"What will you do, God...?"

 From the great poet Ranier Maria Rilke...“What will you do, God, when I die?I am your pitcher (when I shatter?)I am your drink (when I go bitter?)I, your garment; I, your craft.Without me what reason have you?..."

It is true, for each of us.  We are a little piece of God.  A particular expression of the Infinite and if we pull back on that expression, when we judge that expression, we judge Divine, we doubt.  We think we know best, but the part of us that is doing that thinking is the protective system called the ego or strategic mind.  This part of us is on the defense.  But if,  instead of listening to it, we turn the other direction, we do and be what we love, we wholeheartedly move toward what we love, then we give God full reign.  AND we “feel” like God…big "G" not small.  Feeling like a small "g" god, is grandiosity and hubris.  It may feel good in the moment but it is what Jungians might call being caught in an "inflation".BUT if instead we  know, we actually experience ourselves as a particular expression of the divine, then we want to kneel and kiss the ground.  We do not feel certain or powerful.  We feel awe.  We feel wonder.   We feel humility.  We feel like,“really, really? I get to be and do this?  Oh goodness," or "'Beam me up Scottie'.   When what you love, loves you back!”What if that is the secret?  The really big well kept secret? What if that is God?   What you love?  Don’t settle for god, it’s like trying to live on only cake, or only adrenalin.  It ends up leaving you empty, literally and figuratively.  The ultimate high that drops you to the ultimate low.  BUT there is another path, literally that puts allows you to move to another level.Einstein said, “you can’t solve the problem at the level of thinking that created it”  so instead of HIGH and then LOW and then HIGH…etc. how about something that is not in between, or in the middle of those two, but rather of an entirely different order?   That order is akin to the wonder and joy we felt as children, or on Christmas morning, or when watching a doodle bug curl into itself, or the first time we realize we are riding our bike without training wheels.  That feeling the Infinite's way of giving us a green light to keep going in that direction.  The direction of what we love.  What if it is really that simply?  And those doubting and critical thoughts?  Well, they never enlarge us.  They never call us to become someone we can truly admire.  Instead they call us to play it safe.  To stay separate and to protect and cling to what we have.  They call us to distrust not only others but ourselves and ultimately our destinies.If like Rilke, above I truly trust the little piece of stardust that is me...well, then paradoxically I quit judging myself and focusing on myself and whether or not I am good enough. What I do instead, is simply go out and express my little piece of heaven.  Just like the old song said..."this little light of mine...I'm gonna let it shine..."[audio m4a="http://www.nancywonders.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/03-This-Little-Light-of-Mine.m4a"][/audio]   

"Suffering is pain that hasn't found it's meaning yet..."

This quote from  neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's book My Stroke of Insight.  Her 2008 TED talk, My Stroke of Insight   by the same name, and currently holds the number 2 spot for most popular TED talks.   Jill's left-side brain stroke sent her on a journey that included an 8 year recovery.  Along the way, she decided that even though having her left brain largely unavailable to her put her in a  very peaceful, harmonious place, it also restricted her ability to communicate and contribute to our world.  She challenged herself to bring her damaged left hemisphere back on line WITHOUT reengage its negative emotional baggage.  She refers to this part of her brain as her story teller.She did the miraculous thing of figuring out how to stop her story teller (left brain identity centers) from attaching to pain.  She discovered that our emotions only last about 90 seconds in our blood stream.  If she was feeling a negative feeling longer than that it meant her story teller was somehow keeping it alive or that she was somehow attaching to it emotionally.  Toward the end of the audiobook, she says "suffering is pain that hasn't found it's meaning yet".  I flashed back on Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning and how his drive to understand why in conditions of extreme pain and deprivation (Nazi Concentration Camps), some people psychologically connected to the best and most resilient in themselves and others did not.  Meaning and purpose played a significant role he concluded.  It allowed people to endure pain while somehow also seemingly transcending it.When the pain we are experiencing has a context, when we create a larger meaning and purpose for our trials and struggles, they can enlarge us.  We may well  experience pain, yet we do not have to experience suffering.  One of my teachers Richard Heckler Strozzi spoke of your "for the sake of".    Using this concept, when there is a challenge in our lives, especially one that is painful to us, what this challenge "for the sake of"?  Or what  "for the sake of " could you give your pain?  My sister, as she supported her husband through his long journey and eventual death from colon cancer appeared to create one of the most powerful contexts for his cancer and the pain they all endured.  Looking from the outside and observing her compassion for herself, for him and their daughters her "For the sake of" appeared to be living fully each moment that they had together.  They were both surprisingly present to the day to day joys available to them during so much of this journey.  Not necessarily "laugh out loud" joy, though she did plenty of that too, more like a deep abiding gratefulness for whatever particular moment she was experiencing.  And he seemed to be present without agenda and available to the moment and what was happening in a remarkable way.  The story teller (suffering generator) gets banished when that happens.  You know where this is going.  If you are "suffering", if you are experiencing negative thinking or emotional energy, look around for a large enough meaning for your pain and the suffering may well dissipate.   

The ideal and the real...

