Gratitude Blooming Podcast
Inspired by nature, art and gratitude, the Gratitude Blooming co-hosts Belinda Liu and Omar Brownson bring fresh and diverse perspectives to well-being. For us, heartfulness is the new mindfulness. Gratitude Blooming was inspired by the artist Arlene Kim Suda and her 100 Days of Blooming Love art project. Hear from culture keepers, creators, healers, leaders and so many others who share their emergent practices to build the beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Please rate, review and subscribe. New conversations each week. We want to hear what you're grateful for. Learn more at www.gratitudeblooming.com
Gratitude Blooming Podcast
When No Thing Works, Turn to Dandelions and Zen Master Norma Wong
Zen Master and movement leader Norma Wong returns to share her profound insights on tenacity and transformation, illuminating the intricate dance between persistence and stubbornness. And, she shares insights from her new book, When No Thing Works.
We pull the dandelion card, representing tenacity, and explore the art of nurturing curiosity and playfulness amidst adversity, much like how dandelions spread their seeds across vast distances. Norma's reflections on her extensive travels (including more than 3 million airline miles) offer a rich tapestry of lessons that parallel the resilience and adaptability of these unassuming flowers, emphasizing the cyclical nature of growth and personal evolution.
Tune in to discover how valuing the process over outcomes can lead to thriving practices, both personally and communally. Our conversation centers on the courage it takes to release creative work into the world, trusting it will land where it's meant to grow. We delve into the transformative power of intentional practice, elevating routine into ritual, and the importance of choosing practices that truly serve us.
As we navigate life's transitions, the metaphor of autumn invites reflection and renewal, encouraging us to let go of what no longer serves us while embracing the unpredictability of new beginnings. Join us in a conversation that intertwines the beauty of nature with the journey of human growth and connection.
“This is deep, no-nonsense grounding, taught lightly, with invitation and humor and curiosity. Profound and embodied in each line... I know I will return to this text over and over.”
—adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy (and previous Gratitude Blooming podcast guest)
ABOUT THE BOOK
Talking story, weaving poetry, and offering wisdom at the intersections of strategy, politics, and spiritual activism, When No Thing Works is a visionary guide to co-creating new worlds from one in crisis. It asks into the ways we can live well and
maintain our wholeness in an era of collective acceleration: the swiftly moving current, fed and shaped by human actions, that sweeps us toward ever uncertain futures. Grounded in Zen Buddhism, interconnection, and decades of community
activism, When No Thing Works explores questions like:
● As we stand at a threshold of collective change, what leaps must we make?
● How can we push through discord and polarization and meet these critical changepoints collectively?
● What practices, strategies, and spiritualities can align to vision a sustainable future for our communities and descendents?
● How can we step out of urgency to tend to our crises with wisdom, intention, and care?
ABOUT NORMA
Norma Wong, a life-long resident of Hawaiʻi, is a descendant of Native Hawaiians and Hakka Chinese immigrants. She has decades of experience in organizing, policy, strategy, and politics in Hawaiʻi, particularly in the area of Native Hawaiian issues, serving in the Hawaiʻi State Legislature and as a policy lead and negotiator for Governor John Waiheʻe, Hawaiʻi’s first Native governor. N
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Hello Belinda.
Speaker 2:Hey, omar, so lovely for us to be back together again.
Speaker 1:And today we are joined by former Gratitude Blooming guest, but always Zen Master and movement leader, norma Wong. We're delighted to have you back, and even more so since our last guest was Adrienne Marie Brown, who was sharing her new book, and so we invite our listeners if you haven't heard that episode Adrienne Marie Brown's incredible movement leader, poet, activist, mystic in lots of ways. And so to have you, norma, who I know she also counts as a friend join us today, and I can't wait to hear a little bit more about your new book.
