I was invited to give the opening session - two hours - of an intergenerational component of a Family Office conference on Martha's Vineyard on Origin Stories. (Family Offices are private wealth management firms serving ultra-high-net-worth families).

I had not, actually, ever given a 2-hour experiential version of Origin Stories workshop before. Really, I didn't have an Origin Stories workshop. Nor had I been to Martha's Vineyard.

They also asked me if I could help to bridge some local relationships with the Wampanoag people in the area. (Or did I offer that? I don't recall.) A friend had mentioned that there were Wampanoag people in the area.

I didn't know any of them, mind you.

I immediately said yes.

Sometimes, I'm really good at saying yes. Sometimes I’m totally gutsy. Even if I was a bit out of my league.

Quick backtrack: nearly a year earlier, I had received a very clear invitation from my ancestors/spirit guides to start working with wealthier communities/individuals, especially with those people whom, like myself, were part of the foundation of America.

I was surprised when, shortly after receiving that directive, doors that I didn't even know I existed started opening up for me, and I was quickly invited into a group that, totally independent of me, had also started trying to get into family office spaces. Their reason was different from mine: they wanted to bridge intergenerational gaps, in which younger inheritors are sometimes very distant from older family members and/or from the staff of Family Offices. The leaders of this group invited me into the space that they had carved out/created within a particular set of gatherings for a group of family offices.

By the time I was invited to Martha's Vineyard, I already knew some of the people and I was somewhat known (in other words, the invitation did not come out of no where).

I was most concerned about the relationship/bridge building piece of it (between Wampanoag peoples and this wealthy conference), so I spent several weeks working on that.

How, you might wonder, do you build any kind of relationship between an indigenous community that you don't actually know and a bunch of very wealthy people whom you also don't know very well and whom you are not sure how much they actually care... especially when you are pretty sure they don't have a lot of knowledge of local protocol?

Very carefully. Gently. With low expectations. With a lot of prayer.

And: a lot of phone calls.

So, so many phone calls.

And emails.

So many emails.

Each email was like a little thread I sent out across a vast distance of space and time, worldview and ideology, perspective and position. Most of the phone calls were like sitting on a thin wire of a prayer. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to keep my balance and stay on the wire, or if I was going to fall off. Most of the time, I kept my balance. I kept my eyes on the other side: the side where we were connected.

That moment was bigger than me and I was, in ways I didn't know until later, serving something much bigger than I was.

Somewhat miraculously, everything came together (including figuring out my clothes!) in the few days before I left my apartment in the South Bronx to carpool with some of the folks I had invited (including an indigenous elder from Maine).

It was on the ferry from the mainland out to the Island, sitting with the elder from Maine, that I wondered what my mini-workshop was going to be about.

See, the work of being in service to building bridges/connections/relationships was the work that had taken most of my time. Hours and hours of it. (None of which was paid, just in case you were wondering).

Bridgebuilding often takes a lot of time. Which is one of the reasons it is often left undone.

So I had not had much time to really work through what the mini-workshop was going to be.

Which, it might have seemed, was pretty important. That moment when I was going to be standing in front of a room representing a lot of money, introducing elders whom I had invited whom I didn't know very well and who had never been in a space quite like that one, trying to do some bridging of vastly different cosmovisions in a way that was palaptable, and also trying to share something that was authentically from me, from the work of ReMembering and ReEnchanting that I had been developing.

Some would say I was unprepared. But I think I had been doing some really important preparation work (relationship building)… it just wasn't the work that was about what I was going to say. I was not feeling particularly concerned. I knew, however, that I needed to open myself to Spirit. What was wanted in this moment?

I recall three of us sitting on the deck of the ferry as we sped through the bright blue sea in the middle of August. It was a beautiful day. The ocean reflected a beautifully clear sky with little wisps on it. I love boat rides, and for a few moments, I just enjoyed it. I let my mind and heart just - expand. Even dissolve, just a tiny bit, into the beauty around me. From that place, I asked the elder who was with us about his creation story. I don't recall why I asked. But as he told some of it, I felt it. I felt the sun in it. The waters. The people.

In that moment on the open waters between one land and another land, I saw - something. The outline of how to think about origin stories. How to listen to one another. I saw how my own story/journey fit into it.

I don't even think I wrote it down.

I just - let it come. The feeling of it. The understanding of it. Until I could see each part of it.

I talked with the elder and my other friend (whom I also didn't know very well) about my idea They listened deeply. I think they made some good suggestions.

And then it was time to get back in the car, and we drove to where we were staying, and I was surrounded by more new people.

What happened next was a really beautiful workshop on Origin Stories. The group - were there fifty people? - were enthralled with the stories we told. And then I had them work together, and they connected with one another in a way that I knew was very, very rare in a space so often dominated by the masks that people wear.

Several of them signed up for the next activity I had co-organized: a trip out to the tip of the island (an hour's drive? two hours?) to the tip of the island, the traditional homeland of the Wampanoag people. Some of whom just happened to be doing a fundraiser that same night. Where Robin Wall Kimmerer happened to be the keynote speaker.