REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

The Wise Old Man Meets the Fool - SoulCollage®

 Yesterday I made two SoulCollage® cards and both of them are in the Council suit. That's where the archetypes reside and those things that are larger than life. I am extremely restless right now as the academic year comes to a close; I only have four more weeks to work until I get 10 weeks off for the summer. I've been thinking too much. Doing the various kinds of art I create--and writing--and reading--makes me stop thinking so much. 

This card is called "The Wise Old Man." My late spiritual director Betsy Hedberg Caprio nudged me once to really focus on the masculine in my art because I do have a tendency to create predominately feminine images. Starting with SoulCollage's "IATOW" statement, I am the one who was taught that God the father was a wise old man and that the Bible was filled with wise old men. I still carry those images, of course, but the personification of it was my dear paternal grandfather who came to live with us from when I was five until I was twelve. His death was the first one I encountered as a child. He became my best friend in so many ways and hanging out in his trailer and hearing his stories really enriched my life. I carry you in my heart forever wise old man Ed Streur.

The archetype of the fool, jester or clown plays a key role in my SoulCollage® deck and I have made several cards with this theme. I am the one who has played the fool purposely, especially in adolescence, to get people to laugh at me--and themselves. I realized my zany side early. Everyone always seemed to take most things in life so seriously and by making people laugh, I guess I hoped they wouldn't notice my imperfections. I have a good sense of humor and allow the zany side to surface with my dear old friend Rick Hammond and his late wife Orma. I am the one who adores watching stand up comedy and have to keep myself in check when life gets too serious. There is such a fine line between comedy and death. 

SoulCollage® Card - Natalie Wood

This is the second of three SoulCollage® cards I recently made. This one is called Natalie Wood and is in the Community suit. 

"I am the one who had crushes on several movie stars as a kid and adolescent and Natalie Wood was one of them. I first started my obsession when I saw her in Miracle on 34th St. I was 9 and she was 8. When I was 13, both she and Tab Hunter, another of my male heart throbs, were in our small town Sunland Tujunga parade and I got both their autographs. She rode in a convertible and was all made up and absolutely adorable. She got out of the car a few times and she was so tiny. I hand’t even started to wear lipstick yet. We followed our celebrities back then in movie magazines long before celebrity media hype was born. I gobbled up each tidbit, new boyfriend, husbands, children, and most fondly remember Rebel Without a Cause (James Dean, another hearthrob), Splendor in the Grass and Westside Story. I am the one who was shocked when she drowned off Catalina Island in 1981 under unusual circumstances. She and Robert Wagner had quarreled, Christopher Walken was aboard, along with the captain. In her autopsy they found excessive alcohol and painkillers and I felt very sad about that. I am the one who still sees Natalie as a beautiful woman, a coquette, mysterious, almost Goddess-like, and eternally young although she would be 77 now."

This Has Become a Time of Discernment for Me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, Sacred Ordinary blog, I’m back. On May 21, 2015 I posted at my blog Sacred Ordinary and since then I haven’t gone back. I miss it—and I miss the blog walking I used to do. When I started blogging in November 2003 I vowed that it would be part of my daily spiritual writing practice and for several years it was. I poured out thoughts, posted photography, art and spiritual things that struck me. I have written 2,491 posts over this 12 year span. So, what happened?

Social media has really, really changed and it changed me. I got sidetracked with Facebook primarily, but I also use my “computer allowed” spare time for Pinterest and Polyvore and to Google stuff I don’t know about that I want to know about. I haven’t even used Polyvore for several months and I loved creating digital art there.

This summer I had a health crisis and in September I had my second surgery to remove an adenocarcinoma from my bladder. Right now I’m feeling well, almost normal, and the surgeon got good margins. I’m back to work three days a week, but my life has been forever altered. Part of my bladder was removed and that all by itself has physically and emotionally changed me. I’ve survived breast cancer twice, so I’m hoping for the best, but frequent testing is in the cards. And because of my age, I am simply not as mobile as I used to be. Traveling, for example, will be rethought because of some new limitations. I am, however, filled to overflowing with gratitude for each day, far moreso than I have ever been.

I’m really second-guessing how I want to spend the time I have left, I guess. It’s a process of discernment. I am blessed with a great family and lots of friends so I have many opportunities to meet and mingle. I also feel very strongly about giving back through community service. But—and this is a big but—I find myself preferring being home alone reading or doing art, or streaming movies vs. being the human doing I have been until recently.

