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Crafting with Clay...

10/9/2018

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Last week my friend Margie took me to her clay studio to make some pottery. This is a new adventure for me and I was excited to be invited to play in the clay. Before you get too impressed, she is a professional potter and has created molds for bowls and plates to help make the process easier. I have only once experienced trying to create something from a glob of “mud” stuck on a spinning wheel and discovered it is a VERY difficult thing to do. It is certainly not as easy as it looks in the movie “Ghost” with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. NOT in the least! In this case because of her molds Margie convinced me that this would be “easy peezy”. It was nice of her to have such confidence in my skills but seriously I had my doubts.

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D-I-V-O-R-C-E...

6/20/2017

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When I was a young girl, my brother enjoyed Country Western music and one of his favorite artists was Tammy Wynette. I was a fan but I distinctly remember one of her songs called, D-I-V-O-R-C-E in which she sang about how her small son, J-o-e would be affected by his parent’s divorce. The lyrics that stand out to me are these:
 
Watch him smile, he thinks it Christmas
Or his 5th Birthday
And he thinks C-U-S-T-O-D-Y spells fun or play
I spell out all the hurtin' words
And turn my head when I speak
'Cause I can't spell away this hurt
That's drippin' down my cheek
.*


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Anyone Out There?...

6/14/2017

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It has been a real struggle for me to decide what to write this week.  Lately, it feels like so many people are experiencing a lot of pain and anxiety. People are struggling with an unexpected cancer diagnosis, the death of a parent, a failing marriage, and a CAT scan that shows a brain tumor. This past weekend, a tornado ripped through the farming community leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. There is ongoing mourning and outrage for victims of bombings that kill fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers. Many of us are feeling anxious about the political leaders worldwide who are trying to establish the governing power of their nations. All of this pain, fear and angst has touched my spirit and at times given me a feeling of hopelessness. Where is hope to be found in these feelings of doubt and helplessness?


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United...

1/31/2017

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With all of the chaos of the past political cycle, I will admit to feeling some anxiety about the divisiveness in the country regarding race, sexuality and religion. There have been debates, protests and an ongoing dialogue of hate and violence being spewed from both sides of the aisle. There are conversations that are dividing people even on social media that has lead to Facebook friends un-friending each other because of differing opinions. As Americans, we fully embrace the rights afforded to us, ALL OF US, under the Constitution, and by these principles we are all different but equal under the law. Knowing that we live in a great country with freedom to speak up for what we believe, the freedom to practice religion without any threat as well as the freedom to cast our votes for the candidate of our choosing should be enough to unite us rather than divide us. I have grown weary of the disagreements, debates and meanness of some of the rhetoric that I hear daily so I have been thinking a lot about unity and how people like you and me can change our behavior and attitudes to help ease the divisions and offer hope and peace.


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What's Your Story?...

1/17/2017

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There is nothing better than a good story especially when the storyteller captures our imagination with his or her words and expressions. I love to listen to personal stories. When I was young, my family would gather on Sundays and reminisce about our teenage experiences. I was the youngest of 12 children so I didn’t say much but I listened with a bit of shock and awe at some of the stories my brothers told about their escapades. I am pretty sure that some of their stories were embellished a bit and came as a surprise to the ears that were listening, including my parents. They were an adventurous bunch and I listened with rapt attention to their tales of high speed, devilish pranks and some really clever wit. I was enamored with their words and maybe a little naïve about believing some of their antics. It was a fun time.

Have you ever thought about your own story and how it has shaped your identity? What does your story reveal about the choices you have made in your life? Yesterday, I visited the Salvador Dali Museum and listened to the docent describe some of the history behind Dali’s paintings. He was undeniably talented even though his art is somewhat bizarre and “interesting” to say the least. Each canvas is rich in color and cleverly crafted to tell his life story without the need for words. One of the largest paintings in the collection is named, A Portrait of My Dead Brother, which honors his dead brother. The portrait is full of elements that point to the struggle Dali had with his dead brother. The man in the painting, who bears a striking resemblance to Charles Lindberg, was an adult version of the first and eldest Salvador Dali, who died at the age of 2-years-old.  The second son, Salvador Dali, the artist, was born a year after his brother’s death.  Dali spent his entire life feeling like he was a replacement child for his lost sibling. I understand that it was a common occurrence for parents to give the deceased child’s name to their next child. Ironically, this practice not only affected Dali but also was the case for another famous artist, Vincent Van Gogh. Both men lived with feelings of unworthiness and throughout their lives struggling to be known in their own right and not be defined by their dead brothers. Dali’s art is intentionally rebellious, bizarre, and at times disrespectful and defiant in appearance. Many of his paintings illustrate his challenges with family, his difficult relationship with his father, his questions about God and his issues with religious authority. In so many ways, his art was pure genius.
 
