I’ve been asked to share the poem that was in last post’s photo.  It’s by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

Pick up the pen already

and put it to the page and stop whining.

Write.

Pick up the brush

and be mean to yourself for a change,

paint.

Dancers, put on the loose chemise,

tie the ribbons in your hair,

at your waist, or on your ankles

and tell the body to take it from there.

Dance.

Actress, playwright, poet, musician,

or any other.

Generally, just stop talking,

Don’t say one more word

unless you’re a singer.

Shut yourself in a room with ceiling

or in a clearing under the sky.

Do your art.

Generally,

a thing cannot freeze if it is moving.

 So move.

Keep moving.

Now, Cat here again:  Are you doing your art?  Are you finding moments of timelessness, transcendence, exhilaration?  If not, do you really have to make another 20 minute trip to the grocery store?  Paint, instead.  Go ahead and be really mean to yourself, as CPE says.

If I promise not to stop at Michael’s to use another 40% off coupon this week, and write or art instead, will you promise to do whatever you need to  do, just for 20 minutes a day?

Okay?  Okay.  It’s a deal!

With warmth and blessings,

Cat

(image from my journal)

Hello dear friends,

In my post to you last week I forgot to tell you of two somewhat momentous events that occurred during my “pilgrimage” to learn from CPE, that is,  Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  One is quite wonderful, the other, not wonderful at all.

The “not wonderful at all” event was seriously spraining my wrist the first night in Colorado.  I was sitting in my motel room, leaning over to reach for something, when I lost my balance.  I was tired and out of my physical comfort zone.  I’m learning that that combination is risky for me and I need to exercise extra caution at those times.  Alas, I fell, all my weight landing on my hand, wrist, and arm.  As I lay there on the floor, my whole right arm pulsating with pain and visibly swelling, I thought I might have just broken my wrist.  Of my writing arm.  On the day before a 5-day writing intensive.  That I had looked forward to for at least six months.

I slowly got myself into a sitting position — not an easy act with my go-to arm out of service.  Then, after another 10 minutes, sort of climbed up the wall to a standing position.  Then I sat down for an hour and figured out what to do.  Fortunately, I had already gotten ice, so immediately got some onto my hand and wrist, now twice their normal size.  Anti-inflammatory and pain medication followed.  (Did I mention that I travel with a mini-pharmacy?)  Prayer and relaxation exercises calmed my trembling.

It seemed that nothing was broken, as I could move my wrist and fingers well enough, if painfully.  With a trip to the nearby Walgreens I was able to wrap it up in a stretchy bandage, which helped with both the swelling and the pain.  (Picture the almost surreal scene with the check-out person over whether I could tear the bandage with my teeth, or if I’d need to also purchase scissors which I’d only use for a week, as I could not bring them back home on the airplane. I bought the wrapping tape, opened it at the counter, and proceeded to chew a length off of it — using only one hand, of course.)

Throughout the week my arm turned colors that matched my black, blue, and purple wardrobe, yet I still took 44 pages of notes with my purple fingers.  Yes!  Notes for a second harvest of what I was learning!

And I totally forgot about all this when I wrote my last post!  Why do we forget these kinds of things?  I think it’s because when there are so many chronic challenges, one more thing feels almost unremarkable.  Already practically overwhelmed with the challenges, extra pain, and the unexpecteds of travel, one more thing is just subsumed under the psychic category of “things I have to balance, attend to, manage, and cope with.”  And, I’d really rather focus on the neat stuff, like new learning and wonderful people.

But this ignoring of the “one more thing” continues to have repercussions:  I finally needed to see the doctor, twice, since I’ve gotten home, as the nerve seems to have been bruised and it’s wreaking havoc with alternating tingling and numbness.  Yet even that has taken second notice to the mammogram last Monday.  I got the dreaded phone call to come back the next day for an ultrasound, and the really dreaded phone call early the next morning from my doctor’s office saying I needed to come in to discuss the results.  That day.  Gulp.

Fortunately, though I’ll be getting a biopsy on Friday, it’s more than a 90% chance that it’s just a lymph node that didn’t shrink after an infection.  That makes sense and fits with my history.  Yet I find myself still magically hoping that because I already have more than my share of health problems, it should somehow make me immune to other things, like cancer.  Moments like these remind me that the question shouldn’t be “why me?” but “why NOT me?”  What’s so special (and immune) about me?  I’m just another person, weak and vulnerable to the human condition.

But I’m also oh, so very, very strong.  Hey, I can forget about a bruised nerve and a sprained wrist!  Seriously, though, what we choose to focus on can deeply impact our experience of daily life.  I want to focus on all the neat stuff — and thereby recognize the really amazing, privileged, rich life I live in the midst of the oh so human travail.  Five trips to the clinic this week have been exhausting; those were also five trips in which I had the good fortune to experience caring and competent health care, care that is still out of reach of so many in the world today.

