REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

A SoulCollage Birthday® for Barbara and Mary Lou

For many years,  Barbara, Mary Lou and I, have celebrated our summer birthdays with a luncheon and exchange of simple gifts. Our birthdays are within a six-week span although I’m a little older than the two of them. For the past few years, we have also started meeting sporadically to do SoulCollage® together.

So, after lunch at Jerry’s Deli today, we will go to Mary Lou’s house for our gift exchange and we’ve added a SoulCollage component.

This week I made a SoulCollage® card for the three of us which I’ve called The Divine Sisterhood and it could go in Community or Council. I will probably use it in the Council suit because our long-time friendship becomes more sacred to me as the years pass. I have made copies of this card which will be part of my gift today to each of them.

I am the one who met Mary Lou and Barbara in 1968 through the Sunday School program at St. Catherine Laboure Church in Torrance, CA.  Though our beginnings were in Sunday School, we soon found that we had a lot in common beyond Sunday School. All of us were raising young children and we began to chum around as couples. We soon found ourselves together in Christian Family Movement (CFM), a very avant garde for-then couples discussion and social action group founded in Chicago post-Vatican II. I am the one who, when I was to separate and later divorce in the mid-1980s, joined a singles CFM group in another parish, but our friendship never waned. I am the one who rarely attends the original couples CFM group, but I credit my friendships made there to be the foundation of who I am today. I am the one with three grown kids; Mary Lou and has three and Barbara has four. We are the ones with many grandchildren between us.

Barbara’s husband Dale passed away ten years ago and she has happily remarried a man named Jerry. Mary Lou and Larry will celebrate their 50^th anniversary soon. I am the one who stayed single, but wishes we all had more time to spend together. As a single person, my own life revolves mainly around a separate set of friends these days, but these two women are one of my stabilities in a constantly-changing life. I am the one who could keep a separate journal of memories of the times we have spent together. I am the one who feels extremely grateful for their friendship!

Though I feel more like saying thank you, thank you, thank you rather than ask a question of the Divine Sisterhood, I shall ask one. In the coming year, how could we meaningfully honor our friendship more regularly?

 

 

SoulCollage®: Feminine Freedom

In my SoulCollage® cards, I often find myself working in certain colors much more than others. Many of my cards are purple, although I personally don't wear purple often. The other colors I use a lot are red and black together. 

I'm not a color analyst or symbolist, at least not consciously. I find purple to be a mysterious color, but I know this color often connotes both nobility and spirituality. To me it has always meant freedom.

Using SoulCollage terminology, I am the one who often feels stifled, shy, railed in, particularly about my body--largely because of my own fears and more recently because of the limitations of age. I was the one who was always chosen last for sports teams and sat in the corner at dances because I was simply terrorized I'd be discovered as a klutz. I am the one who always needed a drink or two to really relax enough in public to dance decently. My husband and I often danced; he was a great dancer but I was too self-conscious. I am the one, when newly separated and divorced more than two decades ago, would turn up the stereo at home blasting my favorite rock music and dance until I dropped--alone. I found freedom in the dancing--and I haven't done that for a long, long time. 

I am the one who then loved Mariane Athey-Levy's Movement Expression and used to attend her Santa Monica Friday evening classes in the 1990s. The dance studio was darkened and people of every age gathered and we moved, each in our own rhythm, getting used to our bodies. And then I discovered Gabrielle Roth's method, which I assume Movement Expression came from. I often danced to my video of "Sweat Your Prayers." But, I am also one who tires of the discipline of such classes and Santa Monica was so far. And dancing alone at home gets old after a while.

And now I am the one who hasn't danced in ever so long, alone or in a ballroom or studio. I am the one who feels sad that I have reverted to the woman who is no longer at home in my body.

I remember leading a Progoff National Intensive Journal workshop long ago where "Dialogue With the Body" was one of the exercises. When people read back, I was so deeply moved, but I particularly remember a woman in a wheelchair who wrote about the dancer she once had been. 

I'm not even going to ask this card a question because I just want to prop it up next to my journal and next week I'll see where it leads me. It is really pulling at me and I'm just too weary right now to be insightful.

SoulCollage: Death by Inquisition, Abuse, Excess and Rigidity

This is a SoulCollage card I made a few months ago and that I have not been able to name or really work with, but it haunts me. Without a title or a suit, I can't focus on what it means to me.

Two weeks ago I saw Angels and Demons and because I have this card laying out on my art table--and laying on my computer desktop--I have kept looking at it repeatedly. Angels and Demons was my favorite Dan Brown book of them all, although I had trouble with the film because of the violence. It's one thing to read it and quite another to see it. 

I am no longer a practicing Catholic, but I do go to an Epsicopal Church because I like the liturgy. I was a convert to Catholicism at 21 and in my heart of hearts, I suppose I will always be a Catholic on some level. 

