what color do you need?

found this at kate i's place...interesting because i keep thinking i need to create a new quilt for my living room and purple continues to come up in the color scheme. hmmmmm...

You Need Some Purple in Your Life

Purple will make you feel ambitious, independent, and creative. And with a little purple, you will project an aura of individuality. If you want more extravagance, you've got to get a little purple in your life! For extra punch: Combine purple with green or orange The downside of purple: It can evoke sad feelings The consequences of more purple in your life: You will feel an increase in your artistic abilities You will find balance in the most chaotic parts of your life You will feel calm and will be hard to disturb

What Color Do You Need?

life cycles

I am home and something is stirring in me. I have been emptied this past week. I have poured myself out in an offering to others and I have allowed them to begin to fill me back up. It is a cycle of renewal. It is the beauty of birth-life-death and rebirth.

I never cease to be amazed at the touch of those I have chosen to surround myself with as well as the impact of strangers and others who have entered my life for only brief moments. This morning I read the post of a dear friend as she wove her experiences of grief, loss and life. I am reminded of my own losses. Some as profound as the loss of my beloved father when I was barely nineteen and the fast forward to losing my dear sweet, Curry. Other people and family members stir in my mind, but I am most profoundly struck this morning by the loss of people I knew for only a brief moment in time like the student who battled hard against me and then chose to walk away suddenly and silently. I still think of the man on the bus and another stranger in a small Oklahoma town who I knew for an hour and then we shared a prayer. Each touched me deeply by their presence and I can feel the loss of their absence along with the significant impact they made on my life.

Loss is indeed profound in our lives especially when we allow ourselves to acknowledge it and feel it. Feeling the loss leads to an emptying which then allows us to be filled with joy and other experiences of life. If we refuse to empty ourselves, the old stuff fills us to the brim and we find ourselves like an overstuffed turkey unable to move or a box filled to the brim just waiting to explode.

This past week, I unconsciously and deliberately chose to be emptied. And so I enter this day, this week, waiting to be filled. Not expecting anything. Just as I did not expect the beautiful filling I received when I read Christine’s post. There is something in accepting what we are offered each day. Not expecting grand results, but then looking back and seeing that we have been touched and filled (perhaps only a teaspoon full) simply because we allowed ourselves to really feel the emotion of a moment—perhaps our own or maybe that of another person.

Will you allow yourself to be impacted today? How will you empty yourself? What are the moments when you feel the inpouring of life? Consider grief. Consider joy. They each make room for the other ☺.

Blog Action Day

Poverty: the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount.

Where do you experience poverty in your life? Do you listen closely to those around you? Do you feel that others listen to you? Do you go through life on autopilot, hurrying from one place to the next? Do you wonder what a blog action day about poverty has to do with you?

Consider this: When we are not fully present to the stories that surround us, we close off the possibility that there is something new to be heard or discovered. We close our minds and our hearts to the possibility that we have something in common with the child in Africa, the mother in Harlem, the Senator in Congress, the homeless man on the corner, our next door neighbor and even the person(s) who sleeps in our own warm house.

On this day of poverty awareness, I would like to pose that we experience a paucity of listening. How might our world be different if we fought the poverty against our own cold hearts of stone? What if we started listening more deeply today? How would the world change? How would you? If only for today, I hope you will choose to listen a little more closely to the world around you.

Peace.

freeze frame

A moment in time. Sunday with my son. Beautiful. Slow. Steady. His glorious smile lighting the day. But first, a sharing of his heart. His fears. His struggles. Authentic and true. There is a humility about him. A realness. A maturity.

We talk over eggs and sausage. I smile. He is my son. We are so much alike and we are so different. We spend the day driving together. He, practicing to get his license. Me, learning to let go. He, becoming more relaxed and consequently me too. (I wonder if the relaxation is with the car or with each other? ☺) The day goes on. A stop by Sunset Hill. “Mom, will you take my picture?” We pick up his sister and drop her off at soccer and then IT happens. The icing on the cake of an already perfect day.

He starts to sing along with the stereo. The Beatles. “Let it be.” He sings aloud. Playfully. Not really in tune. We are so much alike ☺. He is performing. No, he is singing to me—to us. I am holding my closed hand as microphone to his mouth. We laugh. I sing a little myself. Time stops. I want to freeze frame this moment. This day. Let it be. It has been a long time coming. It has been well worth the wait if only for this moment.

art making & prayer

Fall into the Mystery placed before you--
the one you will become will catch you.

--saying found in Lectio Divina

I awoke today with this collage beckoning to be created...or was it beckoning to create me? Either way, this was my morning prayer. It shall not soon leave me.