With Hope on Mothers Day!

As many of you know, it’s been quite the week in post-op puppy nurse land!

Luther is healing well which is great because I’m pretty close to wiped out. I’m thinking of having my mail forwarded to the magic chair where I’m pretty much living at the moment.

In an effort, perhaps, to channel my early years, there has been a lot of Grey’s Anatomy going on.

One episode in particular hit home for me just now.

An explosion, thought to be a bomb, happens at a shopping mall. Many people, including a number of children, are injured.

One of the ER docs, a young woman who is pregnant, reacts with tremendous fear and wonders over and over how to bring a baby into a world where such a thing is possible.

Her mother-in-law, a woman more given to snapping orders than to extending comfort, offers a surprisingly profound response:

Raise your babies well. This is how the world changes. 

The obvious question, especially as the American Mothers Day holiday dawns, is “How?”

Allowing that we must each find our own answers, I’d like to offer a framework that has been hugely helpful in my journey. It comes from the late Dr. H. Stephen Glenn, whose work, Developing Capable People, I first encountered when my own baby was four years old.

According to Steve, much of parenting (and grandparenting) comes from helping kids to believe three things:

I am capable.

I contribute in meaningful ways and I am genuinely needed.

I can influence what happens to me. 

Raising Self-Reliant Children In A Self-Indulgent World, p. 49

I believe!

In fact, I know. And it isn’t easy. It involves ditching our societal obsession with success and claiming the amazing possibility that there’s no such thing as failure. Only experience to be learned from. 

Kind of like acrylic paint!

Here’s the catch.

In order for our kids to learn these amazing truths, we have to at least experiment with believing them ourselves.

It doesn’t make a great Hallmark card. It does help us to raise kind, confident children, even in this world.

Steve walked on some years ago and the book is a bit dated in terms of language and examples but it still lives in my study on a shelf I always know how to find, no matter how much we rearrange the furniture. And it lives on in my own book, Grandmothers Are In Charge Of Hope.

With my whole heart, and with hope for my own girls, I invite you to check it out. It’s never too late to start! We need all the capable, significant, influential kids we can get.

This is how the world changes.

Many blessings to all of you who are mom-ing and grammy-ing anybody, anywhere and teaching these truths in whatever way works for you. This day and every day. Amen.

 

 

 

An Interesting Question…

I got an email this week from a dear writer buddy of mine who said she was “confused about my blog.”

I get it.

She went on to say that she, “originally thought you were interested in uniting and empowering elders as a dynamic power… also things like it’s difficult to mature in our culture, which is why we should treasure the brave and courageous people who do mature and become powerful wise elders…”

Because I know her, I can hear the gifts of her academic and activist filters which I so treasure in her question.

If you’ve been reading along for a while, you may have wondered, too.

My blog isn’t the same these days as it started out, nor is it the same as my book, Grandmothers Are In Charge Of Hope.

I still believe and want all the things my friend mentioned in her email and all the things I wrote about in my book, which is, by the way, pretty handy!

The thing is, that I, in my personal grandmother-ness, am still learning. I have grown and discovered new ways of actually doing those things I believe in. Many of those ways have to do with art and creativity.

You see, as I get more empowered and in touch with the inherent creativity in each of us and with ways to share that in the world, there’s more for everybody! And there’s way more for my girls, for we do these things together, as often as possible.

The work of Intentional Creativity is often about paint, for sure. But it’s also about putting hopeful, empowering images into a world that desperately needs them. Especially feminine images.

And, for many of us, it’s also about teaching others to put that same energy into their families and communities and the world.

Many of the people I learn with and teach are grandmothers. A whole movement of us acting in love and peace and diversity around the globe.

And it’s also about some very cool things like accessing right and left brain processes and more of our own consciousness so that we can all live our gifts in the world.

I want my girls to grow up thinking that’s the way things are supposed to be. I want them to claim their gifts and put them to work creating a world that works for all of us.

And the best way I know to do that is to share what’s changing in my life with grandmothers and grandkids and seminary students and yoga students and friends dear to my heart.

Come. Hang out. Read the stories and check out the images. Ask questions.

Roll around in fierce compassion alive in the world. Roll around in paint, too, if you’d like! Or soup. Or words. Or quilts.

Create, because it’s a huge part of being human.

Risk learning new things. (How cool a model is that for your kids???)

Grow some asparagus in your front yard.

And vote, if you live in a place where you can. Preferably for fierce compassion.

 

Sometimes I Sort for Same!

