Ash Wednesday Spirituality – Embracing Slowness

Image by Abbess Christine Vaulters Paintner

 

Today is Ash Wednesday. I will honor this day with much reflection. I am blessed. I am mortal. I am dust and unto dust, I shall return. I am getting older. My bones have a sense of dust. But my spirit burns bright within me.

There is much I still want to do. Sometimes I want to do it in a hurry. Today is one of those days. Last night, I made a list of all the things I want to do today, a day of release from a focused pace of writing. Yet here I sit writing.

There are way to many things on this list; apartment cleaning that has been put off, calligraphy practice I want to do, watercolor play I haven’t taken time for, doing some low carb meal casseroles and snacks to have on hand, reading, praying; tend Tom’s surgery healing and my own sore body from a fall;  sending valentines to my beloveds; there is more. I just think of them right now because I didn’t write them down. They are in my head.

But the thing is, there are too many and I am too slow. I cant’ whisk through them. I must go slow; I must embrace slow. And I received my lesson from Abbess Christine when I opened my email. I have joined her tribe of contemplatives and journey-makers and art lovers many years ago. She lives in Galway, Ireland and it would be a great blessing if I could fulfill a burning desire to visit her there one day. We are bonded together by membership in the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks.

Another tribe I belong to is Cat Carecelo’s Wisdom Gatherers through Collage and Process Art. We journeyed to find the Divine Spark within us. And that spark has led to the writing of a book, I have long yearned to write, with an image guide found within my 2017 art process.

 

Tom and I will spend this rainy day inside today. I will cross each of us on our foreheads with soothing moisture cream and essential oil…meant for the living…and we will live this day, in slowness, reflection and gratitude for the life and partnership given each of us on what has been a grace-filled long road of love and family, and tasks and missions well-done.

To Do List things will get done. This Lent, I will be mindful of embracing a spirituality of slowness and being ok with that.

Guest blog and photo below from Christine Valters Paintner.

 

Dearest monks and artists,
Modern life seems to move at full speed and many of us can hardly catch our breath between the demands of earning a living, nurturing family and friendships, and the hundreds of small daily details like paying our bills, cleaning, grocery shopping. More and more we feel stretched thin by commitments and lament our busyness, but without a clear sense of the alternative.

There is no space left to consider other options and the idea of heading off on a retreat to ponder new possibilities may be beyond our reach. But there are opportunities for breathing spaces within our days. The monastic tradition invites us into the practice of stopping one thing before beginning another. It is the acknowledgment that in the space of transition and threshold is a sacred dimension, a holy pause full of possibility.

What might it be like to allow just a ten-minute window to sit in silence between appointments? Or after finishing a phone call or checking your email to take just five long, slow, deep breaths before pushing on to the next thing?

 

Chi

 

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Art is a Blessing

 

I am playing with art. I am no longer afraid of art or being an artist. I love Oriental Brush Painting. I love watercolor. I love collage. All of it is now fun to me. I write more than I play with art, but that will balance out eventually, once I get my book completed.

I had fun this summer with an on-line course from Carla Sonnheim. It was a course for children and their parents. I will take her next one and hopefully later on join some more teaching courses with her. Color makes me happy.

We shared our art on-line and it was so fun to get up each of the five days to see what others had created.

This is my Chagall rendering of carousel.

 

We created Blob animals from cracks and shapes found in the sidewalk and parking lots. There are lots of blobs out there!

 

We also created lots and lots of herds of corrugated cardboard elephants.

 

 

Asian brush art is a favorite of mine and I am taking up learning it. The soft, fluid energy I see in it lights my soul. There is much to learn and PRACTICE is the centerpiece of learning. It is meditation with ink and paint. I love watching YouTube videos to get me going with it.

And I took two workshops in Berea, a creative center of the arts and writers, from Diane Marra this summer also. That deepened my love for this art. I created two pieces that vibrate with chi and warmth for me.

 

Being genuine.

