My eyes embrace this picture. One of the five senses doing its miraculous job of seeing the objects, their color, their setting. The sensory reaction of a softening of my eye in a duet with a knowing smile, opens up a door into the memory chamber of my mind. Thirty two years ago, I brought home this young man, prepared to embrace his brand new world with the care and love he was so open to receive. And now he is holding his daughter, his first born child, prepared to do the same.
I know what I am experiencing what has been experienced by eons of grandmothers. After all, we are about progeny, but the heart energy takes on a new patina of color and generosity of being . I am in awe of the babe that I nursed is now joyfully holding his daughter. A daughter that has her own sense of being one with her brand new life.
And so, my heart is larger, wider and encompasses a whole new way of being. And so it is.
I think I was last up here about 6 years ago or maybe less, but it has been awhile. Rick has asked me to do this a couple of times and I was able to dissuade his charm,This time he had a cancellation, I felt sorry for him, what can I say.That and George Wilson taunting and challenging me with, “You are resisting.”
So, if I am boring or meandering you now know who to blame.
The theme of my conversation with you today is, ‘We are hereto create and love’.
Clay and dance have been an integral part of creation and of love.This came to mind by the recent death of Patrick Swayze.
When I heard the news of his death I went back in time to two of my favorite film experiences; DirtyDancing and Ghost.
I love the way my mind went from Patrick Swayze’s death, to reliving the experiences of seeing each film for the first time and revisiting two very poignant scenes and messages each film had conveyed to not only me but I suspect to many of you as well.There are distinct quotes from each film that made an impression on me.
From, Dirty Dancing there was the famous line, when Johnny says, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” In the closing minutes of "Dirty Dancing," after Swayze's character, Johnny Castle, had been fired from his dance instructor job for daring to have a relationship with a debutante member of the club where he worked, he came back during the club's end-of-the-season annual event to give his final performance. He walks up to Baby's family, seated around a table and utters those powerful words to her father before taking her up on the stage to show his true passion and respect for her in the form of dance, as her mother holds daddy back and keeps him quiet.
From, Ghost,there was a strong moment in the film just at the end when Swayze’s character Sam, was describing to his living fiance what it was like to be on the other side, just before moving on.He looks at Molly and says, “It's amazing, Molly. The love inside, you take it with you."
In the film Ghost, Molly as an artist and Sam as a Wall street Yuppie meld into each other when they sat together at her potter’s wheel and got lost in the clay creating something from their love.
Synchronicity happens when the universe conveys its approval of an action or a decision you make, it affirms it by bringing a person that leads you to pertinent
information or an article that reminds you of a pivotal book that revolutionized your way of thinking.
Funny how that works.
From Patrick Swayze, to two films with important lines, to a friend sharing her notes from a workshop she is taking with Angeles Arrien, emphasizing creativity and love, to an articleabout the 25th anniversary of Matthew Fox’s, Original Blessing, whose theme on co-creatorship,lead me to the theme of this conversation with you.
Mathew Fox writes, “Like God, we need to create.” Hildegard of Bingen, (1098-1179), a remarkable visionary and learned wombman of her time and a personal shero of mine, explained that God holds a passion for us, and how this passion is meant to “serve all the world” through our creative work.She had visions. She wrote, ” With my mouth,” God says, “I kiss my own chosen creation, I uniquely, lovingly, embrace every image I have made out ofthe earth’s clay. With a fiery spirit I transform it into a body to serve all the world.” p/184
You and I have a purpose, a purpose that has the potential to create nurturing, enriching and constructive communities from the most painful and
fear filled times we live by infusing it with the spirit of love.
We are here to create and love.
No matter what life has to offer us, we have the potential to take what Matthew Fox named Via Negativa, (the negative, the shadow side) and transform it through Via Creativa, ( creating and birthing) into Via Positiva, (the positive, light) and What Angeles Arrienin her book. The Second Half of Life, calls, “the need to bless those who challenge us to love more fully, for they are great teachers who show us when we are open-hearted and close-hearted, full-hearted or half-hearted, and strong hearted or weak hearted in our relationships. The shadow side of the open heart is closed heartedness.” P.7
We are here to create and love.
