Tick ... Tick ... Tick!

It's almost here.

After months of toil and trouble, it looked like it would be here in August.

But, things take time ... September, October and November dropped off the calendar like fall leaves.

December got sidetracked by holidays and bureaucracy.

Now, it's 2012 and it's almost here.

Patience is a virtue.

Virtue is getting thinner.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe.

Maybe???

Free Art Supplies

While schools continue to cut back art programs and the availability of art supplies, Lisa Ambler started a non-profit organization in Denver that has given art supplies to over 100,000 children in 80 countries.  She inspires me.

I Dream - Two Years Ago Challenge

Here's a challenge for all you bloggers ... find your post from two years ago and repost it.  Think about where you were then in connection to where you are now.  


This was my post on January 11, 2010 ... a poem that came after a hike into the Rockies with a friend.  This image of life struggling forth from hard rock moved me.  My life felt like that back then ... like little was supporting my growth but yet I was growing.  I am so grateful for all the miracles that happened in the past two years.

I Dream

"If one is lucky, a single fantasy can totally transform a million realities." 
-- Maya Angelou

I Dream

I dream of being.
I dream my roots deep down into the impervious,
sun-warmed granite where their tendrils drill into
the tiny cracks and crevices where life hums.

I dream of truth.
I dream my dark spine rising upward
into the harmony of sun and earth and rain and wind
until it sings one clear note of an ancient melody.

I dream of love.
I dream my green needles into the crystal air
dancing light beams back to the sun
in a forever rainbow waiting simply for rain.

I dream of death.
I dream my shadow across the lichen children
reaching outward further, further each hour
stretching beyond, yearning ... yearning for ...

Unexpected Gifts

One part of my annual review process is looking at last year's intentions to see what happened and what didn't.  It reminds me of the psychic predictions that used to be part of the tabloids (and may be still).  I used to always buy the beginning-of-the-year-prediction issue and save it till the following year to see how many "hits" there were.  As you might guess, there were darn few.  

It seems to be the same with my intentions.  At the beginning of 2011, I made an intention map of things I wanted to "Learn," "See," "Do/Create," "Experience," and "Contribute."  I remember really liking the categories and how succinctly I could put so many intentions into such a small space.  I was very specific about my intentions in each category.  Here are my results:

• Learn -- 5 specifics ... 1 Yes, 4 No
• See -- 8 specifics ... 2 Yes, 6 No
• Do/Create -- 7 specifics ... 2 Yes (if I stretch a bit), 5 No
• Experience -- 9 specifics ... 6 Yes, 3 No   ... these "specifics" were more general
• Contribute -- 5 specifics ... 1 sort of 2, 3 No

This doesn't look like a very good track record so I decided to look at the specifics to see which ones would still be on my list for this year and discovered that a whole lot of them apparently just didn't have much energy behind them because they quickly dropped away.  What really surprised me was when I made a map of the unexpected gifts of the year and came up with 13 things I couldn't even have contemplated at the beginning of the year.

Some conclusions I have from all of this are:

1. Perhaps my intentions were too specific and too time-bound.  They were more "bucket list" kinds of things.
2. I am not the same person today that I was a year ago and will probably be a different person still a year from now. 
3. Setting intentions is a worthwhile activity, but I need to stay open to the unexpected gifts that come my way and flexible enough to change directions when I recognize a new path.

So, how do you feel about setting intentions?  Do they work for you?

Doing Changes Things

A new year is like a magical chest filled with things unseen and, in a quantum physics way, affected by our thoughts about it and our processes of observing each day as it slips through the measured opening.  I love the abundance of this time of the year as it always seems so pregnant with possibilities.

My annual ritual of planning is underway ... choosing my words for the year (check), collaging the opening pages of my journal with inspiring images (check), decorating the outside of the journal (today's task), making a calendar list of coming attractions (in process), weaving together the strands of "doing" into a ribbon that will gently and colorfully guide me along the path of what I truly value (also in process).

One of my favorite activities during this process is to flip through previous journals, and a couple of days ago I found the three words that make up the title of this post:  doing changes things.  At first I skipped past them as a "duh."  However, they kept coming back to me as I thought of things I had done in the past that changed things, some that changed everything.  And, then it hit me:  what I am doing right now and in the coming days will change things.  Our actions are our thoughts, beliefs, hopes and dreams made manifest.  

