D-DAY - I promised a different kind of post but...

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen...the hopes and prayers of liberty-loving peoples everywhere march with you.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower - D-Day speech

The Great Crusade

I watched a young man on the news last night, in Normandy with his great grandfather, overlooking the wide open beach and the impossibly rugged, tall cliffs of the Normandy coast, saying honestly, “I can’t imagine putting my life on the line to cross that beach under heavy fire…I don’t think many of us can.” And yet, if we can’t imagine it, how are we to remember it and to honor the courage and the sacrifice of the thousands who gave their lives for our freedom? 

Read more...on my WordPress blog for today http://seasonssongandspirit.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/d-day-we-must-always-remember-html/

Tuesday I will finish the series on living from the heart and that will be my last post for several weeks as I will be in the hospital or away at rehab and then unable to sit at the computer for some time. I will try to get a couple of posts prepared ahead and schedule them but I don't think that's likely with all else I have to do in the next few days for work. I hope you'll come back and visit and read when I am able to return. 

Still broken...but authentically me

"Let go of who you think you're supposed to be and embrace who you are."

Brené Brown

In Remembrance of Things Past

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/in-remembrance-of-things-past-lianne-schneider.html

Perhaps I'll never really exhaust the subject of brokenness because it's part of understanding who I really am and what the process was of becoming me. I promise, however, not to dwell too long on the broken parts...but rather more often on the good that comes of them. I know that there are people who would prefer not to explore the idea of being broken...let alone admit it out loud. The question for me today is what do we gain by being vulnerable, by acknowledging the broken bits and pieces, by accepting our imperfections? 

And for me the answer is authenticity. If I can muster the courage to admit how cracked and broken and mended I am, if I can expose what most would perceive as weakness and allow myself to be vulnerable, then what I gain is the freedom to be truly and authentically myself. I don't have to pretend to be someone else. I don't have to keep trying to be who others expect me to be. For years and years, I was the "rock," the "strong one," the "crisis handler," the "responsible get it all done well" one. I didn't let a soul see how shattered I was at times, how much struggle there was to pretend to a strength I didn't feel. 

My own perception of vulnerability was character weakness. My version of relationship was to be the one in control, the giver, the do-er, the rational and seldom emotional spouse or partner or friend. "Big Girls Don't Cry" should have been my theme song...or alternatively, "Lean on Me." I didn't often let anyone offer me a shoulder to cry on. I never admitted that sometimes the burden was just too heavy and I needed someone to share it with me. If I had a problem - or you did - I could analyze it to death coming up with just the right advice or course of action. But I didn't very often acknowledge how I actually FELT about any of it. What I THOUGHT, yes, but what I FELT, no. The brain could be trusted - the heart with its messy feelings could not.

I could, I thought, prove that. When I fell in love late in my life after the death of my husband, I couldn't seem to help myself from opening the door to all those "feelings." Irrationality was the special of the day and for once, my heart ruled my head. And then...I had my heart totally shattered. One would think, wouldn't you, that I'd fall back on old habits - go back to pretense, to rationality, to cover up? But that's not what happened...once the door to a feeling heart was open, I couldn't close it again. And I realized that broken or not, I didn't want to go back to that inauthentic person I'd been. So it is that I learned this most valuable lesson: (I post this for a dear new friend - you'll know who you are!!)

HEARTS WERE MEANT TO BREAK

Hearts were meant to break

Love…requited…bursts them wide open

expanding them ever outward with the

awesome power of the big bang,

photon upon photon of love light -

an endless grace, that energy moving toward

the sacred consummation of intimate union.

And when stars cavort and gaily pour

the glittering dust of diamonds

into the space that love has opened

to receive it, a heart so fills with light

that it must split asunder to make room

for the more of love, the overflowing

river of it, the numinous, luminous constellations

of love light dancing through the cosmos.

Love…unrequited…breaks it open wider still…

transforming brokenness into beatitudes,

slivers of past sorrows that now sparkle

like shards of glass catching moonlight.

But the shattered heart remembers,

with deepening gratitude, its shattering,

having tried with such determination

to share its rounded fullness with another

and found it breaking on the hard, square edges

of someone’s heart not open yet.

There is no way to put it back together.

Now broken, it moves ever outward

like the universe,  which is itself

Love’s energy radiant with grace.

© 2013 Lianne Schneider 

So, I can say truthfully, that though I'm a mended (or mending) version of who I was, I think I was blessed to be mended with gold as I said the other day. Admitting that I'm always vulnerable now, that I can be hurt, that I feel things not only lets me be authentically who I am without pretense...but strangely enough my vulnerability gives the people I love the courage to be vulnerable too and it's there, in that shared vulnerability, that true and honest and loving and joyful relationships are born. 

 

Could you give it up???

“I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.” 

~Robert Henri

Postcard - Impressions of Niagara

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/postcardimpressions-of-niagara-lianne-schneider.html

Over the past few blogs, I've written a lot about motivation, marketing and how to avoid burnout, particularly if our artwork isn't selling. As a result, I got quite a few personal messages from fellow artists who wrote about discouragement, about all the ways they were turning themselves inside out to be successful (financially) as artists, about the frustration they experienced when they saw work by artists they didn't feel was as good as their own selling well while they sold nothing. Most of these heart-wrenching letters were completely sincere and not a few people suggested that perhaps it was time to throw in the towel and either take some period of time off or get out of the art world except to putter at home for their own enjoyment. These friends had honestly tried everything they knew to market themselves. That's not to say there might not be other sites or methods out there that would work but at this point, they'd tried everything and had come to the conclusion that no one really wanted their artwork hanging on their walls. 

