REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

Art Journal: Honoring Pied Beauty and Gerard Manley Hopkins

It has been many weeks since I've created an art journal page, but I literally compelled myself to go to the "creation table" today and work. A little bit here, a little bit there, and voila: my tribute to Gerard Manley Hopkins and my very favorite of all his poems, "Pied Beauty." Each time I read Hopkins, I feel utterly elated.

Because my handwriting may be hard to read, here is Pied Beauty typed out. 

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—         

  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;    

    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;  

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; 

  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;           

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.           

 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;           

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) 

    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;    

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:                   

                  Praise him.

 

 

When a Grandson Turns Nine

It seems like yesterday when my son Tony called from St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica to say that his first son, Henry Carlo, was born eight weeks early. I hit the rush hour traffic and next saw this little tiny bundle of a boy in the NICU, his very groggy mom after an emergency C-section, and my excited and shaken son.

Here's Henry yesterday at his party with his neighbor Adela. 

And here he is with his mom ready to blow out his candles on a cake with a photo of a battleship. 

 
And here he is four years ago. All of us who have kids and grandkids ask ourselves continuously, "Where does time go?" Darned if I know. Henry is number three grandchild and I have six--one girl and five boys ranging from 25 to 3. What a blessing each child is with their unique personalities, interests, temperaments. As Psalms 128:6 says, "And you live to see your children's children." I am blessed indeed. 

And though born premature, Henry is a strapping young boy, by the way. Modern medicine is miraculous.

Haiku My Heart Friday: Children's Garden

Each spring the children

Plant a garden at Christ church.

Sunday they water.  

Behind Christ Episcopal Church in Redondo Beach, CA, there is a small plot of land behind this fence. With some dedicated volunteers, The church's children garden there and on Sundays there is a bucket brigade during Sunday school hour. 

Visit Rebecca's Haiku My Heart Friday to see the wise words and images of other haiku-ers. 

Amaria SoulCollage® Card for Haiku My Heart Friday

Mi Amaria

Wisdom guide, muse, cornerstone,

Who sees so clearly.

This SoulCollage® card in the Council suit depicts my more than 30-year wisdom guide who often journeys with me when I journal. Amaria first came to me in the early 1980s as I wrote next to a creek at a favorite place of mine, La Casa de Maria in Montecito.  She told me her name and she has been with me ever since.

I have made several images of her in SoulCollage® and art, but none ever really depicted her as I saw her in my mind’s eye. By the creek she came to me in what appeared to be coarse, brown monk’s robe with her face only partially exposed. In the National Intensive Journal work of Ira Progoff,which I’ve used since the mid-1970s and that I taught for many years, there is a section called Inner Wisdom Dialogue.

That’s usually where I would turn when life was rocky and I had big decisions to make. Her divine feminine voice is strong and gentle,  low and a bit husky. She was a crucial companion when my marriage came unraveled and ended. She was a rock during both my breast cancer treatments.  She often visited when my grandkids lived with me in high school. She has never been a form of God to me, just someone to bring me strength, a pilgrim with me on the journey. By making SoulCollage® cards for her, she draws out feelings I don’t even know I’m hiding. She becomes even more tangible than when she speaks to me in the journal. She is a clarifier.

In the language of SoulCollage®, I am the one who often feels alone, a kind of orphan. I am fearful and tend to hide in the ruts of routine. I am the child-like one who needs a mystical mother, a loving sister, an affirmer of my femininity. I am the one who is often reminded by Amaria that it’s safe sometimes to be alone. She puts her steadying hand on my back and sometimes even holds my hand, ever reminding me that I just feel alone, but I never am. I am the one who is reminded by her to start each day with intention and to look for the sacred in the ordinary. “Amaria,” I say to her, “I am the one who will carve out time this weekend  to spend with you—not for comfort so much, but to say thank you for giving me such blessed support which I've largely taken for granted. You are pure gift."

