According to plan…

If all goes according to plan, my kids will be here at this time in one week!

I never imagined what a big thing it would be – what a whole consciousness thing – to write this sentence.

It feels very big, indeed.

Half the adults are fully vaccinated. The other half are half-way there. The girls are too young.

I am, as you might imagine, thrilled. It’s been over a year since I’ve hugged my girls. One of them has had a birthday. The other has had two. And they’re in the tween/early teen phase when they change from moment to moment.

I have changed, too. Frankly, I’m scared. I mean, they’ll have to stop and put gas in the car. What if one of those people who doesn’t believe Covid is a big deal works at the gas station? They can’t drive clear from Virginia without food. What if somebody coughs on their sandwich?

And they’ve started back to actual school part time. Talk about another 9 million what if’s !

Then I watch the news, especially just now in Atlanta, and remind myself that there are always what if’s. We’re just not always quite so aware of them.

A couple of my heroes helped me remember the big picture this morning. You see, The Rev. Dr. William L. Barber and Senator Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock were speaking the Word.

Specifically, Dr. Barber was reminding us that God’s plan, God’s theology, is All Theology.

I won’t spoil it all for you here. I will share this link so you can join in yourself. You are, in fact, invited!

And I’ll also confess that, as I listened and watched virtually, I couldn’t help but remember that, despite my fears about my kids and traveling and Covid, I have had a lot of social advantages in dealing with those fears and with the possibility of becoming a pandemic statistic.

And we need to keep working on making those advantages available to everybody. Just turn on CNN and pick your issue. Then, in whatever way it works for you and your beliefs, think what the world would be like if we all heard Dr. Barber reminding us that, “God’s way is everybody in. Nobody out.”

And what would happen next if we acted, and voted, on that belief?

So, having sat, figuratively, in the pew at Ebenezer Baptist Church for the first time in about 30 years, in the midst of what feels like mountains of laundry and trying to figure out how to fit four more people amongst the easels, I’m making prayer dots.

I know. No surprise!

It really helps. When I pray with my eyes and ears and hands and heart, there’s less room for what if’s. There’s less room for fear.

And there’s more room for all.

Then, when I take a break from the dots, I’ll do what Grammies have done for centuries. I’ll check recipes and make grocery lists for Grampy to take shopping. I’ll wash the flannel sheets. I’ve even ordered garden seeds in case they want to help plant.

And, good friends willing, I’m sending the beasties off for a bath. It has been more than a bit longer than optimal.

One of my favorite things about our kids is that they’re really good at figuring things out.

It’s entirely likely that I’ll cry the whole time they’re here, with the relief and joy of it all. And they’ll love me anyway, if I do. Though I probably ought to put Kleenex on the next grocery list!

I’m also pretty sure painting will be involved. We’ll make some dots for you and yours. They’ll look a lot like stars in the sky.

ps… I have one more space open in my new program, Soul Expression Breakthrough. If you have a vision for your future, anything from a concrete project like remodeling your kitchen to running a rhino reserve after you retire, and aren’t afraid to color, you could be a good fit! email me at suesvoice@gmail.com to schedule a call and find out.

Wednesday is for learning!

In the Intentional Creativity world where I hang out, it’s #WIP Wednesday, again. Actually, all the Wednesdays are Work-In-Progress days.

I used to feel somehow pressured by #WIP days. You know how it goes…

Is mine good enough, yet? Did I actually make any progress this week? What if it’s hard to post what I’ve been learning? What if it’s hard to claim, even inside, what I’ve been learning?

You might relate. (I mean, maybe…)

Today, I feel like a bunch of the things I’m learning are all smashing into each other and becoming whole new things I hadn’t expected.

Then again, expecting is often problematic!

So, I dragged out an old, dusty box from my brain. It’s the box I used to set outside my classroom door when I was first teaching Developing Capable People, which has been a while.

And I’d explain to the eager, terrified, hopeful parents and grandparents in the group that one of the most important things we know about learning new things is that it’s really, really hard when we’re all wrapped up in shame and blame.

So, anybody who might be having feelings of shame or blame was welcome to set those feelings outside the room during our time together. And, yes, I always assured them that they could have the shame and blame back when we were done, if, of course, they wanted those feelings back.

Very few of them ever did.

So, with shame and blame deep in the virtual box… here’s an old #WIP that’s teaching me still. (This is why we document our paint journeys!)

What I see when I look at it now is all kinds of things started, some attempt to organize them, and the most helpful thing of all… a red thread running through it. (We’ll come back to the thread in a minute.)

