Giving up? Or merely letting go?

We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. –Joseph Campbell

A Song of What Will Be

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/a-song-of-what-will-be-lianne-schneider.html

 
Daniell Koepke, founder of the Internal Acceptance Movement, speaks of the wide gap between what it means to give up and what it means to let go, to accept things as they are. She says, "There is a big difference between giving up and letting go. Giving up means selling yourself short. It means allowing fear and struggle to limit your opportunities and keep you stuck. Letting go means freeing yourself from something that is no longer serving you. Giving up reduces your life. Letting go expands it. Giving up is imprisoning. Letting go is liberation. Giving up is self-defeat. Letting go is self-care."

We've probably all struggled at some time or another with this difference and often our unwillingness to let go is a sign that we see that act as giving up, as failing to live up to our own standards or promises. We don't see letting go as an opportunity to change for the better or to move on to a greater sense of self-worth or happier relationships. Particularly when it comes to relationships, we have a tendency to cling to the past, even to romanticize or idealize them. Letting go of someone we have loved intensely, someone WE chose, seems both an admission of failure and a betrayal of a love we promised would be everlasting. Too often, even when someone breaks our hearts, we just cannot make ourselves let go. We lie to ourselves, in fact, calling our determination to stick it out even when the relationship is brutally demeaning an act of hope. 

I've watched friends hold on to relationships that were abusive, destructive and completely unfulfilling. I've stayed with relationships myself that totally undermined my self-esteem, convinced me that I was not "good enough" to merit a fully loving and intimate relationship. I've rationalized the choice to stay as the result of how I was raised, the way my Church defines love as all giving and no getting, self-sacrifice, and loving without expectations. To expect something from another is selfish love - or so I was led to believe. I've continued to love through hurt after hurt and comforted myself with the idea that I was a person of my word, faithful to my promises. That's all well and good but cold comfort when all one has at the end of the day - or a life - is a chimera.

But through all that I've learned a lot of valuable lessons and I hear the same thing from others who have finally been able to let go of the past - whether it involves a relationship, a career failure, a loss of a friend or loved one, a pet, or even one's long lost youth. Says American Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, "To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit." To let go is to release our spirit to soar and dive, to find its own heights and depths. To let go is to believe in a future that is "more." To let go is to forgive not only the "other" to which we cling, but ourselves for not having the courage to untie the ropes that have bound us to the past.

So it's important not to confuse giving up - on a dream, a relationship, a goal - with letting go and moving on to what is still possible, to becoming who we were meant to be. While this post is primarily about relationships, the same truth applies to our efforts in other areas of life too - our art, our careers, our lifestyle and health choices. We can't keep repeating the strategies of the past that did not work and expect them to work the next time! Don't give up - but do let go of what is not serving you. When I first tried to take this lesson to heart and put it into practice, I wrote this poem to express my willingness to finally "let go."

A song of what will be.

I released the anchors around a heart

that long tied me to a clouded past,

to heartache, need or suffering,

unknotted sturdy ropes that bound me

to a dock of mournful memories.

I've felt the churning chaos of life's storms,

wild whitecaps of my search for self,

endured those times I was becalmed,

adrift in open ocean without breeze

or sight of islands of safe refuge.

But now, as if by heaven's gift

I feel the westerlies begin to rise,

to clear ghostly cobwebs from the deck;

winds fill white sails to billowing,

and give gentle lift to my silvered hair.

I see myself standing at the helm

with new confidence and clarity,

a bright vision in my eager eyes

of inspiring ports of call to find

before life's journey ever ends.

With prayers to some universal source

as I set my course for parts unknown,

I imagine new horizons I will find

and give thanks for all my future joys.

The Gift of Failure

“There is no such thing as failure — failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”

Oprah Winfrey

Ride the Peace Train

One of my favorite blogs I follow religiously is a blog called "Brain Pickings" - a site I only discovered because a dear friend pointed me in that direction. The author, Maria Popova, is articulate, extremely well-read, refreshingly insightful and she always writes on art and literature with such a perfect sense of what is important in the work she's reviewing.  The author herself calls Brain Pickings a "weekly interestingness digest." 

and she'd be right. I've yet to scroll through the Sunday edition without getting caught up in the valuable lessons she shares through the work, writing and art of others, not to mention her own remarkably astute commentary. 

