REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

Blue Madonna SoulCollage® - Day 8 - Twelve Days of Mary

Blue Madonna SoulCollage® made in Polyvore by Redondowriter

One of my favorite madonnas was painted by Carlo Dolci, Italian, 1616-1687. The focal image here is his madonna and I'm making a variation for one of my favorite art processes, SoulCollage®. You can access information at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida about the original art. I created this SoulCollage® card in Polyvore, however, not cut and pasted by hand like I usually create cards. 

In the SoulCollage® process, you write "I am the one who" statements to personalize the experience. I am the one who has hidden inside your unconscious long before you became Catholic. You came into life loving the color blue and when you became upset as a child, you'd shut your eyes and think blue to calm yourself. In your 30s I came to you tangibly the first time in a reproduction you found in an art book. My image has brought you comfort ever since. 

We are encouraged to ask the card a question and mine would be, "Now, thanks to the wealth of information on the Internet about you that I never knew, how can I make you part of myself in a more meaningful way?"

I am one of several women joining Rebecca in celebrating her 12 days of Mary love at her blog. Everyone is invited. While this is not about religion, it is about sharing, opening hearts, rejoicing in ultimate mother love. It is about light, compassion, inspiration, and the sweet chance to begin each day together in beauty and peace. Thanks, Stephanie at Mango Studio for the words in this paragraph.  

Our Lady of Sorrows SoulCollage®: Day 2 of Twelve Days of Mary

Today I introduce you to a SoulCollage® card I call Our Lady of Sorrows as part of Rebecca Brooks Twelve Days of Mary Love 2015.  Part of the process of SoulCollage® is to write what they call "I am the one who" statements to personalize each card we create. I am the one who is crying for you over the recent losses of your friend Orma and nephew Bud. You've internalized these deaths resulting in high anxiety and you wish you could just cry yourself. Intellectually you know that death is part of the circle of life, but you remain in denial. Closure will come when their memorials are held later this month.

You can also ask a question of the card inSoulCollage® . So, I tell Our Lady, "I am carrying these losses heavily although gathering and scanning  photos for the memorials has helped me remember so many happy memories. I don't take most deaths of family and friends this hard. What else can I do to deal with the grief and celebrate their lives?" Continue the scanning, your journal writing, minimize the phone calls back and forth regarding death and burial details, and how about making an art journal page for each of your loved ones? The tears will eventually come. 

SoulCollage® - Birth of Eve and the Book Queen

Earlier in the month I created two SoulCollage® cards at one of the groups I facilitate. 

This card is in the Council suit and I titled it, "The Birth of Eve," but gave it a subtitle of "Cosmic Transformation." 

In this SoulCollage® process, you write I Am The One Who statements and this is what I wrote. "I am the one who loves the Judeo-Christian creation story, but I view it as sacred myth vs. historical fact. I am the one who envisions Eve created out of chaos as the divine feminine, not from Adam's rib, but as an entity onto herself. I am deeply drawn to Carl Jung's definition of the anima and animus and to other world religions and beliefs that incorporate male and female. Making this card I began to smile as I envisioned the Garden of Eden so differently than how I saw it as a child. 

This card is called The Book Queen and is in the Committee suit. I actually use a few art and digital art processes and the woman is cut from a Polyvore set. I am the one who reads obsessively and have since learning to read. I am the one who has been enchanted with libraries from age 5 on. If I had listened to my career counselor when I was a high schooler, I would have gone to library school, but I am the one who got married, raised a family, returned to university late and became a writer/journalist instead. But, books are key to who I am. I keep track of what I read on Goodreads. If I am anxious I often seek quiet in a local library and always visit libraries when I travel. I have volunteered at the Palos Verdes Library District for the past 10 years, and my own work office at school has been in their library the past 11 years. I am the one who was certified as an archivist late in life, so maybe I can claim the title of librarian on some level. 

Feeling the Energy of Three SoulCollage® Cards

Yesterday at a monthly SoulCollage® gathering, I made three cards to share with others. We meet from 11 a.m. to about 4 p.m. and we have a loose format that we follow, including check-in, image searches from shared magazines, trading of images, and lots of chit chat. This gathering has become one of the high points of my month as we women have known each other since our children were small. 