And the wonderful momentous event?  I won one of only two prizes in a lottery at the CPE event, a lottery benefiting Dr. E’s Guadalupe Foundation which supports literacy projects, especially for women.  I won a package consisting of a rare 1995 edition of Women Who Run with the Wolves, a truly beautiful book with embossed cover and signed (of course) by the author, a copy of CPE’s book The Gift of Story, a 6 CD set of her The Power of the Crone, 2 cards designed by Dr. E, and a tote bag that displays her quote “Friendly . . . but not tame.”  Truly, it all made me smile!  I was so excited to win!  AND, on top of it all, it will be a multiple win:  since I already own all of those treasures, I’ll be gifting these extra copies to others, along with the story that goes with them.  Happy day!

Dear Friends,

I can’t express how inspiring and deeply introspective the week with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes was.  As you may know, she has been teaching one or two “intensives” a year for the past three years, after a gap of more than a decade.  And I’ve been privileged to go to the three “Mysterium trainings”, plus this past week’s “Original Voice” trainings.  There is a group of people from around the world who have attended more than one of these trainings, and it feels like an ancestral “meeting of the tribe” when I see these women again and get caught up with their lives — or just wave at each other from across the room.  I receive a strong feeling of “not being alone” in the kind of work that I do that is much deeper than any kind of “networking”.  It feels deep, and very nurturing, the very opposite of competitive feelings that have sometimes accompanied my conference goings in the past.

Home from my pilgrimage, I brought home ideas that I will be sharing over the next few months  (truly, for the rest of my life).  I also brought home a miserable cold, and today, sprinkled with sneezes and coughs, I’m celebrating my birthday!  A pile of things unattended to is to my left, and to my right is the 3 page list of “to-do’s”.  Tomorrow I have a mammogram.  It only gets better!

Underneath, though, is a sense that was deeply confirmed while I was at the intensive:  that each of us has inestimable value to bring to the world, and that how we choose to live our lives, who we support in community and in the marketplace, what attitude and intention we return to a dozen or a hundred times a day — that this is where our power as humans reside to impact our world and ourselves for the good.  We — I—- am often in the grips of what is not in my control.  Even when it seems I have a plethora of choices (buying shampoo, for example), it’s often an illusion.  Yet I can choose how to respond to a question from my son; I can choose whether to whine about how unenergetic I feel; I can choose to celebrate what health I do have — that I can move and type and walk, rather than continuing to pine for the days when I was only a size 12.

Someone asked Dr. Estes how to age gracefully in a world where thinness is seen as almost a moral value and youth is idolized.  CPE’s response, after a long pause:  “I don’t live in that world.”

What world are you living in?  Is it the world you want to be living in?

With much love,

Cat

“The world as pure object is something that is not there.  It is not a reality outside us for which we exist. . . . It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own unique door.”  Thomas Merton, from Contemplation in a World of Action

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow I leave on pilgrimage.  I’m going to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ training on Original Voice, Storytelling:  “Rowing Songs for the Night-Sea Journey”.  Dr. Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves, is my beloved mentor, and this is a writing intensive which will focus on retrieving our archetypal and ancestral stories.  Sounds intense, and I’m properly awed, respectful, and in preparation.  

The intensive starts Thursday and ends next Tuesday, in Colorado, but I must travel in stages.  Tomorrow a dear friend will drive me to Great Falls, Montana where I will catch a plane to Denver on the following day, Wednesday.  I’ll spend the night in Boulder, CO, then on Thursday make my way to the event venue.  On the way home I’ll again spend an extra night in Colorado, then fly back to Great Falls and drive home (3 hours) after that.  All of this travel is certainly an ordeal, but doing it this way makes it possible for me to go.   It’s physically just too much for me to try to do all the traveling in one day.  As is, I’ll need lots of motion sickness pills plus extra pain meds.  (I’ve been to other trainings with Dr. Estes at the same venue, so I know of which I speak!)

So why do I do it?  It’s worth it.  In addition to whatever knowledge and wisdom I may get through the event, the entire process is a pilgrimage within to my deepest self, where I will hopefully be able to define anew how and why I choose to live as I do, within the responsibilities and limitations that are the givens in my life.   While there is much out of my control, I know that how I frame the story of my life, where I define my priorities and subsequently choose my intention that will suffuse all my actions, creates — at least partially — my experience.  This is one way I make meaning, and make soul.

Lately I’ve been caught up in writing educational program plans, doing far too many errands, and trying too hard to use all my 40% off coupons for Michael’s.  (With painting and art journaling, there’s always something else I think I need!)  The internet has swallowed too many hours of my life, and I’m not quite living the contemplative life that I know will allow me to thrive.

Sometimes you have to go away in order to find yourself at home again.  How do you find your self’s door into this living and self-creating mystery that Merton speaks of?

Note:  I won’t be posting next week.  I’ll be home on September 26 and I’ll connect with you after that.

Blessings to all of you in ways that you most need and can most recognize,

Cat

This post by fellow blogger Kristin Noelle is just too good to not share.  In it she talks about how we so often really want to do something, like take a course or start a practice, but then don’t follow through.  Why?  She helps us understand some of what might be going on:

http://www.kristinnoelle.com/2013/09/11/demystifying-the-want-to-did-do-gap/

I’ll be back on Monday with more.