In his book, The Invincible Embrace Beauty, byJohn O’Donohue (on my top 5 list ofinspirational books- 1. The Phenomena of Man, Teilhard De Chardin;2. Matthew Fox, Original Blessing; 3. Eva Piarrakos, The Pathwork of Self Transformation; 4. John O’Donohue, The Invisible Embrace Beauty; 5. Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open), he writes,” The two longings deepest in your heart-the longing to love and to be loved-are not merely psychological needs; at a more profound level,
they are the stirring of God within you. Your capacity to care is God; it is your beauty.” P. 225
We are here to create and love.
Creativity has a source in a holy place.As O’Donohue tells us, “Creativity is holiness”.What we have dreamt, have left unfinished, transforms itself into experience, because we are constantly transforming. Every human experience we have that has as its only outcome, love, is a creative experience.
Even when you think you are set in your ways, change happens, and as the saying goes, “This too shall pass.” The individual imagination becomes part of a community of spirit.We as individuals create family, a circle of friends, a network of business contacts, a spiritual community and an outreach to those with similar interests.Thus the holy becomes active in our lives because we are not our own source of imagination. The source of our imagination is elsewhere. It resides with Spirit.
We are here to create and love:
When we experience tragedy, loss and betrayal, our beings bend over from the pain that hits our solar plexis.In my own life, I know that once I created the space for the pain to be present and that I was willing to
be an instrument of love rather than live in a haze of bitterness and resentment, the pain became
transformative and a never ending gift of love and compassion for another’s pain, another’s sorrow.
We are here to create and Love.
I am an artist, a poet, a writer, and a scholar.I am so in love with my partnership with the source of creation that it has led me to a place of peace and fearlessness.BUT I also know you do not have to be an artist, a poet, a writer to create.The verybreath you are taking now is a partnership with the Holy and if each breath carries love and compassion you are an artist upon the world canvas of humanity.
We are here to create and Love
Living in this Paradise, near the sea we have access to
being a witness to the original primal conversation.A primal conversation that John O’Donohue describes, “the meeting of ocean and shoreline must be one of the places where earth almost breaks through to word.” P.116
What a delicious phrase to digest!
Words and the expression of words creates a picture between the reception of the word and the image it will convey to and within you can also be a powerful tool of
connecting the divine spark within us to the infinite possibilities of divine design.
And so I would like to conclude this conversation by leading us in a very lovely and useful exercise, introduced by the practice of Buddhism, and EckhartTolle’s teachings, whichbrings the co-creator out in you and places love at its original source, you:
Amidst the media frenzy focusing on all that causes a sense of universal melancholy, fear, panic and even apathy there is a space you and I can create and counter point with.I would like to ask you to take a moment, right now, to close your eyes, and take a slow deep breath counting to 5 and slowly exhale counting to 5.Allow your awareness to go to the center of your body and with your awareness create a space outside and directly in front of you; in that space put the bill you can’t pay, the sorrow that pulls at your heart,the heart break a child, parent is experiencing or you are experiencing your self, the fear that is keeping you from living life fully. Let your awareness acknowledge whatever is in that space, surround it with light and surrender it, acknowledging with gratitude that the highest outcome is already in place. Embrace the space you created with your goodness and feel the difference in the center of your being.
As a little girl I was drawn to the canvas of blue above me, a painter's palette of whites, watching the divine sky walk artist create and let go. As a little girl I only had a small seed of recognition of a divine artist. I loved lying on my back and watching the myriads of shapes and expressions that drifted across my mind's eye. I also loved how it all changed in a blink of my eye.
As I grew older, looking up into the blue sky allowed me to escape, to muse, to ultimately allow my growing imagination to embrace the divine artist and co-create mind upon ether. The process taught me to go deep within and surrender the images unto paper and canvas.
Matthew Fox, in his Original Blessing , which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, introduced me to the concept of co-creatorship, that I am a living vibrant prayer of divine energy! What a revolutionary concept that was to embrace and contemplate. It also offered me an affirmation of the incredible joy I would feel getting lost in the creation of a poem or art.
Now, as I enter the second half of my life, sharing the day this picture was taken with a girlhood friend, I looked at this sky, with the deft slices of cloud strokes and my inner being responded to the clarity and simplicity of the sky above me. I became one with the clean, zen like, upward movement of slices of cloud and suddenly I understood. The motion between the divine creator within and the beauty of the present moment were one and the same. And it is goodness embraced by a lifetime of experience.
I took a photograph of this egret on a glorious day in Point Lobos. One of those days that a mysterious combination of the Divine and Nature reveals a magnificent sense of well being. A sense of well being that comes from the Still Water Time in my life.