 

We moved to Lexington in January 2017 and reside in a nice apartment in The BLVD at Hays complex. The new Lexington Senior Center is very close to us. I took up a few water color classes there. Water color is my favorite paint medium. I love what it does on paper with its blends, splatters, and swirls and thin line art. I want to get much better at it and I have time to practice.

 

 

I am Napkinwriter. I write on napkins.

 

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Make an Elephant

That’s a tall order for the day, I think as I glance at my To Do list and see the words Make Elephant not crossed out on my list.

I like the TO DO pad I found at Office Depot one day. It has two columns: On the left, it says TODAY, and on the right it says, LATER.  I take full advantage of being a retiree, so my list is not two columns. It is just one running across both columns. Those not crossed out at the end of today…you guessed it are the ones that are left for LATER.  Works pretty well.

It seems the Elephant was left for later.

It is the last of 5 daily assignments of Carla Sonheim’s Art Week for Kids 2017. This kid, age 74, really had fun with the art we all made. Besides making the art, and learning a little about famous artists, the best part was a private Facebook page where our Art Gallery existed and so many posted their creative work, it was a blessing to enjoy.  Each of us doing same assignment, all of us doing unique, individual, no-two-alike creations and having fun while doing it. I am going to be a kid again next year and join the others.

First, we went BLOB hunting….finding cracks and shapes and shadows outside that we drew the outline of and then created Blobimals from them.

And then we studied the Durer Rabbit (Hare) and many of us discovered that we loved the oil pastels we made our creations with. Some of us were very surprised that we liked the oils so well. Most of us found that our rabbit shapes came easier to us when we outlined him like a blob and worked from there.  This is mine.

 

Many of us like blue.

Then we went on to the Russian-French painter — Marc Chagall and created paper art in imitation of his Merry-Go-Round with horses and his sense of fun and delight in life.

 

What came next was pretty wild and crazy and most of us could not stop at one. We made more and more and more and became great fans of artist Picasso. We made the Picasso Cat. Mine fell asleep and took a nap in the sun.

 

 

Others were quite active…dancing

Or were quite blue….

 

One more just for fun, because this was F U N…

 

So, last Friday, we came to the elephant.  And for me, life interfered with art (I hate when that happens!)  and I only began to make my elephant. Beginning means that I found a cardboard corragated box and ripped shapes off of it.  These shapes sat next to the dining room table on the floor while I did life and watched all the wonderful animals appear on the Facebook Art feed.

And here is blue again.

There was even a pink one. I have to find her in the herd.

Alina posted pictures on how she made her elephant. After getting her pieces in the shape she wanted for her elephant, she is painting gray onto the elephant. This is going to help me remember how to make mine.

Here she is deciding which shapes to use.

Now, we can see her magnificent elephant. Oh my, he is so awesome.

Each day, artist Carla Sonheim led us in our art with a brief 10 minute happy encouraging “let’s do this” video and a written list of instructions to follow that were simple.  Along with a jumpy little tune, I know I was just like all the other kids and if I had had a mommy by me, I’d be bugging her to “Let’s, go, mommy, let’s go.”

And they did. And I did.  And this weekend I will be piecing and painting and gluing my elephant together. I think he will be silver gray.

Peek into Carla’s world if you are interested in having fun in creating.

http://www.carlasonheim.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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New Tools

I haven’t been able to post new photographs here, so son-in-law Carl, looked into it and seems my seven years of blogging has cramped the space and a new enhancement is needed. I have done that and am now on experimentation ground.

Well, my first photo surely uploaded quickly. Off to a new start.

I have been having some fun playing with art lately. I was so happy to travel to artisan village Berea and take two classes in Asian art that I will follow up on with small group meetings with others who find this type of art appealing and serene.  In the tradition of the Japanese, copying from the Masters is the way of perfection.

Then I also jumped into a week-long kids art class from Carla Sonheim on-line and this has been so joyful. One project a day and so many creations are put up on the Class Facebook page. I would take the class just to be able to see the other paintings (like me, there are some “little-big” kids in the class.)

