Elul 5783

 First problem after finding blogger is to find a picture. Yours. But this one will have to do. Let's see now if I can get this to you.

Second problem...still rying to figure out how to send this to you.

Sparkle: Manifesting Something New

This post replaces the one that was lost. Amazing to find it. I was in my little self about it for a bit, but no more. This is the first post about Sparkle.

                           

               HELLO HELLO. IS ANYBODY THERE?

I haven't written in this blog for several years. Life has taken a different course. Very different.
This new year, I would like to manifest something I've been brewing for quite awhile. I'm interested in making an altered book, an informal book, maybe a prototype, and the subject is SPARKLE, how to know when you've got it, how you lose it and how to get it back.

This blog will be more interactive. I'm interested in how this works for you. Maybe you wonder what SPARKLE is. I think it covers what you are feeling when you're feeling your best, when you surprise yourself about how excited you are about what you're doing, life, and how that differs from the way you feel the rest of the time. Maybe you call it something else.

If you are still out there at your old email address and you would like to join me on this journey, please respond. OR if you rather, contact me at babschwartz68@gmail.com.

What I Mean When I Talk About Sparkle

There are moments in life that vibrate with an energetic aliveness I don't ordinarily have, a feeling of delight, joy, of being in sync with myself in a way that goes beyond everydayness. In that moment I feel a shivery joyful excitement I want to last forever. Professor Sean Kelly writes about "a time when you really feel alive, when your past, your present and your future make sense together as the unity they have always promised to be." When I talk about Sparkle, this is what I'm talking about.

You may have another name for it. Perhaps you are teaching and for a time you and your students are all engaged in the same special moment with each other and you sense everyone feels that.  Or perhaps you are a musician and there is a glorious moment when the music plays you or you're a writer and...well, how does it go for you? It can come up in so many ways and so many guises. Today would you be willing to share with me how it comes to you, how you experience it, what you call it?

I hope you'll join me on this journey of exploration.

If you can't post here or rather not, please email your thoughts to me at babschwartz68@gmail.com.

Barbara

It Has Been a Long Time

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Life has been full of grief and gratitude, joy and the joy of challenges and some really hard work.We are getting ready to sell our home of 46 years and I'm looking forward to moving into a small cottage like place near the university. All this won't happen before this summer, so there's a long drum roll of activity until them and all sorts of opportunities to be courageous.

I have been loving Mary Oliver's new small book of poetic gems, "Blue Horses."
This poem stopped me.

If I Wanted a Boat

I would want a boat, if I wanted a
boat, that bounded hard on the waves,
that didn't know starboard from port
and wouldn't learn, that welcomed
dolphins and headed straight for the
whales, that, when rocks were close,
would slide in for a touch or two,
that wouldn't keep land in sight and
went fast, that leaped into the spray.
'What kind of life is it always to plan
and do, to promise and finish, to wish
for the near and the safe? Yes, by the
heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want
a boat I couldn't steer.

Baruch ata adonai...I say I love this poem, but what sings to me? Even for my new life I am planning and doing for the near and safe. Do I want a boat I couldn't steer, or do I merely want to want? And if what I want is what I say I want, then please help me go for it with joy and abandon knowing a safe  harbor is a good thing too. Amen

This is What is for Now

"Spiritual practice is about transformation, but it's also, and more importantly, about working with what is." Angel Kyodo Williams

In Memory of Suzanne

I won Suzanne at an art fair, won a lesson on bookmaking, won a friend who taught and supported me me and challenged me to believe in myself as much as she believed in me. She called herself The Paper Queen, she could do anything with paper, and she called me Bookie. Once following surgery, she brought me a a carton of papers that over the next few years and up to today is the basis of books, paintings, bookmarks and cards. Her patience with folding origami designs and little bitty books is legendary. The best way I can remember her is to to believe I have as much creative juice as she was sure I have. Suzanne was a loner, a person most comfortable in her studio which was actually her entire living space. I need a lot of alone time, but I'm most comfortable in the community of friends who know me. We clicked from the beginning. I'd reached out and she let me in. I am grateful.

This morning I made shrine for her: books she taught me to make, a thank you card made with one of her paste papers, a small book she made of green tea bag wrappers for my birthday, and I lit a candle.

In this time of ebb and flow, of the transition between life and death, of moving into my summer life in the mountains, of coming up to a very significant birthday, I've decided to pull back even more on blogging. Right now, I don't feel I have much to say, and I need to go back to more personal writing exercises and dig into myself. I want to be more personal than I feel I can be going to a wider audience through Facebook and online sites, and I want to blog only when I feel motivated. If you don't get me in your email box and you want to follow me, sign up to receive me through email. If you would like to stop seeing me in your email box, let me know. I thought you could unsubscribe by a simple click at the bottom, maybe you can, but I'm not seeing that. Let me know and I can do it from my end.

Thank you for reading me and thank you for your comments which always mean a great deal to me.

