—Unfolding Mystery, Cat Charissage, 2014

Hello Dear Friends:

This summer I had the opportunity to take the 10-week online course LEGEND: Awakening the Hidden Stories  from Cosmic Cowgirls University, the organization founded by Shiloh Sophia McCloud (and others).  Shiloh is my painting teacher online, and this course included 2 sets of instructional painting videos from Shiloh, art journaling prompts and videos, and daily writing prompts, plus the opportunity to write our own Legendary Woman Chronicles.  I’ve just recently finished the painting, and wanted to share some of the process with you.

The reason I share these work-in-progress photos is that I want to demystify some aspects of artistic expression, and to encourage others to keep going in their own artistic expression, especially when the piece is in the “kinda ugly, maybe I should just quit now” stage.

This is also the way of daily life, too, isn’t it?  In taking on any new project, it’s easier to just give up when it gets to the “kinda ugly” stage, especially when there are so many needs to attend to and voices asking, pleading, demanding us to do all sorts of things for them.  I’m really learning that if my self-talk starts a new thought with “I really ought to.. .  ” or “you know, I should. . . “, then those words are my clue that I need to examine that thought and question whether it’s true that I really “ought to” or “should”.  I’m not denying that there are things in life that ethically we need to do, but those things are a small category of the “I oughtta” thoughts that creep in.  It seems that the very idea of doing something fun or creative, or something that doesn’t immediately benefit someone else brings up the socially constructed “but you don’t want to be selfish, do you?” thought.  Most of us women don’t even want to be thought of as being selfish, and will willingly squash the creative, fun idea in its tracks.  Or maybe, if we’re really brave, and have started on a creative task that doesn’t immediately seem able to benefit anyone else, we’ll definitely squash more attempts when the creative act gets to the “kinda ugly” stage.

It’s a victory for me that most of the time, now, I can differentiate between the ethical “oughtta’s” and the socially constructed “oughtta’s.” I’m definitely not yet doing the writing that I wish to be doing, though, nor am I painting and art journaling as much as I would like.  It takes time and inner fortitude to become the person you might be.  Yet, a few paintings at a time, a few blog posts at a time. . . .

Here’s what I painted first.  I didn’t like it at the time (it was in the “kinda ugly” stage), and so I gessoed it over and started again.  In hindsight, I wish I’d stuck with this painting; there’s something about it that I’d like to develop.

Portal:

Design:

In progress:

Glazing, where you paint over the entire painting (or selected parts) with a darker transparent color, is one of the scariest things I do.  If I’m liking the painting so far, I’m afraid that I’ll lose all the work I did.  Glazing, though, can harmonize the colors and bring a glowing richness;  that’s why I do it:

And how she/I ended up:

She hangs in my bedroom where as soon as I open my eyes in the morning, I see her smiling at me.

Join me in persevering through all the “kinda ugly” moments.  What comes next will certainly be interesting!

With love and the kiss of today’s September blue, blue sky,

Cat

Dear Friends,

I don’t usually repost articles or editorials.  In the past month or so, though, I’ve been thinking a lot about those of us a generation or two from a great “something” that happened to us as a social group or demographic, or that our social group did that we as a culture now regret.  Most of us are descendants of immigrants who came to this country for a better life, but some also came to escape persecution or some kind of racism or prejudice.  There are many stories held within our families, and it is helpful to think through these stories to find out how they have influenced us, how these stories have impacted our choices and identities, have impacted what we think is possible for ourselves.

This year is the centenary of World War I.  In the years since that war and WWII, many of us in the U.S. and Canada find ourselves living in neighborhoods where also live the descendants of our former “enemies”.  My brother in law is from German ancestry, a sister in law is of Japanese ancestry.  Here in Lethbridge we have many Japanese families who relocated here after the Second World War, having been uprooted from lives on the west coast of Canada and sent to internment camps inland near the mountains during the war.  We also have many First Nations People here, as we live very close to the largest reserve in Canada.  As Dr. Estes says, all of us, if you go back far enough in our history, come from conquered tribes, from groups that were almost wiped out.  And too, all of us come from peoples who have tried to destroy other peoples.  Her point is to remind us to treat ourselves and others with care, for we have all had much suffering in our histories.