There’s a concept in the field of Neuro-linguistic Programming that says that some of us sort for same and others sort for different. 

All boiled down, it basically means that some people prefer things they way they’ve always been. Tradition. Routine.

And others prefer variety and novelty and things we’ve never done before.

At least that’s the way I learned it.

With all due respect to my learned teachers, I think there’s something they forgot to mention.

Most of us do both! Here are a couple of examples I know best.

When it comes to music, I sort for same. I’ve actually had the same CD in my car for about five years! And I have about three choices for painting alone times. All of which I’ve known for at least 20 years.

Bill, on the other hand, sorts for almost everything when it comes to music, as long as it’s loud.

Food is a whole different deal.

I sort for variety. Novelty. Local food. Ethnic food. Darn near everything except snake, octopus, or bugs. As long as it doesn’t come in a cardboard box with cartoon characters on the label.

The Legendary Husband sorts for same in food. Same restaurants. Same order. (The “Bill Special”!)

Recently, I’ve had a new experience with food. You see, right around Thanksgiving last year, one of my favorite restaurants was closed due to smoke and water damage from a nearby fire.

I’ve really missed them! Noodle Decatur. 

As you probably guessed, noodle dishes. Bowls. Soups. All really good. (If you leave out the tofu!)

And, even better, dumplings. Just a few, for appetizers. If we’re telling the truth, fried pork dumplings.

And, best of all, sushi. Really, really, really good sushi.

I’ve tried other sushi, of course, in the long months Noodle has been closed. Finally, I gave up. And took to checking at least once a week to see when “the permit problems” would be resolved and I could, once again, have the food I missed so much.

Same order. Every time. Which is extremely sort for same-ish for me!

You guessed it… they’re open again!

Lunch. Virtually unchanged menu. Some of the same staff. (And some new guys learning to fold napkins.)

New tables. A bit more pared down decor.

Dumplings, yes. And my favorite sushi roll.

And I am, kind of oddly for me, relieved.

Which is, I guess, variety of a sort!

I tell you this story today, in the middle of my happy dance, knowing that if you’ve been hanging around for a while, you may have heard some of this before. That’s okay, though. You see, I think there’s an important reminder in here.

First, to borrow a bit of language from Bill Harris, most of us have more than one strategy for handling things, like choices.

Last week, after my fall, my strategy for dealing with food was pretty much whatever hurt least to reach. Today, an excursion to the land of familiar and comforting. Often… as often as possible… exploring new things. (Italian, house-made pasta with fresh shaved truffles comes to mind!)

And food isn’t the only thing for which we have strategies. How to mow the lawn. Or pay the bills. If it’s working, great. (Until your bank changes its system!)

Have you had the same argument 27 times with the same person?

Or backed into your trash can once a month for 3 years?

It might be time for some new strategies.

The good news is that we don’t have to give up the old ones to add new ones. Sometimes we just need some more choices.

Just now, after about 17 coats of paint (!) I’m developing a new strategy for hair on one of  my paintings. It didn’t happen all at once, this new strategy. It happened by going back, again and again, and listening to the outcome from each attempt. By learning from experiences that didn’t quite work and not giving in to old voices whispering “failure”.

I’m headed back to the studio next. Some different. A bit more same. A lot more learning.

And, it’s entirely possible that when my friend comes for lunch tomorrow, we may be back at Noodle!

Context and Puzzle Pieces!

It’s been a week of big bruises and recliner chairs and a fair number of pain pills since my fall.

The good news is that I wasn’t hurt badly and am healing well.

The other good news is that I’ve had some extra time for pondering. This is especially helpful as there is a lot to ponder in my universe these days. Much of it has seemed like deja’ vu.

Back when I was doing full time pastoral counseling, retreats, staff development and other interesting things along those lines, I often felt like my job was to take a jigsaw puzzle with no edge pieces and no picture on the box and try to help folks fit them together in a way that felt true.

Turns out that those are handy skills for making my way through the lands of Intentional Creativity and the neighboring territory of Red Thread Circle Guides.

Time out for a footnote…

The Legend of the Red Thread is an ancient tale common to many indigenous cultures across the world. From Asia to ancient Greece (Think Ariadne’s thread and the labyrinth…) to native peoples from South America to Alaska and beyond, there are references to the red thread as that which holds us together in community and helps us support, and be supported by, those whom we were destined to know.

There are even biblical and sacred art references to the red thread.

There are lots of those stories running through my head these days.

Also lots of pondering about the Body of Work that so many of us are building in our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not which, according to Maestra Shiloh Sophia, has something to do with my CODEX paintings, though I haven’t quite gotten that far yet.