A Still Water Time defines our inward journey when it becomes the dominant energy in our lives. It is the settling place for the emotional waters brought forth by a junction in our spiritual journey that demands all the tools we have acquired so far to re-evaluate, redress, discard and acquire the necessary new tools for the next part of our journey. Still Water Time is the culmination of our darkest hours transformed into the realization, that it was , in reality, one of our shining moments.
I reflect upon my own Still Water Time. And, like the Egret that stands still and eats his prey whole, in a similar way I receive whatever life offers me, wholeheartedly. The major difference between the Egret and my self is that his still waters is a constant offering or denial to his survival. His survival imprint is simple and direct, the rules are encoded in his DNA and the relationship between the Egret and the water is predetermined.
My Still Water Time rules are not imprinted in my DNA. In order for me to recognize a Still Water Time, I know I have to allow it the space and time for the spirit within to stretch. I usually have to get there by forcing it through avoidance and ignoring the restless spiritual nudges within me. I read somewhere that in those times when I judge my self most harshly and I feel I have let my self down are the moments that enrich my spirit the most.
I look at the photo and step into the place of the Egret, taking a zen like stance and staring into the stillness, allowing Paul Russell's words wash over me as the stillness flutters and settles itself around me:
" I realize that meditation was not about chasing states of consciousness or following a path but about letting go of the path, it's a long journey to realize there's no path."
In the end, someone or something will throw a pebble or two in those still waters, causing circles to widen and disappear. That is the irony and ecstasy of a Still Water Time.
This was the full moon in all its glory which appeared on August 6, 2009. It is a fertile and shining light beamed upon a certain womb containing the power of eons of feminine secrets and mysteries, beckoning her guest's arrival a week early. The August Moon has always held a magical and meaningful hold on me and now I know why . It is the Summer Moon pregnant with life's profusion of her gardens, sea shores, and playful spirits, and raised above it all, in its purest meaning of joy filled delight, a baby girl named Sophia Michele.
Slipping in on a beam, Sophia Michele heard the call of this Full Moon and began her entry . Its details are a deluge of words, phrases, linked thoughts, rushing streams of adrenaline, anticipation, excitement, disbelief, apprehension, all flowing onto an invisible warm blanket of love ready to be wrapped unconditionally. Strangers met with a common genetic code melded into the DNA of Sophia and became guardians of our common love for our son and daughter, the soon parents to be.
Two mothers witnessed their babies having babies. Alethea's mother being lovingly vigilant of her daughter's discomfort and progress. My witnessing the unfolding of my son, Nick, a man in love, as a full partner overseeing his wife's comfort and making sure she had what she needed. I saw a man intuitive to his wife's pain when he looked into her eyes and let her know he was there for her. Two mothers, strangers until then, bonded over their concern for each child of hers.
Two fathers, each showing their love and support in their own way. Alethea's father sat until midnight and came back the next day for her birth. Nick's Dad cooked his special Italian breaded chicken and pasta salad for all of us waiting in the birthing room. That was his way to show his love. He came to welcome Sophia when she was born.
Witnessing Sophia Michele's entrance onto her stage of life is witnessing every generation that flows through her veins going back to the very beginning of all our being. The very beginning unknown of its identification but carried in her blood pumping through a brand new heart. The miracle within the miracle beyond all miracles. That is the organic nature of progeny.
And so I am now a grandmother for the first time.My feet carry a lighter step. I hear a tune in my head over and over and it makes me giggle at 57. The tune is from West Side Story, " The most beautiful sound I have ever heard." Sophia, Sophia, I just met a baby named Sophia ..."and suddenly I found how wonderful a sound can be..say it loud and there's music playing..." . I recall reading somewhere of becoming aware of the heart space within and the song that emanates from it. My heart space has expanded beyond space and time!
Sophia Michele, you have captured my heart completely and irrevocably. An abundance of gratitude surrounds me, rich with the healing powers of reconciliation, unconditional love and revealing mystery of life.
Fluid blue of water. Music notes reveal their melodious messages . The verdant green lies amidst a few bent Pussy Willows. A limp bird, wings listless at its side, becomes one with the image of the lady of the water against the colors of yellow and orange.
When I create a collage, I let the messenger within articulate the state of my inner landscape without censorship. In this landscape I melded into the background the colors of orange and yellow.