Tonight I watched the PBS documentary "Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton" and I recalled so vividly how the Trappist monk Merton, another convert, had influenced me from the time he wrote "The Seven Storey Mountain." In the mid 1980s I wrote my master's thesis on "Dialogues With Thomas Merton." Merton's untimely death in 1968 has made all of us who he influenced wonder how he would have remained within the constraints of a Church that was having a hard time changing. 

This card reminds me of the inquisition, of child abuse, of clerical excess, of rigidity and morbidity. I almost want to name this corpse of a priest so I can personalize him and have a dialogue with him about all the things that trouble me about organized religion. 

And that's what SoulCollage is really all about. Our cards invite us to go beneath the surface. What would you name this card and what feelings does it evoke in you? 

SoulCollage: The Drama Queen

For those of you who knew me when I was a younger woman, I was a drama queen. I didn't even realize it, however, until I got into therapy in my early 30s. It took me a long time to recognize this tendency and to let it go.

The difficult part of all this is that it takes one to know one. I now literally shrivel inside when I am around someone who is acting out. It's a no win situation.

This SoulCollage card is called The Drama Queen and is in the Committee suit.

I am the one who made a big deal out of little things. I was a hypochondriac and my pain was a little bit worse than everybody elses. I was fearful about being out of control and because I felt invisible, I made lots of racket, complaints and cried at the drop of a hat.

But, I am the one who was given the gift of recognizing the Drama Queen in my behavior and I worked hard to eliminate these tendencies.

If I could ask the Drama Queen a question, it would be something like, "How can you love and accept a Drama Queen's behavior and still be friends?" I am intolerant of Drama Queens and the few Kings I know--with one exception. She died in 1983 and I loved her and accepted her beyond belief.

California Fire Season Starts Early: Soul Collage

Seeing a wildfire out of control is one of those things you never, ever forget. If you listen to the news, you know a large fire is burning in Santa Barbara--again, this one named Jesusita. According to the Santa Barbara News Press, this is the third fire there within an 11-month span. Maybe I'm imagining things, but the fire season seems to have become almost perpetual and I was born in Los Angeles. For those of you who know the Santa Barbara area, this particular fire area, which Gov. Schwarzenegger has proclaimed as a state of emergency, has burned more than 400 acres, destroyed more than a dozen homes and caused the evacuation of over 8,000 people as of 8 p.m. tonight. Our weather is unseasonably hot and the winds have been blowing throughout the day--and particularly in late afternoon and early evening. This is called the sundowner effect. 

What's even more disturbing about this fire is that it is close to State St., the main drag of Santa Barbara. I have a feeling our state is in for a very long fire season this year. Please send your prayers, thoughts, mojo, or whatever you believe in to the people and the firefighters. 

Which brings me to a recently created SoulCollage card I'm calling the Goddess of Fire in the Council suit. This is a kind of water bearer card, but I already have three water bearer cards in that suit.

I am the one who is always present with water, ingenuity and hope for those whose professions are to keep fire under control, or those trapped in unexpected fires. I know that rampant, uncontrolled fire can be deadly, but I also know that fire gives life. A house can be replaced, but human life cannot be replaced. 

If I could ask this goddess a question, it would be to ask how we can help to make our environments as safe as possible from unbidden fire. She actually whispered in my ear, go to the Santa Barbara County Fire Department site. I went there and found a guide to help preventing wildfires. 

SoulCollage: Goddess of Surrender

I made this SoulCollage card tonight and called it Surrender: Step 3 - Made a decision to turn my will and life over to the care of God as I understood Him/Her. This card is in the Council suit.

I am the one who always tries to control my own reactions to people, places and things only to be repeatedly reminded that I am not in charge; God/Goddess is. Unfortunately, even at the age of 71, I have to continually -- literally daily and sometimes hourly -- remember to turn my will and life over to my Higher Power. When I do manage to truly surrender, I feel free and safe in that moment, like I could fly if I wanted to. I am the one who then remembers that in my defenselessness my safety lies. (ACIM)

The question I would like to ask the Goddess of Surrender is how to remember for more sustained periods of time that She/He is always with me. 

By the way, there was a 4.4 magnitude earthquake in the Los Angeles area a little after 6 p.m. It was definitely "feelable" in Redondo Beach where I live. I sure remember then that I am not in charge.

SoulCollage: The Green Woman

After a long, dry spell with any kind of art work, Sunday night four SoulCollage cards more or less made themselves. This is called the Green Woman or Spring and she is in the Council suite. I am the one who makes the time for all plants to grow, for the light to stay longer, and who brings the warmth to your chilled-deep bones. I am the one who knows that time is another definition of seasons; I am spring. I am the one who hears you say that summer is your favorite, but I know you've been planting impatiens and other flowers in your patio and watching the jasmine flowers forming with such gusto that I know you are living me in each moment. 