One of my favorite things about the Red Thread legend is that we each have our part to hold but we’re not responsible for everyone else’s part. I find that very comforting!

This week, The Legend of the Red Thread and the notion of a Body of Work smashed into each other in my head when I was chatting with my granddaughters on the phone.

My piece of the Red Thread is, to the best of my ability, to live as fierce compassion in the world. From my girls and our three Newfie rescue dogs and those I teach to the food I grow and the fact that I vote.

I imagine the Red Thread as this enormous spider’s web that connects us each to another, to another, to another. (I learned this at summer camp when I was about 12, with actual red thread. Back then, we were talking about the environment.)

And I can feel that call to fierce compassion woven all through my life and work ever since, though I didn’t really know it consciously until this week.

I still don’t have a complete picture of what the puzzle looks like but I know a lot more than I did. And I’m not, in this moment, entirely sure that there are supposed to be edge pieces!

I’d love to know what kind of wonderings these rather rambling thoughts are bringing up for you.

For now, though, a phone call with a woman trying to help heal the impact of child sexual abuse in our world. Which sounds a lot like fierce compassion to me.

Then, the canine fine dining experience and some more green hair for my current opinionated painting!

 

Some words from a wise friend and a demo painting…

Yesterday I led a workshop called Holy Polka Dots for some students at Columbia Theological Seminary. Our topic was an introduction to the practice known in Intentional Creativity land as praying in dots.

We began with this poem, from the book, Tea with the Midnight Muse from the very gifted artist and poet, Shiloh Sophia McCloud.

Just Dare

Dare to re-invent yourself
when you don’t know what that looks like yet.

Dare to dream bigger than
you feel comfortable dreaming.

Dare to love unreasonably,
even if you have been hurt.

Dare to practice radical self-love
even when you aren’t sure how.

Dare to practice big compassionate love
for others, even those you don’t know.

Dare to say yes to your own self
when family or friends don’t understand anymore.

Dare to not let fear get in your way,
and when it does, dare to keep moving.

Dare to be the most you that you can be
while accepting yourself right as you are.

Dare to discover what beautiful means,
to you and only you.

Dare to call yourself an artist, a poet,
a dreamer, a thinker, a revolutionary.

Dare to take passionate action
so that your fire will be lit within you.

Dare to take risks that make you feel hopeful
when you don’t know how it will all work.

Dare be a colorful being, and dance alone.
Dare to live. Dare to love. Dare to laugh.

Dare to not get it right. Dare to get back up.
Dare to live in amazing grace.

shilohmccloud-fafvmntgfimkcjpmussgmsyphpevkkwi-v2

The group was so touched by the reading, and I with them, that I just had to share it with you, today.

I, literally, dared to get back up yesterday after a fall on the steps, re-loading the car after the workshop. I’m sore and bruised but, as far as I can tell, basically intact. (Nothing making creepy noises!)

The getting up was hard. And I’m grateful for two friends helping. The biggest thing I noticed, though, was that I had to figure out how to do it. And believe that I could, even though none of it made much sense. That felt like amazing grace. (Even though it hurt!) And something to share with our beloveds.

Here’s one more thing to share. shilohsophia.com

What will you dare???

Storm Warnings

The local weather folks are having one of those days they live for. Tornadoes, it seems, are likely. Any time now.

The big dogs have been out and are safely back in, jockeying for prime real estate on the bathroom floors after an uncomfortably warm night in which our air conditioner decided to take a break.

The first rumbles of thunder are muttering in the background. The wind is picking up.

I have hot water in a stainless thermos, lest we run out of tea.

It is another storm, though, that occupies my mind for yesterday I took my Black Madonna painting to the amazing digital arts studio for her turn to be scanned so that giclee images on paper can be made.

black-madonna-boardmanShe was painted in a storm, that one. While my dear friend was in the hospital, hurricane Irma raged on and I couldn’t get to Florida. And so, I made dots.

Prayed, literally, in dots.

I do mine with the handle end of the brush. You’ve heard the routine before. Dip. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dot. Dip. Repeat. Lots.

And with each dot a prayer. A word. An intention. In this case, names. Friend. Daughter. Mom. Irma (for all the folks in the path of the storm.)

Friend. Daughter. Mom. Irma. Hours at a time.

And now, as we wait and watch, I am preparing to set my first ever painting, the Black Madonna, free into the world where, maybe – just maybe – she will help others through their storms.

