Category: Art Journey

It seems to be the question for my day.

How are you?

Bill. The server at lunch. The guy behind the counter at our favorite local butcher shop. Friends on the phone and online. My sister.

(I’m guessing this sounds familiar to you, too!)

And the honest answer is, I don’t know.

I’m tired, after a long and rather stressful week.

I’m thrilled to have received a check in the mail for my first Intentional Creativity partnership workshop.

I’m grateful for having had much of yesterday to paint what moved me in the moment. Including big, free circles in both directions.

I’m sad and frustrated and utterly blown away by the news.

I’m blessed with food in my belly and in my freezer.

I’m deeply, deeply sad for the friend who lost a beloved dog.

I’m glad that Sarah is feeling well enough to go chasing some varmint around the back yard in the dark and pissed that, given her tendency to stubbornness, I had to go get her.

I’m hopeful and anxious about new things beginning in my world.

I’m sad that my kids feel far away.

And I’m blown away by a crazy new idea I’m just about going to have to make happen if I can talk the relevant folks into agreeing.

Well, you get the drift…

I learned one time in school that some famous therapist type said we could only feel one thing at a time.

I beg to differ.

Instead, I suspect that life is much more complicated than that and the assumption that we feel this way OR that adds, somehow, to the angst of paying attention.

(I also suspect that being tired complicates all the rest!)

So, what do we do?

Well, there’s soup on the menu for lunch tomorrow. Bird broth and lots of veg and a bit of local smoked chicken sausage.

A sprinkle of stardust certainly wouldn’t hurt!

A few things to cross off the list. The kind that just up the stress when they feel avoided.

And time for creating.

Quite possibly a nap.

Frittata for supper. Yummy and complete with leftovers. And maybe time to hatch up a plan for Valentine’s Day.

It won’t solve all the problems in the world. Or even for the people I love. And so I will add, along with my rather more traditional Presbyterian sorts of prayers, my personal version of the metta, or Prayer for Loving-Kindness:

May I, and all beings, be safe, healthy, happy, free from pain, and at ease. May we be filled with loving-kindness and at peace. 

It’s probably going to take a while longer. And it is, if we’re being honest, rather a lot to live in to. And yet, for me at least, it shifts a bit of my focus from how I feel — which may have a lot to do with weather fronts and weird dreams — and reminds me of what I intend.

That seems like a pretty good place to start.

You’re welcome to join me. I think we’re going to need all the folks we can get!

 

 

 

 

Years ago I learned an old Yiddish proverb: “We plan. God laughs.” A bit of early morning rooting around on the internet suggests that, somewhere along the way, Woody Allen learned it, too.

This week has kind of been one of those weeks.

You see, I made a plan.

In the midst of the painting and the dog grooming and some fascinating conversations about getting my art out into the world, I’ve also, as you may remember, been making a liturgical stole for a seminary alumna being honored with an award for “Pioneering in Ministry.”

The timing was, shall we say, a bit short. But, I had a plan.

I started by choosing a quilt block I’m familiar with. Not too fussy. More fun, really, in its almost folk-art style. Deep, jewel tone colors. What I refer to as Liberated Wild Geese blocks, which means we’re not too worried about precise measurements and identical triangles. In fact, as wild geese are symbols, in some Celtic traditions, for the Holy Spirit, I think Liberated is just how they should be.

God probably started giggling about the time the fancy computerized sewing machine quit when I was just starting to sew.

The new one works great, in a very minimalist sort of sense, which may be what I needed, though I lost about 18 hours while Amazon did their thing.

Then, yesterday, the printer blew a gasket.

My Gramma Elsie, who was a quilter, did not have a printer. She didn’t know that you could print text onto fabric and add it to a quilt.

These days, you can, and it’s really cool, but it pretty much depends on a printer that works.

I had already tried new ink, which didn’t work, even after I waited yet another day for it to arrive. Everything was striped. I like stripes but I want them where I want them and this wasn’t it.

I suspect God had reached full on chuckling by this point.

Bless the Legendary husband who fetched a new printer and figured out the magic involved in actually getting it to print.

The fabric is still drying, but the colors are great and I think we’re going to be good to go.

Then, very, very early this morning (read that last night) I had made enough progress on assembling everything to come to the conclusion that my design had wandered past liberated and into the realm of chaotic. Considerable seam ripping was involved.

Not to worry, though. I have a plan! At least this time, God and I are both laughing!

Am ready to start the re-assembly part which, fortunately, really isn’t hard. It just took a bit of listening to the truth my eyes were telling me. And, I still have about 48 hours, though that includes air drying time and it’s supposed to be cloudy and damp. (Not really so funny!)

