“Soulful Story Cards”  is this Saturday, Sept. 26, from 1:30 to 4:30 and there are a few places still open.

Are your unbidden thoughts cheerleaders for your deepest mission and desires?  Or are you unbidden thoughts sometimes quite critical and discouraging?

Do you want to defuse negative thoughts before they become untruthful beliefs about yourself?

Do you want to start new habits, but just don’t yet have the “follow-through” to make them happen?

Would you like to play around with a rainbow of colors and thick juicy watercolor paper in an encouraging environment of inquiry and possibility?

You will create 8 to 12 colorful personalized affirmation cards that will help your inner world support your deepest aspirations.  Alternatively, these cards can be filled with scriptural or wisdom quotations.  These cards will help silence your inner critic, and will give you motivation to do that which is most important to you.  You will leave with your own set of individual talismans of positivity and possibility.

In our small microgroup (less than 5 people), we will identify our most common unbidden thoughts through inquiry and visioning. Then we will open up potentiality and hope, and create empowering intentions that will encourage us and defuse the power of negative thoughts.  These personally decorated cards will then be infused with our intentions, all individualized and colorfully rendered.

Though sharing with the other participants is encouraged, we also respect working in silence if that is your preference.  The whole intention is to create a respectful, individualized experience in response to your needs and desires.  Suitable for adults and/or teens.

Location:  in the Red Thread Study in my home office/studio, northside Lethbridge (details upon registration)

Investment:  $80 for 3 hours of Intentional Creativity. sliding scale available.

  ALL SUPPLIES PROVIDED

No previous artistic experience needed.

To register, email me at catcharissage@gmail.com.

I will be speaking this Sunday at the service of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Lethbridge, on the topic of “Making Meaning, Making Soul:  Four Portals to the Depth Dimensions of Life.”  I’ll be talking about the practices of painting, writing, dream analysis, and different forms of meditation as ways in which we can move into our depths, finding both what is most Immanent within as well as our connection with that which is most Transcendent.  I’ll be bringing some of my paintings to illustrate my ideas, and we’ll practice a couple of simple ways that each of us can use on our own to come to a more peaceful, compassionate, wildly wonderful humanity!  Please consider joining us if you’re in the Lethbridge area.  It will be a small but welcoming group.  All are welcome.

Sunday, September 27, 2015, 10:30 a.m.

at the North Lethbridge Seniors’ Centre

1904 – 13th Ave. North  (COME TO THE BACK DOOR [south side of building])

Alchemist’s Golden Cup, Cat Charissage, (c) 2015

Dear Friends,

I am delighted to announce this in person series of Story Circles, Red Thread Sessions, a 13-Step Painting Adventure, and a Study Group on Bluebeard: Predators Within and Around Us.

If you live anywhere near Lethbridge, please consider joining me in some of these offerings.  And of course, contact me for more details.

With much love,

Cat

Cat Charissage:  Offerings for Fall 2015

catcharissage@gmail.com     

Sheltering Soul: Monthly Story Circle based on Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ groundbreaking, bestselling Women Who Run With the Wolves

We will read one or two of these archetypal stories per month, come together to write in response to several prompts, and discuss the book’s themes and our writing.

Meeting the 2nd Wednesdays of the month, 7 – 9:30,

October 14 through June 8.

A second group may be formed on the 4th Wednesdays of the month, October through June.      There is NO CHARGE for this Story Circle.

Soulful Story Cards:  Transforming the Critic’s Voice through Color and Language

A Red Thread Session

Saturday, September 26, 1:30 – 4:30 p.m.

$80 for 3 hours of Intentional Creativity based on your personal stories, challenges, and recurring thoughts.

What’s in Your Medicine Basket?

A Red Thread Session

Saturday, October 24, 1:30 – 4:30 p.m.

$80 for 3 hours of Intentional Creativity based on claiming our particular gifts and talents for service and abundantly creative living.

Sophia:  Wisdom Within, A One-day Painting Adventure

13-Step Painting and Writing Inquiry using Intentional Creativity

Saturday, November 21, 11 – 5 p.m.

plus, optional Sunday, November 22, 2-5 p.m.

$150 for 9 hours of painting and writing

                 NO PREVIOUS PAINTING EXPERIENCE NEEDED

Also, on Nov. 19 & 26, Dec. 3 & 10 :  a 4 week Study Group on “BLUEBEARD: the Predators around us and within us”

ABOUT Cat:

How do you really live a deeply meaningful life, living gracefully within the paradoxes and challenges life hands you?  Where are the depths of soul?  And how do you get to those depths?  What is a soul, anyway?  How do you let what’s within you be expressed in ways that are helpful and contribute to positive change?  Do you ever fully heal from the traumas you survived?  How can life be more colorful and creative?