A question I could pose to her? Not a question exactly, but certainly a request at another of life's intersections.  "Amaria, please remind me of past ways you’ve taught me to be comfortable and safe on my journey and show me even more ways to live with intention and gratitude at this stage in my life. I am so forgetful." 

Thanks to Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon for hosting all of us at Haiku my Heart Friday. This image came from Google images an was attributed to Buddy the Buddha of Missississipi, but when I asked for permission to use it, he said the universe provided it and to feel free to display it publicly. 

 

 

A Visit to the Rancho Mirage Public Library During Spring Break

I am the person who writes the content for the Palos Verdes Library District's Peninsula Friends of the Library website. As some of you know, I spent a few days in the Palm Springs area last week and visiting local libraries while traveling is a hobby of mine. 

"Last week my girlfriends and I spent a few days in Indian Wells, CA and one of the things I always do when traveling is to go visit one or more of the local libraries. Our Palos Verdes Library District is a wondrous place, but I’ve never met a library I didn’t like. I usually include my write-ups on the Peninsula Friends of the Library website, but I promised to share this write-up with Ellen November who is hosting a new blog for PVLD called  Ellen’s Go Libraries as well.

I had an ulterior motive for visiting in addition to looking all around the premises of this spectacular modernistic library carved right into the desert. I use a self-help art method called SoulCollage and I knew they had a used book library shop and I needed some old magazines to tear up.

 So, off we drove to the spectacular-looking Rancho Mirage Public Library located at  71-100 Hwy. 111, Rancho Mirage, CA 92270. Here are a few photos of the exterior.

 

The library was designed and built by MSR Ltd. and features shelving shelving for 125,000 books and recordings, and seating for 160 people in the library itself. Their public meeting room seats 350 and can be broken into three smaller rooms. A small conference room for 20 is adjacent. There is parking for 220 cars and a lovely outdoor garden space for special events. There is also a small gourmet café right next to the indoor Library Book Nook.

After a few stops to ooh and aah over some bookish bronze sculptures, we went right to the Library Book Nook. This room was staffed with friendly volunteers, many wonderful books and media of every ilk, and used magazines for 10 cents each. My friends were in a hurry and I didn’t have a car so a more leisurely visit will come on my next trip to the desert.

While we were there the community room had a movie playing for children—it was during spring break after all. They have a very ambitious schedule for the space in the library’s Spring Program’s brochure.  If I lived out there the library would undoubtedly be my home away from home, just like the Palos Verdes Libraries are.

One interesting fact I found in researching the Rancho Mirage Library was that the Friends of the Library group disbanded in 2010 and a foundation was established that oversees all library fund-raising including the Book Nook. In addition to funding special programs at the library, the Foundation also operates the Book Nook with over 3,000 volumes and a myriad of other items. The volunteers there were so friendly and helpful. My friends had to drag me out.

This is a library you won’t want to miss when you are visiting the Palm Spring area next time."

If you are a library visitor everywhere you go like I am, be sure to visit Ellen’s Go Libraries and send her your stories. What is your very favorite library in all the world? What has been the most unusual you have visited? 

 

 

 

 

SoulCollage® Card: The Spring Woman

Though two rain storms are predicted for the Los Angeles area, one beginning tonight, it is beautiful today. I am looking out my office window and mist is covering the basin and hiding the mountains.  The light seems thin and blue-tinged but below me is the South Bay I love so much fully visible.

When I saw this image in a gardening magazine, I knew that a SoulCollage® card was in the works.

I call this Spring Woman and she is in the Committee suit. I am the one who creates art but never plein air, but I feel I am the woman splashing her canvas with pink nonetheless. I am the one who is the light spring breeze andI do NOT react to the pollens I am in the midst of. Breathing the sweetness of spring, I sit quietly listening to birds calling back and forth and far below me I can hear the traffic of the city. The sun warms my skin and the breeze ruffles my hair and carries the weight of years into the cloud traces. I am the one who emotionally struggles during winter, but when spring shows herself like a hussy, I begin to lighten and welcome hope and creativity.  Goodbye, winter. I am grateful for the insights winter brings, but I am the one who whoops and hollers for spring.

