Intentional Creativity

Alchemy in the real world!

Posted on August 12, 2018by sue boardman

If you look at a calendar, or even out the window, you will notice that it’s the middle of August. Time for making a last trip to the beach. Closing up the cabin. Stocking up on school supplies. Getting ready for the Qigong retreat. And, depending on where you live, drooling over garden catalogs for fall and winter planting.

It is, in my world, also time for contemplating new moons and journeys winding to a close/start.

And, today, it’s time for alchemy. With paint brushes, certainly. And, especially, in the kitchen. Today, I am boiling bones.

You see, Spike needs some soup.

Spike is an old guy who’s having a tough time. He looks a lot like Spike Too. Spike Too was rescued this week and taken to his new home where he is now in charge of greeting.

I am in charge of soup.

Or, more specifically, bone broth, which is one of the things in my medicine basket. And one of the things that just insisted on showing up in my Legend painting, back toward the beginning of my Color of Woman journey through the world of Intentional Creativity.

Soup doesn’t “fix” everything. It does, for many, many of us, make life’s journeys easier.

So here, at the special request of my very talented photographer friend, Kristen Alexander, is a contemporary, minimalist version of the alchemical formula for turning bones into comfort and major nutrition for your 4-footed, carnivore friends.

And a quote from one of my wise Red Madonna teachers, Havi Brysk Mandell:

What if we could be passionately and openly curious about what is in our own medicine basket?

While nobody loves a battered, patina-ed, old stock pot more than I do, I’ve developed quite a fondness for an 8 quart Instant Pot Duo when it comes to this kind of project. Please adjust times and amounts according to your particular equipment and process.

Place 2 – 3 pounds of grass-fed beef “bones” into your pot. A mix of rib and knuckle bones, some beef tendons if you can get them, beef feet if they fit in your pot (or lamb feet if you can find them), leftover bones (not spit upon!) from cooked steak/roast beef, etc. will work. I especially like short ribs and beef tendons for this.

You could also use chicken, lamb, or goat bones, depending on what’s available. Even venison or rabbit. A mix of roasted and raw is great! Feet and necks are healthy, inexpensive options. Choose the cleanest, highest quality bones you can find. Grass/pasture raised, local, sustainably farmed, etc.

Add aromatics as desired. (Not all herbs are appropriate for pets. If in doubt, or trying to address any particular conditions, ask your vet!) I use 2 – 3 fresh bay leaves and about a nickle sized bundle of thyme from my garden. Carrot feathers, parsley stems, celery, etc. can also be used but are not necessary. Most experts suggest not using onions or garlic for pets.

Add 1/4 c. organic apple cider vinegar “with the mother”, which pulls helpful nutrients from the bones, plus cold water to the fill line of your Instant Pot or about 2 inches from top of a standard stock pot.*

If using an electric pressure cooker, set it for 2 hours at high pressure. Allow the pressure to release naturally. Cool, enough to strain. Please do NOT feed your pet cooked bones!

*If cooking on the stove top, longer is better. Bring to gentle boil. Skim and discard any foamy stuff that forms on top. Reduce heat to simmer. Tiny bubbles! Cook 12- 16 hours for poultry broth, up to 24 hours for beef, etc.

Chilling is important. Insiders use a chill stick to speed cooling, which is simply a small, stainless water bottle with a screw-on lid, about 2/3 full of water and frozen in advance. When the side of your pot is comfortable to hold your hand against, place it, covered, in the fridge. A really good batch will look a lot like jello when thoroughly chilled.

You may pick out any meaty or cartilage bits to feed your pet, if desired. Most of the nutrients are already in the broth but, especially if they are ill or old, and having trouble eating, they may enjoy the cooked bits. Our three Newfie rescues are raw fed so, while I add bone broth to their diet for joint and immune protection, I don’t feed them cooked meat. Again, if in doubt, ask your vet.

That’s it! Gather. Cook. Strain. Chill. Make your fur-baby happy.

Store broth in fridge for up to 5 days or in freezer for up to 6 months. I freeze in BPA-free plastic and leave an inch of head space for expansion as it freezes. Be sure to label!

And, for versions of bone-boiling alchemy your human family will enjoy, see my Amazon bestseller, Let’s Boil Bones… available in Kindle books and coming soon in paperback.

Art Journey Contemplations Grandmothers

Minding Mama!

Posted on August 8, 2018by sue boardman

Legend, and a few of my seminary professors, hold that the famous Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth (1886-1968), once said something pretty close to, “We do theology with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.”

