Okay, it’s true…we’ve actually had the logo now for a few months. But we’ve been meaning to tell you a little bit about how it came about. Here’s what happened:
Mindfulness, we say, can be described (in part) as intention + attention. We were looking at our public face: our website, our logo…and realized it needed some attention. A shout out to all you artists out there: creating art is hard! It takes intention! And attention! And lots of other things that we talk about in mindfulness: patience, trust, letting go/letting be, non-striving, humor. Oh—and artistic talent.
Into our lives walked the perfect artist for this mission: Will Crosby, working from his desk on an island off the coast of Maine. He was curious: what were we doing here, with this Mindful Birth & Parenting venture? Why? How did it work? What was becoming of it? Where were we going? Who were we serving? What was being practiced? And as we spoke, he mindfully listened.
And then he started creating. And there were lots of cool ideas and pictures he came up with, and it was fun to see what he made, and why. It was interesting to see our reactions, and our responses…and why.
But you know how you learn that when you take a multiple choice test you should probably always go with your first answer? Well, that’s what we did: we went with Will’s first answer.
So here’s our (new) logo. It’s an acorn that is sprouting. And if you are thinking it’s upside down it turns out that’s the side that the acorn sprouts from. And if you’re a botanist you’re going to say that well, it doesn’t really look like that—it kind of explodes from all sides. And you can think of it like that, too, if you want. But if you’re a botanist-artist, maybe you’re okay with it sprouting from one small spot. And if you’re thinking: Molly & Carol, you always tell us that with mindfulness, we start with the body. And this is not a human body, it’s an acorn. You’re right. These are all the things we got to talk about with Will as he was making these things.
So it might be kind of obvious, but it goes like this: we are the acorn. And our mind is the acorn. Our heart is the acorn. And the baby that might be growing inside us is the acorn. We are reminded that it’s all programmed: there is nothing to do, the acorn is going to grow in the way it’s going to grow. And growing happens slowly, on horticultural time. And creating the causes for the acorn to grow—some of that is up to us, but we need to have the intention to pay attention to what is needed. Some of it is not up to us—I mean, we don’t control all the weather, right? But we can sit in the weather and be with it, exposing ourselves to the elements and still grow. Actually, this is just the way life is.
And the oak is native to Pennsylvania. Or so we read. But it is also native to many other continents—that is, you can find oaks in many places on this earth. That’s neat, because the idea that an acorn can grow into an oak anywhere, if the conditions are right, is what we are going for here with this mindfulness business.
Before we picked the acorn, we showed the image to a few MBCP alumni. “That’s it!” one said, pointing to the acorn. “That’s it exactly. It explains it all.” We had to agree.