We have played with Blobs, and blob creatures, rabbits, a Chagall Merry-go-Round with horses and a Picasso cat. How fun, how fun, how fun.

Selections from the class:

 

 

 

One more project left for tomorrow but I think the blobs shall never stop appearing to me and needing to be made into animate objects.

Next week, I return to regular scheduled and steady writing on my book. During the lapse of writing, much has come to me that is going into the writing, so I am grateful for that. I am pretty sure the cover image is changing to the second of my two choices AND I have a top talented graphic artist who will work with my cover design for me which will be M A G N I F I C E N T.

I continue to get great response to the title of the book, as I talk about it more frequently than I have in the past:

“Being Faithful To The Quiet”
Finding the Peace that Frees Your Soul

I don’t know where to find my new tools. I will have to explore some more. But the photos are working nicely again.

 

 

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Shattered

The world breaks
broken places
shattered mirrors
to reflect what is neglected
in dark corners.

My efforts are needed
i will turn to meet my destiny
reflected in shattered mirrors.

Unmolded clay
in my hand
nourishes new life.

The world breaks
I am a humble artist
molding my earthly clod.

Prayerful hands

i will trust to love.

Several years ago, I was grateful for the opportunity to return to a weekend workshop at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY and be with my artist sisters of WWAM  (Women Writers and Artists Matrix). A loving, powerful, far-seeing community of good living and loving in the world.

In one of the workshops, we played with broken pieces of glass added to a collage we made on a trypearche.  Color, fabric shapes and designs and paint went on the surface.

Then we added the lines of a poem, selected from many she handed out. We cut these lines and added them to our art form in any order we were inspired to. I only wish I had added the name of the author of the original poem to the back.  Yet, the beauty of it is that I “create” a new poem by reading the lines in different order any time I want.

Last, we we glued pieces of glass to our piece and shiny gem shapes and buttons.

I have kept my art piece in my sight. It has luminous energy about it. It speaks daily truth of the state of the world and the challenge before all of us, in any way in which I choose to read the lines.

Try it yourself. Take my poem I wrote today and write your own, choosing to start with “I will trust to love”.   See what happens.

I am trusting us to begin and continue the work and loving and listening to be done.

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Rainbows, Hearts and Sparkles Repeated

I need those hearts, rainbows and sparkles today, so I repeat a story told on January 26 this year about Amy who gives all of those in great measure.

 

I am curator of granddaughter Amy’s away-from-home art gallery. Almost every time she visits us, she has “something I made for you” to give grandma and dziadzia.

Amy almost always dresses in sparkles. To quote her, “A princess can never have too many sparkles.”

Amy draws in hearts and rainbows and sparkles. Her hearts come in many versions and she has a sense of how precious they are to us when we receive them. She gives them over graciously.

 

We have a large side-by-side refrigerator and we need it for space to hang her art. I am pretty sure she checks it out when she comes to know that I am current with her postings.

One day, I was coloring with Amy at her house and she said she was going to color a story for me. This is the story of grandma and Amy out on a nice walk together after a rainstorm. A rainbow has appeared in the sky and low and behold there is dziadzia, pencilled in under the rainbow, peeking at us to see where we are going.

You can immediately distinguish Amy from grandma through her detail. Grandma has the head of white hair!

Hearts and flowers….joy and expectancy….a rainbow to cover all endings and holding hands to add warmth and companionship. That is the story of our lives.

A good story.

 

 

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The Love of a Six Year Old

I am curator of granddaughter Amy’s  away-from-home art gallery. Almost every time she visits us, she has “something I made for you” to give grandma and dziadzia.

Amy draws in hearts and rainbows and sparkles. Her hearts come in many versions and she has a sense of how precious they are to us when we receive them. She gives them over graciously.

We have a large side-by-side refrigerator and we need it for space to hang her art. I am pretty sure she checks it out when she comes to know that I am current with her postings.

One day, I was coloring with Amy at her house and she said she was going to color a story for me. This is the story of grandma and Amy out on a nice walk together after a rainstorm. A rainbow has appeared in the sky and low and behold there is dziadzia, pencilled in under the rainbow, peeking at us to see where we are going.

