Losing sight of wholeness

"I have a wonderful [business] partnership, so much so that when my partner was way too busy and couldn't say no, I told her we should cancel. That we weren't in the right place. She was grateful."

When I related that information Monday at the second in a series of workshops I am taking on collaboration in the arts, I added "You know, had this been in the corporate world, we would have had to move on no matter what. No breaks for family life or time-outs when needed," I confessed to Darla, our daring facilitator.

"That's why you are an entrepreneur," she gently tossed back at me.

That's the second time in two weeks she has given me an essential truth I needed to hear and in the right moment when I could listen. Last week, she said she had to let her perfectionist tendencies go and just get things done the best she could. Of all the marvelous things she said and reminded me of, this was crucial and it just sort of slipped out. I am not sure it was in her notes.

So, according to Darla wisdom, I chose to be an entrepreneur to control my schedule and I can curb my perfectionism and the world won't fall apart.

Before Monday, I hadn't considered what I am doing as either entrepreneurial or a choice. That insight is causing a shift in me. A BIG one. Perhaps from listlessness and either accepting what comes along or taking it all on to understand this is a choice, a positive one and not a sentence.

I have also heard the term artpreneur. That seems very much in line with where I am these days. Whether writing and planning to publish, making art, leading creative workshops, grant writing and working with low-income kids, I AM my own boss. I tend to lose sight of that in all of the busyness and far-flung projects.

As a result of these workshops, I drew out all the things I am doing -- ALL five -- and trying to see similarities and places to simplify. I did this last fall, yet things have shifted majorly.

Artsy Fartsy Saturdays: serves a very specific population and geographic location, has grown and successfully attracted grants. However, I need a new home by June 1, must assemble a board to help me apply for my own non-profit status and continue to seek funding. Not so simple: new home, new board, new status, more funding solicitation. I have also initiated a book I'd like to write online as a fundraiser about the experience of launching this incredible program.

Art Truck: This concept popped into my head several months ago when I was meeting with a very energetic, get-things-done photography teacher with a big heart. She will be on my board if/when that happens. Didn't even hesitate when I asked. It was an after thought in a conversation about finding a new location. For a few, brief moments, a larger arts business was interested, but decided they had too many initiatives. Then I applied for a new grant for individuals. Yesterday, I heard I was not one of those selected. The week before, I heard from ArtsWave that my video request had been advanced to the next round and another large application, but for bigger money than I have ever sought. I adore this idea of taking art directly to those who don't have access, plus doing some fun gigs in-between. Adding a vehicle, new venue and drumming up support through social media is a whole, other venture. What if I am too busy? I asked my husband, then realized the ridiculousness. I am less afraid of failing than getting too busy.

Salon for the Soul: The blog I have faithfully been writing weekly, sometimes twice a week, for five years. I want to continue and create a devotional from the many entires. That means culling the 500-plus posts, re-writing and paring down and publishing in some form. And building a larger audience. In reality, the groundwork is in place. Maybe not too unsimple.

Turtlebox Stories & Studio: Essentially my physical space and the playful, nurture workshops/retreats I have conducted, which all stem from my first journals and the book I created from them. It's been resting while I taught it. Now the teaching has been resting. I would REALLY love to travel with these workshops and retreats. Someday will be the right time for the book.

Pain as Spiritual Teacher: A chapter from the Turtlebox book that jumped out at me as something wonderful in a workshop format as did the perfect partner, my first yoga teacher, Renee, who also lives with chronic pain. We spent a year doing small, intro sessions, 4-hour workshops and, finally, a stint at the wildly popular Victory of Light Psychic Festival. We had a good, receptive crowd, but got so caught up in what we were doing, we forgot to ask people to sign our e-mail list. We planned a February workshop, but canceled after our festival faux pas and busyness in our lives. Interesting that our Facebook page continues to be active, I think we need to write an article or book together and focus on this rather, specific and hungry audience.