A few weeks ago, I marked an article to read later and then, as often happens, forgot about it in the crush of springtime activities - Easter, family visits, my Mom's 90th birthday, etc. But once I had a brief moment to go back to the file, I discovered this marvelous gem amidst all the other great articles on the Blog. It's an article on a subject we've probably all encountered but often neglected to dig into - failure. We avoid the topic because it has negative connotations, particularly in a society where it's often "winner take all" and "dog eat dog." Even our television shows express clearly how we feel about this subject - "Failure is not an option." 

We reject it because it has negative associations for us - failing damages our self-esteem, destroys our dreams, labels us as less than worthy. Or does it? As this marvelous quote above from Oprah Winfrey suggests, there are a gazillion lessons in failure and as many treasures to be found in those lessons that we would not learn any other way. It IS why and how we change direction and find another way around what seem to be insurmountable obstacles. There really could be no true success without a willingness and a capacity to accept what failure has to teach us. 

Popova's blog on the Gift of Failure comes from the title of a book by Sarah Lewis - 

The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery.  Lewis is the former curator of the Tate Modern Gallery and MoMA and a member of President Obama's Arts Policy Committee. In her book, she uses the example of Thomas Edison who tried endlessly to create a working lightbulb and said of his efforts, "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work." I think there are so many valuable lessons that Popova and Lewis have explored that I'd like to turn you on to the blog site with this introduction: 

Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Crucial Difference Between Success and Mastery

You  won't  be  sorry  that  you  were  introduced  to  this  wonderful  online  source  of  profound ideas  and  insight guarantee.

Speaking of failure, however, I wonder if you noticed that there is no link beneath my own artwork above. That's because it's not posted on any of my sites yet - and it may not ever be. I've reworked this piece 100 times - starting with a simple photograph that was small and not terribly good to begin with. But I loved the composition of the piece and I was listening to Cat Stevens singing Peace Train one night and decided to try to do something with this. I consider this work a "failure" in the sense that I've not managed to achieve what I hoped with it - it doesn't "deliver" the feeling I wanted it to. But each reworking teaches me something new about digital art and painting and that's invaluable to me for the future. I may not ever finish this work to my satisfaction but what I've learned by failing to do it has stood me in very good stead in other works. 

My beautiful Mom is 90!!!

“The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole,but true beauty in a Woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she knows.

And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows.” 

― Audrey Hepburn

Luella Mary Kendall - Lorne F. LeMieux

August 31, 1943

Today, my beloved mother celebrates her 90th birthday and I'm so incredibly happy to have her with us still. I remember a psychic once telling her she'd live to be 92 and that upset her...she didn't want to live that long, she said. But here she is - still in relatively good health, enduring the aches and pains of later years with barely a complaint, still driving occasionally, cooking, and working daily on the computer to complete the most expansive family tree you could imagine!

For all the poetry I've written, including pieces about my children, my spouse, friends, my siblings...I've never written one about my mother. I just never could find the words to express everything I feel for her - not just boundless love and affection, but admiration, respect and sometimes a tiny bit of envy, if you must know. She is, as you can see, a beautiful woman, and she honestly has only grown more beautiful with age.  Her hair is pure silver, like her dad's, and naturally so - no tints or toners. Her eyes are still a rich dark brown and are alight with the contentment she has always expressed at being exactly who she wanted to be her entire life - wife, mother, homemaker. And that last...home-maker...that is exactly who and what she is. 

She made our home home - not just comfortable and welcoming but a place where love was made visible in every little touch...in her knitting, the small personal collectibles that were scattered throughout the house, the books -leather bound and gold embossed - that are everywhere and for which she personally made the decorative bookshelves that hold them. She laid the floors, (seriously - pegged pine floors), she laid the stones for the fireplace, the stairway, the living room wall. Every inch of this house, which now belongs to me, speaks her name and holds the precious memories of all our times together. 

Her friends think that there is no one in the world like her - and they'd be right. There isn't. I have always said that my mother was the perfect "lady." She never raises her voice, is never ever vulgar, wouldn't swear if her life depended on it, doesn't whistle (not ladylike), and every single morning of her life, she dresses as if someone special is coming to visit - including jewelry - some necklace or broach that is special to her, a gift from her Dad or my Dad or one of us children. She's never owned a pair of jeans and wouldn't be caught dead in them! 