This card is in the Council suit and I call her Earth Mother; I will put her on my altar tonight as a reminder of Earth Day tomorrow. I am the one who has always been deeply drawn to Mother Nature or Mother Earth since I was a young child. Judaeo/Christianity’s story of how the earth was created in seven days by one God is a powerful myth for me. But I like to think that creation of all the universe, however it happened, has male and female aspects. I am the one who believes Gaia, as Mother Nature, personifies the entire ecosystem of Planet Earth. The way of Mother Gaia is the passive, feminine, Yin way of healing.

This card is also in the Council suit and I call it Ecstatic Dance. I am the one who used to love to go to movement expression gatherings and dance with Gabriel Roth on her videos. I am now more limited in movement, but I believe ecstatic dance is a powerful way to connect with God.

This is another Council card I call The Crone. I have several Crone cards in my deck because I am one and they inspire me to be more positive about the aging process. I am the one who is grateful for the graciousness with which I have aged. I bitch and whine sometimes about pain and limitations, but I know I'm blessed to have made it to cronehood, though I sometimes miss the mark when it comes to wisdom, patience and acceptance. I'm a crone in progress. 

If you would like to see more of my SoulCollage® cards on Pinterest, go to Redondowriter's SoulCollage® site. 

 

 

SoulCollage Card®: Duality of Icarus and the Phoenix

In November 2003, I started this Sacred Ordinary blog and for many years it was part of what I called my spiritual writing practice and I posted daily for a long time. I met so many wonderful friends, many cyber, and several I have actually met and continue to be part of my life. Blogging revolutionized my life--but then along came all forms of social media that caught my attention and a lot of us early bloggers began to slack off. It's all about reading in just a few characters now and I'll admit that I love Facebook. 

But, Typepad just announced a new beta set of designs and since I'll be on spring break beginning next week, I think I'm going to redesign and try to do more in-depth posting again. The blog was technically never for just the public--it was a way of keeping track of my life. So, perhaps you'll see me here more often in the weeks coming up. 

Today's post is one of two SoulCollage® cards that I made yesterday while with a group of friends. I've felt so stagnant for so long and somehow I seemed to break through. I'm also feeling physically better than I have in weeks and that helps.

This card is in my Council suit and I call it "The Rise and Fall of Icarus." This is what I wrote about it: 

I am the one who loves Greek and Roman mythology and the eternal human drama and truths portrayed in the stories. Icarus’s story has followed me through life. Though I was never a risk-taker who defied my father’s warnings not to fly too near the sun or the sea when wearing wings of wax like Daedelus warned Icarus, I used this card’s wisdom to ponder instead the Phoenix bird rising from the ashes, another Greek myth but one that early Christian scholars adopted to describe renewal or resurrection. I’ve always related the two stories somehow—and because my own long life has been a series of peaks and valleys, flying high, then crashing, and then rising again and again, I am the one who is sometimes Icarus, but often like the indefatigable Phoenix.

Question: I really want to explore why these myths have impacted me so much. Where should I start?

The card instantly replied that I should reacquaint myself with both myths and see how they apply in my life today. 

Twelve Days of Mary Love (Day 11) - SoulCollage® Black Madonna

This is a SoulCollage® card in the Council suit I call "The Black Madonna." I have been using this method created by Seena Frost since 2003 and was certified to teach the method in 2005. I facilitate only one group per month, but the collagers are girlfriends I've known since our kids were little in the mid-1960s. We raised them together and CFM (Christian Family Movement) played a huge role in that. Making SoulCollage® cards together each month and then sharing them has become a very special part of each of our lives in our older years. 

The spiritual/archetypal suit in SoulCollage® is where I keep most of the madonnas that I have created using this process. I made this card several years ago and she reminded me of Joseph and his coat of many colors.

To see other participants work in the Loving Lupita: Twelve Day of Mary Love, go to Rebecca Brooks Recuerda mi Corazon. There is only one official day left of our twelve days. 