I’m even very unsure about whether I want to continue my part-time job; I have so loved it until recently but the climate has changed and I have not changed enough, and I'm not sure I want to. Am I really benefiting anybody anymore with this use of my time? I already resigned from two non-profit Boards this past year, even before I got sick, because there was more minutiae and politics going on than I was comfortable with. 

All I know is that today I wanted to post to Sacred Ordinary and to officially announce to anyone who might trip across this post that I have entered yet again another period of discernment. I’m going to start examining what I really love doing, what I dislike doing, and making changes in my life. I am just so blessed to have had the great life I’ve had—and I’m planning on making my life even more meaningful. 

Saying a Final Goodbye to Sister Virginia

For those of you who have known me for a while, you may remember that I'm the baby sister of five sisters, if one can call a 77-year-old a baby. On Sunday night at 7:45 p.m. my dear sister Virginia Annette Streur Estrada, passed away quietly  in Las Vegas after bravely fighting Parkinsons Disease for several years. Her daughter Rose was there with her holding her hand when she unexpectedly took her last breath. My nephew called about 45 minutes later and even though she's been in hospice the last eight months at Tender Loving Care, a phenomenal skilled nursing center, you are never ready for that call. Now there are only two sisters left.

I had gone to Las Vegas for a weekend in July to help celebrate Virginia's 87th birthday and she was conscious then, although very frail. I will hold these last memories of her in my heart, but the really happy memories are bubbling up and I've been free-writing in my journal. It's those I want to remember. Virginia was 11 when I was born and in our little house in Inglewood, CA, she and I shared a bed until we moved to Sunland in 1943. She married young and she and my brother-in-law Salvador had three sons and a daughter and I grew up being more like an older sibling to her kids--and she a kind of surrogate mom to me. I spent a lot of time with them in Lennox and later in Reseda. I lived with them the last year before I married in 1958. 

My sister Donna died in 1998, also of Parkinsons complications, and my eldest sister June died in 2002 of cancer. My sister Betty and I (she is 90) are the two sisters left. Childlike as I am, I pictured my parents and sisters and Virginia's husband Sal waiting at the end of the tunnel you hear about in death experiences.

Yesterday, at a monthly SoulCollage®  group, I made this community suit card in honor of Virginia.

I am the one who is very sad and dualistically relieved that my youngest sister to me died quietly on Sunday night. My nephews and niece are now in the process of finalizing funeral plans in Las Vegas, probably mid-next week. We are all relieved to avoid the Labor Day zoo that Las Vegas will be this weekend. My sis totally made her final plans before she became too ill to do so and that's a reminder that that is the one thing I haven't done in my own will and trust. I am the one who my sis loved unconditionally and though she had personality issues with many other people, it was rare for us to clash. I am the one who was able to do a short oral history with her when we traveled together with our late sister June in the late 1990s--and I look forward to finding that file and gathering photos and memories. I am the one who wanted to surround Virginia with flowers; Sal was the avid gardener, but my sister enjoyed them--and even had iris bulbs in her yard from our mom's originals. She was named, by the way, after Virginia Park, Michigan where my parents lived with my four sisters before they moved to California in the early 1930s. 

Some Random Thoughts on Growing Older

 

 Photo courtesy of Paranoias review of Happy at One Hundred.

For those of you who know me well, I am driven to stay busy. That doesn't necessarily mean doing meaningless things to fill up time (although sometime I do that, too), but I was raised with several old sayings like, "Idle hands are the devil's workshop," and "A rolling stone gathers no moss." My parents were very hard workers and instilled that work ethic in all their children. My former husband I instilled that in our children. Growing up, if there was spare time, that's when we did embroidery, crocheted, read or in my dad's case, built things in the garage. There was no TV until I was in my early teens. 

This morning I dropped by to see my friends Gene and Pat at the library and they were teasing me about how I'm never home--I'm so busy. I teased back and said, "It's summer and I realize how much stuff I have to cram in before I return to work next week." But then I remembered one of the real reasons. Time is running out and I'm trying to outrun death. My window for being really physically active is growing smaller. I see trying to outrun death as a positive, not a negative thing, but I've long been a student of Jung's shadow work. I've got to embrace my dark along with the light.  I love to be out and about, with friends--or I'm quite comfortable being all alone, and sometimes I long for solitude. I will admit that I am driven when it comes to trying to help the world be a better place in small ways, or maybe it's just that I need to be needed. I must give service. But, it's rare to see me as a lounge lizard, I'll admit, unless I'm reading, doing art, journaling, or watching movies on TV. I'm a multi-tasker by nature. I do try to have quiet meditative time in short bursts each day, but I am a busy person by nature.