Another artist on display at the museum was the Mexican artist, Frida Kahloe, who was known for her self-portraits, her passionate nature and her bold use of vibrant colors. Frida’s early life was also filled with the pain as she suffered from polio at the age of 6 years, which affected her walk. At the age of 18 years, she was involved in a terrible bus accident, which left her with a severely broken body. Unbelievably, in her 47 years of life, she endured 34 surgeries to repair her brokenness.  As a student, she intended to focus on medicine, however after the bus accident, and being confined to a bed for many months, she began to develop her artistic abilities through painting.  She lived a physically and emotionally painful life, spending a good portion of her life in a hospital bed recovering from surgery.  On a personal level, she was entangled in a very public tumultuous relationship with her artistic husband. When you look into the eyes of her self-portraits, you can see real pain, sadness and resilience. Her paintings are splashed with bold, rich colors that shout her story of strength and power in such a way that words could not.
 
What I appreciate about these two artists is their willingness to give us a glimpse into their somewhat tortured lives. I wonder if fear drove them to paint with such fierceness and extraordinary intuition of their inner pain. As the story goes, Dali had a constant fear that he would be known only as a replacement for his brother. Did fear and sadness drive Frida to paint her self-portraits in order to show the world her pain? Near one of her paintings, this was written, “I paint my self-portraits because I am so often alone and because I am the person I know best.” Both Dali and Frida’s artwork is so dramatic, intense and full of emotion that I wonder if they ever found what they were looking for hidden in their painted stories.
 
Spending the afternoon looking into the lives of Dali and Frida has me contemplating my own story. What would my life look like in pictures? How is my life defined by my choices and actions? While I love art, I am not blessed with the skill to paint my life on a canvas. But wait, a friend pointed out to me that my life started as a blank canvas and with each new experience, struggle, pain, joy, peace or even dream, new colors are added to my picture. My life is a developing story that is rich in creative design and exploding with vibrant colors. Some of those colors even reflect those Sunday afternoon chats with my mischievous brothers. What is your story?
 

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Free to Soar...

11/14/2016

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Recently my daughter, Kelly, moved to Houston, TX to begin a new chapter in her career with the company that she has worked with for years. This past weekend, I flew to Texas to help her get settled into her new home. My girls and I have an understanding that when they move, I will do my very best to help them unpack and decorate their new living space. I like new beginnings especially when it comes to opportunities for my girls.


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Art of Repairing Brokenness

11/1/2016

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Last week my friends and I were discussing the line between brokenness and becoming whole. The word “broken” has been used especially in faith-based circles to describe the hurts, pain, betrayals and really any issues that have affected our lives negatively. I can very easily identify with how the word sometimes describes a broken spirit, broken heart, broken confidence and so on. We are all broken at some point in our lives and we can even go in and out of those times of struggle in our lives. So when my friend Lou looked at me and said, “You are whole” it caught me off guard. He said it twice as he looked me straight in the eyes. What did wholeness or being made whole really look like? Honestly I haven’t given much thought about how the spirit of brokenness is mended and is once again restored to full capacity. Yes I have spent quite a bit of time, in the recent years, identifying the broken pieces of my past experiences and have worked to rewrite my story, however I just haven’t thought about fixing all of those pieces to make them whole. 


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Boldly Defend the Littlest Among Us...

8/22/2016

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This week has been a tough week for me as a parent because of the horrific news of the ongoing violence in Aleppo Syria and domestic violence within families here in the United States. There are many more examples of violence and abuse but the two stories that caught my attention this week were especially poignant. The first is a little boy who was pulled out of his home after it has been bombed in Aleppo, Syria. His family survived but the video of the little boy sitting alone in the emergency vehicle just breaks my heart. You can see that he is in shock, as his expression never changes. The only movement is his hand reaching up to rub his eye and when he does he encounters the blood on his face. He then looks at his hand and sees the blood, which he tries to rub the blood off his hand onto the seat underneath him. He doesn’t cry out in pain or in fear, he just sits looking at the chaos going on around him. His face will haunt me for a long time.


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Rewrite Your Story…

8/15/2016

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I love, love, love the Olympics!! I am partial to the summer events more than winter however I think they are all just grand.  Each sport has its own heroes and stories of how each athlete trained and trained and trained to qualify for the games. The two weeks of competition begins with the opening ceremonies, which are full of color, explosive fireworks as well as a sampling of the culture unique to the host country.  Then finally the long awaited moment or should I say hours in which the athletes from each participating country enters the arena dressed in the splendor of patriotism as they are led by their country’s flag. To top it off, if you are able to stay awake through all of that, the Olympic flag is carried in and hung as the crowd anticipates the entry of the torch.  The flame has traveled from Greece and carried for thousands of miles, through many countries, cities and towns to it’s final resting place at the games.  The crowd finally gets their first glimpse of the torchbearer who lights a large caldron that will house the flame until the games are finished. This is all so exciting!


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Pieces...

2/29/2016

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Recently on American Idol, Kelly Clarkson performed her new song “Piece by Piece,”* which describes a little girl watching her father walking away from a relationship with her. Towards the end of her performance, Clarkson became quite emotional, which touched the lives of the audience and many of the viewers watching the televised show. Her story resonates with the lives of many of her listeners as they too have watched a parent walk away leaving them with feelings of unworthiness and confusion.


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