 

Loving Lupita: Twelve Days of Mary Love (Day 5) and Haiku My Heart

Rebecca of Recuerda mi Corazon is currently hosting Loving Lupita: Twelve Days of Mary, but on her blog every Friday she always hosts Haiku My Heart. She is combining the two on this Friday. I hope you have time to visit and perhaps participate yourselves. 

In 17 syllables we write what we feel in our hearts and today this SoulCollage® card, another art process that I use, presented itself to me. I created it in 2011.

Always inspiring

Eternally maternal

Divine feminine.

I purchased a vintage sepia photograph of the focal image at a garage sale several years ago and I use it in many forms in my art.

 

 

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. 

SoulCollage® Cards: Explorer and Ellen DeGeneris

On Monday I got together with friends for our monthly SoulCollage® group and made two cards. I'm far behind scanning my cards for Pinterest and have neglected Sacred Ordinary blog so much. If one thing is certain in life, it's change.  Facebook has definitely affected the blog. 

This card is called The Explorer and is in the Council suit. I am the one who recently took yet another silly quiz on Facebook called "Which Jungian archetype are you?" and to my great surprise I was the Explorer. I equate explorers with travel and adventuresomeness and though I travel, I'm not driven to it and I would not call myself a physical explorer. However, I'm definitely an interior explorer. I love to explore people, places, animals, history and thought. Books and the Internet are my playgrounds. I am the one who looks every day for the sacred in the ordinary of my average days. I am the one who for years traveled alone in the U.S. after my divorce and I would research whatever town I was in and then explore its sites and history. I am the one who realizes I am an explorer after all. 

This card is in the Community suit of SoulCollage® and now Ellen DeGeneris has become part of my community/family in a more aware way than ever before. I like this description of the community suit, a favorite suit in my deck. "The Community Suit, or the communal dimension, is for the people and pets who have loved you, taught you, and challenged you.  These people can be family, ancestors, friends, teachers, healers.  You may know them personally, or you may only know them through their art, writing, or special accomplishments.  They may be alive or dead.  Relationships are honored in this suit, and your support system is represented here."

I am the one who has loved Ellen DeGeneris's style of humor and timing ever since I first saw her on television. I have been attracted to her as my next door neighbor girlfriend who is funny as hell but also has the wisdom of a sage. When she had the courage to come out publicly as gay, my admiration increased. I am the one who admires her courage and wishes I had it. I rarely watch her show because of the time frame and my ignorance about programming my TV, but when I do, I am so darned happy. She is a mentor to me of finding light and love even in the midst of what seems like disaster. I am the one who was utterly delighted with her large group selfie at the Academy Awards. I wish she were the permanent host. 

 

Polyvore Continues to Captivate Me

As those of you who know me well, I have found such a fantastic stress-buster but also a way to be creative in a new way: Polyvore. Created originally as a fashion sharing/selling site, its easy-to-use layered collage software called the "clipping tool" has enriched my life so much. For me it's like a free Lumosity; I have to constantly use this aging brain, but it also has become a psychological/spiritual tool as well. It takes me about 15-30 minutes to create a set and I pin each set to my Pinterest account and often share my creations on Facebook. I also print each set out twice. One copy goes in my Polyvore scrapbook and the second copy is cut apart and the pieces are often used in my art journals or SoulCollage® cards. You can see all my sets to date at Redondowriter's Polyvore. 

Part of the Polyvore experience can be entering the variety of "contests" that are always available in the groups that you join. My groups are all in the art and expression category. The moderator of a group calls creation guidelines for contest sets. I have only entered 3 contests and won none, but I just love entering nonetheless. I'm not a trained artist, but I am a well-trained writer. The contests give me the same rush as writing to a topic or subject. 

The three black and white Polyvores I'm sharing here were created for the Creative Coalition's black and white clip art contest. They were far more challenging than creating in color. The guidelines said, "Create an ART set using only black and white (grey's ok) clipart/illustrations. A *hint* of _one_ other color is ok. B&W text ok too." I don't easily think out of the box with my art but I find myself beginning to. The trick for me is to find copyright free images from the Internet to put into my Items folder.