A bit of rooting around some dusty corners of the internet reveals that the specific quote is hard to trace, but that Barth shared variations of the thought in several letters and interviews.

I’ve carried those words around in my mental backpack of things I don’t leave home without for decades.

In the last few days, they’ve become even more true for me. (Which suggests that Tillich was right, but that’s a subject for a different day!)

You see, I’ve been hanging out with Bella Mama.

Bella Mama is, in one sense, a painting class. A gracious gift from the amazing Shiloh Sophia McCloud and my friends in Intentional Creativity land.

A madonna, perhaps. Mother Earth. The Divine Feminine. A symbol of different things for each of us and, yet, a powerful reminder of the absolute human need for mama-ing.

And (Let’s be real!) as I’m a bit behind on my Color of Woman journey, she’s been following me around for a few weeks now, dropping hints about how she would like to take form and why she matters so much in this moment.

First, she whispered to me that she is fierce compassion.

Then, she proclaimed that the US border immigration disaster in this moment, also known as “the newspaper”, is a serious hint about her message.

Then, truly, I was wandering through Kudzu one day, combining a bit of intentional walking with an artist date, and I saw her.

There she sat, on a lovely console table of rustic wood, a stunning pottery statue from Mexico, waiting for me to notice.

Then, she started stalking my dreams in an encouraging sort of way while I watched the videos and sang along and painted all the under layers of meaning and energy.

When we moved on to form, she had to hold my hand while my inner critic showed up with her usual temptations toward way more realism than I truly want or am likely to be able to produce.

“You have a cell phone with a fancy camera for realism,” she told me.

“This is about your heart and mine.”

Well, of course, she was right. As was Shiloh, reminding me that anything can be painted over.

And, wow, has this one been painted over!

It’s time for more purple glaze. A bit of drying time.

And a vivid reminder of the moment I quit coloring my hair.

It was just after Kenzie was born and the kids lived in Scotland. I did the math and figured out that about two and a half trips to the land of highlights and lowlights would pay for a trip to rock my baby!

Or, in the case of Bella Mama, the dreaded metalic silver paint I put in her hair late last night was taking over everything and I’ve spent most of the morning, at her insistence, nudging it back to something that blends just a bit better, visually.

No judgement. Who knows what she’ll decide tomorrow?

For today, it’s the little ones whose stories aren’t even showing up in the newspaper these days, the little ones who will be sheltering under her cloak, that she wants you to see. (Though it looks like that will be the next time you meet. Mama knows best!)

Art Journey Contemplations Grandmothers

Squeaky shoes and new adventures!

Posted on August 5, 2018by sue boardman

As hard as it is for me to believe, it’s back-to-school time where we live.

It seems earlier than ever this year. Even the dogwood leaves are still green.

The streets in our neighborhood have been full of school bus drivers, practicing their skills at the essential art of blocking traffic.

The football stadium up the road is sporting a new coat of paint on the bleachers while last year’s crop of artificial turf waits expectantly and crows bob energetically in a fountain at Kudzu.

I’ll even bet that guy is skipping around the office supply place on TV, singing, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!”

I used to think it really was the most wonderful time of the year. I loved going back to school.

And, even though I’m letting my hair grow at the moment and I wear shoes as rarely as possible, especially squeaky, slippery ones, there’s still part of my non-conscious calendar that has required a bit of reassurance that skipping those particular rituals will be okay.

(I had considerably less trouble talking myself out of the three little plaid dresses from Sears!)

I did, however, invest in some updated make-up, which actually has to do with the prospect of being out of school (again!) in the forseeable future and the need for some photographs.

And, frankly, I’ve kind of solved the whole back-to-school thing by just deciding to stay there and not really contemplating being “done,” at least in a big picture sort of way.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend about learning.

Well, it started out having to do with covering chair cushions and moved on from there to the science of learning which, as it happens, I know a bit more about than actual upholstery.

I was reminded of my studies in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, also known as the psychology of excellence. It is, in many ways, learning about learning and it’s a really big subject.

A subject which involved a bit of book shelf excavation. I found what I was hunting for in a little volume called Principles of NLP. (Mine is the old, tattered, yellowed edition from 1996 but the link, above, is for a shiny, new, updated version in case you’re interested.)

In a section titled Behavior to Capability, authors Joseph O’Connor and Ian McDermott explore the question of how behaviors become skills.