When I was in high school the boy I was madly in love with (and truly I was and stayed in love with him until after he died in an automobile accident on his way to ask my Dad if he could marry me)...that boy/man used to tease me and say he loved me because he adored my mother and the old saying was if you want to know what your wife will be like, just look at her mother. She adored him right back - they had art and music in common and he would come and visit with her often while I was away at college. That's where my touch of envy came in - I sometimes thought he really would have preferred my mother had he been older! 

Sadly, I am not like my mother though all my life I aspired to be as wonderful a person as she is. She was the center of my father's world until the day he died - I don't think he even realized any other woman existed. Oddly, in a way, that is true for my brothers as well - they adore her and everything we all do is somehow measured against whether Mom would like it or be upset by it. 

I dedicated my second book of poetry to my mother with these words:

"To my mother, Luella Kendall LeMieux, whose indefatigable spirit has been my guiding light and whose encouragement and faith in me has made all things possible."

I might add that her personal sense of integrity has been a model for me my entire life and in that respect, at least, I hope I begin to measure up to the woman who is still and will always be the heart of my home and the most beautiful person I know. 

We've stretched the celebrations over a three week period so as not to overtire her and there's still more to come. Just another day, she's says..."Don't make such a fuss!" If we could, we'd give you the moon - just as Dad always tried to do.  Happy birthday Mom - I hope we're both around for your 100th! I love you very much. 

Here's your favorite poem from my book, Mom, that you made me read aloud every time someone came to visit...

The Road of Infinite Grace

I met a man today,

just an ordinary man,

who taught me more about love

in one brief encounter,

about the infinite grace of loving,

than I have learned in a lifetime

of trying, or crying,

or praying or saying it aloud.

His old pickup was stopped

on the side of a country road

so I pulled over to see

if he needed assistance,

if something was wrong,

if he needed a lift.

Just a little elderly man

standing in an untended field and

as I approached I saw him

bend low to pick a flower or two,

some Queen Anne’s lace,

a handful of daisies, some buttercups,

cornflowers and purple spikes

whose name I didn’t know.

“I’m fine,” he said, “but

that was kind of you to stop.

I’m just picking a bouquet, you see -

today is my 60^th anniversary. 

My wife had a stroke two weeks ago

so I’m on my way to spend the day

at the hospital with her.

She always loved wildflowers best,

not fancy garden flowers,

they suited her, you see,

for she was just like them.

Her eyes are blue as cornflowers,

her cheeks as rosy as these mallows,

her hair had the glow of buttercups

when we used to walk this field

together hand in hand.

She can’t speak right now

to tell me that she loves me still,

but she tells me with her eyes

that she’s never wavered all these years.”

Unashamedly, I wept to see

the bouquet he held in his gnarled hand

and offered water to keep them fresh

till he could bring them safe to her.

“Don’t cry, my dear, it’s nothing much.

She’s graced my life for sixty years,

each day of them a blessing -

I just hope she’ll know that in my heart

she’ll always be my buttercup.”

       

          © Lianne Schneider 2010

This is the song my mother had played and sung at her wedding, at my Dad's funeral and has asked for her own. I hope it's a very long time before I have to find someone to sing it! 

Of virtual friendships, shared emotions and a tribute

I like to connect to people in the virtual world, exchanging thoughts and ideas, when in the physical world we might never have the opportunity to cross paths.

Demi Moore

Silent Stones
http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/Art/Digital-PaintingPhotoArt/i-jQdvNJp/A

There is a lot of talk these days about the superficiality of social media - the silly tweets about going shopping or taking a shower or getting caught up in some media/celebrity frenzy that says little of substance about who we are. I've heard some say that virtual relationships are not real - that one cannot trust them because people can assume a persona that is nothing like the person they "really" are. And that's true in some respects. People can pretend to be other than who they really are; people can use social media just as a means of attention-seeking; people can substitute superficial virtual relationships for the real thing because for one reason or another they are detached from the real world.  I don't deny any of that. 