Our actions are the future being born.  Each action is a step down a path, a path that shifts slightly with each step.

It makes me want to take a little more time in planning my actions for the year and to be a little more careful of my actions in each moment. It makes me want to focus carefully on what I want so that my focus guides my steps.  And, it makes me willing to take a little more time making sure I'm clear about my values and what I truly want.

Gandhi put these thoughts into a more elegant statement:

Your beliefs become your thoughts

Your thoughts become your words

Your words become your actions

Your actions become your habits

Your habits become your values

Your values become your destiny.

May your magical chest of 2012 be filled actions that lead to a destiny of joy and fulfillment.

Happy Birthday Sid Parnes and George Washington Carver

What a day of creativity this is!  Two great creative souls were born on this day

Dr. Sidney J. Parnes (born 90 years ago today) is a retired professor at Buffalo State College (located in Buffalo, New York) and the co-founder of the International Center for Studies in Creativity. The Center is housed within [[Buffalo State College], one of the only places in the world that offers a Masters of Science degree in Creativity.  He is the gentle and guiding force behind CPSI, one of the most remarkable gatherings of creative souls on the planet and the longest-running international creativity conference in existence.

This video explains the creative problem solving process developed by Dr. Parnes and Alex Osborn.

George Washington Carver who was born on this day in 1864, perhaps into slavery, is acknowledged as one of the most creative and inventive minds of the scientific world.  His reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans andsweet potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life.  In 1941, Time magazine called him a "black Leonardo."

There is a national monument dedicated to Carver at his birthplace in Diamond, Missouri.

How fortunate we are all that these men dedicated their lives to creativity.

Words for the Year

Every year I pick a word (sometimes two) as my talisman for the year.  I decorate a plain, black 9"x12" journal with the words and as much glitter glue and paint as I can pile on it.  It's a tradition started years ago when I lived in Santa Barbara and discovered my first word while driving through a residential area. When I spotted an old, rusted RV with the word "Jubilation" painted across the back, I fell in love with the word and chose it as my first journal word.  Or, perhaps, it chose me.

Usually I start trying to find my word in mid-December and have time to contemplate several words before settling in to one or two.  This year, I've been moving too fast for the past several weeks to think about my word. So I made a date with myself today and thought I'd use this post to focus my attention.

Now I'm sitting here with my journals circling me as I think about 2012, a leap year, and what words call to me.  I often note words in the back of my journal so I'm flipping through the old ones and the following possibilities appear:

• Exuberance -- joyous vitality
• Reflection -- being a clear mirror of spirit and joy
• Quest -- an adventurous seeking for something of value - I like the connection to question
• Mandala -- a symbol of sacred peace and the reunification of self
• Zest -- passion for life
• Dayenu -- Hebrew -- it would have been enough

After much tea and thought, the choices for words to guide me during 2012 are "quest" because I want to continue learning, exploring, seeking new experiences that help me better understand the world and myself ... and "dayenu" because I want to remember every day how overwhelmingly grateful I am for all that I have been given and to remember that even a fraction of it would have been enough and that I do not need more.  There seems to be a lovely tension between these two words.

FYI: here are the words for the past few years ... and if you decide to choose a word or words, I'd love to know what yours are.

• 2011 - Temenos, sacred space. Carl Jung used this same word to refer to the inner space deep within us where soul-making takes place.  Hallelujah -- as in the words from Leonard Cohen's song, "nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!
• 2010 - Beauty and Equanimity (complete with a mindmap of things that nourish equanimity)
• 2009 - Miksang (Tibetan for "good eye" and a photography process that involves a deeper way of seeing, and Abbondanza - joyful abundance
• 2008 - Chrysalis -- a place of deep transformation which cannot be seen until it emerges
• 2007 - Autopoiesis -- continually re-creating and organizing self in relationship to surroundings
• 2006 - Joy and Dreamway ... the title of a book by Robert Genn
• 2005 - Emergence
• 2004 - Querencia - a calm and quiet, yet powerful, place of safety