Speaker 1:When no Thing Works, which drops on election day, but before that, with all our guests, we love to pull a gratitude blooming card, and when we invite folks to do that, with all our guests, we love to pull a gratitude blooming card. And when we invite folks to do that, we really invite you to also just pause and reflect verbally if there's a question or intention that you're holding. We like to think of almost the gratitude blooming cards as a way to ask Pachamama, mother Nature, the plant world a question and how we might think about that question or intention through those eyes.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, omar. Thank you so very much for having me back. I actually thought that this podcast is a one and done right. Once having come, well, one is done. But I guess not. So here I am back again.
Speaker 1:No, we are in a constant state of emergence here, and so it is what is being called to us. I don't know what would you call it, belinda?
Speaker 2:Well, I love that we're getting to see the spiral of the conversation so that we can really build on some themes that were alive from the past and also hear from you, norma, what is most present for you in this moment, in your life and in the work that you do. So, yeah, if there was one central question or focus that you have right now, today, in this moment, what would that be?
Speaker 3:Let's see what the card emerges.
Speaker 1:All right, we have seven rows, six columns. I'll scroll and you can just tell me when to pause okay, so third roll, third card all right, let's see uh, card number six, represented by the dandelion and the theme of tenacity. Can you appreciate the time and effort required to nurture the things you truly love? And when you look at the art or this particular plant, the dandelion or the theme of tenacity, what comes up for you in this moment in time?
Speaker 3:What comes up to me is where does tenacity begin and stubbornness end? So, and you know, dandelion. To me, it's the perfect flower for this, which is to say that its persistence is not always welcome, but it is so. And if one took the time to eat dandelions, they're actually quite delicious. So a perfect flower for this sentiment.
Speaker 1:That is a great question. Where does tenacity and and stubbornness begin? Belinda, you've been persistent, with gratitude blooming.
Speaker 2:I don't know what comes up for you in this card yeah, every time I see this card, I feel like it's's a big stop sign on the road You're having gone on this long journey.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's a marathon, and then you get the chance to really pause and reflect on the journey of what has been and also contemplate, well, what is next for this commitment, for this thing that I truly love, and I love the invitation to contemplate the shadow of tenacity which is stubbornness. Sometimes it's time to let go and let things take a pause to see what else wants to emerge and, with gratitude blooming, what's been beautiful is. This card continues to show up every time. We've had this question of are we complete yet? You know, normal, like you said, I thought this was done at this episode, you know, but now here's another episode with you, and so I would love to hear from you just what is the thing that you're cultivating right now and nurturing in your life that you're like yes, I love this thing and I want to keep tending to it because it feels so right you know I well.
Speaker 3:First of all, I am a monkey. You know I am a monkey that has made their way around the universe in five cycles. So, from the Asian perspective, that, having made its way around five cycles now, eight years ago, that I'm invited to hold the curiosity and playfulness of childhood once again, that's the cultural permission that is given to us and that seems like an indulgence in this particular fraught moment on Mother Earth. And yet I'm trying to hold it in that way, which is to say, if we're not curious and playful about what we think about our next chapter as human beings, then the wormhole is pretty complete. It's pretty complete. And so to hold this time with the tenacity that it needs, but also not only buried in the roots of the dandelions, but in the flowers as well, I think it's an important reminder.
Speaker 1:When I look at the dandelion, what I appreciate and it's not captured here in this image is when it turns from this like yellow flower and then it closes in on itself and then it reopens as this, like white ball with like a thousand seeds, and to me that's like one of the most powerful transformation. It's not like a butterfly, it's where it's one-to-one, like one caterpillar creates one butterfly. This dandelion goes from one flower to then a thousand seeds. And so in this moment I know you said you're in a particular cycle and in this cycle I think you've just hit 3 million miles. Am I remembering? There are 2 million miles, a large amount of miles on flying across time and space, and so maybe, just from that sort of lens of flying and I'm imagining you flying like the seeds of the dandelion across time and space what has been some of the things that you've been able to kind of see that is important for this moment that we're in.
Speaker 3:I, indeed I just passed three million miles on one of our national carriers, whom I declined to promote, even though they've been very good to me with respect to this particular mileage moment, and what it means is that I've spent over 240 days in an airplane over the course of time since 1986.