With love,

Cat

My “Wall of Honour”

Dear friends,

It’s been an unexpected and busy year for me.  Healthwise, there have been no crises for me, but at the same time there has been no relief, either. Chronic pain is very fatiguing and as much as I have a full and meaningful life, I can never forget my physical body and its limitations, which are my limitations: we can talk about the body, mind, spirit, soul, but we are always and every minute one, an integral self.  We can’t live by separating ourselves into parts; we might focus on different areas, but as much as I might like, I cannot leave my body in bed while “I” go on with the life I might want.

Last fall I joined a weekly Centering Prayer group at our local retreat center.  Though most of our time is spent in silence, I did meet several contemplative and interesting people, and I loved it.  I will write more about Centering Prayer and how I find it an entrance into mystery unfolding in a future post.

I also continued in our twice monthly Book Club at the YWCA in town —- I love the women in the group even more than I love the books!

After Christmas, however, an online course that my son was taking conflicted timewise with both of those activities.  Since the course was on Euclid, a math and logic course, it was drier and more slowly paced than — well, just about anything else you could imagine.  I sat with Liberty as he met with the teacher and other students online, mostly for moral support in this slow and carefully paced experience for him.  But doing so kept me at home and occupied, rather than continuing with my own activities.

However, in January I started painting, and later, art journaling.  It has brought me so much happiness, and an entirely new language with which to express my inner symbolism.  I’ll write about that adventure later this week, as it deserves its own post.  The above photo shows my dining room wall (of about a month ago) with my paintings from this year.

So each day I will myself to move, smile, interact with love, and try to move forward just a little bit in my plans.  I’ve learned that with my health, as with guiding my son in his education,  it’s better not to measure progress in getting things done on or by a certain date, but to have a direction I’m moving into, with “next steps” well thought through and strategized, and then (to try) to be happy with overall forward movement over a week or so rather than counting the “two steps forward, one step back” of individual days.

With love,

Cat

Hello dear friends,

I’m so glad to be posting regularly again.  My family and I have gotten into a new rhythm, and with my son learning more independently, I have a daily dedicated time for writing and painting.  More about my painting and art journaling, my new love and unfolding mystery, later. . .

There are a few changes:  I’ve changed the title of the blog slightly, to “Mysteries Unfolding with Cat Charissage — Making Meaning, Making Soul,” from “Mysteries Unfolding: Making Meaning, Making Soul in the Midst of Chronic Challenge” .  This reflects my desire to broaden the scope of my writing, from primarily nourishing those of us with chronic challenges, to wanting to nourish, inform, and gently challenge all of us who are interested in creating deep and meaningful lives.  The “About” tab has also been edited to reflect these changes.  It’s there where I explain why I’m writing this blog in the first place. These two posts also explore my intentions:  Making Meaning, and Making Soul.

You can now access the blog directly through my name [catcharissage.com], so that you don’t have to remember the exact wording of the title. To more easily remember the spelling of my last name, remember that it’s one ‘r’ and two ‘s’, reflecting the 2 words “charis” and “sage” that together make up my surname.   (You may want to check out this post: “Who are you?  What, and how, are you called?“)

I hope to post approximately weekly, sharing the ideas, books, practices, and tools that have helped me, and many of those with whom I have worked, in Making Meaning, Making Soul.

I invite you to subscribe!  Feel free to ask questions, share your own resources, and respond to my posts.  Thank you for being here and reading this.

In time, I hope to have tabs which describe my work in the world of educating and counselling individuals and groups, and of mentoring those who wish to engage in independent study.

I’m so excited to be engaging with you in this way!

With warmth, and cool water on a hot day,

Cat

WILD GEESE  

I surprised myself that I haven’t written here in several weeks.  It’s been one of those demanding times in life, though, where lots of activities and commitments, family and otherwise, have all come within the same week or two.  Even good stress is still stress, and it takes its toll whether I will it to or not.

Even good stress is still stress:  overwealmth.  Overwealmth is the word I coined many years ago when, as director of the Sexual Assault Centre, our centre was the recipient of vastly increased funding.  It was the fulfillment of our dreams — but it darn near killed me!  It demanded an entirely different way of thinking, and it demanded huge public accountability as well.

I amaze myself with how I can keep on keeping on; at the same time I’m horrified by how much toll daily life can sometimes take (like now).  It’s difficult to discern when one should be in “heroic mode,” as I call it, and when one should put on the breaks, take time off, and just hibernate for a few hours or a few days.  Usually I try to pay attention to the physical symptoms:  do I need to take more medication just to get through the day, am I sleeping well, or sleeping enough, do I feel like I could burst into tears at any moment?

Methinks it’s time to become a bear for a few days.  Bears hibernate, take care of themselves, take care of their offspring.  And they sleep — to survive.

From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard:

“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.  The surface of mystery is not smooth, any more than the planet is smooth; not even a single hydrogen atom is smooth, let alone a pine.  Nor does it fit together. . .

“The question from agnosticism is, who turned on the lights?  The question from faith is, whatever for?”