It was actually a pretty big trip to see my friends at digital arts studio yesterday, for we were picking up as well as dropping off! I have, right on my desk, the first few museum quality prints of my work!

With lots of help from Barry and Bill, the paperwork is close to done and my online gallery should be open this coming week. (Watch for more information!)

In the meantime, I’m contemplating entering my first juried show. The timeline is pretty tight and there’s some potential overlap with dropping off and picking up and Luther’s upcoming eye surgery. There’s part of me that just wants to paint, which sounds like a Muse thing but may actually be whispering from the inner Critic. I’m sorting.

Yesterday, though, we did a bit of celebrating progress and stopped at Ponce City Market for lunch. I’ll bet you can guess what I ate. (The Muse was very happy!)

For now, more tea, and a painting who wants green hair! A few dots for my kids who are skiing out West and quite a few more dots of thanks.

We made it through the storms with a bit of water in the basement and no trees on the roof. May it be so for all.

Big Dogs Snoring and Tony Bourdain!

If I knew anything at all about digital music or how such a miracle comes to be, I think I could create the world’s greatest meditation recording.

It’s playing now, in the live version, as I write.

Yes, you guessed it! A trio of big dogs snoring gently in a unique chorus of peace.

(If you had a digital version, you might not still be freaked out from the big event of the evening in which the bass member of the trio urped his dinner all over the blessed rubber mat on the floor in the place formerly known as the breakfast room  and the resulting yuck involved in solving that problem!)

Please keep reading… it will get better, soon!

After all was clean again, I repaired to the magical chair, always willing to adjust to whatever my knees and back desire in the moment, and, deciding on a brief vacation after a major meeting with my new friend Barry at digital arts printing, summoned Netflix where I encountered Parts Unknown and the late Anthony Bourdain, mid-episode, in the Republic of Georgia.

I was intrigued.

Let me admit, before I go on, that my grasp of contemporary world geography is nowhere near adequate and I missed all of the 1980’s as a single mom earning four college degrees. Then, I spent the 1990’s enmeshed in church politics so it’s safe to say that I am in need of a bit more learning on many of these matters.

Tony, as was so often true, was glad to oblige.

Beyond quite the soliloquy on homemade hootch and something to do with chicken baked in a pumpkin, much of the conversation had to do with Georgia’s precarious geographical position, essentially between Europe and the former Soviet Union. Here’s the sentence that hooked me.

We wake up every morning and find out where we live. 

This I understood, for I heard the same stories when I was in Hungary, just before the former eastern bloc fell. I was, naively, I suppose, mind boggled by the notion of waking up to find out who had taken control of your country overnight.

Now, if you’ll pretend for a moment that it’s time for a commercial break, I will take you with me to the land of Shiloh Sophia and Intentional Creativity where we are painting about consciousness. We’re pretty much always painting about consciousness but it’s been particularly intense for me, having two CODEX paintings in process at once.

Basically, that means we’re painting about thinking about thinking. And, in the moment, we are allowing any of the things that may have been non-conscious historically, to become conscious if that is safe and helpful at this time.

We’re not really talking about consciousness in the sense of above or below but, if you want to paint it you have to have some way to represent the whole thing visually. The picture above, which you’ve seen other bits of before, is essentially an image of those things that are safe and helpful (though sometimes a bit unsettling) “rising” into awareness.

Now, let us return from our commercial break to Tony and the Republic of Georgia.

First, the big flash for me. (It’s ok if you’re ahead of me here. We all learn when we’re ready.)

You don’t have to live in the former Soviet bloc, or in a tiny country between Europe and Russia and parts of the Middle East to wonder who will be in charge when you wake up in the morning.

It’s just as true in the United States of America.

The thing that really blew my mind was the hopefulness of my new TV friends in the Republic of Georgia.

We’re hopeful, I heard most of them say. What else can we be if we want a better future? 

And, somehow, because of the place where inviting new consciousness meets embodied memories of eating and drinking and dancing with old friends in Hungary, I suspect I will be more hopeful, as well.

And busy making prayer dots. Wearing, I might add, my Fiercely Compassionate Grandmother tee-shirt! My girls are growing up in this country!

For now, warming a bowl of really good soup and wondering where Tony is headed next.

PS… Just in case you’re curious, where Tony went next was Senegal, where a native leader said: This world is going to be a better place when more cultures are actually given a chance to be put at the table. And, after a few bites of lamb, Tony responded, Democracy, as it happens, requires regular maintenance, diligence, and a willingness to stand up. RIP, Tony.

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