Warm, energetic, flamboyant orange is about change and transition. You find orange in the changing leaves of fall, the exposure and the intimate burst of skin revealing the meat of citrus fruit. It is the glorious transitional mediator between the heat of summer and the cool of winter. In this collage an inner voice guided the voice within to communicate transition and a bridge between two opposing natures.
Happy, cheerful, hope filled yellow often is associated with sunshine and happy daffodils . A source of warm, bright, and intoxicating rays of awareness. Contrary yellow is present ; on the one hand it denotes happiness and joy and on the other it denotes cowardice and deceit. It warns us with its high visibility used in hazard signs and emergency vehicles. In the color world of duality it works best as a companion to other colors. Mellow Yellow.
Why did this collage become a message of, "The art of life is A little to the left"? Life imitates collage. The collage relays the existence of duality and our desire for oneness or harmony. Present is a a feeling of life's equanimity. Happiness and sadness; judgment and non-judgment; love and hate, once poured into a body of water, they become indistinguishable. What is evident is what has flourished from its life experience. Like the limp bird we must often bend into a space where any loss, betrayal, or hurt can soften itself into another form of life. Dealing with life's challenges and heart breaks is the foundation of what will make the inner heart of lightness , life's art, a little off balance, a little to the left . ***********************************************************************************
(After reading , click on the link below, close your eyes and allow your inner landscape speak to you in whatever images or words it translates itself to you. )
I created this collage thinking of the child we all carry within us that lay on sand or green grass staring up into the sky seeking clouds that made pictures of our minds. Bird feathers, sea shells, sand, acrylic, an eternal organic heart out of wood on the left, a sand castle in the middle, flights of fancy fanning out providing a safe place for the child to day dream in.
As I was the only child in the world that had ever done this, I told my mother of all the fantastic pictures I had created out of the clouds, to which my mother replied , "Dear, you were day dreaming. I use to do that when I was your age.". Deeply disappointed, I realized I wasn't the creator of day dreaming after all! The first ego disappointment for the child within.
Daydream. It was love at first sound for me. Daydream. From then on I would create a daydream out of whatever I could until I discovered I could actually create something viable out of a day dream. Sometimes the day dream stayed a day dream, safely residing in a sandcastle built in my mind. Those that became a reality sometimes were better off as a daydream. Others were better than my daydreams; my boys were even more wonderful than my daydream of the children I was going to have, my husband more complicated, loving and less placid than my knight in shining armor day dream. My life messier, richer, more painful and wonderful than I ever could have day dreamed.
My daydreams had the awkward teen stage. They took on a hue of self doubt, fear of rejection, and the doomed landscape of secrecy. I shared them with only a very carefully chosen few and even then experienced some ridicule. They were elevated to new heights of emotions by the songs like; California Dreamin', The Mama's and The Papa's, When a Man Loves a Woman, Percy Sledge, Come Back When You Grow Up, Bobby Vee and The Strangers, Society's Child, Janis Ian, Baby, I Need Your Lovin',Johnny Rivers, Hurt so Bad, Lettermen, (It Looks Like) I'll Never Fall In Love Again, Tom Jones, adding a delicious angst to the boy that got away daydream. All rich fodder for the day dream factory of a teenager of the 60's culminating with my first broken heart, singing to Barbra Streisand singing, "What Now My Love", a hundred times, alone in my father's living room. Music and day dreams went hand in hand were inseperable in my day dream landscape.
At this stage, my day dreams were introduced to poetry and creative writing and in turn took on a whole new level of existence.
My daydreams had the blossoming bridal stage. The daydreamer had fallen in love with love expressed in the man who had won her hand in marriage. Songs like My Love, Paul McCartney and Wings, Danny's Song, Anne Murray and Me and Mrs. Jones, Billy Paul, fed the embers of new love and a bright future.
And so the daydreams became daydreams of their own. Children were born, my daydreams took on an aura of a spiritual quest, art and the enrichment of friendships. And now in my 57th year, I feel nostalgic and grateful that the day dreams of my childhood have become an intricate part of my being and reality. One of my favorite memoirs is Sidney Poitier's, 'The Measure of A Man'. He wrote this about his day dreams, "Daydreams were guaranteed to please. They had it all over facts and reality when it came to getting groundwork done and foundations laid. However, daydreams were burdened with what in years to come would be revealed as their major weaknesses. Every ounce of the hard, grueling, exhaustive work necessary in the conversion from promises made to dreams fulfilled was the sole responsibility of the dreamer."