But there is another truth regarding relationships forged and maintained through social media and a virtual environment. I've commented on it before and several of you have told me that  your marriages are a result of "meeting" someone online. I know, too, that some of you have made friendships that have lasted many years and are deeper than some you've had in the "real" world. That is certainly the case for me. Friendship is precious to me - whether it's in the physical world or the virtual one and these days, thanks to technology the line between the two can be very blurry. Skype allows us to see and speak to our "virtual" friends - as does Yahoo voice and video and other such services. I used to speak to a friend in London weekly and I prepared for that in the same way as I might have prepared for her to visit in person - I dressed for company, did my hair and makeup, tidied up the space around me, had my coffee ready to sit down together and be "present" to my friend. 

Emerson once wrote an essay on friendship in which he said, "I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, — a possession for all time." I feel that way about my "virtual" friends, too. I may choose or be forced into a somewhat isolated life for reasons of health or circumstance, but I honestly believe that my online friends know me, hear me and understand me every bit as well or better than others in the "real" world. 

Which brings me to the reason for posting again on a topic I've spoken of before - the shared emotions in those virtual exchanges. One might wonder how you can actually "feel" someone else's pain or sorrow when you can't look upon their face, or when you are simply reading their posts. And yet who among us would deny that we do. I've had friends who have reached out to me when they were terribly depressed and just needed someone to "talk" to and I've done the same. In this past week or so, friends I met on various art sites have posted on Facebook about personal loss - the deaths of beloved parents, the serious illness or frightening surgery they are facing themselves, the discouragement they feel about their job search or art careers, etc. I think we "write" our emotions more carefully in the virtual world - and express more clearly what it is we feel and need from our friends. I think we are even more generous with support, encouragement, prayers and positive thinking than we might be otherwise. 

This weekend, members of the art site, BlueCanvas, met in a way we used to meet - in a weekend forum where we shared features, poems, music, awards, congratulated and supported each other, talked about our lives at many levels and deepened our regard and appreciation of one another. That "BLUE Lounge" forum has not taken place for over a year - most of us have pursued other outlets for one reason or another, or our lives have pulled us away from that forum because of work or health or caregiving. And truthfully, the person who created that venue, carried too much of the burden of keeping the forum going - something those of you who host groups on other sites can appreciate, I'm sure. Nonetheless, this weekend, at the request of a number of old regulars, the BLUE Lounge opened again for an extended tribute to a FRIEND we lost recently - a friend almost none of us have ever met personally but whom we all loved and cherished. Our sense of loss is real, our grief is real, our desire to share that emotional response with one another, others whom we have never met either but love equally, is real. Thank you to my FRIENDS Berns, Chris and Foti and especially to Rosie for making this tribute to Aldolfo Hector Penas Alvarado possible and for reminding us of just how precious our virtual friendships are.

For Adolfo:

THE SILENT STONES

The lowering sky is mourning

gray and somber above 

the silent stones that mark

your coming and your going.

They speak naught of who

you were and yet still are -

father, son, brother, spouse,

mother, daughter, sister, spouse.

What says the marble slab of

that which only I could know?

The blessing that your were?

The joy that only you could bring?

An eloquent language of silence

drowns out the syntax

of the wind, though it lifts me

upon its transcendent current

to some place above, beyond,

farther still - past all the limits

of time or space or language

itself - past thought or sentience,

in sacred consummation,

in ecstatic communion

with your eternal thou

not bound to ashes now interred

beneath the silent stones

that bear your names. 

© Lianne Schneider 2010

Celebrating the many rites of spring...

Life stands before me like an eternal spring

with new and brilliant clothes

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Deep Purple

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/deep-purple-lianne-schneider.html

This year, everywhere you turn, people seem to be celebrating spring more joyously than I can ever remember. Perhaps it’s only because it’s been such a very long, cold, snowy winter for most of us here in the northern and western hemisphere. The threat of one last bit of snow and ice is potentially still out there as the temperatures seesaw from 30s to 70s in a matter of hours all across the country. So our spring celebrations are doubly meaningful for many of us this year. But celebrating spring has had and still has great religious significance around the world as well – because spring is about rebirth, being “saved” from the dead of winter, triumphing over death, enslavement and evil and being renewed.

Sometimes we can be very myopic about our own particular celebrations, assuming that they are the most important or most meaningful. As a Christian, I celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter – as do Christians around the world. There is no more powerful symbol of renewal, salvation or triumph for Christians of any denomination than Resurrection or Easter. But Christians are not alone and not the first to welcome spring, to recall events of salvation or triumph over “the enemy” – whether that enemy is a brutal winter or an evil person.