Dr. Drew Leder, M.D., Ph.D. has a book I love, "Spiritual Passages: Embracing Life's Sacred Journey." I'm currently reading Fr. Richard Rohr's "Falling Upward" and both books are about growing older.  This Leder quote below really speaks to me today. 

Time is both a thief and a generous soul. It can steal from us things of great value, yet lavish precious gifts in return.

For there are gifts of the ripened mind, heart, and spirit. As we grow older, we may finally grow up—attain the maturity that’s always eluded us. We may also grow younger at heart. There’s a wildness and a freedom buried inside us beneath layers of social convention. Why not let it loose? Why not play? 

 Then, too, maybe the fears that have bedeviled  us—of our past mistakes, of death hurtling toward us from the indeterminate future—will finally disperse as we age. We can stand in the present, serene. Maybe the driven pace of our lives, whipping us about like a drunken merry-go-round, will finally slacken. We can rest inside. We can be alone with ourselves in a spirit of joyful solitude, not self-crushing loneliness. 

 

Kelly Kilmer: A Great "Journal This" Class at The Word is Art

What a great way to spend a Sunday--with Kelly Kilmer, mixed media art journaling teacher extraordinaire. 

Many of you who visit here already keep art journals in your own styles, but if you've wanted to and didn't know where to start, I recommend Kelly. She was the first teacher I had in mixed media and it is great to periodically go back to the gas station and get a fill up. She's always got new "stuff" going on. 

I have had the pleasure of taking classes with several different teachers during the past 10 years, but Kelly is literally in my own back yard, and I sometimes forget this. She teaches not only in California, if you check her class schedule at her blog, you may be pleasantly surprised to see that she is coming to a place near you. 

Another delightful surprise today was my introduction to The Word is Art Gallery in Culver City, CA. It is a great space with lots of wonderful art on display, but owner Renee Troy also has many classes she hosts there. She had a nice space in the back of the gallery for the four of us to work today with Kelly. Sometimes intimate is nice. I went with my friend Marion who hadn't worked in art journals before, but she is hooked, I can tell. 

I'm never satisfied with my work, especially when I take classes because templates, other techniques, and new pens and inks are being introduced I'm not familiar with. But, I am a good student because I am willing to go along with the program. Kelly's suggestion for this page was that we all use print in the background and one focal image. Because I am growing old myself, this is what I created today. It is very poignant for me.

So, check out Kelly Kilmer and her classes and The Word is Art Gallery. You deserve it. 

Entering 2013 With SoulCollage® Thoughts For Us All

Yesterday our monthly SoulCollage® group gathered to have a morning brunch and a day of creating cards to help us bring in 2013 with forethought and blessings. This is "Weloming 2013" and it's in the Committee suit. I stopped making resolutions long ago, and I no longer go out on New Years Eve, but I do use the last day of the year to write and create. I wrap things up and till the creative soil for what is ahead. 

I wrote this: I am the one who enters each new year with gratitude and hope, but always with a slight sense of unrest because of the unknown.

Imagine my delight when I went to write in my journal this morning, the first day of 2013, but first thumbed through a book I had tucked away, but not re-read since it was published: Jean Shinoda Bolen's "Crones Don't Whine: Concentrated Wisdom for Juicy Women." At the end, Bolen quotes one of my favorite wisdom teachers, Angeles Arrien, regarding how to successfully live life:

1. Show up

2. Pay attention

3. Speak your truth.

4. Don't be attached to outcome. 

But then Bolen adds regarding change, "I wonder what will happen next?"

I feel like I got just the perfect words to welcome 2013. My card really rang true for me then--and I hope a few of you might find these words inspirational as well. 

 

Lewis Richmond: Aging as a Spiritual Practice

Both of my living sisters, 86 and 88, are fading and because I'm an elder myself, 75 this year, I'm often helping out with my aging friends and family. Two of my sisters have already died. I've been the primary person responsible for three relatives that have passed, but I was younger then. The magnitude of what was happening didn't paralyze me. I go to funerals often and sometimes it takes a lot of mental discipline not to project and wonder how my own life will end. I've been writing about it a lot in my journals lately. Maybe some of this explains my fascination with all things Day of the Dead. 

My sis Betty in Washington has been in and out of crisis for a month and her daughters live in California. Trying to stay on top of things on the phone and computer has become a full-time job for my nieces.

Another good friend was just hospitalized again two days ago. I wrote in my journal that night, "Do I have the courage to grow old?" (Like we have a choice one way or another?) The sentences that followed were that it is time again to seriously re-acquaint myself spiritually with aging and what lies ahead for me. One niece flies to Washington tomorrow to help out while Betty is moved to the assisted living wing of her retirement inn. The other niece and her husband fly up on Sunday. I was blessed to spend quality time with Betty in August and I am very grateful for that.