You can immediately distinguish Amy from grandma through her detail. Grandma has the head of white hair!

Hearts and flowers….joy and expectancy….a rainbow to cover all endings and holding hands to add warmth and companionship. That is the story of our lives. A good story.

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Art is Life. WWAM!

Art is life. And Dorothy Randall Gray is WWAM. And so…..

Dorothy Randall Gray AND Amejo Amyot  together are WWAM  WWAM!!

In my joyful and fun 70th year on this planet Earth, I have been intimately united with my own parallel universe! It was great from the start. My extended family joined around me for a surprise breakfast/brunch buffet with brothers and sisters and cousins awaiting me after I’d celebrated the Sunday liturgy and Mass with my daughters, sons-in-law and wondrous three grandchildren. We had brought the gifts to the altar and I prayed in thanksgiving for the sixty-nine years granted me and opened my heart and arms to the possibilities that lay within each day of this new year.

I get two new years in two days, as my birthday falls on January 2nd, just as the partiers are reviving from their New Year’s Eve excesses.

Rejoice! This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad!

So, in a parallel universe, time is not linear I have found, and it is now heading into the autumn month of September. I have just returned from a precious trip to Charlotte North Carolina where I trained with Catherine Anderson for SoulCollage Facilitator. Totally inspiring and over one hundred fifty photos from that weekend. My year also included an invitation from a best friend forever to join her on an all-paid first class trip through the European Alps and five countries along the way. This all speaks of parallel universe to me.

But the words, memories and images on my mind  tonight are from my mystic, magical, meditative and magnificent experience I had attending the May weekend of Women Writers and Artists Matrix in Saratoga Springs New York.

What happened there? Magnificent, MUSE-i-cal women in community, minute by minute artistic expression and learning. Quiet, honorable time and chant in the early morning quiet. Waves of prayer carried out into the ethers by the sound of the drum beat above and around us and within our heart. Lunch time sisterhood sharing that drew in even the chef who prepared special dishes for us and hung out at our group table because he didn’t particularly want to be anywhere else at the moment.

Painted poems, paper book specialities, movement, dance and exclamation! “Seeds” respected and collected that have given rise to new prose and poetry by this time because they came home in journal pages with us. The campus of Skidmore College, with IWWG (International Women Writers Guild) roots for many of us, welcomed us as we strolled throughout the Quad area and by the old dorms and buildings. I revisited the grounds I put my newly created prayer sticks many years ago from Amejo’s meditation group. Old friendships renewed, new friendships gained. That’s what happened there.

This, indeed, is my parallel universe and I’ve known it for a long time. It keeps inviting me in. I cannot stay back. When I committed to both the WWAM weekend and the SoulCollage training, I did not know where or how the funds would come. It was my calling to say yes. The funds manifested and everything worked out for me to have an abundant experience on the least possible amount of dollars I could spend.

I even got author and WWAM workshop presenter, Suzi Banks Baum, for a room mate at the Inn of Saratoga. Plus, she offered to pick me up at the airport, which saved a $50 fare, while Amejo drove me back to the airport on Monday morning.

Suzi

Suzi taught many techniques for one type of folding book, and had examples of oh so many other types. In her work, she values the mission and honor of motherhood. It is a precious work.

Suzi invited us into our own gardens to see what we would see and hear there. My garden had a beautiful brass gazebo entrance.

And in my garden, I found the very same sunflower girl awaiting me that I had on my 2013 Intention Mandala on my wall back home. Now how could that happen?

Magical? Mysterious? Mystical? Definitely Magnificent.

My Year of Joy and Fun beating on my mandala and in my heart at WWAM.

And just WHO did we think we were, Dorothy asked us and warned us there were to be no timid responses.

And we did our best…..not to disappoint.

 

I told her, “I am God in a pod”, but I don’t have a “selfie” photo of me saying it.

