Inspiration

Life artist Ali Edwards issued a challenge last year to think of a word and concentrate on it for a year: meditate, take photos or draw pictures representing its meaning, and post the word in a prominent place. I couldn't get focused enough to do this, but I thought about it occasionally.

January 2008 came and I decided My Word should be FOCUS. Get that—"should be." I have a friend who says, "Don't should on yourself."

But, two months have gone by and I haven't really done anything, again, but think about "focus."

A couple mornings ago the light bulb came on: My Word is not "focus" right now, but INSPIRATION. Even though I now knew this to be right for me, at this time, while listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer on PBS the light bulb began pulsing and I realized the truth when he said, "there are no coincidences." When you are in harmony with Spirit and on your own right path, you begin paying attention and become aware that a message is being delivered. (apologies to Dr. Dyer; he's more eloquent.)

How many times in a day lately have I read about "inspiration"? How many times have I been asked to think about what inspires me? How many times have I thought to myself, "This book-quote-story-picture really has inspired me"?

Okay, so Spirit-God has my attention. Dr. Dyer also said that as we develop this awareness, we also must be open, ready and willing because the next step involves doing. Our purpose in life is to serve and give back.

Now I am asking myself:

How? What am I supposed to do? How can I help? Serve? Give back? Am I—perhaps—doing a little bit already?

When I first became serious about photography and was preparing for an exhibit, I was asked to write a statement about myself and photography, something about why I do it and what inspires me. It came to me (another light bulb) I had basically two reasons:

1. I needed some way to preserve, to document, to hold onto a specific: a moment in time, a piece of Nature, a child's expression. These are fleeting happenings, never to be exactly duplicated or repeated. Gifts from God to me.
2. No. 2, I was also struck with the thought that while these were gifts to me, they were not necessarily just for me. I needed to share them because maybe—just maybe—I was the only one who could share this particular thing in a particular way. This seemed to be God's message to me: preserve this memory and share it.

Before I started seriously photographing, I was a reporter and a graphic designer. While I never had such a clear revelation, the theme was there: tell the story.

I found when I was surrounded by Nature, living on the prairie as I was, away from the distractions of city life, traffic, manmade noise, daily reminders of violence and negativity, God's voice was clear and pure, no longer muffled.

I began at first taking pictures of sunsets and fall leaves floating in the creek, for me, because I was starved for this beauty. I picked the wildflowers in the spring and dried grass and seedpods in the fall to bring inside, to save and to savor them.

After a while I no longer had to pick them. I had my photos, and I had begun to recognize the rhythm of Nature, the ebb and flow of the seasons. New versions of the same plant life, different colors in a sunset, patterns of the clouds before a storm. All out my front door.

As I wrote last month, I began writing my IDEAS TO IMAGES blog and have become more involved with scrapbooking for the same reasons: to preserve and to share.

Back to My Word. Dr. Dyer's latest book—are you ready?—is "Inspiration." I don't have it yet, but over the past month I've come across several references (coincidences?) and have checked it out on Amazon.com. I'm ready to order it.




I've read about 10 of his books and have some tape sets. I looked back in my journal a couple years ago to a a list of people I found "most inspirational" (not "influential") in my life. Dr. Dyer is high on that list.

I opened "Simple Abundance" for my daily reading today and what did I find? Ms Van Breathnach says her personal ritual in preparation for work is "priming the pump for inspiration....to access your inner reservoir—that place deep within you inhabited by imagination."

I particularly love one phrase she uses as she describes the setting which includes a "pile of dog-eared books....my circle of saints." The author is referring to people, specifically a group of women writers.

Even though I've read references to "spirit guides" and other descriptions of the muse, this is one to which I'll cling.

I'd include in my "circle" some special people: authors (I've listed some already), artists (Klee, CD Muckowsky, Ali Edwards, Stacy Edwards) relatives (an aunt, my mom, grand-daughter Tabitha), friends; things: a cardinal, my grand-daughter's sweet face, puppies and kittens, a sunset; and music: Tchaikovsky's "Piano Concerto No. 1" and Celtic ballads. There's much more, but you get the picture.