These are the questions I live out of, every day.  I do soul work.  I’m a contemplative educator, counsellor, and artist, and I help women and men navigate the Depth Dimensions of their lives through image, word, silence, and dream. I believe that the most important work each of us can do is to live out our gifted self fully, creatively, and freely, in an overculture which too often wounds our bodies and souls and colonizes our minds with distractions, commercialization, and other people’s agendas.  

I’m a master of the labyrinth, the way of experiencing life’s twists and turns as pilgrimage — through having lived it.  I believe that there’s always the unexpected — I first became a mother at 40, and an artist at 56.  I work in the ways of women’s wisdom — and gotten skilled at unravelling the knots of internalized oppression.  I live expansively and joyfully — and also with serious chronic pain.

I invite you to join me in Intentional Creativity afternoon sessions, in Story Circles, Study Groups, and Painting Workshops, and in customized individual sessions where you explore and express your own lived wisdom and beauty in watercolor, acrylic, and journaling.   Each season I respond to the needs of my beloveds with new offerings based on the themes I discern as immediately relevant.

Professionally, I’m a student of the wisdom traditions of the world, with a Masters in Education, 4 years’ graduate study and a B.A. in Theology, plus more than 30 years’ experience in service and education, including as counsellor and Executive Director of a sexual assault center.  I am trained in post-trauma counselling and as an Intentional Creativity Coach. I have taught in university, in high school, in professional development, and in my own workshops and classes. I also home educated my son to the college level.  I live creatively with the limitations of chronic illness and engage actively in ongoing learning and reflection, most recently with Shiloh Sophia McCloud, visionary artist, and Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes (author of the groundbreaking bestselling Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype) in 7 of her summer training intensives.  To see some of my art and writing visit my blog at http://www.catcharissage.com.   

My current journal cover

Dear Friends,

Here we are, the last week before Labour Day.  Lots of buzz in my household with my son starting college again.  I’ve been very busy painting and writing for my online courses.  One of the things that has been bringing me a lot of happiness is working/playing/writing/arting in my journal.

I remember a question posed many years ago by Stephen Covey (of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People fame) in one of his CD series: (paraphrased) “What is the one thing, that if you did it regularly, would make the greatest positive difference in your happiness and productivity?”

My immediate thought was “write regularly in my journal”.  I’ve kept journals for many decades, but not nearly as regularly as I had wanted to.  What is bringing me happiness over the last year or so is that I’m finally working in them faithfully, including not only what most people think of as journal or diary entries, but much else as well.  I don’t write in them every day, but most days I do.

I have this feeling that my life is not getting away from me before I know that I’ve lived it, if you know what I mean.  I’m not looking back over a three month period of time thinking, “Now what did I do these past few months?”  This helps me own my life, and therefore, take responsibility for it, and for how I spend my days.

One of the constant challenges of my life is having so many more ideas and ambitions to do things than I have the energy or health to actually pursue.  By taking that little bit of extra time to record what it is that I do most days, I’ve become aware that I mostly use my time very well, and I do get done that which is the most important to me.  I’m not perfect in this, but I do make progress.  As a “for instance”, before preparing this blog post, I was getting down on myself for not posting for over a month, especially when my goal is to post once a week.  While putting this post together, though, I was paging through my journal and noticing what it is that has been taking up my time.  While I still wish to be posting more regularly, I also know that this last month has been filled with many worthy and important activities — along with “wasted” hours eaten by lack of sleep, or pain, or feeling just rotten.  My journal even helps me accept the “wasted” hours as maybe not so wasted, but part of a full, “deep and real” life, where I’m making good use of what I can control, and accepting that which I can’t.

Here’s some of what I include:

List of Dream Titles. After writing out my dreams as soon as I awaken, I later date them and give them a descriptive title that will help me remember them. In my regular journal I have an indexed page where I list chronologically all the dreams’ titles.

Newspaper clipping of a recent photo of the earth from a satellite launched years ago.

Weekly page summary

Copies of my writings and photos of paintings for my online courses.

Other peoples’ art and articles from the web.

First page of my journal, with artwork by Shaun Tan

Another recent painting, with random notes pasted on opposite page

I’m not necessarily suggesting that you keep a journal, nor if you do, that you should keep one the way that I do.  What I DO want you to ask yourself, though, is:

What is the one thing, that if I did it regularly, would make the greatest positive difference in my happiness and productivity?

Now, why don’t you try doing it and see what happens?  For many people, September, after the Labour Day weekend, is the second “New Year’s Day” of the year.  Why not set yourself up this week so that you can start doing that “one thing”?

I’d love to hear how it goes for you.

With love,

Cat

—Talisman, (c) Cat Charissage, 2015

Dear Friends,

This is personally a very busy time for me and my family, but I’ve finished the painting I’ve been working on for several weeks.  I hope you find it intriguing and inspiring.  The prose/poem below that accompanies it explains some of the symbolism.  Some of!  What is she saying to you?

