I want to share with all Napkinwriter readers who love to play and work with a camera the latest offering from Catherine Anderson. This is an amazing On-Line Course that will greatly enhance both your skill and your fun with your camera. I am beginning to think I left a passenger behind now anytime I get in the car without my camera. And I really grieve the image that “is not taken” because I was so hasty or forgetful to have it with me. Learning from Catherine Anderson, perhaps, is why I feel this way.

https://ruzuku.com/courses/1860/about

Go to the website above to read about the course now available to take in your own feasible timeframe.

Also from Catherine’s website, below is a blog about creativity. Enjoy.

I was excited to be a guest on Janet Conner’s Soul-Directed Life Radio program on Unity Online Radio yesterday, February 14th.  One of the questions that Janet asks all her guests is what words of wisdom they would like to leave with the listeners on how to can create their own soul-directed life.  My soul-directed life fell into place once I began living my joy, once I began choosing to spend time doing things that had meaning for me. But how to translate this into “words of wisdom”?

Then I remembered my “Soul Whisperings” which I had translated into images and words to remind me of the flow of my creative process. I thought these might help others with their creative process and so this is what I shared as my “words of wisdom”.

The first word is BREATHE.  This is to remind me to slow down and become conscious of my body and to thank it for how it supports me in doing the work I love in the world.

The second is LISTEN.  This reminds me to make time to listen for guidance by making time to meditate and to sit quietly and allow a sense of spaciousness to surround me.

Next is TRUST.  This is probably the most important word, as it is a reminder that I am not in the creative process alone.  I don’t have to force anything, and I can relax when life takes a detour I wasn’t expecting, as TRUST reminds me that all is happening perfectly.

These three words are essentially about how to show up in my studio.  Then when I am creating, I need to remember that I am merely a conduit and I have a partner in the unseen realm, so I do not create on my own, I CO-CREATE.

And finally, I need to SHARE, as creating, whatever form this might take in your life: cooking, bringing up a family or gardening (all life is an opportunity to be creative), is about sharing a part of you, and when you share from the heart you never know when you might be giving someone exactly what they need at that moment in their lives.  So don’t judge your creations as not good enough or not big enough.  Everything you create makes a difference.

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Clearing the Chaos

Five Year Old Amy’s Mandala

It is said that chaos precedes creativity. Today is a day when the chaos in my creativity room has overtaken even the simplest of my creative activities, so I have had to STOP. And “retool” my room with some peace and divine order.

So I am doing this. Some of the chaos comes from inspirations coming in at a fast and furious pace, the stocking up of “I can use that”, but don’t quite have a place or a “tab” for that now, plus an overindulgence in a buying habit of new resources.

Again, I stop. I will relegate some of my “not using at this time” book shelf stockpile to the lower level of the basement (oh no!) but tend to them in time.

I am centering the papers, files, and hanging folders of my main projects at hand now, and within the next 48 hours have a much better chance for a systematic approach to each.

This task of ordering is always elongated in time, as I stop to read materials I’ve either written or saved, rather than to just put them in order. The temptation is too great and so I “take a rest.”

Well, I am back and I will post a writing I came across in a Science of Mind Skills book. In lesson Three — In The Name of God, it lists some interchangeable terms for God. When writers use these words, they often capitalize the words to give an indication of their divine meaning.

In the Skill Builder section, it asks the student/reader to use each of the synonyms used for God above in an affirmative claim.

Here is what I wrote, August 29, 1999. The synonym will be italicized bold:

God – In God, I live and move and have my being.
First Cause, Creator of all, creator of me, you live in me.

Creative Process, I trust we are united as one and I co-create your will.
Divine Intelligence supplies me with all I need to know to do what is mine to do.

Divine Mind, you are my mind now.
Divine Givingness, I give thanks for your generosity and amply fulfilling my needs.

Divine Intelligence, never-ending, you flow through me and guide right thought and action.
Infinite Wisdom, how sweet and precious, more precious than gold or silver, how you console me and how welcome you are.

Creative Power, it is you I hear in my heart and imagination.
Universal Power, I am One with you.
Higher Power, you guide and sustain me in my gift of recovery.

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

 

Father-Mother God, alpha and omega, masculine and feminine, be-all over all as One.
One Life, One God, One power, I am you.

I continued writing on “the empty page” a short essay.

My image of God today is that the purple flame that burns in the center of my forehead in the third eye area during the quiet of Centering Prayer. My image of God is One who is always inviting me to come closer and wants to make itself known in more ways than I now know.

My God is a river that flows endlessly, nourishing all life with sweet water. My God is a fire in a rock that flames forever with a passionate, consuming flare. My God is the Bread, the sustenance of all life.

God is light and in God there is no darkness. My God looks to me as the Light of the world. My God looks to me as the Incarnate — my flesh bringing forth His Word of Truth in my life and bids me to bring forth The Good News to others.

Now in 2013, I’m glad I took a rest to read through these words of mine almost fourteen years ago. Between that time and now, I have experienced heights of joy and the depths of defeats and everything else that falls somewhere in between.  And this I know.

I described what God, has been, is and will always be to me. And I am most grateful for your Oneness.

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