The truth is that no matter how hard we've tried, most of us are NOT professional artists. I know a few of you who truly are but most of us are not. We're rank amateurs regardless of whether we have fancy cameras with $5000 lenses, a complete studio with stacks of canvases and $200 brushes, pens and notebooks full of ideas for our next story or poem, or the best kiln and clay on the market. What we're trying to do - most of us anyway - is market our hobby. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. But we should not expect the kinds of results that a professional artist expects and strives for. And we should not be so frustrated and disappointed when we don't achieve that level of success. 

I say hobby because being a professional artist/writer takes enormous discipline. It has nothing to do with how many courses we take or how many positive comments we get on the work we present to the world. It has to do with whether we cannot let a day go by without working at our art - not just for an hour or until some distraction comes along - but literally setting aside a good portion of our day to create. It has to do with writing or painting or sculpting even if we feel no inspiration today at all (and believe me I've gone through months where I complained that my muse was on vacation!). The wonderful writer, May Sarton, and the much loved Annie Dillard both wrote about writing for hours every morning after a walk - even if at the end of those hours everything they wrote went in the trash. It has to do with working through lunch if we're on a roll. It has to do with believing in ourselves enough to be persistent in marketing ourselves through every possible means. It has to do with not comparing ourselves to anyone else - or their success - because we believe in our gift and our talent. It has to do with knowing that no matter what happens - we could not give up what we love to do.

There is a lovely succinct little blog post that struck home to me when I read it and I think you might enjoy it too. Doug Hoppes wrote recently, "However, in my mind, if you really are meant to be an artist, you won't give up.  It's part of who you are.  Rather than having the fancy paper or pens, you'll get a ream of copy paper and a ballpoint pen and draw.  Rather than having a fancy studio, you'll work at your desk... or dinner table... or wherever you can sit.  Making art is not about having the fancy materials.  It's about expressing yourself in only the way that you can imagine the world around you." Read the rest here: Ever felt like giving up? | Doug Hoppes Fine Art

If writer/artist is who you ARE, there's no way you could give it up and go back to being something or someone else. Be courageous (which means to have a strong heart) and be persistent and believe.

 

Feeling shipwrecked???

When an inner situation is not made conscious,

it appears outside as fate.

Carl Jung

All That Remains

 http://fineartamerica.com/featured/all-that-remains-lianne-schneider.html

Ever feel as if your life is a shipwreck...perhaps just today, or for a week or even months at a time? No matter how well prepared you thought you were for life, for parenthood, for your career, for a relationship...things just seemed to fall apart all at once. It hardly seems fair when you've tried so hard to do it all and do it right. A great many people struggle every day with all kinds of depressive disorders because they felt hopelessly shipwrecked on some deserted island with no help or hope in sight. 

Artists often address this kind of emotional shipwreck in darker paintings perhaps where they can make such pain visible. Poets, of course, have throughout history done the same. As you will see in a moment - I've done both - but not for the purpose of merely expressing the feeling of being abandoned by the fates or the universe or God. Rather it's to offer hope and remind ourselves that courage in the face of hardship is not what we usually think of - a lack of fear - but rather a willingness to stand up and try again, no matter how afraid we are. There's an old Asian saying, "Fall down seven times, get up eight." That's pretty much the way it goes...and that's okay. The only possible failure is the failure to try to make something from all that remains after the shipwreck.

ALL THAT REMAINS

At times, all that remains

of the graceful, promising ship

in which we once set sail,

onto which we had bravely loaded

and entrusted our adventurous dreams,

provisioned with the sparkling

citrus of hope, the ballast of reason,

is a rotting hulk cast upon some

lonely shore, beached and broken,

darkening with age and petrifying

with desperate abandonment.

We misread the silent stars perhaps,

encountered reefs that were unmapped,

were blown aground with the violence

of the fierce and unexpected hurricane,

the savage force of events and emotions

that whipped the sea to gray-green foam,

the perfect storm against which our ballast

was of little weight or counter-balance.

Here we’re stranded far from home,

even farther from where we thought we’d be,

our hulls splintered, ribs spread wide,

exposing all that we’d possessed.

But there are always treasures

to be gleaned from every shipwreck,

salvaged from the bones of shattered past.

We reclaim what is essential to survival

convey it all inland bit by bit, to an interior

place away from tides and undertows.

We collect from the jetsam what tools we can

to construct a shelter for the present,

to build a boat for some tomorrow –

keep the unbroken planks of wisdom

as foundation for what we can create,

the pegs of persistence with which

to connect the pieces into some new form,

the coiled rope of quiet courage,

the astrolabe and compass of our values,

with which to do our daily reckoning,

the parchment maps on which to mark

the errors of our previous course,

and with fresh insight plot anew

the way to yet dreamed of destinations

beyond the clouded horizon we see now.

We’ll roll the mainsails for a covering,

yet one day watch them unfurl again

filled with the brisk winds of bright new hope.

And when we go at last from here,

we’ll take with us a different treasure

than the gold we’d brought aboard at first -

new jewels of faith and fortitude,

the valued currency of courage.

We’ll leave behind not some worthless hulk

but a story written on that distant shore

preserved as an art and an architecture,

perfectly fitted into the landscape now

where sand and time will make of it

a home not just for gulls and memories,

but for the record of our redemption.

© Lianne Schneider July 2011

Sometimes, even when we're shipwrecked for a time, there are valuable lessons to be learned, qualities in ourselves to develop, and hope - not that someone will rescue us but that we will figure out how to save ourselves. We are the only ones who can. 

Poetry  and images on this page are not only copyrighted but registered - no one may quote or copy either the image or the poetry without permission of the author/artist.