Baruch ata adonai...help me to be gentle and sweet with myself. Help me to let go with grace and gratitude. Amen

Welcoming Myself to This New Day

"Only a few things in life really matter, and those few things that do matter, matter immeasurably." Kent Kilbourne

In the past two weeks I've had three mini vacations away from home and at restaurants and theaters, at shops and hotels or private homes, I've been struck by the importance of how feeling welcome adds to my enjoyment of a show or a meal or conversation or even my perception of the hotel room before I get to it. This morning I'm thinking about the importance of welcoming myself to this day and how that can make the difference between me feeling energized and enthusiastic or slogging onward, because this morning I didn't welcome myself as an honored guest and then move on. First thing today I peeked into the Life Book 2014 lesson, felt overwhelmed, and right now I am trying hard to resist a downward spiral of not knowing what to do with myself of not wanting to take out art materials and start this new project.

So I start over. I do what I usually do each morning. I have a glass of hot lemon water and sit down to the computer for a five minute writing to learn what's on my mind in the most gentle way.  This  routine is important to me. I wake up, still more a part of my night than my day. This daily routine welcomes me gently, gives me time to enter quietly, time to smile at myself, time to say "hello dearie, I'm glad to see you again, how are you feeling, I'm glad you're here. Now please take a deep breath and just sit here for a few minutes." It makes such a difference to me. In those few minutes of restarting my day, of honoring myself with a decent welcome, of doing something immeasurably important to me, I've decided to delay the art project until later today or tomorrow and do something else I've been wanting to do: create very small works. And my world won't end if I don't do this week's class another day. Or not at all.

Last Monday after my water and writing and sitting and listening routine, I decided not to go to a yoga class but rather do it later in the week. I felt so liberated. Last Monday and Tuesday I was in a flow of activity and productivity I know I wouldn't have been if I hadn't taken a few minutes to allow my heart and body figure out what I needed to do rather than my head. I trust this part of me to know the way when my head is busy busting barriers and making too much noise. I've been actively trying not to try. You can click onto this link and read more about this here.  This link brings you to the brilliant brainpickings.com. Always interesting and thought provoking. It will seriously sidetrack you if you start your day here.

Baruch ata adonai....I am so grateful to be in this stage of my life when I have the time and presence to listen to myself, to be gentle with myself, to honor and welcome myself to this new day. Amen

The Good Girl/Good Woman Continuum

There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good, she was very very good,
and when she was bad, she was horrid. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I love Monday morning. It's the day I get do write my blog for my heart and start a new Life Book 2014 project for my creative part which I can hardly wait to start. Monday is the day I set aside for myself. Just minutes ago I did a brief meditation and my good girl was in a big snit about needing to go to yoga and she was trying to shame the rest of me. You should go, she said, you've got to go, she added, how can you do the rest of what you want to do if you fail to take care of your body? She has no middle ground. She can make life so unpleasant for me. I'm not sure it's a place of good intentions she's speaking from. She reminds me of a teeny tiny mother, a little girl who doesn't know how to mother at all, but who has all the words and the idea that she knows perfectly well what's right and wrong and what I should should should do. She can be one bitchy piece of certitude.

While I was doing the meditation, my little lady above, the one with the little curl right in the middle of her forehead, tapped me on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. Though she is very strong in her sense of joy and delight in life, she's a bit afraid of the good girl. I never doubt her intentions for me are right on. Not like that good girl who is so prissy. She told me I can really go to yoga on  Wednesday, which I always do, and on Thursday which I never do. And, she said, she's sure I would love one of the Thursday morning classes. So I sit here in my bathrobe smiling. I may stay in my bathrobe for a good long time this morning, right up until the time I get into my paint clothes. I may not even wash my face or brush my teeth. I am feeling so good. My good girl is in retreat.

I've been drawing little ladies for a long time. I've always thought they represent the best part of me. They are joyful, fun and undemanding. They just have a good time. After watching the delight of my four year old granddaughter as she celebrated her birthday this weekend, I think my little ladies are four at heart.

So here I am. Not going to yoga. Getting to do art. And write. And read the newspaper. And feel very very good about myself. I'm not punishing myself by making myself do something I don't want to do this morning and I've found a way to take care of my body on Thursday. That little lady is a very good woman!

I've been thinking and talking a lot the past week about the good girl/good woman continuum. The good girl is drilled into us from the earliest times. With nursery rhymes even. I remember there was a little girl who had a little curl being said to me when I was very young and knowing with all of my little girl heart they only said it when I was being a bad girl in their eyes. The little girl doesn't have it all wrong, though her delivery stinks. Every good woman knows the good girl still lives in side her, only now, she lets her know she can't be in charge unless she's inclined to be a fun loving joyful even devilish little lady.

Baruch ata adonai.... this morning, I am a good woman, a woman who knows what's really important for me this day, a woman who helps me make a way to do what I need to do to feel good and strong and able to lift my heart and to feel and hear the goodness of this day becoming known to me.  Amen