If I could ask Green Woman a question, it would be, "I hibernate and see in shades of gray during the cold, dark months. Can you tell me how I can carry you in my heart even in the dead of winter? 

If You Keep Your Eyes Open, You'll See Amazing Things

I take my camera(s) everywhere. I keep a small one in the trunk of my car, a medium-sized one in the office, and my Nikon D60 is usually with me, especially when I'm going to an "event." I wrote earlier in the week about going to a welcome baby party and the hostess gave me lots of leeway in photographing not only the people, but a few pieces of art--and even the buffet table. 

Here are three items I'd like to share--and I'm inviting you to write captions if you feel like it--even irreverent ones. Just click on the photos to embiggen them. (Thanks for this word, Kay D.)

I was mesmerized by what I called "The Goddess," who was on the patio in a gorgeous mosaic fountain and pool. That area of the house was not open to visitors, but when I spotted her, I asked permission to take my camera out to photograph her. 

The Goddess's owner said that the chemicals in the water in the past have damaged this Italian beauty, although when spring comes and the water is turned on, the new chemicals will not harm her anymore.

Personally, I liked the weather-worn look of this goddess; she reminded me of a lot of the antiquities I saw in Turkey and Greece last year. I sat staring at her a long time. By the way, she is about 4' high, if I were to guess. 

I just enlarged this photo when I placed it and the goddess takes my breath away. I may ultimately use her in a SoulCollage card. 

This beautiful painting hangs above the fireplace in the dining area. From where I was sitting, I could see this painting so clearly and the journal dialogue writer in me wanted to have a conversation with the two lovers and the woman looking on. 

When I first looked at it, I missed the woman in the foreground with her back to us. 

How long had these friends been hanging out together? What did it feel like to be so immortalized by an artist, who if not Italian, had an Italian heart? Is this a duplicate of a master that I do not recognize as famous? 

The painting seemed very erotic and very elegant to me. I would have liked to melt into the canvas just to see what was going on, but the Mediterranean buffet was so delicious I kept getting sidetracked. It also helped that the luncheon was all women (except for baby H.) and we were hooting, hollering and giggling. 

And then the finale: this dessert. 

It was all chocolatey, squishy and creamy with lots of fresh fruit inside. And next to it was a round platter filled with all kinds of fresh fruit including kumquats which brought my childhood back with a bang. We had lots of fruit trees growing on our acre of land: orange, blood orange,tangerine, pomegranate, loquat and kumquat. They bordered the beds of boysenberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and marionberries which my mom sold to the local grocery store. Ah, I so took all that yummy fresh fruit for granted when I was a kid; I was embarrassed my folks had to work so darned hard to earn a living. My parents told me I was a snob, or a wanna-be snob. Hmm. Am I still? 

From a spiritual point of view, my camera acts as a lens on being in the now. When my thousands of photos stored in iPhoto flash by as a slide show when I am in between writing documents on the computer, I am immediately transported back to wherever I was--and whoever I was with. 

Another Redondowriter addiction, but compared to some I could have, I guess photography is pretty benign. 

More SoulCollage Cards to Photo Album

• It rained off and on today.
• I went to one estate sale and a few thrifts. I bought a Valentine ball gown for "the mannequin" but I'm working on her accessories. I'll post a photo soon, but wait until you see her Mardi Gras outfit next month. 
• All afternoon I worked at cleaning up computer problems and reloading drivers et al. Thank God for Nicole, my work tech, and the guys in my Mac user group who offered great tips.  
• I went with my dear friends Rick and Orma to see Last Chance Harvey and was deeply touched by it. Afterwards we went to dinner at Marmalade Cafe. 
• I spent the rest of the evening downloading the rest of my SoulCollage cards to my photo albums. Rain suggested that I add "I am the one who---" statements and I will do that eventually. Taking the time to scan all these cards, many I haven't looked at for a few years, has been a real journey for me. 

SoulCollage: American Audacity of Hope

Today I've downloaded more SoulCollage cards into my photo album on the lower, right side bar. When I ran across this card I had made a few years ago, it seemed to fit perfectly on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. 

I call this card the American Audacity of Hope although it was originally called America. 

I am the one who symbolizes this nation of freedom, compassion, tolerance and diversity. I am sometimes viewed negatively by other nations around the world, but it is a time for new directions and I have infused hope in the millions of people who are proud to be Americans. 

God bless America and God bless our new president and vice president and their cabinet. God bless each of us as we reinvent ourselves. 

I spent four days several years ago in Washington, D.C. It was January, like it is right now and I remember how very, very cold it was. We did all the tourist things, but the Lincoln Memorial, the tour of the White House, the Supreme Court, the Smithsonian, the Ford Theater and the Vietnam Wall immediately come to mind. 

I want to go back someday.