Speaker 3:And it was a startling number to me, but what I realized is that, for someone like myself, that just means more meditation time, and so not just where I have gone and people that I have met and spoken to and worked with, but also the ways in which it is necessary to reflect upon that which has just happened and to reflect upon that which is going to occur, upon that which is going to occur. And having to travel in that way, in the technology that we have not yet, at the speed of light or a Scotty beam me up, is actually a blessing, because as long as it takes us time to get somewhere and time to come back, then we have time to resettle into understanding what may be important and to set aside that which is not, and so I see this particular moment as requiring that, and I try to do that, even if I'm not on a plane every other week, but I call it the blessing of having spent that much time in a chair.
Speaker 2:I love that you focused on the process versus the milestones of these 3 million miles we often, I think, in our modern life, look at, well, what was the outcome of this thing, what was even the big lesson learned of these travels?
Speaker 2:And you honed in on the process of the journey, which I so appreciate, because even the journey that Omar and I've been on of co-creating with Gratitude Blooming and the spirit of nature has very much been about that. It's been about the process more than what's going to happen as a result of this process, as a result of our love and our effort to nurture Gratitude Blooming. And you're making me remember, too, one of the things I love about the dandelion which I learned only in the period of producing the podcast is how those beautiful yellow flowers that grow like on sidewalks and everywhere, how they close at night and open up again, and open up again, and this period of rest and pause that is needed to be able to keep moving forward, and so I love that. That's a bit of what you're talking about, as well as just taking the time to be in the liminal spaces as you are transitioning. And we'd love to hear how the book idea came to you and why now? Why, in this moment, are you inspired to share this story?
Speaker 3:So a truth telling among friends, as we are here, that this book is a book that is traditionally published, which is to say that although I have written things papers, even volumes in the past, that they've just been things that have been printed and then given to people that are my students or acquaintances or for whom I wish to share something or another, but never traditionally published. And traditionally published means that it will come into the hands of people that I have never met and will never meet, and that is essentially both the reason I wrote it and also the reason why I hesitate. And so this book was written as a culmination of two years of effort by Todd James and I'm just going to name him and you can publicize that and that's fine with me and Todd literally spent two years encouraging me to this endeavor. He actually did not necessarily have any notion in mind on what the book would be about. He just pursued the notion of sending whatever may be potent out into the world to people for whom neither he nor I will have ever met.
Speaker 3:And finally, that actually became the reason, which is to say that if we are going about the work of helping to bring along human evolution to the extent that we may be moving into more thriving than collapse, then can we do that fast enough with just putting people in front of us or having people find their way to us, or do we need to take measures that just take the chance that, whatever it is that is being offered humbly, with care, with an understanding that not everything will be understood If we take the chance and we just send it out? You know, like the dandelion does, dandelion doesn't know if its seeds are going to meet asphalt and not the place in the asphalt where there is going to be a bit of water or a little bit of dirt to be in. It doesn't know whether it's going to meet that or whether it's going to meet you know, a well-groomed yard for which the dandelion will find nurturing ground, but the owner might not. You know, it doesn't know, it just goes, it just goes, it just goes, and so this is a bit of that kind of thing. It's a bit of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:I'm hearing a radical act of trust in sort of you know the seed going out and finding the place it's meant to land. As someone who now spends a lot of time focused on gardening, you know there's this paradox you spend a lot of time nurturing something and it may or may not survive, and I don't have to look far to my own garden plot to see success and failure. And then this dandelion, which no one is cultivating and yet is thriving, and so there's something interesting about this idea of like what wants to live right, and I think the way you sort of described it is just now is this idea of thriving versus collapse. And I appreciate you invoking Taj's name. He is, in some ways, how I got to connect with Adrienne Murray Brown, reading her book Emergent Strategies and being inspired by Rainbow Eucalyptus Trees to reach out to Taj, which is how I know you, and so it's just a fun.
