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I’m beyond thrilled and completely overwhelmed.

Read Name Your Dream Assignment Winners and Shutter Sisters.

from Patti Digh

Sometimes when you’re in a spot where there’s nothing to do but wait, the very best thing you can do is move. Right now I’m waiting for so many things–the beginning of one thing, the ending of another, word about who will win the Dream Assignment, word about when Odette’s girls will come (we’re getting close!) and so, so much more.

The other night my sister and dear friend Fatou invited me to the gym to go to a dance class. All of you who have ever seen me dance are laughing right now. I’m a dead ringer for Mary Catherine in Sister Act, the timid little white girl who still looks like she’s stuck in a box even when she’s busting out her moves. Still, without shame, I took my extremely white, boxed in body to dance class with Fatou and tried to keep up while women of every shape and size and a hundred shades of brown danced like I’ve never danced before. And just when I thought it would never end, our very round instructor put on another shake your booty classic (from Jamaica! from Colombia! from Nigeria!) and everyone would go at it again.

I quickly realized it wasn’t worth the energy to try not to look ridiculous, so I brought my tiny white butt to the mix and–as Myriam likes to say–”shook my money maker” for every penny it’s worth.

This morning, totally sore and happy for the memory of looking ridiculous in such joyous company, I’m deciding it really is worth the embarrassment of being revealed as uptight and white (which I am) for the chance to really move. Because to move your heart, your mind, your soul, your world, your body–in ways you’ve never moved before might be the most joyful thing of all–no matter how you look doing it.

the amazing Jen Lee, in my backyard

“To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go”
–Mary Oliver

For the judges of the Name Your Dream Assignment contest and anyone else who is inspired by this dream:

Crossing the Threshold from LittlePurpleCow Productions on Vimeo.

For more photo essays, see my work at shuttersisters.com.
For more photos and stories about my experience in Rwanda, start here.

About Me:
From riding on the back of a motorcycle in the hills of Rwanda to helping modern day slaves in the Washington DC suburbs, Jen Lemen’s dreams have carried her across continents and back again to her artist studio where she cultivates hope in the essays she writes and the illustrations she creates. Jen’s work has appeared in Good Housekeeping, The Huffington Post, Memory Makers magazine and online exhibits of the International Museum of Women. She is a regular contributor to the collaborative photography blog shuttersisters.com and www.pbsparents.org/supersisters—a child development blog she writes with her two real life sisters. Blogging since 2002, Jen uses social media to tell stories that can open doors, shift perspectives and deepen our understanding of what it means to be human. You can contact her for sage advice on social media, storytelling, parenting and more at jen dot lemen at gmail dot com.

“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.” Joseph Campbell

guest post by myriam joseph

We finished the voting phase of the competition on Friday at 11:59PM with 1315 votes in first place with over 2500 dream assignment ideas submitted! Stephanie and I are beyond thrilled that this is happening and are equally overwhelmed by the support for the project. Thank you SO much for everything you did to help us get to number one. I can’t help but feel like something really good is bound to happen next. Can you feel it, too? Winners will be announced in two to three weeks.

All this (of course) is making me think more and more about hope, where it comes from and how to uncover it–especially in the stories that are easily overlooked. If you could plan out the trip for me, where would you want me to go? Who would you want me to meet? We have a good list working right now, but I’d love to hear your suggestions, especially if you know people who are doing hopeful things in the countries where they grew up.

photo courtesy of Tracey Clark of Shutter Sisters

There’s a storm brewing around me, and everywhere I turn someone is having a crisis about the meaning of hope. The questions are sometimes spoken, but mostly silent, and they sound something like this:

If I don’t want to travel around the world to (maybe scary) places and ask people questions about hope, am I still a hopeful person?
Can you be hopeful and incredibly doubtful at the same time?
Is there some sort of expert definition of hope and do you have to be a survivor of various tragedies to claim it?
What if the hope you know best is the kind that shows up in tiny moments–like giving a child a bath or washing the dishes or making a bed–and what if you’re not so hopeful about other things–like if the person you love loves you back? or if your life can be dramatically different than it is right at this moment, even though you desperately wish it was?
Is being hopeful best left to a hope specialist? or do regular people who (theoretically) have nothing to complain about really have a shot at that thing at all?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I’m watching carefully as the questions unravel the askers and I’m hoping against all hope I have nothing to do with all the accompanying self-doubt, but I’m not so sure.

What I do know is that hope starts as a seed and if you are very, very lucky, you find a place to plant it, and someone else comes along and waters it and little by little together you can watch it grow. What it grows into no one can predict exactly unless you were also lucky enough to find the master gardener who gave it to you and ask her what it will turn out to be, but even if you can find that person and she decide to tell you, I’m not sure you could believe her or that your heart could even let you know the answer–the future of seeds being generally mysterious and uncertain, especially to the person who’s never held a seed before.

At least not a seed as simple and innocent as this.

It was just a flash, anyway, right? The way you felt when you saw the fire in her little girl eyes. The way your heart leapt when you first looked through the lens at running water, fresh turned earth. The way you knew everything had to change when you heard your name, when you read the fine print.

It hardly matters.

Or does it?

Hope asks that you notice tiny moments, each one, but not only this. Hope asks that you trust them, that you listen to them, that you take that sneaking suspicion that the Universe is indeed a safe place, a good place even and that you plant it deep into that dark corner of your heart.

It’s a ridiculous act, and no one need know. Until, of course, everyone has to know. That something’s growing here. And that whatever it is, it is no longer meant for darkness, that it is taking over actually. That it is expanding beyond the confines of your mind and twisting and turning its way out your ears and your eyes and even–God help us–your mouth where it says exactly what it was thinking, back when it was just a seed in a case in the dark in the part of your heart where you were most hurting.

And believe me, these words are a scandal. They are deceptively simple. So simple, you could miss the click before the explosion goes off, before you understand really, that everything must change if this thing is even half true.

“You have everything you need.”
“You are not alone.”
“No one belongs here more than you.”

By the time you speak them, you will forget about hope or the seed or the flash when you first wondered if it could be true. By then, you will have an actual living thing to tend to, a living thing that looks nothing like when it started–a little bit of nothing in your hands. With this living thing–this Hope made manifest–you will have a place to rest, a place to stand, a view from which to see the world, a blossom of goodness to inhale, a bit of fruit to nourish you, a site to behold from a far off land. From the shoots of this living thing, you will plant again and again and again until your life is a field of possibility, until your land is a garden of Hope where any lost traveler can come.

For something to eat.
Or a seed.
Or a story.
Or a place to be convinced,
the best is yet to come.

The Name Your Dream Assignment voting closes tomorrow at midnight. Please register your name and email address and vote.

Picture Hope: Gathering Images for the Journey from LittlePurpleCow Productions on Vimeo.

A little over forty-eight hours left to go in the Name Your Dream Assignment Competition and as of right now we are number two with two hundred votes needed to overtake the number one contender. (Do you feel like you’re watching a horse race yet?) Voting ends Friday, and then we’ll see if Microsoft & Lenovo send us around the world or if there’s some other bit of magic waiting to take us there. Top twenty ideas go to final judging.

I’m so hopeful about this either way. Please vote and ask your mother to, too, and your neighbor. If you don’t mind. Details about Hope Notes here.