One week 'til the film's online release.
This is the part where it starts getting hard to breathe because it feels like the space between my ribs is suddenly shrinking.
This is the part where I look at the gap between My Wildest Dreams and What I Can Actually Pull Off and try not to let it swallow me whole. The part where I look at What I can Actually Pull Off and dig deep for my compassion, which is so easily frightened away by the gap. The part where I strain to believe that even this will matter or--miracle of miracles--be enough.
Just in time I remembered the first time I saw the film on the big screen--at the historic Mission Theater in Portland, Oregon as part of The World Domination Summit. I remembered how the theater was quite a distance from the conference center and how I wondered (as I do with every invitation) if anyone would come.
Photo by Justin Davanzo
a pre-show shot from my phone
People came.
And they kept coming and we had had to delay the start time just to get everyone in the door. The new worry became: Would there be enough seats?
And when the lights came down and the applause began I could feel how much love filled the room for this humble offering.
My heart played across a two-story screen for an hour.
The gap between My Wildest Dreams and What I Can Actually Pull Off was there, in every frame. The travel plans that fell through, the footage I couldn't find a way to work in, my bare bones equipment, the time I had the most beautiful light and forgot to press "record". All the tips and tricks I still didn't know, all the movie making moves I still didn't have.
I was just a girl who held her heart in her hands and then tossed it out for all to see. It felt SO SMALL in the offering.
But something happened in the space between that screen and everyone else's eyes. Something multiplied and grew, and the gap wasn't there for anyone else. Just goodness and beauty--more than they could even take in all at once and hold, it seemed. It was overflowing. I could see it in the tears all around me and feel it in every tight embrace people lingered to give me afterward.
These moments feel like miracles because they break all the rules we have about deserving.
This was my most powerful lesson, and it would play out again and again all along the coast to coast tour: What we offer in love multiplies and nourishes, it becomes enough and then some for those who receive it.
Not because we were clever or spent a lot of money or got something perfect for once in our crazy lives. It is the love.
I'm sinking into this memory today, trusting that even though it doesn't compute with the way my mind is so fond of keeping score, the love I offer this work with now will multiply this humble offering until it is enough. And then some.
Post-show photo by Justin Davanzo