While it is unlikely that you will find cards to celebrate many of these rites if you go looking for one in a Hallmark store, you will find cards wishing our Jewish friends a happy holiday about the same time of the year as Christians are celebrating Holy Week. That’s because in the Jewish faith, the Feast of Pesach or Passover is celebrated in the spring to commemorate the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the triumph over both Pharaoh and the hardships of the desert crossing. It’s an eight day celebration of freedom and the promise of new life and it begins with a Seder meal that includes unleavened bread and bitter herbs – symbols of how quickly the Israelites had to gather their few things and leave Egypt. The events celebrated during Passover are the heart and soul, the most sacred memories of the Jewish people, just as the events of Holy Week and Easter are for Christians. Jesus, of course, celebrated Passover.

Here are a number of other religious and non-religious rites and celebrations held around the world at some point between early March and May 1. That’s not a coincidence – any more than the timing of our Easter celebration is.

The symbols we attach to Easter may (even the name and the Easter egg and Easter rabbit) – and probably do – derive from spring festivals in certain Middle Eastern Mystery religions like Zoroastrianism or Mithraism. But if we look further afield – beyond the Middle East, we can see other traditions with similar or related meanings, all having to do with renewal and rebirth in some way.

Japanese Buddhists celebrate a spring festival called Ohigan – which literally means “the other shore gathering” but it is a celebration to honor ancestors and to express gratitude for enlightenment or awakening, a celebration of the birth of Buddha and wisdom itself. Those Japanese who practice the indigenous Shinto religion – an earth based religion – celebrate the spring equinox, praying to the spirits of nature…of the forest, the mountains, the rivers, the sun and the sea…to purify the land, to renew it.

In India, Hindus celebrate Holi, the festival of colors which marks the coming of spring and the new harvest of winter crops. Part of the celebration includes huge bonfires that are lit to cleanse the air of evil and symbolize the destruction of Holika, for whom the festival is named. The ashes from the fires are applied to the foreheads and some ash taken home to put on children’s foreheads to protect them against evil.

Wiccans – another earth and moon based religion – celebrate Ostara or the vernal equinox marking the first day of spring and the renewed life that comes with spring. This day has marked special celebrations in ancient cultures too – to honor Aphrodite, Hathor, and Ostara.

The Baha’i New Year is celebrated each year beginning at sundown on March 20. It is preceded by a 19 day period of fasting symbolizing the sparseness of winter or the less-fruitful growing seasons. But new growth begins with the coming of spring. The period of fasting is similar to the Christian practice of Lenten fasting and sacrifice. One month later, those of the Baha’i faith will celebrate the first day of Ridvan which marks the day when Baha'u'llah proclaimed his mission as the last of the prophets of God.

The spring celebrations conclude with the Wiccan celebration of Beltane on May 1 of each year. It’s a fire festival that represents the coming of summer and the fertility of the season. This late spring Celtic festival is closely tied to the farming calendar with prayers for a fruitful harvest.

So as you can see, Christians are hardly alone in celebrating rites of rebirth, renewal and salvation. Mankind has always been closely bound to the seasons of the year, the cycles of growth and harvest, and to the idea of “resurrection” whether of the physical body or of the spirit or the bursting forth of seeds and flowers to mark the triumph of life over death.

And so I wish you each according to your beliefs…a happy Easter, Passover, Ohigan, Ridvan, or Beltane. Respecting such traditions from all over the world reminds us once again that we are more alike than different and certainly more connected that we often realize. 

STOP...how to make room for happy

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty to be happy.

By being happy we sow anonymous benefits on the world.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I don't usually do this - and to tell the truth - Blogger doesn't let you easily reblog someone else's post like WordPress does. But I thought this post was so important that I should pass it along with only a very little commentary (and not to bore you, but I do have another prose/poem to go with this topic!)

I've made the point before and will again in the poem below, that we choose who and how we'll "be" in the world. We can choose love or indifference, hope versus despair, optimism versus pessimism and happiness versus discontent or sadness. We can alter our stance toward life and others by our conscious desire and thoughts to do so. But...while I absolutely agree that we can change ourselves when we cannot necessarily change others or change the circumstances in which we find ourselves, there are, nonetheless, certain things we absolutely have to stop letting other people do to us if we are to even have a chance to choose happiness. In these cases, "choosing" happiness involves modifying our external circumstances at least in terms of how we allow others to create negative situations for us. Marc Chernoff in the blog "Marc and Angel Hack Life" has this list of 20 things to stop letting people do to you.  