If I could ask this card a question, it would be, “Winter is the shadow of spring, summer and fall. Show me ways to imprint Spring Woman into all my seasons.”  

 

Happy Easter From Redondo Beach, California

What a lovely day it has been so far! It began with services at Christ Episcopal Church just down the street from my home. 

After church, the annual egg hunt was held on the church lawns--and what a delight it was to see all the kids scurrying to fill their baskets. 

This Easter was the first one without John Simpson, famous for his booming alleluias. When he passed away last year, we put up a small bronze plaque in church over where he always sat in his scooter. 

After church, my daughter Christy, my granddaughter Whitney, and Whit's dad Lorenzo came over and we went to breakfast at one of our local landmark restaurants, near my house--The Cozy Cafe. I was also celebrating my granddaughter's 25th birthday. This is my daughter, granddaughter and me. I'm wearing a top that my friend Lorna in Wonderland sent from Canada. If you click Lorna, you'll see a recount of when they recently visited California. 

Below is a photo of my daughter-in-law Laura with grandsons Zachary and Arlo on the ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria, B.C. where they celebrated Zach's sixth birthday this weekend. 

My son Tony and his family were at Notre Dame de Paris on Palm Sunday a week ago and instead of palms, they brought me this sprig of green given to the tourists. 

Now I'm off to write in my journal on my sunny patio -- about Easter and spring's renewal. I like to use this day to refocus my own life each year and recount my gratitudes. 

 

Postcards: Palm Sunday Walk From Jerusalem's Mount of Olives

Rebecca's Sunday challenge is called Postcards from Paradise, but I guess it's hard for me to think of Jerusalem as paradise on this Palm Sunday 2012. I have relived our pilgrimage to the Holy Land over and over again and so much of it was pure joy. Seeing all the sites Jesus walked that last week of his life is forever imprinted in memory.

This is a photo I took of old Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in 2011 as our pilgrimage group made its way down the hillside to the Garden of Gethsemane. 

GoIsrael describes the awe and wonder of the Palm Sunday walk much better than I can. 

"The view from the Mount of Olives is wondrous: the densely packed walled city of Jerusalem embraced by the Hinnom and Kidron valleys, the Golden Gate to Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount, Mount Zion, City of David and more, bring alive both prophecy and Psalms. It is from the Mount of Olives, with its view not only toward the Holy City and its green surroundings, but toward the wilderness, that one understands how Jerusalem got one of its earliest names, Zion (2 Sam. 5:7), which comes from a word meaning desert. 

On the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives is Bethany, where a beautiful church marks the home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha (John 1:11), and where visitors can descend and emerge dramatically from the traditional tomb of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead (John 11:43).

The Palm Sunday Walk, which begins at Bethphage, follows the traditional path Jesus took in his triumphal entry to the Holy City (John 12:13-15). It stops in the quiet garden chapel of Dominus Flevit, marking the site where Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), and then passes the ancient Jewish cemetery, where the deceased await the resurrection when the Messiah comes to the Mount of Olives (Zach. 14:4). This is an important place to pause and consider that the Mount of Olives is not only a geographical link between the desert and the fertile Jerusalem hills, it is the spiritual link between death and life, also emphasized by the resurrection of Lazarus in Bethany. 

In the early days of Christianity, monks came to the Mount of Olives in large numbers, seeking the solitude of its heights where they could deepen their understanding of these and other Scriptural truths.  

The Palm Sunday walk culminates in the Garden of Gethsemane, one of the most dramatic sites on a Christian itinerary." 

All I know is that studying scripture and the life of Jesus came alive for me last year and I am grateful I had the experience of following in Jesus' footsteps.