I will be away for about a week, learning again from Dr. Estes, and therefore away from my computer.  I’ll respond to any comments when I get back.

With love,

Cat

Compassion’s Companion:  Becoming Whole, Becoming Holy

I recognize you, dear three eyed mystery.

You’ve visited me since I was a teenager first exploring

the quiet books that invited me into contemplative depths.

Your third eye travels through time and space

noticing, watching, understanding — from an inclusive view

offering unending compassion.

You’ve seen much, you ancient of days.

Your aged face still, always, beautiful.

Your regal shawl is reminiscent of the Blessed Mother’s mantle

offering shelter, respite, prayerfulness,

its purple mix of passionate red and introspective blue threaded with gold.

Gold — the treasure, the divine in the mundane.

You hold golden seeds, are sheltered by infinite seeds within seeds,

this world’s memorandum of the life-death-life cycle in all,

these seeds brimming with mystery metamorphosing into vitality,

nourishment, sustenance:  abundant provision.

Even your face is the shape of the acorn,  seed of the stalwart oak.

Tree of Life, indeed!

You are surrounded by stars, tiny yet immense  centers of light.

Five fingered stars, like hands, like humans, our community,

where we’re embedded to be light for each other, to walk each other home,

to be with.  Companions in compassion.

Our nights are also illumined by stars that no longer exist,

whose dying light has not yet reached us,

just as many of those who have lighted our path are no longer with us

yet continue to shine.

Across time, across space ,our light extends to each other, none of us ever truly alone.

Tongues of fire crown you, beauteous as a sunflower.

You kindle the divine fire within; flaming out, it is light for us.

Thirteen flowers, a baker’s dozen of holiness, abundance of spirit,

more than enough for all of us who weren’t in that upper room 2000 years ago.

And your gifts to me!

The bone, that which endures when all else has decayed. . .

You remind me to sing over the bones with pen and paintbrush,

to show others how to gather what is left of old stories, old lives, dismembered selves

and find the songs that re-member the (w)holiness.

You hand me the grail, and my cup overflows.

Enough.

Not only enough, but plenty.

Not only plenty, but fathomless.

You charge me to dive deep into these numinous, luminous waters, to

understand  language that is not translatable to the common tongue.

And finally, you offer me my life:  the cross, encircled.

This is my Catholic past and my interspiritual future,

where I sit at the crux of my matter

joining human with divine, and remembering the circles of

medicine wheel, mandala, Celtic cross.

You’ve transformed my lived experience into a plethora of symbols which

now offer me crucial daily discernment into how to best live who I am.

I am brought full circle to you.  To myself.

I bow to you, dear three eyed mystery, accepting the call.

Yesterday the three of us (moi, spouse, and 18 year old son) entered the 21st century.  At least I hope so.  I think.  You see, we all got smart phones.  “So what?” you say?  Well, our last phones (only two of them) did not even have SIM cards in them  (as if I know what a SIM card is. . . )  Flip phones that did not connect to the internet, they at least had answering machines  — oh, I mean, “voice mail”, but only if the phone was turned on, which dear spouse didn’t want to do because he might run the battery down.

Two weeks of research figuring out what kind of phones we wanted, several long phone calls with much more savvy friends, and more hours than I care to admit in telus stores and phone kiosks later, I sure hope the learning curve of using it is a lot shorter! It’s actually kind of fun figuring out what this fascinating portable computer that also has a phone in it can do.  Of course, my neo-luddite son saw me looking at the screen and moaned, loudly and dramatically, “Oh!!! NO!!!  You’ve been mind controlled!!! Put the device down!!!  Walk away from it!  Slowly!”  My response, “Uh, uh-huh, uh, I’ll talk to you later,” wasn’t taken well.  He’s the only one in the family who really didn’t want a smartphone.  He usually carries two to five real books around with him, at least half of which are hard-covers.

I’ll try to remember to post on this blog once in awhile.  Until next time, I’m learning how to use wi-fi instead of sucking up our (very small, shared) data plan).

This post written on a full-sized Dell laptop.  Though I am using wi-fi.  I think I might even know what that is.

Cat Charissage (c) 2015

Love has prevailed; may it continue to be so.

It’s been an emotional week.  There were the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, then the fact that the city and the country did not burst into flames of hate and violence, but that so many, though filled with grief, were enflamed only by love and unity.  Then there was Friday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court affirming that marriage between any two loving adults is legal.   I am rejoicing with my LGBT brothers and sisters.

And here in southern Alberta, traditional Blackfoot territory, it’s hot.  My dear body, carrying my extra weight, struggling to balance blood sugar with chronic pain, suffers.  Such an experience!  To be filled with so much love, and grief, while being so strained physiologically!  Tears keep coming, steaming on my hot face.

