Today's 7 Bits of Grace

I've fallen off the grace wagon and I've missed it. Again today I was reminded to look for the good stuff among the not so great, so here goes:

1. Though it was cold this morning the sun popped out this afternoon.

2. The scallops I made for dinner came out decently.

3. I started another blog! Wait, is that a good thing?

4. I got in some reading time today.

5. I also got a little cleaning done. A very little, but some.

6. I got in some journal writing time, some really productive journal writing time.

7. Last week the Newberry Library granted me an internship.

Whew, I made it through. It's a tough time of life but there are a few good things.

I truly haven't forgotten this blog...

Though it seems that way. I've been blaring all over the net how busy I am at the end of the semester, but I haven't told readers of this blog. Until now.

Here's a thought to help improve your karma:

"Give away what you want most (love, money, gratitude)."

Because what you give away comes back to you 10 foldish.

From: The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chodron

" A fresh attitude starts to happen when we look to see that yesterday was yesterday, and now it is gone; today is today and now it is new. It is like that - every hour, every minute is changing. If we stop to observe change, then we stop seeing everything as new. "

- Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

The spirituality of creativity

Of all my latest obsessions, this is one of the top three. Having finally gotten around to keeping a journal, as of July of last year, I'm coming to terms with a lot of things about myself and my mania to create. I also see now how that can be a sort of spiritual experience, a soul-purging kind of cleansing that leads to an number of epiphanies.

At UUC services yesterday creativity was the topic. We're in week 8 of the 10 week "Finding Your Unitarian Spirituality" course, and this is the week I've been waiting for with great anticipation. So, of course, as it turns out the service yesterday was interrupted by a man having what was possibly a heart attack. Talk about the jolt of mortality in the middle of a fascinating sermon...

Hopefully he'll be okay. After the ambulance left the sermon went on, as was the popular consensus. Creativity, the Rev. Dan said, is a sign of life. When creativity ends, you die.

And of course, that lead me to quip about the guy taken off in the ambulance, "I hope he hadn't stopped being creative..." And no, I didn't say that IN the church.

Intriguing thought. I know I'd die, a spiritual if not a mortal death, without creativity. I was never so depressed as the dark time when creativity was eclipsed by the exhaustion of motherhood. They both went hand in hand, feeding off each other leaving me miserable.

But now I write every day. I create constantly. And I'm if not blissful, at least content knowing I have that outlet. Bliss isn't an easy concept for me. I may have my moments, but they're not a constant. Maybe as I'm working through my various issues I'll find bliss more frequently. I expect it'll be in the pages of a book, a manuscript, or as soon as I get my butt in gear, a drawing or painting.

Wherever it is, I know it's in reach.

Reading back through Louise DeSalvo's 'Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives'

If you're a creative sort of person with a horrific past I can't tell you how helpful DeSalvo's book truly is. It's so helpful I could imagine designing a workshop around it, though it would produce work of such a sensitive, personal nature I think one would have to be really careful about it.

The book is very introspective, naturally, and just so, so wise. Here's one of the zillion or so quotes I highlighted:

" ... we possess an emotional self-righting mechanism, akin to our body's innate ability to heal wounds. This is our creative imagination ..."

Apparently DeSalvo read several works on the subject of traumatized children. It seems these little ones tend to engage in imaginative play more often and for much longer than children who've enjoyed pleasant childhoods. And this is what spurs so many creative people to continue making use of creativity in adulthood.

Really a fascinating glimpse inside the creative mind, and a very inspiring program for using one's creativity as an emotional outlet. I'll refer back to this book for a very long time.

Today's Seven Bits of Grace

Consider these as bits of grace from the weekend. From my birthday weekend:

1. Two words: jalapeno cheeseburger.

2. Beer.

3. Finding a bookstore with a biography of Leslie Stephen I didn't already own, and didn't know existed, and having that be my birthday present. Hurrah!

4. Getting away for the weekend, sans children!

5. The weather. It kind of, sort of cooperated giving us hours of sun though not a whole lot of warmth. Still, I'll take it.

6. Fudge. To bring home.

7. The realization at least a couple of my moments of grace didn't involve food: priceless.

Lemons & lemonade

Making the best of your life. That's pretty much the gist of it, though sometimes that's easier said than done. Lots and lots on my plate right now, and I'm not really free to discuss it openly because it's first off highly personal, but second and more inhibiting is the fact keeping a lid on things is advisable, since it involves people in my own family. Maybe I will talk more openly about it once it's done, once I've made that ultimate decision and taken steps to do a few things that may help my fractured soul to heal. But for now it's necessary to be more than a little vague. And yeah, I know that's not all that weird for me at the best of times.

Sometimes in life you find you just can't abide the status quo anymore. That's where I'm at. I've been living a life that's condoned bad things a few key people have done to me, letting them think it must all be okay now when it isn't. The impact on me can't be measured, it really can't. It's affected every other part of my life, to the extent it just can't be ignored anymore or I'll risk hurting myself even more.

Doing something about that is going to take some real planning, and most of my energy. Being the person I am, I don't want to let that monopolize all my time but the time I do have will probably find me exhausted from dealing with these BIG ISSUES.

But I don't want to give the impression it's all bad. Lots of positive things are going on here, too, plenty of reading and writing and things of a creative nature. School's going well, everyone in my house is healthy and doing well, and the dog hasn't pooped in the house today. See, not all grim!

I write about that general life stuff on my Bluestalking blog, so I don't want to repeat it here. This blog's dedicated things spiritual, occasionally blurring into things self improvement. Since I haven't been really all that active in either in the past without boring myself too much. So head on over there for a recap of my birthday weekend, etc.

I'll be back here again soon.