Speaker 1:Maybe that is this pollinating effect that is happening from reading a book to reconnecting to a friend, to now being I think it's probably two or three years in a series of practices with you. That's one of my favorite things that you sort of teach is this idea that practice is anything that disrupts habit and you know, belinda picked up on your three million miles and what you focused on she called process or practice, like the practice of meditating and being present for those 246 days. What practices do you think may be inspired by this book? And, if I may be so sort of pushing the envelope a little bit, we've been talking, at gratitude blooming, about how do we move from habit to practice to ritual right and really recognize that in some ways, practice isn't just like this biohacking shortcut you you know, optimization of life. It's something maybe a little bit more speaking to something, an ideal, that how we want to actually live, not just by ourselves but together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know, practice is an intention to interrupt habit. But there are so many things we could practice and I think right now we're actually called to practice that which can practically serve us. Now don't just pick that practices to practice practice, but to do the things that will feed us, that will clean up after us, that will create things that are needed, that will tenderly take down the things that no longer serve us, to thank them, whatever it is that we put our efforts into but no longer serve us, and find good homes so that we can move on and that we're not just creating additional rubbish by leaving them behind, leaving those things behind, leaving those artifacts behind. And so I practice flower. I've done this since the year 2000, so it's now coming in 25 years, next year, and a shocking thing for people when they observe us practice flower is that we don't leave it up, we take it down. If we have it in it up, we take it down. If we have it in our house, we certainly take it down before it's lost its dignity, before it's showing its wear and tear, and that it cannot take itself down. And so we take it down and perhaps it has another life, perhaps it may be compost, but even if that is not the case, to leave it just deteriorating is a reminder of how we move on without closing things properly, as if we just discard them.
Speaker 3:So there are these multiple practices, I believe, that are available to us, and really importantly is to orient ourselves into the horizon of our imagination. That is, a place that is thriving and is interdependent. There is little usefulness for us to practice treading water, and there's little usefulness to practice taking revenge upon people because of the things that they have done to us, and there is little to be gained by practicing survival for our own sake, knowing that others will fall and may even be taken out by our actions in order to just survive. I think there's very little to be gained by those things, and so the practice of thriving takes a good amount of discipline to keep doing that, day in, day out, when things are not going well, and there's so much for us to be reactive to.
Speaker 3:As any gardener knows, the five minutes that you spend pulling weeds will make a huge difference. If you do that every day, what you have in mind is not the weeds that you're pulling out, but the room that you are creating for life to be abundant. Life wants to be abundant. It wants to, but it needs air right, it needs a bit of water, it needs to be able to have sun, but not too much. It needs soil that is as rich as you can make it. So it needs these elements and the practice of life, I believe, is to be observant and in practice of the actual creation and cultivation of life.
Speaker 2:That resonates so much for me. As a land steward I'm. You know from big to small things. You know I've been getting into the habit of arranging flowers for people you know in their space and it's so interesting to watch how quickly different kinds of flowers, especially in this new environment of the big island.
Speaker 2:You know what's the life cycle and it's really interesting when you think about, when you go into a space, you can see like, how well has it been tended to, based on what feels alive and what is deteriorating and is still there.
Speaker 2:Why is it still there, honor, that it has completed its cycle? And I'm really curious from this perspective of choosing when is it time to fertilize more to give it more opportunity for growth and life, and when is it time to allow it to compost and die with dignity. Because I think we're living in these times where it's very confusing and I think you even said that in the word of stubbornness. I think the shadow side of resilience is that we stay in that situation that's not helping us or serving us for too long, and then we really pay the price, you know, in a sickness or in a toxic culture, you know, just letting it continue. So I'm really curious for you as an individual. How do you make those choices in your life of should I stay, should I go, should I continue to fertilize or let's start something new? You know?
Speaker 3:You know I have a reputation for moving along faster than people may think of. You know, like when is the time to go, but what I know is that, from a personal perspective, I probably stayed too long in terms of the hope of something being able to happen. Right, you know that's a human thing. I believe and you know it's also ego that you have something to contribute, and you know. And then there are all kinds of ways that people may play with your ego and to entice you to stay.