The short answer is practice!!!

The slightly longer answer involves the four stages of learning a skill. I’m going to let our talented teachers take over in their own voices for a bit:

Learning a skill goes through four stages. Think of some intentional skill that you have acquired in the course of your life — driving, riding a bicycle or reading — and see how it fits into this scheme. You start from unconscious incompetence. In this state, not only can you not do it, you have never tried. You don’t even know that you don’t know.

Then you start to do it. At first, although it is part of your behaviour, you are not very skilled. This is the stage of conscious incompetence. You know enough to know you are not very good and it takes a lot of your conscious attention. This stage is uncomfortable, but it is also when you are learning the most.

Next you reach the stage of conscious competence. You can do it, you have reached the capability level, but it still takes a lot of your attention.

Lastly, if you persevere, you reach the stage of unconscious competence, when you do it easily without thinking. It has become streamlined and habitual, and is taken over by the unconscious part of your mind. Beyond this stage is mastery — but that is another book!

Here’s the big message for this moment in time… There are a lot of things I don’t know much about yet. My new Instant Pot. Adding darks and lights to faces! My new cell phone. Upholstery. Most of what Bill does at work, all day, every day.

I do know a lot about learning.

And knowing that — knowing what it looks like and feels like and what helps it to happen — is a big part of the reason that my friend has four chairs in her house that she’s excited about, even though we needed to do still more learning along the way.

It’s also what we should be teaching our kids. And all the folks around us.

Not the answers to the standardized tests but how to tap into the part of them that already knows how to learn.

How to have confidence in their ability to keep learning.

Once upon a time Sally, Dick & Jane was hard. There are moments when getting my paint brushes to cooperate is hard. I’m still trying to figure out the rosary thing. Let’s don’t even talk about head shots.

Except to say that learning is familiar even when what I’m learning is totally new.

If you have a story like this, tell it. The future is counting on you!

And one more word on new adventures from my friends at The West Wing.

Oh, and the crows… symbolic in some traditions of life magic and mysteries. Also intelligence, flexibility, and destiny!

Art Journey Contemplations Grandmothers

Re-membering

Posted on July 29, 2018by sue boardman

Last night I spent about three hours gathered around a picnic table (Which is also known as the dining/art table at our house!) sharing food and wine and stories with a dear friend.

A friend who has been out making some new stories recently, having to do with shiny jewelry and some interesting travels. A subject, I might add, she and I will be returning to later!

You will be delighted to hear that the beasties were excellent hosts and laid quietly under the table hoping, no doubt, that if we were going to drop things on the floor they’d be paper-thin slices of copa, or even tiny leaves of endive stuffed with tuna, as opposed to, well, roasted brussels sprouts.

We re-membered ourselves through several knee surgeries and a couple of romantic break-ups and a passel of dogs and way too many episodes involving dry needles on her part and four-letter words on mine.

It felt, rather surprisingly, like summer camp.

Perhaps it was the picnic table. Or the weather. Or the moon.

Then there’s the fact that I’ve been on a bit of a camp nostalgia tour lately.

You see, long before I was the chair of the camp committee or the camp nurse, I was a camper. And a counselor in training and a counselor and program staff.

And, as I’ve mentioned, it was always my job to remember all the words to all the songs from one summer to the next.

Today, I remembered some more words. You see, I went to camp in the 1970’s. And some of the songs we sang came from the Broadway musical, Jesus Christ, Superstar. (Which turns out to be a bit more complicated than I expected, as well.)

Oddly, I am, in this moment, in the midst of painting projects having to do with both Mary Magdalene and the Holy Mother or, in a more inclusive sense, Bella Mama.

I got more than a bit behind today. It had to do with the technical challenges of live streaming and the need for a nap after last night’s lovely dinner.

Honestly, I’m not quite sure yet where all of this is headed. And I’m way okay with that. I do know that painting the elements of creation dripped (literally) with stories of camp and with more than a few tears, which we add to the paint.

The camp I grew up in had a very ecological orientation. It was also strongly oriented in what we might call the archetype of the Divine Feminine, though I had no notion of those words in those days.

I had no idea then that when we picked the trash and the odd pickle out of the dust pan on our turn to sweep the dining hall, so that we could return the earth to the earth, we weren’t simply being neat.

We were, in a very real sense, becoming people who would, one day, vote.

When we sat under the full moon, filtered through the branches of ancient long leaf pine and turkey oak trees, and called circles around the fire, we were doing as women had done from the beginning of time and calling it good.