I do have all kinds of things started and I have made LOTS of attempts at organizing all of them.

Amongst all the paintings and writing, there are some tears in my world. Some hopes. Regular ones and really big ones. And then there’s the family tree project with which I am currently obsessed.

Frankly, I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m obsessed.

Then, last night, I dreamed the answer. Well, sort of.

What I knew when I got up was that I needed to go back through some of the under layers for old #WIP’s because there was a message for me there.

And there it is… right at the top of this post.

And, yes… it’s the red thread.

The invisible connection between us and all those destined to be important in our lives.

Or, more specifically, the invisible connection between all the generations of a whole bunch of Grammies and me and my girls.

It was there in that #WIP about three years ago. And it’s in me and all the painting and writing and coaching and teaching I’m doing now.

Some of the stories I’m learning are more fun than others. I imagine you can relate!

What’s best of all, though, is that I get to keep the stories that are helpful to me and, literally or figuratively, paint over the others.

Paint something new.

And now feels like a very good time for that!

ps… If you’re curious, my #WIP for today turned into my first Abundance Muse!

pss… In the midst of my #WIP Wednesday, the need for a new Soulful Vision Plan Workshop. If you have a dream, it might just be the place for you. Details to follow… or, you could email me: suesvoice@gmail.com (Yes, YOU!)

A whole new question!

What do you do when your dreams start to come true?

It’s not that I’ve never been here before. I have. It’s just that I was a lot less conscious then. (And exhausted!) This time feels different, though. Mostly, I suspect, because I’ve been the one deciding what the questions are for the last few years. Here are a few I’ve been experimenting with:

  • What matters, not in just my world, but in my relationship with the world?
  • What can I actually spend energy on and what needs to be on somebody else’s list?
  • How is food a symbol of what I believe? (Edit at will!)

Then there’s the one that (to continue the food theme) is “on the front burner” these days:

  • How do I hold onto my chosen belief that everyone’s voice matters, even when I disagree, with every cell in my body, with so many of those everyones?

And, yes, I’ve been watching CNN again. And doing some work on Get Out The Vote efforts in places that need some help just now. And emailing my personal flock of politicians. And making prayer dots.

Lots and lots of dots.

I won’t ask you to believe that I don’t swear at the tv a good bit. Also at my email. And Facebook.

I also cry a good bit. Sometimes even the good kind where you feel touched deep inside where the tears live.

Those are the kind of experiences that just volunteer inside me.

Prayer dots are the ones I choose. Auditory. Kinesthetic. Visual. All at once, which is a good thing in terms of creating new realities.

And every now and then, mostly when my knee is really whining, I sit down and work on reading the extra-canonical Gospel of Thomas which is part of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library.

Frankly, I haven’t figured out where to file all this particular newness, just yet.

Here’s what I am sure of… anything that says this is worth wrestling with some more.

If you bring forth what is inside of you, what is inside of you will save you.

Thomas and his friends may have been short on paint deliveries from the Dick Blick guy. I, however, have a deal with him and many, many more dots to make.

ps… This abundance of dots are part of my new painting journey known as Ritual, which, as far as I can tell, is a whole lot about bringing forth what is inside. These are my favorite kind… finger dots!

pss… While we’re pondering big things, this is the day known as Bloody Sunday, when 600 souls began a march from Selma, AL to the state Capitol in Montgomery to mark the death of a man named Jimmie Lee Jackson who was shot and killed by a state trooper while protecting his mother during a civil rights demonstration. One of the Bloody Sunday marchers was the late Congressman John Lewis, who was beaten by police. May we continue the Good Trouble, each in our own way, until it isn’t needed anymore.

Drawing close to the truth…

Do you know that place where your inner puzzle pieces are shifting about and the picture calls you closer and closer?

The place where hope and anger and longing all bring tears and you’re wearing out your Kleenex boxes way more quickly than usual?

The place where swearing and praying and painting all become the same language?

The place where the only thing that would hurt worse than all the stretching you’re doing would be not stretching at all?

For the past couple of days, I have awakened to that place.

There doesn’t seem to be a “Welcome to __________” sign. I’m not entirely sure where I am.

Possibly the eye doctor’s office, playing the endless game of, “clearer one or two?” (I’ve had lots of practice with that one!)

If you’ve been reading along for a while, you won’t be entirely surprised to hear that there seems to be a lot of politics going on in this place which feels both deeply personal and way out of the box, all at once.

At one point, needing a pondering break, I hobbled out to the kitchen for a cup of hot chocolate before Colbert started.