I think of my dear Aunts Loretta and Esther living in hot and humid southern Illinois.  They were large women, too, and when we would visit in the summer I remember their streams of sweat smudging any attempt at makeup.   Oh, I shouldn’t say “sweat,” I remember:  “Horses sweat.  Men perspire.  Women glow.”  We did a lot of glowing!  I remember their red faces, and the constant mopping with white cotton hankies.  Who ever thought then that I’d ever be like that?  They lived with segregation.  I lived with the race riots of the civil rights movement.  No one ever spoke about gay people.  “Lesbian” was a word I’d never heard.

Things can change.

I think of the heat at Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s funeral in humid Charleston, all those people wearing formal clothing, all those sunglasses and beads of sweat.  I think of the heat of muggy Washington, D.C., where at least it was appropriate to wear fewer clothes, even if there were the sunglasses and the sweat.

I, too, am enflamed:  with heat, with so much love, with so much pain that so many have suffered because of racism and homophobia, with pride that humans can act with such dignity, with hope that we can make love grow, seven generations into the future.

Sometimes life is so good, even when it’s so hard.

—detail from “Wise Woman of the Portal” Cat Charissage (c) 2015

Dear Friends,

I wanted to tell you about an amusing and serendipitous moment in my recent travels.  I was in the airport, waiting interminably to be allowed to board my flight, when I noticed a man “of a certain age”, i.e., about my age, standing nearby.  He had earphones on, listening, I thought, to an ipod or whatever.  He was very handsome, looking fit and prosperous, and was slowly pacing around the small confines of our lineup.  Suddenly I heard him say, “You are so beautiful!” and when I looked up, there he was, looking right at me!

Well, it only took a second to realize what was going on:  he had been on a phone call, not just listening to a program, and he was speaking to whomever was on the phone, not to me.  But suddenly he, too, realized what had happened — that I had thought he was speaking to me —- and he flashed a most delightful, apologetic, yet understanding smile.  In that moment I felt him silently saying, “And yes, you too, Cat, you are so beautiful!”

We went on with our day, but both of us with a small smile in our hearts.

And you, my readers, yes you, you are so beautiful!

With love,

Cat

detail from “Why not become fire?” acrylic on canvas, (c) Cat Charissage, 2015

While we need to be as responsible as possible with our words and actions, we do not know what or where our influence might be.  It can reach far farther into the wilds than we imagine.

I’m now back from my yearly pilgrimage to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Mysterium training for helping professionals.  Her teaching, as usual, was inspiring, thought provoking, and mind expanding (perhaps a little mind-blowing, too!).  This year’s event was also highly emotional, because it’s the end of the five years of the Mysterium.  While the topics changed each year, and many new people came each time, Dr. E. designed the five years of the training to cover a particular curriculum regarding psychoanalytic techniques and cross-cultural understandings of the psyche that is based heavily on her training to become a Jungian analyst.  Although there is no degree or particular certification that has come out of this education, the knowledge base, combined with my own study, has been a huge treasure, the privilege of a lifetime.

Out of about 100 participants, there were 18 of us who had been able to attend all five years, another 20 or so attended four of the years, and another 20 or so three of the years.  Although I do not particularly keep in touch with “my people” throughout the year, it’s always been a blessed reunion when I catch up with those whom I’ve studied with in previous years.

Which brings me to my deeper realization of how our individual influence reaches out in ways we do not know and cannot foresee.  Person after person made comments about how something I’d said last year, or a couple of years ago, had made them reconsider some big decision in their life.  Or that even though they never left any comments, they read my blog every time I posted and was so inspired by my paintings that it was a reminder that situations can change in a person’s life, no matter our age or years of doing one thing rather than another.  Another person commented on how she used the photo of one of my paintings to get her through a difficult time.  I had no idea that my comments or art had had any of those effects.  It was only the electrified atmosphere of the once a year deep meeting of souls that allowed me to know that at all.  (Of course, we can also do incredible harm and not know it.  So many of us are healing from unintentional or truly ignorant woundings.  Unintended or not, the pain is still deep.  That is why we need to live our lives as clearly and as lovingly as we can —- this is how we can be responsible, as far as humanly possible, that our influence is at least not harmful.)

Dr. E. unknowingly reinforced this learning for me.  She exhorted each of us, repeatedly, to do our work; that if we put it out into the world it will find its audience, the “lone soul” who needs that particular encouragement or idea.  Truly, we cannot measure our effectiveness when what we want to do is to encourage soul life; we cannot judge the quality of our work by the immediate or visible response to it.  Our work is to do the work, to do that which we are pulled to do, and to do it in as disciplined, whole-hearted, and responsible a way as we can.

To be a freelance lover of all the world, to nurture liberty in the hearts and minds of those with whom I interact, this is my life and work.  I know my intent and my effort; I will never know all the effect.  We do not know what we do.