This artist led me into a most lovely movement exercise and a painted poem creation that left me surprised and amazed. She also gave me the wondrous experience of Wabi Sabi that is a treasure in my daily living. Nothing I read on paper could have matched the gem of her inviting it into my life as a spiritual, practical wisdom practice.

She spoke of the importance of space in art and in life. I will remember that. Also she encouraged laughter. Always.

Dear Amejo, she holds a torch of womanhood in her hands, of woman’s connection to the essential, and is the treasure holder of the transference of women’s wisdom held sacred within our hearts and passed on to others. She is a Shaman among us. A Blessing as she walks the Earth.  Namaste.

Sisters, one and all.

Writers, artists, friends….who have withstood much, loved much, lived fruitfully.

Given an assignment by Dorothy,   “How many ways……”

My camera didn’t focus correctly on this. Her life went out of focus with a serious, severe stroke. All weekend, she revealed the hard realities of her soon to be full recovery, starting from well before the “start line.” Her opening sentence in her book is,  “The first time I died……” I am buying the book when it comes out.

My question posed in my Garden book.

I suppose I got like this because once upon a time……..(like fairy tales begin)

I met Dorothy and Amejo

and then……

I just became

like this.

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I Will Trust to Love

Shattered Mirrors

By Susan Heffron Hajec, inspired from
Mimi Foyle,’s Shattered Mirrors

I will turn to meet my destiny,
reflected in shattered mirrors.
The world breaks
My effort is needed.

I am a humble artist
with prayerful hands
I nourish new life.

In dark corners,
unmolded clay in my hand
in broken places
molding my earthly clod
to reflect what is neglected.

I will trust to love.

Hello Napkinwriter readers. Well just a few moments ago, my blog was shattered…..I typed “glog”. That’s what I feel like now. I had expressed in the first “blank” issue of this, how many ways this workshop experience at WWAM from artist/writer Kittie Bintz had excited me.  Now, I am left looking in a seeminly empty draft land to come up with my version.

Recently on MeetUp, I joined a WordPress group and missed the first meeting. This is one of the first things I want to find out how to avoid or at least be a good enough sleuth to recover it.

This experience was about creating an altar to our muse. Kittie, a soon to be retiring public school art teacher, was a vivacious guiding presence, as we mixed water color, tea lights, collage images,words  and shattered glass to our creations.

The word “retired” didn’t really fit Kittie, so I suggested she was “re-FIRING” instead, and that word stuck, as I heard it repeated among the more than 50 attendees of WWAM Weekend at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs New York.

What a weekend retreat it was. But then again, we creative’s don’t really retreat from life, rather we continue to re-TREAT the world with continuing inspirations, images, ceremony and words.

The inspiration for my creation came from Mimi Foyle’s poem, Shattered Mirrors, which I share here.   I live in the truth that it is indeed prayerful hands and honoring the Mystery that has healed me from my own wounded and light-deprived places in life.

I am in deep gratitude for the great gift of life I enjoy.

Shattered Mirrors
Mimi Foyle

i will turn to meet my destiny,
reflected in shattered mirrors.
heart broken open,
i will pick up the pieces
no matter how sharp
to reflect
what is neglected
in dark corners.
wounded, light-deprived,
with prayerful hands i’ll
recycle devastation to
nourish new life
art, like gardening
is an act of faith and healing,
shining for the world.
as Mystery’s greater
than the sum of all suffering,

I will trust to Love.

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Rosemaling – Saying Hello to my Ancestors

“Behold, I’m doing a new thing!” Somewhere in scripture, it says something like that. And there is a lot of newness in my life today, being born of surprise both in things I am doing and areas I am studying.

One of these new things I am doing is the Norwegian folk art of Rosemaling painting. I didn’t even know the word or what this form of art was until I very recently.

When a friend showed me her photo book of creative paintings, I saw a very familiar looking wooden plate with her painted design centered in it. I had an instant flashback to my childhood kitchen wall where something very similar hung for all the years I was in that home.