(The closer-to-good-for-you type of hot chocolate!)

When I came back, she found me. My very first art therapy drawing from about 20 years ago.

Ironic that I needed to be found. There she is in the photo, just like real life, to the right of my magic chair and above the stacks of stuff I can’t think without. She’s been there for at least a couple of years. Waiting, I suspect.

Her name is Follow Your Heart. My first Legend journey, long before I had any notion of what that meant.

My second Legend journey, from about 3 years ago, is pictured below. Her name is Follow Your Heart, too, though I didn’t connect them then.

The obvious question, of course, is what’s in my/her heart and where is it leading?

I’m afraid the answers aren’t totally clear just yet.

Here’s what I do know. Scrawled in the heart, in invisible ink, is the word, Voice. And another word that intersects with Voice, crossword puzzle-style, that’s not quite clear yet.

I’ll keep you posted!

ps… Here’s Follow Your Heart, the second in a 24×18″ wrapped canvas print, ready to inspire you.

pps… She’s also available in a hand-signed and numbered museum quality 24×18″ print.

Many ways of being…

It’s been a bit of a week. Actually, it’s been a whole lot of a week!

The guys installing the solar stuff on the shiny new roof come and go kind of like teenagers, making planning much of anything a challenge. Blessedly, they are now convinced that we need some warning for dog herding time before forays to the attic. Luther doesn’t understand the whole pull-down stair situation. (And they don’t much understand Luther!)

One of my knees is – shall we say – crankier than usual. The advantage to this is that I’ve had more time for paint videos and my favorite one-virtual-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind of meeting.

A whole bunch of my inner puzzle pieces began re-arranging themselves this week. Then, on Thursday, my mental sketch of how my life is organized changed.

It’s kind of unusual for me to have pictures before words but that’s where I seem to be just now. Rather like the roots and trunk and branches of my inner tree all shifted jobs.

This is a bit unsettling, but not at all a bad thing because I can already tell things make more sense. (Thanks, Sam!)

Then, on Friday, I wandered off to an adventure known as a Salon in Zoom-land with some mostly new friends pondering Carl Jung and Gnostic traditions. More shifting of puzzle pieces! (Let’s just say I don’t recall most of this coming up in Seminary!)

Saturday turned out to be a delightful full-circle sort of adventure in which the painting pictured above found its home.

In September of 2019, back in the pre-pandemic days, I did a street fair/art market in the town where I live. Based on the notion that there’s no such thing as too many prayer dots, I set up an outline of a peace sign and a station for making dots.

It was great fun! I especially loved watching the kids go from, “I don’t know how” to “This is cool!” (I spent lots of time promising that they couldn’t possibly do it wrong.)

Then, last August, a candidate I was excited about won the primary for commissioner in DeKalb County’s super district six. (And, no, I don’t know why it’s different from the regular districts!) Anyway, there was no opponent for the general election so we had ourselves a new commissioner.

Somewhere along the way I promised him the painting for his office when he – you know – had one.

Today was the day! And, in case you wondered, we’re already brainstorming new community art projects. At least one of which would involve ladders. Gulp!

Here’s what you can’t see in the photo. Behind the peace sign, deep in the under layers, the Metta Prayer is hard at work. It says something pretty close to this, with a smidge of tradition mixing:

May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe and well. May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature. May all beings be free and free from suffering.

Amen. Amen. Selah.

“Oddly” enough, that’s pretty much the same picture my shifting puzzle pieces are making. Kind of like a promise to me and to the world.

ps… May all beings find their voices and be free to vote!

pss… And may this painting and these painters and Commissioner Terry be powerful peace in our world!

If I Ran the Zoo…

In the land of neurolinguistic programming, where I’ve been known to hang out, my name tag would read:

Primary Kinesthetic with strong Auditory/Digital backup.

Translation: My go-to information processing system is based in feelings and movement. My next strategy is words.

(There are also people in the world who go first or second to visual information. I’m still learning that one!)

I wouldn’t be surprised if you were quietly wondering why I was telling you all this head trippy stuff when Texas is only barely thawing out and chunks of an airplane fell on suburban Denver and nobody can figure out how many doses of Covid vaccine there are, let alone whether – and how – to actually go about getting, you know, vaccinated.

There are two main reasons, I suppose. One is a larger than optimal dose of CNN. It seems the only thing my inner wisdom finds worse than being utterly overwhelmed with news is not knowing what’s happening. Who knows? It may actually be my Inner Critic trying to distract me from making art!

The second is the notion of vested interest. Why do I care?