I always joke that I have branding issues and that was my struggle yesterday. How do these all fit under one umbrella ... interesting choice of words as I am looking for a financial umbrella for Artsy Fartsy. Of course, the common thread is me, that these are mission/heart driven and creatively address the spiritual on some level. My map showed me that Artsy Fartsy really is the kid side of Turtlebox; that Salon for the Soul is my vital attempt at community; that Pain as Spiritual teacher is the deep, helping-others-heal work I do with the perfect partner; and, maybe, just maybe, the Art Truck is too much. It can go anywhere to anyone and could be the vehicle, pun intended, for what I take on the road.

When I look at my map, I see that Darla is exactly right. I have created all of these and that makes me an entrepreneur. Then, when I apply her next keen observation about perfectionism, I wonder what can go, be put on hold or rest awhile. Of course, I want to do it all NOW. That's not been working so well. Too many balls to juggle.

What is the simple path forward? The one that is joyful, Spirit-infused and abundant?

• When have I had too much on my plate?
• How did I discern or decide what stayed and what was cast aside?
• How do I seek Spirit in these matters?
• How patient am I when I am called to wait for an answer?
• How do I make the most of and enjoy the discernment-and-waiting process?



I always want
things PERfect

to go off without
a hitch and be,
exactly, the way
I envisioned,
flawless

rarely does
that happen

and then I
crucify myself

but then I have
lost sight of
what perfection
means

wholeness

Visit Darla Kirchner @ http://www.cbizschool.com; attend the Creative Biz School series the next two Mondays @ www.the-arts-alliance.org

Listen to this post:

Strength of a rose[ie]

Lonely heart/pastel & paint on paper

Listen to post:

For days in yoga, I keep hearing a haunting song [see link below] as we’re ending practice and entering shavasana. It’s a real song the teacher spins on the dvd player.

These lines, in particular, echo deep within:

            “And it’s happening to me and you …
 

           … Where we’re bound nobody knows ..."

The subject is our wildness, to me, the terrain of the heart. It’s such a wonderful transition from the activity of poses to the coolness, winding down and turning inward of relaxation. And even though I have heard that song at least a dozen times, it always catches me … in knowing. It helped me remember something I wrote as a pre-teen, about the age of my youngest daughter. I penned these lines:

            “I am bound where no man goes.”

It was a somber piece about living in isolation, then I translated it as the Steppes of Siberia. I am coming to understand it was about my wrestling with growing up, keeping part of myself and letting others go.

A month ago, while deep in pastoral counseling, my shaman asked me to remember/visualize when I first felt less than. The image of a pre-teen girl in a fetal position immediately flashed in my mind. It quickly shifted from me to my youngest daughter and my heart sank. I know she is in the same place. Shunning the physical, psychological and emotional changes stirring. My heart aches for her as it does my inner pre-teen: the one lost, confused and feeling isolated.

This week in my monthly archetypal-astrology group, we discussed the drama of opposites with regard to astrological aspects, the angular relationships between the planets, and from a Jungian perspective. A handout carefully prepared by our teacher, discussed that “ego development requires that we reject even essential parts of what makes us whole; and this is what becomes the shadow … the road to wholeness is rough and bumpy … but we continually seek that which we have unconsciously discarded.”

I wonder what I discarded in that fetal position as a pre-teen and what my daughter intends to shed?

Two nights ago, I had an interesting dream; I haven’t remembered dreaming in months:

My twin sister and I are on a train. I fall asleep and awake in a car with her driving. I feel as if I have been drugged. She acts as if all is normal. We stop and I notice one of my daughters, some female cousins and nieces a half block behind us milling around another car. My sister directs me into a store, where we encounter my mother haggling with a woman about a cabin reservation. My mother insists she bought the cabin across the creek behind the store. The woman says she doesn’t even have a reservation.

When I first looked at this dream, I felt betrayed, as if my family tricked me into this journey. But when I explored it again, it seems as if this line of living women in my family is waiting to cross the creek into the cabin of the ancestral women who have come before. The ones waiting at the car are, well, waiting. My mother has tried and my sister has brought me here. I think it’s my turn, my work. I notice my other sister who has a son is absent as is my youngest. They aren’t part of this yet. I believe that my sleeping on the train is a key to how to get past the gatekeeper/shop owner, cross the creek and get us into the cabin.