And I have to cross my fingers and hope with all my heart that a woman I’ve never met will relate to what I’ve made.

The colors. The symbolism. Even a bit of red thread.

It’s kind of scary. And, yet, it’s also my whole heart. And the work of my hands. I’m hopeful.

A bit of trimming. Some more piecing. Or, rather, re-piecing. Quilting and binding. (Still!) Lots of dots, already included. Prayers for transformation.

Am clutching my magic wands and praying that the rest of the machines hang in there. This is not the time for more mechanical breakdowns.

Sadly, we don’t often get to pick the time.

We do get to show up. To take up the challenge, even when it’s a pretty big challenge.

We do get to pick the time to hug the folks doing big work. And to open ourselves to what comes next.

I can’t wait to find out!

God, I suspect, will be chuckling then, too.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s story time! Feel free to curl up with your favorite quilt and a cuppa. Or whatever. This story, like life, wanders a bit. And, it’s one of those stories that is not only true, but actually happened!

First, you need to know that I actually slept last night. In the bed. For about five hours.

This is something of a miracle these days. One of the ways that I know that I slept is that I spent some time wandering around in a Wizard of Oz-like dream in which many things come together from different times and worlds. Things you wouldn’t usually find together, but somehow teach you new things when you notice.

Before we get to the dream, though, you need to know that, historically, I’ve had a very hard time telling right from left.

When I was in tenth grade, I started fainting. A lot. Usually at school. The nurse would call my mother to come get me, though I was generally much better by the time she got there and she’d grumble a bit in that way that made it hard to figure out whether she was mad or worried.

One day, though, I fainted in gym class while I was on the top bar of the uneven parallel bars. I was scared and very grateful for the mats below the bars which preformed admirably and kept me from being truly injured.

About that time, my dad got involved and carted me off to a fancy medical center a couple of hours away for a neurological workup. The eventual conclusion was that I had grown considerably taller, quite quickly, and my circulatory system was having a hard time keeping up. The “answer” involved little red pills I was instructed not to take to school lest someone might want to steal them.

Oh, and there was also the part about the neurologist telling my dad to “teach that kid right from left”!

Now, I may have mentioned before that I never went to Kindergarten, which might explain why I was probably 30 years old before I caught on to the little trick that it is possible to tell which hand is your left because your thumb and first finger make an actual letter “L” when extended just so. (At least possible for lots of people.)

But back to my dream…

I was in a school someplace I didn’t recognize, in a big room with my eighth grade English teacher. We seemed to both be adults, though not quite as adult as we actually are at this point! Despite the absence of bells ringing, groups of students wandered in and out of this magical room, reading poetry and singing and acting like intelligent, capable human beings.

There was also something going on about having a wheel fixed on a very large piece of luggage I was, apparently, taking along on my journey.

Now, as we’ve noted before, the first question of dream interpretation from a depth psych perspective is:

Why is this dreamer dreaming this dream at this time?

Which was exactly the question that got me out of the bed hunting for tea and my laptop about 6:30 this morning.

The answer didn’t take long to appear. You see, I wandered through my studio space on the way to the kitchen and there, like a huge road sign, stood my CODEX painting. (Well, one of them.)

Yesterday was a day for soup and paint and a dear friend. And what we were working on, with our magical paint brushes, was integrating our consciousness.

Old stories and new. Lots of learning from lots of years. Right and left brain access. And appreciation. We actually stated our willingness for anything that was available to be conscious and integrated to be so. (You kinda had to be there… and some of you have been!)

The dream, I think, was a reminder of a moment in my journey where I had a guide who valued both right and left brain work. Creative imagining. And linear, getting it done processing. The linear part, conveniently being the “L” or left part!

Lately, I’ve started using an old hypnosis/NLP trick called anchoring again. When I need to move from creative concept to the step one – step two kind of planning, I do the “L” trick with my left hand and ask for that kind of information. Rather like the favorite quilt and cuppa we began with may be anchors for comfort. Perhaps it sounds bizarre, but it works, which is a good thing because it’s time for the “L” part of a quilt project to begin quickly around here.

Watched over, no doubt, by my CODEX canvas(es) leading me to a place I’ve never been before but is, at the same time, somehow home.

Oh, and the art today is from my Cosmic Smash Book. My very own left hand. Complete with red and purple yarn which is, by the way, also a handy way to tell which is which!

Psssst… In my last post I shared an opportunity to learn from the amazing Shiloh Sophia McCloud about conversing with yourself in ways more likely to get you where you want to go than the ways most of us learned growing up. There’s still time! Tempted??? Click here for more info!