It’s important to be conscious of these things, to tell the stories we hold, and to work for a world of reconciliation.  Truth and reconciliation.  It doesn’t “just happen.”  In that light, I want to share a letter to the editor that appeared in the Lethbridge Herald on July 31.  I don’t know the author, but I thank him for sparking some good conversations I’ve had with my son.  May this letter serve as food for thought for you, too.  And with love,

“Indian Mascots Obscure the Real Human Beings”  A white man and an elderly native man became pretty good friends, so the white guy decided to ask him, “What do you think about Indian mascots?”

The native man responded, “Here’s what you’ve got to understand.  When you see black people, you see ghosts of all the slavery and the rapes and the hangings and the chains.

When you look at the Jews, you see all the bodies piled up in death camps, and those ghosts keep trying to tell you to do the right thing, but when you see us, you don’t see the ghosts of all the little babies with their heads smashed in by rifle butts or the Big Hole, or the old folks dying by the side of the road on their way to Oklahoma while their families cried and tried to make them comfortable, or the dead mothers at Wounded Knee or the little kids at Sand Creek who were shot for target practice.  You don’t see any ghosts at all.  Instead, you see casinos and drunks and junk cars and shacks.

Well, we see those ghosts, and they make our hearts sad, and they hurt our little children.  And when we try to say something, you tell us, “Get over it, this is the American dream, this is America!”  But as long as you are calling us Redskins and doing tomahawk chops, we can’t look at the American dream because these things remind us that we are not real human beings to you.  And when people aren’t human beings, you turn them into slaves or kill six million of them or shoot them with Hotchkiss guns and throw them into mass graves at Wounded Knee.

No, we are not looking at the American dream, and why should we?  We still haven’t woke up from the American nightmare.

Rodney Big Bull, Brocket, Alberta

Dear Friends,

How do you move from resentment to acceptance and graciousness?  Have you ever been in a situation where you know exactly what stage you need to be in next, but just can’t seem to get there by will alone?

I find that I really resent the extra time it takes to deal with my chronic challenges:  because I don’t sleep well, I often need to be resting 11-13 hours a day just to get 8 hours of sleep, which is barely enough for my needs.  Add to that the 20 minutes here, the half day there, and the “only 10 minutes” everywhere, I end up living in the struggle between what I have to be doing and what I want to be doing.

I have been overwhelmed with the backlog of daily chores, emails, and “stuff”  that have accumulated while I was away at Dr. Estes’ training, and while I was in Calgary for an extended family get-together.  Also, in hope and excitement, I signed up for a 10-week online course that includes more painting and writing. (You know how it is:  it was a REALLY good idea at the time!)  Then “there’s always the unexpected” nature of life, the unexpecteds which usually need more time and attention rather than eliminating a chore or commitment.  In this category are the two summer online courses that Liberty has taken in the past 3 weeks (two more days to go. . . ) which promised to occupy him and free me up, but have turned out to completely stress him out yet draw me in as chief organizer, calmer downer, and cheerleader.

Yes, there are only 24 hours in a day, and life continually intrudes on our best laid plans.  I seem to live in this fantasy that if I only didn’t have my chronic health conditions and their pain and fatigue, that I would have enough time to “get it all done” — whatever that means!  But of course the problem isn’t the arthritis, etc., (well, they really are problems, but. . . ), the problem here is higher aspirations than human limitations can fulfil.  I guess one could also call that greed — always wanting more than you have, but I’m sticking with “wanting to do more than is possible in this situation.”

There are always stories about individuals who do the “impossible,” who overcome huge obstacles to achieve a goal.  I respect those people, but the stories also contain the undertones of what they had to give up, or what sacrifices their families made to help them accomplish what they did.  Those heroic stories are ones of single-mindedness and focus.  I don’t have a life where I can or want to be single-minded — I have many goals, not one overarching all others.

In my earlier life I lived the Hero’s (Shero’s?) story.  We’re often led to believe that that’s the only or best story that there is to live. I’m feeling that now, though, I need to live with another story or two.  I know what will and grit will accomplish, but life isn’t asking that these days.  Sheer will power isn’t going to accomplish acceptance.  That’s like trying really, really hard to relax more.  (Been there, done that!)

