Conversations with Spirit...prayers for communities of faith

I am in the midst of a search process for me next call as a Pastor and spiritual director.  The final piece of writing for my ministerial profile (resume) was an invitation to offer a blessing or prayer for the communities of faith that would be looking at me.  What would I like to offer these communities as they seek their new pastor? 

Being a creative, I engaged in this prayer with chalk pastels and paper.  I would term this conversation, Conversation with Jesus and Spirit, done with the support of Land.  

I went praying and asking for an image for me as Pastor: one that would communicate through color, shape, form, vibration, energy who I am as Pastor.  This was deep soul work as I engaged the drawing, the prayer, the Conversation with Jesus.  

I can not explain what each drawing means.  I do know that when I look at them I know that is me as Pastor; me as spiritual director; Me.  I share them now with all of you as I seek my next Pastoral Call to me next community of faith.

I share one more drawing: this one a prayer for what future ministry will look and feel like for me.  This drawing captures the vibration of what I hope will come forth as I enter into a new call with a new community of faith.  It excites me!  

As I drew I felt happiness, joy, love: like Spirit offering a deep blessing of hope for our work together.

For the communities of faith who are considering and engaging in conversation with me:  this is my prayer for you!  May Spirit bring forth such a vision and experience of ministry in your midst.

As you discern whether or not to call me, to engage with me in ministry; feel deeply into these images.  What do the images evoke in you?  What emotions, hopes, dreams come up as you take them in?  What is the invitation Spirit has for you as you engage the images?

These Conversations with Jesus and Spirit have been powerful for me and I hope you also find that powerful, evoking, energizing and healing!

May Spirit and Jesus bring us together in a beautiful expression of ministry!!

Blessed Be.

The healing power of paint...

I have not felt well today.  I sat in an all day mandatory training.  As I sat through the training my neck was getting tighter.  I could feel pre-migraine symptoms arising.  I was more and more tired.  Just yuck — physically and energetically!!!

When I got home I thought all I would be doing was taking some serious pain meds and heading for bed, hoping to feel better tomorrow.

But…

As I walked by my studio (back room) I felt an invitation.  Before I knew it I had picked up glitter paint and began to work on my painting.

Slowly I began to feel better.

The real healing, the good-bye total migraine oriented symptoms, that was the brown.  I have no idea what brown is in this painting. I do not need to know.  All I know is that somehow as I painted a huge brown arrow across the painting my body released something huge and yucky.

My upper neck is still tender.  But I do not fear the migraine.  I am more awake and alert.  More grounded.  Less weight on my shoulders.  Less yuck in me!

There is a healing quality in painting.  Try it sometime…

Watching the Clouds go by...

I remember when I was a child I used to lay in the grass with a friend, stare up at the sky and watch the clouds.  We would stare at those clouds allowing our imaginations to discern their shape: a dog or a dragon.  We would share it with each other, telling the other all the details of the dragon from head to toe, telling the dragon’s story.  We would be lost in the magic and mystery of the element of Air!  Those were good times!!!

While I was awaiting a friend’s arrival on Saturday I decided to lay down in the grass outside my apartment.  I looked up at these beautiful clouds and my childhood memories began to run through my head.  I attempted to allow my imagination to tell me what the clouds were.  But that was not the invitation this time.

Air was inviting me to open my heart to a deeply spiritual experience.  As I watched the clouds, my heart was captured by their merging.  Two clouds were meeting right above my head and becoming ONE.  I watched:

The two clouds did not bang into each other forcing an explosion and uniting.  One reached out tenderly, tenatively to the other.  The other responded in the same tender manner.  They moved slowly and equally toward each other.  They began to blur at the edges, mixing their uniqueness together into something totally new, allowing that ONENESS to continue to develop, grow, deepen, transform.  MAGIC and MYSTERY right above me!!!

I heard an invitation to receive this gift deep in my heart, body, soul, spirit.  I opened myself to take in this gentle loving vibration and Energy knowing that this Mystical Merging Energy will bring me more and more into Unity with the Sacred!!!

I invite you to allow yourself to get lost in the magic and mystery of Air, Water, Earth and Fire.  Allow the Elements to intertwine into your being an experience of Magic and Mystery.  

We all need a little Magic and Mystery in our lives!!!

Pondering a theme song...

One of my guilty pleasures is to binge watch TV shows on Netflix.  Recently I have revisited Ally McBeal, the TV show that got me through seminary.  This week I watched the episode where Alley goes to see a therapist and the therapist asks her to come up with a theme song!

I began to ponder, “What would my theme song be?”

After much dancing and singing, The Yellow Brick Road by lyoeka

Soho’s Goddess (mostly the refrain) came in a close second.  It was so hard to decide!

What is yours?