Speaker 3:Yes, certainly this has happened, and I know that it is sometimes something of a shock when I move on to the people who are still there, and that's because my practice is to have as little drama around departing as I can. So I try to tend to things gracefully but have as little drama around it, and so, therefore, people will essentially say to me oh, I didn't know that you were having a problem and things like that, and so I am needing to care to other people's desires in terms of what the stability look like. And it's an interesting thing because even in spaces where change is on your agenda, you still want stability in terms of how you operate, and it's just a human construct thing, and the complication is that we're in a time in which, if you are truly dedicated to change, then you yourself cannot be wedded to stability. You have to be able to live with a certain amount of instability, but to have your gyroscope working in that instability. And so there are these ways in which we are being called to be more complex beings than perhaps we have become accustomed to with modern life, which is to say, I think that most of our post-industrial ancestors would kind of laugh at the fragility of what humans have become With all of these modern constructs around us.
Speaker 3:We have an expectation, for example, that it doesn't matter what the weather is, we will be able to be comfortable, for example, whereas they had absolutely no notion that that was going to be the case, and so, therefore, they had to be ahead of the curve with respect to the weather in preparation for it, and then, if it got much colder or much hotter, they would have to take immediate measures for that, for which the whole village would have had to have prepared, for if you're going to have people on the other side of the season, those are just things that they have to do, and we've become soft around those things and being soft and sort of pampered does not discount the fact that these are very, very difficult times right now for the earth itself and for all the humans that are on it.
Speaker 1:One of the practices that I've been appreciating and this came through the Dao De Ching series and just my own continued exploration of Daoism in particular is just everything is in cycles and seasons, and I guess my question for you is at the sort of scale of humanity, what season do you feel like we are in?
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a very interesting question. So I would say that we're entering the autumn period, with respect to humanity, and we're meeting the potential of a long winter. So we're in that and the reason we're filled with dread is because we forget, actually, that nature moves from season to season and comes back upon itself again. If we internalize that, understood that, then we wouldn't say, well, if we're in the fall and there may be a long winter, then there's actually nothing to do.
Speaker 3:There's actually a lot to be done. There's a lot. There are all kinds of ways that we can actually make it possible for our descendants to look back and say, oh, you know those ancestors. They're pretty weird but, yeah, they had good hearts and they had the discipline of work that would allow us to benefit from the hardship that they saw, and we're thankful for that. We're thankful for that.
Speaker 3:So, when you're in the autumn period of your own life or in the life of a species, that's the, I believe, one of the most fruitful times. It is when harvests are made, it's when striving is no longer the driver of things, and so there's that part of it that's going through Now. Humans in this time are obviously at all different cycles, and so for the young people who are resentful that humankind would be at this place and they're young people and they don't deserve that I would say we could not engineer that. We would be the people who would be alive, who would make such a difference in terms of what will happen next. You know, we're the people that meet the moment, that meet this moment, and so, whether you're a young person, or you know, or you're Jimmy Carter who just voted from his hospice bed, that notion of humanity. Meeting this moment feels to me like a awesome thing. It's just awesome, one that will fill our descendants with wonder one that will fill our descendants with wonder.
Speaker 2:I love how you are alchemizing the polarities of play and hard work.
Speaker 2:I feel that in my body as you speak, norma of yeah, this is why we're here right now, and I love this metaphor of the fall season.
Speaker 2:This is the time of year where, yeah, we're looking at the trees that have died from the summer and, you know, honorably asking them if they wouldn't mind being firewood for a year from now and making sure that we can stay warm with the amount of wood that we have, you know, and drying that. And so I feel that kind of seasonal shift as you were speaking, and it is such a beautiful way for us to not feel lost in despair or hopeless in this time collectively. And I am curious how you are preparing and harvesting this fall, whether it be a very physical act of getting ready for a winter. Even though in Hawaii it's hard to imagine, I do notice the light is going faster and faster. So I'd love to hear how you're holding this on the many levels that you hold for yourself and then for the book that is being out in the world soon. How are you holding and being with that and when you think about preparation?