The painting and art journaling are really helping.  There’s been a transformation happening in my last three major paintings that I’ll talk about when I post my next painting and poem.  While “the pen is mightier than the sword” is pithier than what I want to say, I’ll still tell you that the paintbrush is more human than sheer willpower.

Thanks for joining me in thinking about these things,

Cat

Dear Friend,

An online friend of mine recently asked me how I do my journals, so I thought I’d post here a modified version of my reply to her.  I must have mentioned here on the blog that I’ve kept journals for more than 40 years now; I’ve used all sorts of ready bound books, plain school paper in binders, small journals, big journals, everything you can imagine!  I could probably give you the pros and cons on just about anything you can find on the market these days!  There are only two things I regret in all these years of journalling:  the years when I wrote very little, and the fact that it’s a real pain to move more than 10 bankers’ boxes full of journals every time we move.

What I’m finding works best for me these days is to buy watercolor paper when it’s a  2 for 1 sale, Canson brand, 11 x 15 inches.  I fold those pages in half, take groups of 3 pages and sew them into canvas or heavy cloth covers.  I usually use 5 or 6 signatures (the 3 page piles) per journal.  I learned to make these particular books from the online art journaller Effy Wild, but there are many tutorials on youtube.  I go for “useful,” and don’t spend that much time on “perfectly beautiful.”  Now you don’t have to go to that trouble at all: a Strathmore Mixed Media journal, or a Canson XL journal have paper thick enough to paint on (and not buckle b/c of the wetness).

I find dating my entries to be a real key for their usefulness to me in the future.  I reread my journals from time to time, and note either my growth or my dealing with the same old/same old (my lifelong challenges, it seems!)  What I do is put the date vertically along the borders of the page, and that seems to look nice.  It’s also consistent, which means I can find a particular date easily, even in a journal where I might have 2 pages for a day, or 10.

When I use acrylics in my journal, as I do when I’m doing more “arting” rather than writing, or when I’m doing a collage or mixed media page, I find it tricky to write over the paint.  It can be done, for sure, but you have to have the right pen, and it’s “lumpy”, i.e., difficult to write comfortably.  So I use watercolor paints most of the time in my journals because they are so easy to write on.  I go through the book and paint pages before I need them.  Then they’re ready for when I write.  Mostly I use 2 or at most 3 colors on the 2 page spread, and keep it either plain, or use larger squares and other shapes that would give me nice spaces to write in.  Some of the pages I include here have been made with watercolor pencils, just horizontal and vertical stripes.  When I then go over them with water and a brush, I bring the colors together to cover the whole page.

This prepping of the pages can be done while I’m on the phone or listening to an audio, or sometimes even having coffee with friends.

VERY IMPORTANT:  I don’t try to be perfect, or make it look particularly “beautiful”.  I find that way of thinking to be paralyzing.  I just aim to get some color on the page.  I let it dry, turn the page, and slap down more color.  I can always add more color, or add collage, or anything else that will spice it up, and I often do.  I love doing this —- the colored page invites me to write.  I journal almost every day, and often add a sentence or two at several times during the day.  My journals are not expensive, so I don’t worry about “ruining” a page.  I just go for it, and some pages ARE better than others (as you can see from the ones I’ve included here).

If you work with your dreams, I’ve developed a system that works well for me, after years of more awkward solutions.  Because my journal’s pages are 7 1/2 in. by 11 in., I take cheap notebook paper (that’s usually 8 1/2 by 11), and cut an inch off the width so that the papers can eventually be tucked into the back cover of my journals.  I take those notebook papers, and have them on a clipboard onto which I’ve taped a pen, so that I can write my dreams in the dark. If you want to record your dreams, it’s important to have the paper and pen ready, because large muscle movement often causes the dream to disappear.  I have 3 of those:  one by my pillow, one by the lazyboy chair that I sometimes sleep in, and one in a magazine holder in the bathroom.  That way, there’s always appropriately sized paper, and pen or pencil, everywhere I might find myself when I’m awakened.

In the morning I collect whatever dreams I’ve recorded, date them, and read through them, adding details or making my writing clearer, and then I name the dream.  I try to pick descriptive names that tell what’s happening in the dream so that the title will help me easily picture the dream.  On a page in my journal, I  list the dream titles chronologically.  This helps me quickly find the date of a dream I might want to work with more deeply.  Then I collect the dreams themselves, in order, and clip them into the back of my journal.

