{"id":149,"date":"2011-04-26T12:39:47","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T16:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/insweetcompany\/?p=149"},"modified":"2011-04-26T12:39:47","modified_gmt":"2011-04-26T16:39:47","slug":"thoughts-on-kate-wills-and-catherine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/04\/thoughts-on-kate-wills-and-catherine.html","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Kate, Wills and Catherine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201c&#8230; for me, spiritual practice is &#8230;\u00a0 about how I discover and reveal myself as I do things that are ordinary.\u201d<\/em> &#8212; Miriam Polster,\u00a0 IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE<\/p>\n<p>Kate and Wills. They look so young. So poised. So glamorous. So &#8230; royal. (Not that I\u2019ve known any royalty to compare them with. Not that I\u2019ve known any royalty, period.) I must admit, I have a better feeling about Kate and Wills than I did about Charles and Diana. Kate doesn\u2019t seem as fragile a Diana; Wills seems more comfortable in his own skin than Charles They both seem more present to each other.<\/p>\n<p>That &#8212; their ability to be present to each other &#8212; may be their saving grace.\u00a0 It is for a lot of relationships, even those not under constant media scrutiny; especially those where there is a lot of internal or external pressure to be perfect, to perform to a certain standard, to perform in the face of great challenge: marriages, work relationships, sibling rivalries, and your everyday keeping up with the Jones&#8217;s kind of thing. Whenever we feel we need to be perfect, for any reason, we become so centered on performance outcomes that we miss the opportunity to enjoy the holiness of the moment, to be there for another, to listen to our Inner Voice, to notice the omnipresence of God, the grace of God, to learn about kindness and humility. To my way of thinking, it\u2019s more important to be present than perfect, to be authentic and sincere than flawless or unparalleled.<\/p>\n<p>Royals may not have that luxury to demonstrate their authenticity and humanity given the standard they are held to and the extent to which they are in the public eye. Maybe that\u2019s what makes us commoners so valuable to them; we show them how to live as authentic human beings in their private moments.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also what makes theatrical royal Catherine Zeta-Jones\u2019 disclosure about being bipolar so important. By choosing to be fully present to herself, in making her imperfections public she helped us all &#8212; Royal and commoner alike &#8212; understand what is perfect and excellent and good about every present moment.\u00a0 That she had the courage to do this makes her quite royal in my eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201c&#8230; for me, spiritual practice is &#8230;\u00a0 about how I discover and reveal myself as I do things that are ordinary.\u201d &#8212; Miriam Polster,\u00a0 IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE Kate and Wills. They look so young. So poised. So glamorous. So &#8230; royal. (Not that I\u2019ve known any&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":231,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[46,43,42,44,47,45,28],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-transformation","category-spiritual-journey","tag-being-present","tag-catherine-zeta-jones","tag-kate-and-wills","tag-miriam-polster","tag-perfection","tag-relationships","tag-uplifting-quotes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Thoughts on Kate, Wills and Catherine - In Sweet Company<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/04\/thoughts-on-kate-wills-and-catherine.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thoughts on Kate, Wills and Catherine - In Sweet Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201c&#8230; for me, spiritual practice is &#8230;\u00a0 about how I discover and reveal myself as I do things that are ordinary.\u201d &#8212; Miriam Polster,\u00a0 IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE Kate and Wills. 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(Not that I\u2019ve known any&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/04\/thoughts-on-kate-wills-and-catherine.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"In Sweet Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-04-26T16:39:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Margaret Wolff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Thoughts on Kate, Wills and Catherine - In Sweet Company","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/04\/thoughts-on-kate-wills-and-catherine.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Thoughts on Kate, Wills and Catherine - In Sweet Company","og_description":"\u201c&#8230; for me, spiritual practice is &#8230;\u00a0 about how I discover and reveal myself as I do things that are ordinary.\u201d &#8212; Miriam Polster,\u00a0 IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE Kate and Wills. 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She speaks and writes about things women care about: how to make our lives and our work be about what we value most; how to navigate challenge and change; how to live with integrity and grace, to look at error in ourselves and others in a forgiving way and view life as an invitation to transform ourselves into instruments for the Greater Good. \"I laughed, I cried, I was silent, I cheered. Most of all, I loved.\" Spoken by a woman at In Sweet Company Retreat, these words express what women experience when Margaret engages them in dynamic, soul-searching conversations about their lives. Margaret holds degrees in art therapy, psychosynthesis, and leadership and human behavior. Her work takes her to universities, to conferences and retreat settings, to living rooms and board rooms -- wherever women gather. Her articles, essays, and stories are featured in numerous magazines; her women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spirituality retreats are held throughout the U.S. Margaret\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last book, In \"Sweet Company: Conversations With Extraordinary Women About Living a Spiritual Life\" (Jossey Bass), is a collection of intimate conversations she had with 14 famous women of various ages, faiths, and backgrounds about how their spirituality nourishes them and serves as a steady compass for their decision-making. Olympia Dukakis, Riane Eisler, Zainab Salbi, Margaret Wheatley, Sri Daya Mata, Lauren Artress, and other women artists, activists, religious leaders, and visionary thinkers shared their lives with her. You can too!","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/author\/mwolff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/231"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}