…or what my crazy project is actually trying to accomplish!
A week ago, I invited you along on the journey to make my space work better by re-using a bunch of stuff we already had and not taking out a reno-loan.
Well… welcome to the scrapbook of what actually happened. And is still happening…
The photo, above, is where things were Thursday night, after a whole lot of noticing and wondering, and some great help from the Legendary Husband and our favorite Fix-it Wizard.
What you can’t see is all the stuff that needed to be un-done in order to get there.
And all the times I changed my mind!
You see, I am not a visual processor. In the land of neuro-linguistic programming, I am a primary kinesthetic with a very strong auditory/digital back up. The visual stuff kicks in much later, for me.
Translation: emotions and movement and touch – or in this case – reach, come first. Then the words to explain what is or isn’t working. Then what it looks like.
The challenge is that, while all that information is already jumping up and down inside me, it takes me a while to engage it consciously.
This can be difficult for folks trying to help!
So, re-imagining!
And moving. And glazing. One step at a time.
By Saturday night, when I was home alone – well, except for the Studio Angels – I had time to start nesting. And then the lights came on in my spirit!
Yes, I needed to reach this better and have more space for that and all that kind of stuff.
But what I was really doing was externalizing my prayers for the world. Creating, if you will, a 3-D, functional sculpture of what matters most to me. Of what sustains me.
Suddenly, there was another voice in my head.
Porter Osborne, Jr. The anxious adolescent narrator in Ferroll Sams novel, run with the horsemen, which I have adored since the summer I did my student intern ministry in Pulaski, TN… which was also my first trip to the old South!
Porter described himself as having been “raised right” in the kind of family you might imagine in the rural South between the World Wars. The only son of an autocratic father and a (perhaps excessively) tolerant mother, deeply centered in the Southern Baptist church and a sharecropping economy.
I think I related to that so much because I, too, have been “raised right,” though by other families and traditions.
Part of me imagines some of the voices of those traditions looking at my project of intentional, externalized hope and suspecting they failed.
They didn’t. It’s just that now I know more. And I suspect that they – many of whom have walked on – do, too.
So, Madonnas and crystals and essential oils. A blessing bowl.
Symbols, each in their own way, of my prayers for the world. Hope. Fierce Compassion. Peace. And space for things that have been true since the beginning of time. Even the ones we thought we had to turn away from to stay “raised right”.
Your symbols could, quite rightly, be different than mine, for your path has been yours.
Here’s the thing… we are able to choose.
I choose with 2 granddaughters growing up in this world.
How will you choose?
ps… if you relate to this adventure, the Intentional Grandmothers Archetype Quiz might be your next step!
pps… just in case your choices might take – well – money, click here to check out Medicine Basket your way… unsticking stuck money stuff. We start soon, and we’ve saved you a place!