My journals are like scrapbooks, too, in that I glue in notes from others or daily life ephemera.  For several years I did more traditional photo-scrapbooking.  I like that, too, but that’s in a different category for me.  The photo-scrapbooks were made for other people’s eyes, whereas my journals are made for me.  I put in whatever pleases me, whether it’s “beautiful” or “perfect” or not.  And if I don’t like how a page turns out, I don’t tear it out or destroy it; I just turn the page and start again.  That’s also how I try to do life:  move forward, turn the page and start again!

—– “Eve”, colored pencil, Cat Charissage, 2013

Dear Friends,

It’s been almost a month since I’ve written, and I’ve missed connecting with you.  In early June, I left “on pilgrimage” to the fourth year of the five year “Mysterium” training put on by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  Though the training is only a week long, it is intensive with 7 to 8 hours of instruction given by Dr. E.  Though there is a small amount of student commenting and working in dyads, it is primarily presentation by Dr. E.  I admire her preparation and stamina, and feel very gifted in being able to attend this series of trainings in which she is presenting, over five years, what she learned in her Jungian psychoanalytic training.  There is no certification or degree involved in this training, but there is this wonderful knowledge base that I immerse myself in even more deeply throughout the following year.

As many of you know, it’s quite the ordeal for me to attend the training.  I start out on a Sunday, driving with a friend the three and a bit hours to the airport in Great Falls, Montana.  We stay overnight, then I fly out on the Monday for Denver.  Another overnighter there, then I drive about two hours to the training venue, Sunrise Ranch, in Loveland, Colorado, for the Tuesday afternoon start.  Coming back I take only one extra night in Denver, and fly back to Great Falls, then drive back to Lethbridge on the following Monday.  This year, I developed either food poisoning or a very nasty virus the first night in Denver.  It completely knocked me down.  Travel is hard enough, but with this. . . .

It took several days to recover from the ordeal and its concomitant lack of sleep.  But it was still SO GOOD to be there! There were about 120 participants, mostly women, but including several men.  I connected deeply with a few of the women who have been to the trainings for several years.  Dr. E was in great form.  The training topics were deeply fascinating:  advanced dream interpretation, and “Descansos”:  a timeline of our lives (and in this case, also our parents’ lives) where we noted the places where we encountered a symbolic death in our lives, whether of trauma or options closed to us, etc., and then looked at the totality of our lives in connection with how our parents (to the best of our often limited knowledge) experienced their own “deaths” and stopping points.  The third major topic we studied was using the Enneagram as another way to look at the Wheel of Life and our gifts in facing the realities of the life in front of us.  While Dr. E teaches with the intent that we will be using this material when we work with the people who come to us for help, she wants us to work deeply with each of the ideas and techniques first.  So while it’s certainly not a therapy week for the participants, the teachings bring us deep within ourselves and are a wonderful opportunity for soulful growth.

I think the greatest blessing for me in the trainings has been the consolidation and deepening of the work that I’ve done in my years as an educator and counsellor.  I have learned so much in so many venues throughout the years, including in that “School of Hard Knocks” and the university called “Life”.  In working with Dr. E, I’m pulling it all together in deep, solid, and extremely useful ways.  I often wonder what next to do with all of this, how best to pass on the gifts I’ve been given.  Oh, I’ve got ideas, many more ideas than time or energy to actualize, so I have to discern how best to help “within my reach”, as Dr. E advises.  One thing I feel convicted of is that I will continue to write, and write more deeply, as I organize my daily life to make this possible.

Continue on!  And with love,

Cat

I didn’t sign up for this:

Aches: always.  Pain: often.

Sleep: elusive.  Fatigue —

fatigue grabs the majestic horse straining at the

bit wanting to run, run, gallop. . .

Fatigue grabs this energy and pulls it

into a brown hole.

A brown hole is like a black hole,

except that it’s a mess of colors, not an absence of them.

All around, creativity, life, color —

I want to live that!  Now!

Not a little, but a lot!

A new color from within

tinges the brown hole an earthy golden.