Being the Red Tulip

I was walking down the street the other day and was captured by a row of beautiful yellow tulips all the way up both sides of a walkway.  Then I noticed what really captured me:  there was one lone RED tulip right smack in the middle of all the yellow ones!  It stood strong, vibrant, bright, fabulous!!!

I have been contemplating that red tulip all week!

In a sense, I have always been that red tulip in the midst of yellow tulips — different than those around me, struggling/wanting to be ‘part of a group.”  I have come at this experience from the negative.

This week, as I sat with this particular red tulip I began to redefine my perspective — I began to experience the positive.  Being the red tulip is awesome!  It is fabulous!  That tulip is the most beautiful, vibrant one along the path.  That tulip is strong and bold — daring to grow right in the midst of adversity — right where it ‘doesn’t belong.’  

There is a defiant and passionate quality about Her as she states boldly to the world:  I belong here!

She grows where she wants to grow, is who she is, makes no apologies for it, and shines her beauty and love to all around her!  She radiates fabulousness!!!

This week, I am putting on my Red Tulip self.  

How about you?

Following the Energy...a day in my studio

I spent the day today in and out of my studio working on my painting.  I have been working on this piece for weeks.  This week I have been driven by a deep internal desire to be in my studio working on Her, finishing Her.  

Late this morning, after taking a break, I walked back into the studio and started talking to the painting.  I picked up the yarn I was finger knitting — white sparkly yarn.  I looked at the long white finger-knitted strand that hung across the painting.  I remember putting it there and wondering why it was going where it was going.  I traced it with my eye from the ‘arm of Owl’ to the ‘Eye of my Portal’  and then spoke what arose in my heart, “I’m knitting and weaving together my Vision.”  

That hit deep — deep into my Soul.  My Heart and Soul awoke with a start!!!  I was called into my Studio to knit and weave my Vision for my Spirituality and Healing Center!!!  I had been knitting it all morning.

Now I turned my attention intentionally to knitting and weaving this Vision.  I let my mind go blank.  I sank into my Heart.  In silence I knitted strands of prayers.  I wove them together creating a ‘spider web’ shining forth from ‘Owl’s arm.’

Each color brought a different energy — unnamed, deep in my Soul — a desire, a hope, a feeling, a healing.  It was when I picked up the deep green yarn and began to finger knit it into a prayer strand that I felt a specific shock of Energy — this is the Heart of the Heart, the Root of the Root.  The green is the Heart of my desire — dream — Center.  Once that was woven in, the Web was complete!

The painting done!

What needed releasing released.  What needed bringing forth, brought forth.  

Now I allow for the vibration of this powerful painting to integrate Herself into my being.  I open my Heart to absorb all of Her.  

I begin my dream! 

Opening the Door Wide

This morning I awoke to Sun shining  brightly into my Studio in my back room. I had been in there late into the night working on my painting, cutting out hearts, creating heart feathers for Owl.  I walked into my Studio excited to see Owl’s new look in the sunlight.  

I was not ready for what would happen.

The Sun and Owl invited me to take a risk — a huge risk.  There I stood before my painting wanting to stare at the brightness of Owl’s new garb.  What I stared at was the pink tissue paper door in the middle of the painting.  

A few weeks ago, while on retreat, I had painted a black door.  Then I had slashed that door out, removing a huge layer a stuff that needed to be shed from my life, from my Heart, from my Energy, from ME.  The empty door was just too much for me to take in.  I felt naked, unprotected.  I needed a DOOR.

Up went the bright pink tissue paper.  It was a thin more malleable door.  In the sunlight, I could see through it.  That bright florescent pink has become a deep part of my being.  I felt protected.  The panic that was in my heart when there was no door was gone.  I was breathing deeply again.

This morning, I stood before the painting being invited to remove that thin pink tissue paper  door.  OPEN completely to this new calling in my life.  OPEN completely to Spirit.  OPEN completely to ME.

I walked away.  I said no.  But that invitation from Sun and Owl would not leave me.  I tried to leave my house and go to work, but found myself back in my studio removing the pink tissue paper. 

As I stood looking at the empty door and the pink on the floor, I felt raw.  I felt that panic inside my body again.  I felt breathe in my Heart.  I breathed into my Heart, trusting that She knows what She is doing.  I stood in silence and awe absorbing this WIDE OPENNESS.

I have been walking around with this vibration of WIDE OPENNESS resonating through my body and soul.  The panic is lessening as the day goes.  I am becoming more attuned to WIDE OPEN and beginning to wonder what Gift it will bring into my life.

Every time I engage this discipline of Intuitive Painting from my Heart, I receive deep healing and blessing.  Through paint and paper  I release what no longer serves me so that I can blossom into new colors, new shapes, new callings, new invitations.  I learn so much more about my Heart, my True Self, about WHO I am and HOW I am being invited to be in this world.

I am grateful that BrushHeart: Intuitive Painting (www.brushheart.com) and Damini Celebre came into my life inviting me to open to my Creative Self, heal and grow.