And even though it's not up to other people to "make" us happy, it is entirely possible that we are allowing others to make it impossible for us to choose happiness. Check Chernoff's list to see if you're permitting anyone to get in the way of that choice for yourself. No one can be a victim who refuses to be one and Marc's advice is to absolutely refuse to let anyone treat you as if you are one. I think you'll find it a worthwhile read - if not for yourself, then perhaps for someone you care about who doesn't seem to be able to choose happiness. 

What is happiness you ask me? 

It may seem odd to approach 

such a seemingly easy subject from the negative, 

but it is easier to begin with what it is not. 

It’s not love – though it can lead to it or come from it. 

It’s not joy – which is a breathtaking kind of elation 

born of full awareness, 

an enlightened sense of the rare 

and unique beauty of the present moment. 

Happiness is not found “out there,” 

in the grasping after or ownership of things or persons. 

It’s not something earned or won like fame or fortune. 

It’s not some romanticized quality of life 

represented by trilling bluebirds or colorful rainbows. 

It’s not something you get; 

it’s something you are 

and something you choose.

Happiness, like love and joy, 

is a state of being one chooses for oneself 

regardless of circumstance or luck. 

It’s a softening and an opening 

of one’s heart and soul 

that empties them of dissatisfaction, 

sadness and regrets and makes room 

for love and joy to fill them up. 

It’s a kind of calmness rather than giddiness, 

peace of mind and spirit rather than elation. 

It’s a contented sigh rather than bawdy laughter. 

Happiness is a general cheerfulness about life 

and a gentle sense of satisfaction with who you are. 

It’s a stance, a posture we assume 

in the face of difficulty or hardship, 

a view of life as more good than bad, 

more hopeful than despairing.

Choose happiness...and then 

allow it to just be.

Chasing joy...

I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive....

Joseph Campbell

Joy Collector

http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/Art/Digital-PaintingPhotoArt/i-Bt57d5w/A

The great American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, in one of his interviews with Bill Moyers for the PBS series, "The Power of Myth," responded to one of Moyers' questions about human search for meaning this way:

         "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of life...so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive." 

The "rapture of being alive"...how many of us have been blessed enough to truly experience that? And how do you go about finding that? Surely we can't all spend our time sitting around "navel gazing" as some have mockingly described the meditative practices that blossomed in the late '60s and early '70s when Transcendental Meditation was all the rage and everyone was looking for a guru to teach them how to reach that state of pure detachment that is "ecstasy" or joy. 

And in truth, we actually can't find it by "dropping out" or complete detachment as some envision it. We find it by the simple act of being truly present to our own lives, to the moments of our lives, being completely aware and mindful of those moments and most of all by being grateful for each one of them. Elizabeth Lesser (Broken Open, 2004) describes it as, "It is a willing engagement with the whole messy miracle of life." By that she means that one cannot find rapture or joy by avoiding the pain or the brokenness in our lives. Quite the opposite - one cannot find rapture without embracing that, looking into the face of our fears and anguish and being grateful for it. It is there, where we would least expect to find it, that we realize and appreciate the joy of living. One cannot appreciate light without darkness, become blissful about spring if there were no winter or dormant period, know love without its lack. 

Here's the lesson in a metaphor - a poem I wrote some time ago called, "The Joy Collector." 

The Joy Collector

Like a lepidopterist, I set out to capture joy in my net,

searching in all the usual, obvious places,

in the garden of blooms I’d planted to be

an enticement for the rare and fragile, wingéd creatures.

And once captured what would I do

with each uniquely beautiful specimen?

Wait for it to finish out its brief life in a jar filled with leaves,

holes in the top and then, when it was living no more…

pin it to the corkboard, fix it under glass,

this now lifeless collection on display,

catalogued and labeled for me to show off my skills

as a butterfly hunter, satisfied, self-congratulatory? 

But true joy can’t be caught like that,

remaining as elusive as a Palos Verdes Blue;

rather it catches you utterly by surprise,

comes from places and events you least expect

and seldom where you are looking for it! 