What constitutes your circle of saints? Give it some thought. Write me.

Everyday Grateful

written February 20, 2008

The north wind is bitter and another winter storm is expected. All I can do is look out the window, hoping for a glimpse of deer in the alfalfa field and dream of spring and watch the dogs teasing each other with their toys.

Since I can't go outside and dig in the earth, I dig into other media: books, the internet, my mind. Lately I've participated in an online Reading Group. (http://bigpicturescrapbooking.com/) The January selection was A Thousand Splendid Suns, a thought provoking and disturbing study of women in Afghanistan. This month, it is Journal Revolution by Linda Woods and Karen Dinino.

I've journaled since the days I wrote my secrets and dreams in a teenage diary. I nearly died when I was 16 and my little brother picked the lock and read it. Over the years I've accumulated and destroyed many trees' worth of pages, I'm sure.

I've found inspiration in some wonderful books: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, A Daybook of Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach, and Plain and Simple by Sue Bender, followed by the Plain and Simple Journal and Everyday Sacred. I've used everything from yellow legal pads to pretty and artsy journal books to "marbletop" composition books. (The latter have probably been my favorites, by the way.)

Sometimes I'm directed to document the simple, everyday happenings of my life. Other times, encouraged to dig into my memories, often a painful task. Sarah Ban Breathnach likens this to a safari—Swahili for journey, to leave the comfort and safety of civilization to venture into the wilderness, which, she says, "brings with it the struggle to survive and a heightened awareness of how wonderful it is just to see the sun set and rise again in the morning. Each day on a safari is lived to the fullest because it is all that is guaranteed."

Is this why I love the prairie so much? Sunset and sunrise here are spectacular. Once a city dweller said to me, "You've seen one sunset, you've seen them all." Oh, how wrong he was! Each is a new creation. And, within the span of only a few minutes, the canvas can change drastically. One November evening I watched as the sky turned golden, and with each passing second the color deepened into fire-orange into coral into deep magenta into majestic purple, and in its final stage before the light was gone, an inky dark blue.

One morning Charlie recorded a rainbow sunrise—colors bouncing off the jet trails and clouds reflected all of God's glorious palette.

Back to Sarah's prompting to live each day to the fullest....I've noticed a trend amongst scrapbookers (or, as Ali Edwards calls us, "life artists") to savor each day, each moment. Yes, it is important and fun to record those milestone occasions (birthday, holidays) and special achievements (graduation, retirement), but isn't it also interesting to look into the everyday happenings of a person's life, to see some of the details and activities that made up a "day in the life of...."?

Many cultures make no distinctions between work and play, religion and day-to-day life. (But this is fodder for an entirely different post; more on this theme another time.)

There is a contentment and satisfaction that comes with sitting back at the end of a day with my gratitude journal (or my mind) and looking over that day—if I've been mindful and observant and not taken it for granted. Did I take some time to look out the window? Did I pull my hands out of the dishwater when Charlie called me to "come and see" something—a tiny skink, a new leaf or bud on a struggling plant, a huge squash blossom, a rising harvest moon, a whole parade of turkeys strutting their way right through our yard.

Maybe what seems mundane to us now will be interesting to our grandchildren or future generations. I was thrilled to discover a ledger my grandpa kept with notations of expenditures for grain and taxes, and a similar account kept by my great-grandmother in the mid-1800s—purchases made for calico, string, medicinal powders and tinctures long forgotten, for "reciepts" for toothpowder and other home remedies. I treasure the few stories recorded by my grandparents, memories that would be forgotten if not preserved.

Will my great-granddaughter care that I ate Post's Great Grains cereal for breakfast or spent the evening struggling while pulling a needle through my quilt until a friend recommended a small square of rubber cut from an old latex glove?

A friend this week admonished me to write shorter posts for my blog. I had every intention of doing so this time, but as I told him, I have trouble being short-winded. One thought leads to another to another....

What little thing are you grateful for, or do you really appreciate today? Did you "save" it some way—journal, photo, scrapbook, e-mail, letter? Did you at least give thanks for it?