To do so, I must traverse the terrain of the heart and retrieve my discarded parts. The song “Strength of a Rose” by Deva and Miten Premal describes that journey. Rose is my maiden name; Rosie is my nickname.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuoQQsHUmZE  

• How have I experienced the terrain of my heart?

• When have I felt isolated?

• What parts of myself have I discarded?

• When have I also felt connected?

• What is my current calling toward wholeness?

Wild wholeness

Listen to this post:

It's been a rather sleepless week. I am certain the limitless list of details in leaving my daughters with a string of wonderful caregivers for almost two weeks has something to do with it. So do hormones ... although the mix of valerian root and melatonin did not work for long enough stretches. Maybe the anticipation of Italy contributes as well.

In the midst of self-soothing in the wee hours, I hit upon something that, well didn't put me to sleep, but awoke me to better possibilities in life. I am choosing. Choosing to accept the annoyances of aging and chronic pain as part of the package AND not letting them shape who I am. Choosing to keep anything negative out of my physical, mental and emotional space. Choosing to trust. Choosing to forge ahead with the career of which I dream. Choosing Spirit. Choosing Jesus. And, in doing so, choosing myself.

Years ago, I had a vivid, disturbing dream. I was biking a country road with a curve, when a whirlwind kicked up and the road sign burst into flames with a shimmering image of Jesus and the words "chosen one." Last night's insight into choosing (as opposed to letting things happen) reminds me of that dream. Several years later, I had another haunting dream. I was having a heart-to-heart with my favorite aunt, now dead, in a beautiful church vestibule when the exquisite stained glass windows parted, unearthly music flowed and I felt Jesus' presence. My aunt said: "You had better choose."

Intuitively, I have sensed what these dreams means, but not so intellectually or fully. I am beginning to believe that if I don't make a conscious decision, something will make it for me, maybe as much by non-action as action. I also know, this has been a time of deep interior work that must be completed before I move on. It's part of the healing and wholeness process.

I sense this trip to Italy is a piece; which one, I am not sure. It may be the joy and living in the present. Last time I traveled there alone. I clashed head to head with Italy's wildness. She comes on her own terms: take it or leave it. After timidly arriving, I chose to dive in and was rewarded. This time, I know her better and myself. Maybe, my wildness will blossom within Italy's.

I can only hope, pray ... and take action.

Ciao.

• What choices have I not made?
• How has that affected me?
• What choices are currently awaiting me?
• Am I in a rhythm of action or inaction?
• How do I discern the difference?


long, sleepless nights
Jesus, my deceased aunt
Italy ...


all flowing together within me,
waiting to untangle


at the right moment
when I am ready


to open


into my wild wholeness

Holy wholeness

Listen to this post:

I love it when single concepts, phrases or thoughts that haunt me, eventually intersect and intertwine, given enough time, to illuminate me. Take these, for example:

• The Bishop Desmond Tutu quote a Bloomington Quaker said had stuck with him.

There is no peace without reconciliation. There is no reconciliation without forgiveness. There is no forgiveness without giving up hope for a better past.*

That simple. salient idea is mind boggling – to me. In my dis-ease, that's really where I've been living. It seems natural in our woundedness to focus, even obsess, on changing what harmed us ... in the past. No wonder healing is so illusive. I just think I'm looking forward when I'm truly stuck wallowing in the unalterable. What if I let go?

• The words on the page of the intriguingly unfamiliar Jewish prayer book that reached into my soul during my daughter's and my first bat-mitzvah ceremony:

We become what we worship.
.

So if we worship the past, that's the only place we'll ever be. The same holds true for fixating on the cause of our wounds. However, there's great hope for transformation in opening our attention to what is mutable. Mostly, our attitudes and thoughts, eventually, surrendering them.

• My Quaker minister's message that the original (Greek) definition of sin means missing and, in another portion of her homily, that all of our parts are holy.

I would run from the word sin until I read Quaker author John Punshon's explanation as being out of sync with God. The idea of missing something rings true to me in the same sense. And the fact that all of the parts of ourselves are holy is a concept I am only lately learning to embrace. I have withheld my imperfection from God, but now understand surrender requires turning everything over.