With a heavy heart yesterday, I Googled spirituality and aging and did come up immediately with four of my favorite writers on the subject: Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi From Age-ing to Sage-ing; Sister Joan Chittister's The Gift of Years; Angeles Arrien's Second Half of Life, Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom; Fr. Richard Rohr’s book, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. I own all these books and/or tapes and know their content well.

But, a new book came up: Lewis Richmond, Aging as a Spiritual Practice, A Contemplative Guide to Growing Older and Wiser. I love synchronicity. I checked the Palos Verdes Library District catalog and the book was in and I am in the midst of reading it. It is very powerful stuff for me to re-orient myself to my own aging process. I don't retain information like I used to so I'm reading it very slowly with yellow stickies all over the place. 

Lewis Richmond is a Buddhist teacher and the national bestselling author of several books and this new one presents a user’s guide to aging well and making every year fulfilling and transformative. I am in the second chapter now and very impressed. Following is what it says on the book jacket:

On the road that anyone fortunate enough to have lived this long must take, the first truth of aging is also the first truth of Buddhist teaching: Everything changes. In Aging as a Spiritual Practice, Buddhist priest and meditation teacher Lewis Richmond helps us understand how the transformation can bring new possibilities, fresh beginnings, a wealth of appreciation and a depth of gratitude that profoundly affects how our lives proceed.

Richmond offers an inner roadmap for aging, acknowledging the fear, anger, and sorrow many people experience when they must confront the indignities of their aging bodies and the unknowns associated with mortality, as well as explaining the four key stages of aging:

• Lightning Strikes (the moment we truly wake up to our aging)
• Coming to Terms (comparing ourselves now to how we once were)
• Adaptation (letting go of who we were and embracing who we are)
• Appreciation (acknowledging that “This is my life, I have no other”)

Regardless of whether you are enjoying growing old, hating it, or in denial, each chapter is filled with relatable anecdotes, includingRichmond’s own experience of illness, aging, and transformation. Guided meditations and contemplative reflections help us to see that while we can’t escape life’s essential problems, we can change our understanding about them and enjoy the process.

Incorporating illuminating facts from scientific researchers, doctors, and psychologists on aging’s various challenges and rewards;Richmondexplores the tandem of maintaining a healthy body and healthy relationships infused with an active spiritual life. Using this information, we can pay attention to our own experience of aging through the lens of our emotions, and adapt accordingly, inspiring opportunities for a joy that transcends age.

Admittedly, lightning struck at least a decade ago, but I am only now coming to terms and adaptation. I will admit that so far I have remained extremely grateful for my life. 

So, prayers for my sis Betty, please, and may we all have peace and purpose as we age. 

SoulCollage® Card: A Shaky Trust

This SoulCollage® card describes where I am on this journey called life right now. I could put it in the Council suit as one of the muses, but I'm putting it in Committee and calling it Trust. My secondary title would be "Feeling the Fear and Doing It Anyway." 

I am the one who has throughout life had issues with trust and abandonment. Even at this august age of 74, with lots of experience under my belt, these issues raise their ugly heads when there is no logical reason to do so. I am the one who finds herself once again in a life transition. I am the one who knows that my professional part-time work is nearing its end for a variety of reasons and that I have to let go with confidence and trust. My work has given me purpose as I love it so and adore the people I work with. Also, I am the one who grew up in poverty and continue to maintain poverty consciousness in spite of being financially stable. I like to earn money, even if it is only a little bit. It falsely affirms me. I am the one who is single  in late life and totally in charge of my present and my future--to the extent any of us can be that. My Higher Power protects me and keeps me safe, but I have a lot of problems remembering that. I'm the one who is feeling the fear of change when it comes, but stepping out, albeit very tentatively, into what tomorrow and next year will bring. I am also the one who has begun to realize I'm not 50 anymore and can no longer accomplish as vigorously all the things I used to. And, I am the one who knows that though life did not turn out as I had planned, it has actually turned out better than I ever expected. Paradox!

A question for this card? Please reveal to me the many options that will still be available to me whether I work professionally, as a volunteer--or simply being a writer, artist and computer nut. Remind me of all the ways I can continue to feel purposeful without employment and continue to have the oomph to show up every day in a meaningful way to myself and others. 

Life's Third Act From Jane Fonda's Point of View

I love the TED talks and when I got notified to check this one out, I was particularly inspired. But, then most TED presenters are amazing. Let me know what you think.