Don’t chase after it…a butterfly hunter with a net -

and when you are very still, within and without,

perhaps even looking wonderingly another way

at something beautiful that catches your eye

and fills your awakening soul with delight,

she will settle gently on your shoulder, 

flutter in your heart...and live.

  

© Lianne Schneider May 2011

Be grateful for the darkness, for the pain, even for the grief - when you can stand still in the midst of that, then you will find your rapture, your joy. In truth, one of my favorite poets, Khalil Gibran said it best nearly 1000 years ago:

I'm a Phoenix - are you??

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.

Ferdinand Foch

Resurrection

http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/Art/Digital-PaintingPhotoArt/i-wgSkwMx/A

We've probably all seen those insidious commercials on TV for the University of Phoenix, which offers online degree programs with a number of physical campuses around the country. The spokespersons all proudly proclaim the reason for their present success - "I am a Phoenix." And more power to them - I applaud anyone with the determination and the self-discipline to undertake a degree program alone, without the camaraderie of classroom time, group study sessions and interaction with other students. But I wonder if they realize how much more powerful the story of the Phoenix really is...and whether you have thought about your own Phoenix experiences as I have. 

The Phoenix, of course, is a mythical bird,  and the myth itself is generally thought to have its origins in ancient Greece. There are, however, analogs to the Greek myth in many cultures - the Persian anka, the Hindu garuda, the Russian firebird, the Chinese fenghuang among others. There are even suggestions that a passage in the Hebrew Scriptures, appropriately in the book of Job, refers to the Phoenix as well. 

"And I said, I will perish with my nest, and I will multiply days as the phoenix (chol)" - Job 29:18. In Jewish folklore, chol refers to a supernatural bird, often glossed as, or identified with the Greek Phoenix.

According to the myth, a phoenix is a fire spirit with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends). It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. But it is the Egyptian interpretation of the myth I find most applicable to our own personal quest for identity, awakening and joy. The Egyptians believed that this 500 year cycle represented the bird's ongoing quest to discover his true self and "knowing that a new way could be found only with the death of his worn-out habits, defenses and beliefs, the Phoenix built a pyre of cinnamon and myrrh, sat in the flames, and burned to death. Then he rose from the ashes as a new being - a fusion of who he had been before and who he had become" (Lesser, 2004, p. 55).

Elizabeth Lesser, in her book "Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow," contends that we each have to go through the "phoenix process." We are each incinerated in the painful fires of life and have the ability to rise again, to be renewed and reborn if we are only willing to throw the old self - the past, the fears, the angers, the failures - onto the fire. "Our lives," she says, "ask us to die and to be reborn every time we confront change." We can, as I mentioned in an earlier blog on brokenness, recreate ourselves as something new and more beautiful out of the shattered pieces that are all that seems to be left after a painful and difficult time in our lives - heartbreak, loss, grief, failure. Those are the ashes from which we are called to rise again. Then we, too, can proudly proclaim, "I am a Phoenix." 

Long before I read Ms. Lesser's book, the promise of my ability to bounce back from heartache, defeat, sadness and grief led me to write this poem and to create the artwork you see above.

THE MOMENTS IN BETWEEN

The miracles happen

in the moments in between –

between life and death,

between breathing in

and breathing out,

between beginning and end,

between one light burst,

one photon, and the next…

in that in between space

where there is nothing…

and there is everything -

where all potential,

all possibility exists.

In that waiting space,

in the now of resurrection

all is transformed.

In that moment in between

all illusion falls away.

Death, the great delusion,

dies a final time and

new and sacred truth is born.

I am pierced with my knowing

that all is one, that seeming

opposites make me whole.

In the crucible of awakening,

in the cremation of ego,

I discover what has been

inside me all along –

within my fear…joy,

within my loss…gain,

within my darkness…light,

within my grief…grace.

  

Rising from the ashes,

the smoke of my resurrection

stirs the trees, becomes a breeze

lifting into the Cosmos.

Then it is that I am your song, 

the song of the Universe –

a song of Love, pure Love,

an energy that creates,

a new music that inspires,

a melody in which I’m

a necessary harmonic note.

O Spirit of the spheres,

in this moment in between,

sing your song in me.

©Lianne Schneider July 2012

* Lesser, Elizabeth. (2004). Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow. Villard Books (a division

           of Random House), New York, New York.