I still day dream. I will always daydream. In creating my collage which inspired me to write this blog made me realize how important music, art and memory is for me. Their engagement pour emotions that found their way into my daydreams whether writing, creating art or having heart to heart conversations. I thank the Ultimate Creator for all the artists, writers and musicians that have enriched our lives to new heights of the daydreaming experience!
A canvas of accidental beauty can be found in the most unexpected places. I took this photograph in New York while eating lunch in the Village. This canvas was just to the left of me and for some reason it called itself to my mind's eye.
The shapes, colors and accidental composition relayed memories of Europe, of walking in orange fields with the intoxicating fragrance of orange blossoms in the air and the promise of delicious, juicy fruit.
I look at it now, in the middle of the night, in Monterey and I am drawn to the Edge that the basket of oranges is leaning against, allowing it the space for my Awareness to contemplate in.
The Edge. It creates a distance. An impostor of going forward and not looking back. It is the emotional strangulation of coming to age with all the fears, guilt, self loathing. It flies in one swell swoop between my solar plexus and throat forcing a deafening silence of a wing's motion into place.
The Edge. It pushes the cerebral being of one into a dark closet, not only locking the door but stuffing any logic that has gathered over time into the size of a keyhole. The only connection to reality is the expected order to step off into the abyss of a never land where a sense of surrender will invite the reticent guest of well being.
The Edge. It marks my horizon and rears its one way order to step off and take the plunge into the unknown. A plunge that realizes a safety net of spiritual tools, unseen but gathered over time. As birds gather threads, scattered hair, small paper, and sticks to create upon their wings a feather for each day of living nestled into a flight where the unknown meets the familiar.
The Space for this Awareness expands and pushes one's cerebral logic through the door, kicking down any fear and somehow, once again, allows the Edge to disappear into fertile fields of dreams.
A lovely bright sunny day in the Village, sharing a delicious lunch with two friends, my camera's eye captured by a basket of oranges leaning against an edge and I am reminded that all I have to do is feel myself transparent so nothing pushes itself against me, keeping me away from the miracles of life, but most of all allowing myself to surrender and take the plunge over The Edge.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Collage by Iris Brewster
I woke up to a gray Monday morning , the garbage trucks echoed my reluctance to the demands the day had already made; retrieving the sunny disposition within me to make it the best day ever. It may be like a Pollyana but when I decide that my day will be the best day ever magical things happen. Today, my suuny disposition was playing hide and seek with its own shadow. I received an e-mail from one of my sheroes, a very dear friend who has known me since I was nine years old. In it she wrote, "Letting go and letting God doesn't always get the garbage intothe trash bin." Immediately, my shadow found my sunny disposition! How true and how simple it is to balance the shadow with the lighter part of my self. How many of us refuse to step back and give ourselves the space to feel the shadow because we are too afraid that the shadow hides an edge that will trip us into an oblivion. It takes a great deal of courage to stop and confront our own grey day edges, step over them and give our selves the light we need no matter what is facing us. I know so many wombmen in my life that have this courage without being fully conscious of it. Whatever challenge or demand faces them, my sheroes confront each and every one of them with out any expectation of acknowledgement or reward, just the sigh of relief that a care or concern has been abated without a world or two crashing around them. My sheroes do have magic bullets filled with compassion, love, concern and spiritual generosity. Letting Go and Letting God is a partnership that allows them to surrender the garbage to a Higher Purpose knowing that the garbage bin is only a surrender away.
Today, I saw the sun shining brightly upon the myriads of its receptors. The green of leaves and grass, the plethora of colors in the summer flowers, blooming or spent. The stainless steel of cars and trucks, high wires and cement all responding to it in their own unique way. I am in awe of the light of awareness experienced by the space I can provide to it all.
Each one of us has a special gift of awareness providing the space for the world to settle into. How we inject our soul's language or our heart's desire into our awareness creates a unique sense of awakening in ourselves and in those who enter it. They expand the space of awareness with their own interpretation and unique reception of it.
My Awareness whispers, "Just write me, that is all I ask. Write me in your eyes as you behold the luminous wonders of every day life. Write me upon your words of kindness and compassion as they flow warmth upon those around you. Write me in your heart as it embraces memories, happy or sad. And write me in your soul as it expands its ethereal being to embrace the visible as well as the invisible."
And so I begin this blog, in awe of the light of awareness and how being present and aware enriches our lives it can also facilitate our daily living into a promise that even though life may not be the party we hoped for, we might as well dance while we are here.