While, at the risk of being redundant, becoming people who would, one day, vote.

And some of us, at least, have undoubtedly become grandmothers, making marks on canvas saying, “I am here,” and teaching our grandchildren that they are here, too, in the midst of a world that needs us all.

So many things to re-member.

A word which, in Hebrew, also means to re-mind.

Which is, when you think about it, not a bad day’s work.

Even if I am a bit behind on the actual paint thing.

Contemplations Grandmothers

Help from all manner of sources…

Posted on July 11, 2018by sue boardman

Dearest friends,

The last few days have been a bit of a blur.

A welcome, if unexpected, visit from my sister who found herself stranded in the Atlanta airport with all her worldly goods on the way to Louisiana while she was trying to get to Indiana. (A story which I suspect will get funnier over time!)

This on top of a visit to the eye doctor to get my glasses prescription tuned up a bit. The new glasses are indeed in the works. And the need for another appointment as, in this moment, it seems likely that I have glaucoma in my left eye.

Between calendar issues and insurance issues, this is a development that’s eating up more time than I have!

Progress on some fronts.

Backsliding on others.

More than the usual amount of free-floating anxiety about some not-quite-resolved shifting career issues in our family and the sudden realization of how much I, who have never considered myself a very visual person, really value my vision.

Both the intuitive, alchemical kind and the eyesight kind!

Help has appeared from all manner of sources.

Dinner out at The Corner Pub which is our little version of Cheers! where everybody does know our names. They’re also graciously willing to accommodate my tendency to revise their menu! (If you’re in the neighborhood, the new roasted broccoli is fabulous.) And they do the dishes.

The presence of Red Thread sisters in my life who are “hugging and tugging” for me even now.

The stack of what Bill refers to as my “thumb-sucking books” which, in this case, has me back in the midst of the magnificent UNTIE THE STRONG WOMAN by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. (Which is, in my experience, sustenance for pretty much everything.)

And some new input in my process.

As I mentioned recently, I’ve become part of a Facebook group created to help send rosaries to refugees on the US/Mexican border and, as the group has evolved, to praying novenas for the families living through the tragedy of separation and for drastic changes in US immigration policies.

Now, before I go on, let me say two pretty important things.

Prayer beads were decidedly not a part of my education in a Presbyterian seminary. I learned lots of wondrous and useful things there. Rosaries were not among them. “Always being Reformed” was, however, among them and this is me, doing that.

And, you are welcome and valued here, whatever faith tradition/s you may identify with, even if that’s none at all. Whatever our varied beliefs and chosen myths, whatever our metaphors and practices, we’re all really just trying to help move the world closer to a place of kindness and justice. A place of fierce compassion. (Well, most of us!)

So, with all that rumbling in my head, and with thanks to lots of teachers along the way, the Anglican Rosary pictured above appeared in my mailbox on Saturday. Amazon, eBay, and Etsy are all sources for similar items.

Then came the issue of what to do with it. There are lots of suggestions and directions out there if you google something like Praying the Rosary.

All of that, combined with Dr. Estes’ Prayer for Traveling the Mother Road, in UNTIE THE STRONG WOMAN, brought “my” version of words to pray in bringing my beads to life.

If it fits for you, I’m thrilled to share. (And you can share this post as well, even if getting it here was a major tech-y challenge for me!)

If it inspires you, in any way that feels true… to pray, meditate, help your kids and grandkids learn, work, vote, or whatever you do, toward that place of kindness and justice, I’m honored.

And if you need more information, just click on any of the pretty colored links, above, for some good starts. Or, reply below, message me on Facebook… Sue Boardman Author, email me, etc. and I’ll come as close as I’m able to shining some light.

For now, I hear a big canvas and a lot of orange paint calling my name. There’s a lot of hope in that, too.

[https://www.facebook.com/groups/2143874129190005/] Rosary group

Art Journey Contemplations Grandmothers

What’s In Front?

Posted on July 8, 2018by sue boardman

There’s a writer named Natalie Goldberg who does marvelous books to help other writers along the road.

One of her most straightforward bits of advice is to write what’s in front of your face.

Here’s a glimpse of what that looked like in my world, today.

Amongst the mountains of frozen dog food to be sorted and stashed, along with about three days worth to be packed for a brief trip to Camp, there were boxes of the stuff that prevents heart worms to wrangle out of an online source, the usual door opening and water bowl filling routine, and, of course, treats, hugs, and brushing. Lots of brushing!