• An insightful friend's response in ministry to that message of her veteran patient only coming to terms with a second amputation after hugging the "missing part" and sobbing. The spirit and soul of this broken body were glowing and powerful, she said.

When surrendered, God shows us holiness in our imperfection.

Together, this string of singly profound wisdom pushed out something deeper, which has been working in me for weeks:

If we worship
the brokenness
of the past,


We are missing
the mark
and not living
into our
holiness, wholeness


• How can I let go of the places I live in the past?
• What have I become as the result of what I truly worship?
• How does the idea of sin as missing change my perceptions?
• In surrendering to God the parts of myself I have withheld, how have I experienced my imperfection, my humanness, as holy?
• How can I live more fully into holiness, wholeness?

* In trying to verify that specific quote, I stumbled upon many attributions for the phrase "giving up hope for a better past," including Lily Tomlin and Anne Lamott

Befriending the dark thinness

I have been really moved this week reading a book I picked up purely for fun, Frankenstein's Monster.

CONFESSION: I am a fan of old horror movies, like Dracula, Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein. Not the current-day slashers, but the ones that push us to explore or own inhumanity by questioning the humanity of those called other.

It's really shadow, that we all carry, rather than inhumanity. I have always been intrigued by the idea of shadow and have come to  understand that as the parts of ourselves unexplored, unassimilated, misunderstood, untended and unexposed. They are not necessarily parts to judge, but rather parts to integrate if we seek wholeness.

It occurs to me that my delight in shadow may have been triggered by a very early experience that I always felt wounded me: being told as a preschooler in Sunday school, no less, that my heart was black with sin. I instantly knew that was not the truth though I was in no position developmentally or cognitively to contradict the lesson or trusted authority figure. Perhaps the teacher was merely projecting her misunderstood shadow.

So this past of mine got caught up in the story of a being created from dead humans who had no say in his origin being rejected and hunted over and over. He has violent tendencies, yet prizes purloined books and brief encounters of kindness. He learns to live in the shadows because of the misery exposure surely brings. He has many more parts to assimilate than most and one begins to wonder what residual the parts of assorted others that form him can be quelled, let alone balanced.

It's as if Victor Hartmann is an opposite: his first breath emanates from the shadows and his lifelong struggle is to shine the light completely on himself. And he does, shaking loose others' expectations of his monstrousness and setting the intention to live as a man.

Victor finds his light. The question for us becomes, can we discover our shadow?

• When do I first recall my own shadow side?
• How have I explored or played with that?
• How do I reconcile myself to that darker side?
• What riches have I discovered there?
• What lessons?


so very easy to
sweep it all into the shadows


and not bother with it


the parts that annoy, disgust or provoke fear
the unknown self that seems to lurk
always there, though thinly


what if I befriend that dark thinness?
calling it into the light
exploring, knowing, perhaps, even loving


what then?


http://www.susanheyboerokeefe.com/Frankenstein_s_Monster.html

Bits of myself

I had a dream some years ago that is as vivid as the morning after. It was beautiful, full of color and love, yet also haunting and calling me, once again.

My mother's youngest sister, and more like a sister to me, and I were intimately chatt3ing in a small vestibule with an extraordinary stained-glass window. The only words I recall were her telling me: "You had better choose." We had been discussing who I thought Jesus was. Then, the windows parted, siren-like music almost too beautiful for human ears played, the atmosphere rolled into translucent waves of color and Jesus appeared as if coming for one of us. My aunt died a few years later, so I had interpreted the dream as Jesus coming for her.

This week I received a facebook message from someone with whom I had lost contact, admired and shared some rich spiritual experience, including a dream group. She said she had come across that dream and "was really struck, this time, by your aunt telling you you must 'choose.' I don't know whether you've chosen Jesus a long time ago, or whether this is still an open question in your life. If it is an open question, I had the sense that the choice was looming with more importance and urgency."

I was bowled over. By the fact she had even paid attention then and now, with her sense of timeliness. She did say it applied to her and, possibly, this was not my message.