Mom's pin-curled hair, now loose and blowing in the March Wisconsin winds as she applies the clothes pins to the wet laundry on the clothes lines strung through the backyard by my father.  Four children, I the oldest at 8 years, followed by three more all two years apart.  Her life.  Her busy and full life.  Many fighting for her lap and her attention.  "Mama",  "Mom", "Mary" ...my mother and many mothers' lives in the 1950s.  It was a different time.  Another time.   Or is it?I watch my young friends, juggle work schedules and a variety of enrichment classes for multiple children.  They are having their children closer together, like my parents generation did.  And they are having larger families.  As I sit on the large patio of the local city golf course looking out ...and back in time...I am struck with the cycles of life.When I was in that jam-packed family and house-holding phase of my own life, I missed time to read, time for me, time for museums, brunches and gallery walks.  Now I have much time for all of these things.  And I miss the sound of "mom" "momma".  I miss being sought after and adored.  I miss the fullness.  The busyness of it all.  Truth be told each phase of life has its exquisite beauties AND the places it falls short.  I advise a young client who currently has no romantic love in her life to enjoy this time because when love finds her again her life and time, will no longer be primarily about just her and her own preferences.  But do I heed my own advice?Not so much...Do I wake up excited about being the sole person I get to please and care for today?  Somedays.  Today, this day, I glance back and wish that I understood 20 years ago that to everything there is indeed a season.  Such a life-long challenge for this visionary, this midwife of change and possibility, to fully embrace whatever cycle I am in, rather than lean into the next "ideal" vision, I glimpse.  For too often that "ideal" arose out of an anxiety or sense of lack.  Years back, when covered over in motherhood, I wondered if there would ever be time for me again.  Would there be enough?  Was I enough?  And when I thought that thought I was leaning away from the reality of my life without deeply embracing it for its particular beauties and flaws.  So often the inner dialogue then was "I better..."  "I need to..." "and I have to..."So now when I hear myself say "I better______"  and note an anxiety that time is running out, or that something negative will happen if I don't act now, I breathe and question that thought.  Same thing with "I need to______".  or "I have to_________."   And often I discover that these thoughts have fear-scarcity-lack or some sort of anxiety lurking at their base.For example, today I could say to myself  "Nancy you need to appreciate your current state of being single."  And if I respond to that inner command it is ultimately a lack-based response.  Ditto, if I say "Nancy, while you are still single you better enjoy and make the most of it."  But, what happens, if I say to myself,  "Nancy, lucky lady, you get the privilege of a low maintenance life with enough time to focus on those things that you set aside during the years you were raising your children"?Shift is what happens.  Shift inside of me.  Shift to a deep gratitude and a wholehearted embrace of the life I have been given.

Strength AND vulnerability...

I feel like the oak tree on the north side of the caddy shack at the city golf course I walk each morning.Fragile...beautiful...broken and bare branched in places, yet graceful and lovely on the whole.My mind like the leaves rustled by any breeze, yet my core, my trunk and roots are sturdy and strong.Strength and vulnerability, my existance.Strength and vulnerability our world.Strength and vulnerability, my home.At last.

The Connection between Art and Vitality

Art isn’t pretty.Art isn’t painting.Art isn’t something you hang on a wall.Art is what we do when we’re truly alive.…But art is who we are and what we do and what we need.  Seth GodinOkay, so I have been in a funk.  By that I mean not really inspired to blog anything.  Yet, somehow still inspired by life.  This may sound trite but Michelle Obama's bangs and her and the girls attire on inauguration day are now my wallpaper on facebook, they inspire me.  I don't know why but I smile every time I see them.  Maybe because the colors are so beautiful and the lines of the clothes, elegant. But I may be making this up.  My strategic mind HATES the idea that it can't explain everything. ;-)  What I know for sure is the image of them makes me smile.   Something else that inspires me:  the comings and goings of the chickadees at my bird feeder.  AND right now, I am really jazzed by my I  brand new elegant red metal dining room table to launch valentine's day week.  All of these makes me happy, grateful and young in spirit.  Yet, not inspired to blog.When I started this blog I understood that the muse comes and goes.  And accepted that, but I didn't expect the fickle girl to disappear for almost 6 weeks!  AND I committed to not write because some voice in me said, I had better write something or...  In other words I wasn't going to let my strategic mind take the my love of writing and connecting things and turn it into just another thing on my "to do" list.   This blog that bears my name would be filled from a place of possibility and abundance.  I would write  because I get to, not because I have to.Trusting this path was part of my emergence as an artist.  Yes, I did say artist.  Not because I think my writing is actually worthy of the word art.  But because I think how I am in the world is.  My definition of art and making art is similar to Seth Godin's.  It puts me on an edge.  It asks me to begin and not know where I am going.  Hmmm, that sounds like motherhood, marriage, most jobs, most projects doesn't it?  I think so.  Godin says we are all artists.  We must make a world we want to inhabit.  So ask yourself:What can I make in my world today, given all the things already scheduled and required of me, that would make me come alive in the making?  That would give me energy?And of course ... go do that!