And through all the pondering there is a fairly continuous loop of Dr. Seuss’s classic, If I Ran the Zoo.

Remember the auditory/digital thing I mentioned a minute ago? Well, it’s the reason that, despite not having encountered an actual copy of this childhood favorite since Dave was younger than my girls are now, I can still hear huge chunks of it in my head. Here’s the punchline:

But if I ran the zoo, said young Gerald McGrew, I’d make a few changes, that’s just what I’d do.

I’m with Gerald McGrew.

In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that young Gerald has changed his name to Joe Biden and finds himself faced with a zoo of epic proportions and some disagreement, shall we say, about just what needs to be changed.

This is complicated by the observation that last guy who ran the zoo doesn’t seem to have gotten the message that there’s a new zoo keeper in town.

In the meantime, here in the part of the zoo known as Georgia, I’ve been spending a lot of time and energy trying to help the critters in favor of voting rights get a lot more notice than they may have had lately.

Someone’s intern actually asked me why.

At this point, the zoo metaphor is in danger of falling a bit short, though the rhythm – the anapestic tetrameter Seuss was famous for – seems still to be running loose in my head.

Here’s what it all boils down to… I have a vested interest.

Everybody does.

Mine is simple. You’ve probably heard it before.

I have two girls growing up in this world.

One of them is turning 11 today. And I vote now for all the things I want for their future.

Not just their future, though. The future I want for all our kids.

Like Gerald McGrew, I know just what I’d do.

Voter rights. Not suppression. Clean air and water. Clean energy. Clean food. Choices about their healthcare. And their education. And who they love. Respect for diversity. Safety. And the chance to explore the world. Safely.

Yes. The list has gotten longer lately. As has my to-do list.

They’re worth it. So are yours. And everyone’s.

But, unlike Gerald’s zoo crew, I want them all free.

So, with thanks to Dr. Seuss, who taught us to see more…

When people see them, I know just what they’ll say. This new zoo, McSue zoo is really a wonder!

ps… Happy Birthday, Taylor! We miss you!!!

Same or Different?

I never went to Kindergarten. By the time I started the first grade, I was six and a half years old and a very eager student.

This was, of course, long before innovations like Sesame Street. I began my school career able to sing the ABC song and count to ten. Everything else was new.

My teacher had been teaching the first grade for 40 years and she didn’t put up with what she referred to as, “being a baby.” I was very careful to stay on her good side!

Sally, Dick, and Jane were my new best friends. The reading and writing came quickly for me. Other things, not so much.

A particular struggle was my teacher’s fondness for worksheets with pictures of objects in neat rows and the perplexing directions to mark which ones were “same” and which were “different.”

I had a particular challenge going with fruits and vegetables. I knew the difference between apples and grapes, but they were both fruits. Cucumbers and squash were even worse.

I knew nothing of botany at that time but, in my mind, they were “same” because they lived near each other in the produce department at the Kroger store where my Dad knew everybody. (And, yes, now that I know some botany, they are both “same” and “different”.)

And then there were dogs.

Neverminding for a moment that the Westminster Kennel Club show I was watching last night was a re-run, anybody “should” be able to see that, while they’re all dogs, there are 197 different breeds and I began relating to them very early in my journey. “Same”? “Different”?

Here’s part of the challenge… It’s not until kids are about 12 years old that the ability to think abstractly begins to kick in developmentally. And, like me, most of us have some pretty firm opinions by the time we reach our tween years.

And, Westminster is not the only thing on TV. There’s CNN. It seems there’s still Fox News because it somehow keeps leaking into my email. Then there are political parties. Run the “same” or “different” game on those!

If you’re hoping, about now, for a tidy answer, you’re probably going to be disappointed.

This is the best I’ve got…

Let’s change the questions! What if we went with something along the lines of “What do we/these things share?” And, “What might we learn from each other?”

If the news is to be trusted, break time, such as it was, is over and Georgia’s about to get even more complicated. I’m in.

I have two granddaughters growing up in this world and I am going to vote on the questions!

ps… Westminster, for which we’ve often moved Valentine’s Day at our house, will happen (Gasp!) in June this year in Westchester County, NY instead of the traditional Madison Square Garden site, because of pandemic restrictions. Same? Different? Both? (The stunning black Standard Poodle won last year/night, in case you were curious!)

pps… Phoebe and Luther, who aren’t much for running in circles, will probably just nap, while sending out their wondrous, peaceful energy. I hope they believe me when I tell them they’d win if those judge folks knew them!


Sue Boardman, Certified Intentional Creativity®
Color of Woman Teacher & Coach