It is I am certain, but not sure how exactly.

I didn't think this was an open question. Firstly, I think Jesus chose me as he chooses each of us. It is I who came to the invitation late .. well, I accepted as a child, then backed off until more recent years. I accepted on my terms: that Jesus means something deeply within me. That I feel his energy in my heart and have experienced his presence in worship and meditation. However, I can't literally reconcile the crucifixion and resurrection. Marcus Borg's book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time helped me distinguish the mythical Jesus from the historical. And so I am left with what I call a mystical Jesus, a palpable energy.

I perceive him as a bridge between divinity and humanity. That he was a wise and wonderful person who truly loved God and is an example of the path to God within my faith tradition. And, yes, I flirt with the possibility of divine origin in my mind and heart, but I can live with the mystery of not really knowing. I DO know Jesus as my inner teacher in how to be with God.

This dream may be pushing me father, deeper. I wonder what I have chosen or not chosen if this question arises again. Have I chosen something else? Has something else chosen me? Is my choice too superficial? Do I understand my choice?

The question that scares me the most is "Has something else chosen me?" Something not love, light, beauty, color and music. Something dark, murky and destructive. Something that breeds self-doubt, guilt and punishment. Something that holds me so tightly all I can I feel is pain or paralysis. Something I can dispel with another choice. An intentional choice. One I have neglected to make as I had not noticed what crept in, stealing bits of myself.

I choose wholeness/holiness and the path of light in whatever language that can be translated.

• How do I view Jesus/God/Spirit?
• How has that changed over time?
• Is it time to re-examine that?
• If that choice calling me to something deeper, to what?
• How can Jesus/God/Spirit bring me wholeness?


I seem
to get lost
a lot


and you
continually
find me


often
without
my awareness


is it
possible
something
else
grips me


also without
my knowledge?


can
intentionally
acknowledging
you
transform
whatever
else
holds me?

The headless baby

It's not often I:

a) dream or

b) dream and remember it.

But, lately, I've had a few whoppers and my wonderful spiritual friend has taught me the value of dreams. I participated in a spiritual dream group for a year and learned so much. But, with some sleep issues, I was unable to be the dream-recording warrior and jot them down right after I had them. So I have to rely on the ones I can remember.

In the most recent, a coworker – with whom I actually did work once – entrusts his one-year-old gorgeous baby boy to my care. I don't even hesitate and enjoy this budding relationship. He follows me everywhere and seems content. The catch is these older women in white, kind of out of the frame of the dream, keep telling me how to care for the baby. And when I don't do what they suggest, they do it anyway. They remove his head (no gore or pain, this is a dream after all) and stand it neck up on the stairs. That little face is so vacant and the body doesn't know what to do, so I keep taking the head and putting it back and the kid stays almost glued to me.

There's something about this dream that relates to a provocative book I just read, PUSH, whose main character is beaten and sexually abused from age 3, constantly told she's nothing and floats through school making A minuses without knowing how to read. Her prayer is that someday, something WILL happen and those words will make sense. At 12 and 16 she delivers her father's babies. But something in this child, who is forced into a wretched adulthood too soon, knows she is better than her circumstance. It's confirmed when Precious starts an alternative school and the teacher acknowledges her, sees her for who she really is, not a thing to dominate. That's when Precious blossoms. Keeping her second child, then moving to a halfway house shows her love in addition to that from her teacher and classmates.

Precious is that baby struggling to become whole, keeping its head attached ... no matter what the chorus of women in white says.

For some, it's a literal journey. For me, I think the headless baby is one of my inner children also seeking acknowledgment and wholeness. And it's up to me – just as it was to Precious – to tend to that child.

• Is there something in my life I am not tending to?

• Am I paying attention to my dreams?

• Can I listen to myself above the noisy chorus of others that may not know the right path for me?

• Do I have some stillness in my life to pay attention at all?

chubby and curly-headed,

this cherubic baby asks so

little ... just for some attention

I am not sure just how

long she has been asking,

it's only now that I

am listening

can I give this

wee one what she

needs?

can I trust myself,

my inner voice

against that

of the outside?

if I don't, what

will happen?