not otherwise have met, and experiences we've had together due to my work running the co-op that have knit us together as only shared struggle can do. The co-op serves a special purpose in our community and I am glad it is there and I wish for it to be there forever. I feel I was led by Spirit to take on this work, and it is Spirit who has carried me through the valley it has sometimes been for me.

But when I think on what gives me joy in this life, when I think of the simplicity my soul craves after, I know deep down that this simpler life I am called to more each year can not thrive in the shade of a business career so fraught with constant tension and struggle. When I compare the work of caring for others to tending to the grocery department's profit margin, I know which fills me with real joy.

I am good at business, and I am grateful for my skills. But I only want to be using those skills to do what my spirit feels free and clear to do.

When I owned my own occult shop in 1999, everyone was talking about y2k. We all laugh now, but then it was a real thing, the possibility that the economy would crash, the utilities would fail, all of it. And I looked deeply at my life. I was selling people gee gaws they did not need. I was showing them which color candle to use, what stones were good for anxiety, helping them find rare tarot decks to round out their collections. Jason would point out that these things were meaningful to these people, that I was meeting a need in them. Also, as with everyplace I work, I build a sense of community amongst local pagans through nights of tea and conversation in the shop, public rituals and classes. And it was very nourishing to many who came, to be a part of it. But what I heard deep down within was that it ill fit my spirit to make my living this way.

But now, now I sell people food, something they need. And I create a strong market for local farmers, encourage the local food system, and promote organic foods. Its also a model for a new, community-based economics that I fully believe in. My business skills are put to a good cause. Right?

Is it too ridiculous that I am now tiring of thinking how to keep profit margins up by getting folks to buy more pre-packaged, albeit organic, crap food? Here I am, doing good work, and I wish my work were simpler. Less complex, yes - I need room to follow Spirit in the footsteps of Woolman which I will never have in this field of constant retail busy-ness and scrambling - but by simpler I feel I mean something more aligned with Spirit. More aligned with Spirit than what you already do, you say? I know. But I don't want to sell people prepackaged crap and I don't want to be around it day in and day out. I had this fantasy today of a little shop with a general store-like atmosphere that had one wall lined with bulk bins, a nice produce case in the back, canning supplies, basic organic gardening supplies, books on canning, gardening, fermenting; information about joining CSAs in the area, etc. I shop that sold only necessary, basic foods that were, everyone of them, fair traded or local or carefully vetted for sustainability. But it was only a fantasy. I don't want to run another shop again.

I am passionate about just food and the coming food revolution, but I want to educate people and put the power back in their hands, not sell them Annie's mac-n-cheese, no matter how nice a company it is. It just doesn't align with my internal compass, it does not feel simple.

I can't lead a simple life working 50 to 70 hours a week. I can't live a simple life while having to fill my head with which items were the best sellers in the frozen department last week while trying to hold a staff meeting. I hold John Woolman's example in my heart and I am inspired, I want to walk in his footsteps more every day. At that height of my business success, I open my spirit to all-that-is, asking that their be a simpler way in my future so I can spend more of my life walking where Spirit wants to lead me.