This gold welcomes the blues and the violets,

the reddish pink.

Come in, mix with me.

We mix, but do not remain brown.

In my own way

I separate out the colors and let them

move out, beautifully.

Differently:  slowly, but intentionally.

The horse, calmed, enjoys the meadow.

——Our Lady of the Resurrections, Cat Charissage, May 2014

FAITH

Dear Friends,

In response to my last post about feeling down and deeply frustrated with ongoing pain and limitations, several people contacted me privately to basically say “you are SO not alone”.    I want to say a sincere thank you to those who responded.  It IS good to know that my struggles are by no means unique —- except in the particulars.

Today is a day with more grace in it.  Physically, I’ve been up and down —- make that a little more on the “down” side.  This week I have more commitments to be out and about than I usually do, partly because my spouse is out of town for work and my SIL’s cats need care while she and her spouse are traveling.  Something big that has helped is reminding myself that I don’t “have” to do it all, and certainly not all by myself.  There’s a back-up person if needed for cat care; when I do the cat care, my son is doing the heavy lifting and the climbing of many sets of stairs.  So, with these extra tasks, I’m remembering to choose to not do quite a few things I ordinarily do.  Like cook, or hassle my son about what he should be doing in his studies, what he should be doing in preparation for Speech Exams, or moving forward this week in some of my long-term projects.

At our last Story Circle, I was talking about the stories we live by.  I was encouraging us to examine the story we’ve been living, and see if it still fits our lives as we’re given our lives here and now.  Are the stories helping us, opening our lives, making our world bigger, or are the stories giving us guilt-trips, ongoing disappointment, and a smaller life?  The last time I did a major examination of the stories I tell myself about my life I was much more physically “able”, and the story had a fair number of heroic elements in it, including the overcoming of challenges and the fighting of monsters (some inner, some outer, some really real).

Whole books could be (and have been) written about these internal stories.  Most of the time, unless we’re unusually self-directed, our stories have been given to us by well-meaning families or teachers as well as by the culture and media.  One story that I used to live by that I absorbed through my religious heritage was that if I’m not dead yet, then I haven’t given enough.  It went like this:  You are a talented and gifted little girl.  To those whom God has given much, much will be asked.   We are to be like Jesus in all things.  Jesus gave all, including his very life.  I will not have given enough until I, too, have given my entire life.

While it is compassionate to be generous and to share our gifts and our lives, it’s easy to see that the message I internalized, though logical, was a bit off.  What happened to the “I came to bring Life, and Life to the full”?  Well, I had to fully understand the operating story that I had within myself, challenge it (over and over and over again), and actively choose to live by the “Life to the full” story.  By the way, this “Life to the full” story was the one that I described above that has all the heroic elements to it.  Who doesn’t love an action story, at least at some times in their lives?

Even this story, as good as it is, hasn’t been serving me anymore.  Or, another way of saying it is that this story has not been opening my life or making my world bigger in a good way lately.  It’s not been helping me to live with grace, or wisdom, or bringing to fruition my gifts in light of what the rest of my life has been handing me.  It’s hard living with paradoxes, and even harder when you’re telling yourself that you have to do something that you don’t even really have to do.  Not living up to the story that we believe our life is unfolding is what brings us frustration, guilt, and even dis-ease (not feeling at ease in my own skin).

But the stories aren’t static.  We do have the choice to change them.  Even if we believe we have a certain mission in life to accomplish, there’s lots of ways to skin a cat (oooh —- what a horrible figure of speech!  Especially for me!!!)

We don’t have absolute choice though:  today, at least, I can’t choose to lead a political campaign, or run a 10K.  So while I can change the story I’m telling myself about my life, I still need to be creative with the paradoxes that reality drops in front of me.  I can’t choose my reality, but I can dance with it  (from afar, some might think I’m wrestling with it; dance, wrestle. . . it’s not all the same, but sometimes they do come close).

So, the new story I’m telling myself these days has some to do with my day to day reality, with some models from my heritage of Baba Yaga wild forest woman stories of my Polish background and some St. Brigid stories of monasteries from my Celtic ancestors.  Instead of going out adventuring, it has more to do with settling in to a place, deeply.  Instead of going out to fight monsters (like violence, or sexism, or. . . , or. . . ), I need to stay in.  Those who need to find me will know where I can be found; and I can send out letters reflecting on what I’ve learned over the years. . . .