That’s when I learned this art form comes from Norwegian heritage. Yesterday was the first painting session I attended and Jan, my Norwegian  friend, is doing everything getting me set up to begin something that has already wrapped itself around my heart. She asked her husband to “turn” a plate for me, so I have my first project underway now with one sanding and a base background coat.

I am choosing to do her pattern that reminds me of my mom’s and now I want to find out from my brother if he knows where that plate is.  I now have some dedicated time scheduled on Tuesday mornings to meet with the experienced rolemaling women who have taken this little duckling under their wings. Next Tuesday can’t get here fast enough for me.

Besides the art itself, there is another side of this adventure that really excites me. I dedicated this year of 2012 in my intentions to: Gain more understanding of the Oneness of All — humanity, spirituality, the cosmos, the past, present and future — and my early leadings in this year seem to push me along in that direction. I truly think that’s how I got to rosemaling, an art tied to my heritage, that I believe I will continue and have speak to me from here on.

Here is the “oneness”, that were a lot of “coincidences” that I think brought me to this art at this time.

I have a good blog friend, Christine, in Australia, who creates and sells nature’s essences;  Last year I ordered two: Space Essence;(create space in your life, elemental balance, prana flow)…..I wanted it so I could make peace, adjust or change the space I was currently living in….within six months we were quickly and almost “lifted out” (it was that easy) of our cramped and uncomfortable space into a home space I am totally at-one with.

The second essence has an even bigger task to accomplish: it is Ancestor Peace, (making peace and achieving harmony in ancestral blood lines)…and that one is very actively “moving things around” for me with new understandings, and forgivings where necessary. It was working mostly on my Irish half,…..but now I see it on my Norwegian half as rosemaling comes into view.

How did I get to this experience? This friend, Jan, is in my Tuesday, Thursday, Poolates class; can’t talk much in that class as we’re working hard. So we spoke briefly in locker room conversations about life’s going’s on and she talked of her painting group a little, and I missed an art exhibit she invited me to.

About six month later, I had a gathering at my home and Jan was there and brought her art project book. Here is where I learned of the Norwegian background. Then further, I learned she knew about Eau Claire, Wisconsin (very Norwegian settled) which was my birth place.

THEN I learned she knew about Eau Claire because she graduated Luther Hospital Nursing School, where my birth mother also graduated and where my birth mother met my father suffering with a kidney stone. They met, fell in love and married.

But this is not the mom whose plate on the wall I remembered, for my birth mother died shortly after I was born and dad remarried (a Thompson Norwegian) two years later.  So now I have this art connecting me to both mothers and ancestors.

The place where I will be learning this craft is Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. Both my moms came from the Lutheran faith tradition, converting to Catholicism with dad. And Peace in my underlying all-covering life purpose.

Could I be more on center? I don’t think so.

Yesterday on facebook, my cousin reminded me of my aunt’s birthday (sister of my second mom) and how much she missed her. I do too, she was an important support to me in my growing up years. At the time of mom’s Alzheimers diagnosis though we had some rough times working things out because she didn’t want to let her sister go and couldn’t recognize the need.

I, on the other hand, did not handle the differences with grace, so a new space was created between us, that took years to repair and heal. I think we got that done, and I felt my love for her in a special way yesterday.

I probably won’t be able to give my first piece away, but I know I will make something (I’m thinking a mirror) for her daughter, in memory of her beautiful mother. That way she can be looking at herself and seeing her mom as well for her mom looks right back at me through her daugher’s face.

And I have one other cousin, my age, who I will send a rosemaling  art piece to because she is the one who connected together for me when I was in my twenties many of the missing pieces of my birth mother’s family and I will forever be grateful for that.

This seems like the breathing process to me, as far as ancestor peace goes. Maybe a natural one, maybe sometimes a bit forced, and other times feeling like I need more breath.  For an earlier part of my life it was like the outbreath expansion and pushing away a bit, getting out as my own, independent self and finding out who that is.

Now, I’m on the in-breath, drawing in, expanding my lungs to fill them fully with all that is a part of me, and loving that energy in my heart, then using this energy in a great, supportive way to live my life now — the daughter of many who “went before.”

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