Speaker 3:For me to step into this moment as fully as possible and to take the care of each 24-hour cycle, to understand that that is the only way that we can be in the longest of marches is if we take to each 24-hour cycle to renew that that is the gift that nature has given us. It is as forcibly as possible telling us that when the sun is no longer in view that it is time to rest, and so that when the sun is barely above the horizon and coming back into our view, that we would be wide awake and ready to go. So these simple things that, from a human perspective, we frequently say that well, I'll just let my will, the stubbornness part of the dandelion, just pull us through. I have not found that to be very useful at this time. Perhaps it's also because of my age. A younger person, a younger Norma, might be able to work through the night, a Norma that has gone five cycles through as a monkey not so much. But I'm also mindful that the book, for example, is coming into the stream of things from a Western distribution perspective, which means that it's moving out with people and structures that I gave approval to but I actually don't have daily control over and they will move out and it will get into hands and into people and it will be read and all this type of stuff, and we cannot necessarily measure what the impact will be. Moving forward and also moving backwards into where I am or where the people are, who I am in proximity with or practicing in proximity with, omar. You've been in these spaces with me and so you're seeing like how growth has occurred in those spaces and that is by relationship. We bring people in by relationship and now we will have the possibility that people will come into space where the only relationship they would have is through the written word, through having read the written word and for it to have reached a place in themselves that asks them to come forward and to be a part of community that is engaged.
Speaker 3:And if you prepare for what you ask for, will it be too many zucchinis Is what a gardener asks at the beginning of her season, and the answer is always yes, there will be too many zucchini, because that's the nature of what zucchinis are. It is their nature to provide so much abundance at a particular moment that no gardener will know what to do with too many zucchinis and the only thing you can do is to do all the things to cook and roast and pickle, and to do all the things and to not worry too much about the fact that you had no control over the zucchinis. The notion that you thought you had is a delusion in many cases. So I'm trying to interrupt as many delusions as I might have about things and to be a good strategist, but not to be someone who is caught in an expectation around things. The future will unfold quickly enough, and so all I could do is to prepare to meet that moment of too many zucchinis.
Speaker 1:I won't say how many zucchinis I did not grow this season, but as we were talking about flower, the practice of flower, flower arranging, we have a bouquet on our dining room table from this young 14-year-old boy who asked my youngest daughter out for homecoming this past week and you know we talked about, well, what do we, you know, discard and what do we keep. And my daughter last night is like dad, can we take the roses out and can you show me how to hang them upside down so we can preserve them? And so I just, you know that very practical of imagination, of we'll just call this I don't even puppy joy, we'll call this moment with them. But yeah, as you look at this sort of, you know a little bit of what I heard you it's the Wayne Gretzky like how are you successful? He said I don't go where the puck is, I go where it's going. Right, what would you tell my 14-year-old daughter with? Where the future is going, how to prepare.
Speaker 3:Okay, let's see. I would say there are ways in which we can prepare for whatever the future may bring, and among those would be can we keep singing? Can we give comfort and joy to someone who is in need of comfort and joy? Can we receive love and have no expectation that love will come out in a particular way, but that it will always be there? Do we know how to prepare our own food, make delicious food out of simple things for the peoples that we love and for the people that we see who may need food?
Speaker 1:Wonderful pieces of practical advice. Well, we appreciate you joining us a second time. We're very delighted and excited for your book. I know I've bought several copies already and they will be my gifts for the holiday. Any closing reflections, questions? Belinda Norma.
Speaker 2:Well, very important one is how do we get our hands on this precious wisdom to have some hope for these times? How do people find the book Norma?
Speaker 3:Well, you know it's your independent bookseller will probably have it. I do have an author's website. It's normawongcom website. It's normawongcom, which I allow the people who love me to use, even though I had to close my eyes and take a big gulp when that occurred and you can go to that website and there's some information there and you can click through and order your book there and you can click through and order your book.
Speaker 1:Wonderful Well. Thank you again for joining us. We appreciate your joy, your monkey spirit and all the wisdom. So thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