May YOUR story fit your life.  May it bring out your gifts to yourself and to us, and help you live your life abundantly, fully.

With love,

Cat

Dear Friends,

Actually, many days are like this, and I’m sure each of you have your own version:  nothing really bad is happening, and, relative to many in the world, I’m very aware that my life is actually very good.  Hey, who can argue with running water, central heating, hot water on tap, and a clean (enough) indoor toilet?  But I just don’t feel well enough to do anything on either my to-do list or my wanna-do list.  Holding my head up feels like too much effort; anywhere you point to on my body, it hurts.

What I find the most frustrating is that I feel that so much time is taken by dealing with all my health issues, and time is what I feel most starved of.  Again, I know that relative to many in the world. . . . etc.  I know.  I know.  My problems may be the ones I feel the closest, but I know I’m not the only one who ever suffers.  It’s the frustration of hours going by, though, where I’m waiting to feel just a little bit better before trying to do anything else besides “cope,” where it seems I just can’t get on with my life, that is one of my biggest challenges.  I know I need to accept that this IS my life: that it’s just going to take time to deal with my dear body.  Maybe it’s the exuberance (and often good health) of youth that is the source of my feeling entitled to not having to think too terribly much about physical needs.  Maybe it’s the female socialization that I’m supposed to take care of others instead of myself.  Give me a day or two and I could write you a long essay on all of the understandable reasons I feel frustrated.  (On second thought, make that a week or so. . . )  None of this is new, and there aren’t any new insights.  Yet I still feel like I’m a strong horse straining:  LET ME RUN!!!

I’m a little embarrassed that I can’t seem to accept this gracefully.  It’s not like I haven’t had time to — it’s been many years, now, that my body hasn’t been able to cooperate with what I want to do, or feel I ought to do.  Always more layers of shoulds and oughts to unravel, and more inquiries of “How do I deal with this creatively?”  I mean, really, if there is a mystery we call God who is calling me to do something, it’s not like this mystery doesn’t know I have these difficulties  —- so I can’t be called to do something I can’t do.  And if there is no mystery we call God, then there is no call.  So why, after all this time, after all this work, can’t I accept all this with some grace?

Well, it’s not the only question I have no answer for.  So, we carry on.

Thanks for reading my little rant,

Cat

“portal” from Magistra Veriditas painting, 2013

Dear Friends,

As a child, I was taught to say prayers in the morning to dedicate my day to God.  As a young woman, I joined in Morning Prayers with others in my household.  Then, I’d always had the suspicion that Morning Prayers would feel so much more “alive” if I’d been able to have my coffee BEFORE  the prayers, rather than after!  These days, when my questions about the mystery we call God are more numerous than my certainties, I open my days with my intentions to be open, compassionate, and to live with integrity.  About 20 years ago I wrote these out, and have developed the habit of going over them thoughtfully just after I awaken, before getting out of bed — and even before coffee!  Some of the words have changed over the years as I’ve learned more about life, but they still “hold”, overall.  They do express how I hope to live my life:

“Radically open to Mystery, and trusting myself, I live a conscious, centered, compassionate life based on integrity and respect.  I see deeply into many worlds, and radiate joy and hope.  I make conscious my radical interdependence with all of reality, and where there is suffering or oppression, I re-member, with love, to make justice, and to bear witness with compassion.  I do these each day, including for myself, in every way that I exercise choice and freedom.”

Those of you who are more traditionally religious could ask why I do not ask for assistance from God for these ideals, or why I don’t pray for others here.   I acknowledge that this isn’t by any means an ordinary morning prayer.  I wanted to be able to set my days in a direction that would be authentic for me even on my “worst” mornings, even on days when any “faith” feels non-existent.  I also want to set my intention based only on what is in my control.  I still have great compassion for others and want them to be eased in whatever ways are needed, but I want to focus on my “circle of influence” while remembering my “circle of concern”, to use Stephen Covey’s terminology.  In my next post I will unpack each of the lines, as they are almost code words for wider and deeper thoughts.

And how do YOU greet your mornings?

With warmth,

Cat