And, there are still dog directions to write for Camp, which I suspect is not quite what Natalie had in mind, but on the list nonetheless.

I’ve done the Don Quixote thing, tilting at windmills with UPS over a package that, shall we say, disappeared somewhere into the big brown kingdom, apparently never to be heard from again.

And was grateful to the folks who shipped it in the first place for shipping another, today. Fingers crossed.

My Muse painting, who appears first, below, and now hangs in our bedroom where she is in charge of dreams, did her job with enthusiasm last night, sending me a dream that involved standing in front of a room full of people I went to high school with (Blessedly NOT naked!) and telling them why I keep showing up here, and at the canvas, doing what I do.

It’s the one of those five people thing we’ve talked about before. (Click here, if you’d like a reminder.)

My alchemical consciousness has been high-fiving me most of the day!

Then there are blessed friends who’ve listened to me think out loud while I sort through .jpg after .jpg of images, all hoping for jobs in the changing landscape which is about to happen around here, on Facebook, and in my pocket where the new business cards from moo.com will live.

Here are a couple of sneak peeks:

There’s crab shell broth warming on the stove.

And paintings-in-progress figuratively leaping up and down, wanting play time, while brushes wait to be washed, eyeing me with one brow raised as I pass by their Mason jars of water.

Perhaps most of all, though, there are the two notes I re-discovered today, scratched in purple ink in my dog-eared copy of Ms. Goldberg’s The True Secret Of Writing.

The first appears on page 106 of the edition I have. It’s beside a list of entry line options provided to get folks from stuck to — you know — writing. My addition to the list:

The first thing I want my grandchild(ren) to know about me is…

You’re welcome to play with it! Grandkids you already know and love. The kind that are on the way, even now. The ones you long for someday. Or the honorary ones in border detention camps or trapped in caves or hungry pretty much anywhere.

And then another one, almost un-noticed, on the very last page of the book, under the note about the author:

Imagine you are seated in the lap of a Fiercely Compassionate Grandmother. Yours, the one you needed, the archetypal one, or even the one you are on the way to being. She asks, “What are you becoming?” and listens with love and attention to your most true answer. Then she whispers, “I will help you.”

I’d love to hear what comes to mind.

The most important thing, though, is that you know!

(To leave a response here, just click on the big picture of what the crab broth became, at the top of this post, then scroll way down, pausing a moment at the blog subscription box if you’d like, until you find the place for comments.)

Art Journey Contemplations Grandmothers

WIP Wednesday

Posted on June 27, 2018by sue boardman

Welcome to Wednesday!

Today we’re going to do something just a bit different.

You see, somehow it’s 4:19 pm and I just realized it was Wednesday!

Very little sleep, two trips to see about new glasses (which I desperately need), a fast stop for lunch, dog food to order, a painting experience to plan for a friend with a big question, and a bit of wandering with some old friends through the kind of wilderness where it feels like somebody just yelled, “Tilt!”.

And, running beneath it all, a song I heard for the first time about 4:30 this morning.

Here’s the story. My Intentional Creativity teacher, Shiloh Sophia McCloud, is offering an amazing workshop that seems to have grown out of what happened when her long devotion to the Holy Mother crashed into the news about immigrant/refugee families being separated in many parts of the US.

If you’re reading this, the odds are pretty high that you, too, are appalled at what’s happening, especially to the children.

Shiloh’s workshop is called Bella Mama and, if you click right here on the title in the pretty colored letters, you can find out if it’s calling your name the way it did mine.

You see, I believe that the more hopeful energy we send into the world, the more hopeful the world will become.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s going to take a while but that doesn’t have to keep us from starting now! It is, as my paint buddies would say, a WIP, or work in progress. It’s also a Wednesday kind of thing.

And, as soon as I feed the very hungry beasties, I’ll be back to tell you about one other thing I learned today…

If you’d like an opportunity to do something more immediate and tangible to help the border refugees, some friends of mine have come up with a great idea.

Humanitarian aid workers are getting huge numbers of requests from the refugees for rosaries. To find out how to help, click this link for Rosaries for Refugees and read the pinned post at the top of the page. It’s easy and VERY affordable to send a dozen rosaries to folks desperately in need of hope and comfort.

When you think about it, as one of my paint sisters pointed out a week or two ago, we’re all pretty much works in progress. And today is a great day for that!

The art for today is one of the under layers of my Tree of Life painting.