by Heather Plett | Mar 4, 2010 | art, journey, prayer
Monday was not a good day. I’d slept about 3 hours the night before, I was grumpy and frustrated about the bad news my daughter had received, and nothing had gone my way all day. I survived the day at work, but was not in the right frame of mind to go to my drawing class in the evening. Almost every cell of my body was screaming “just go home to bed – no need to go to EVERY class.” And yet I knew I would regret missing it and something told me it was just the right thing to do when I was feeling the way I was.
So I dragged myself to class. The first half hour was really bad. We had a visiting instructor, and she just wasn’t teaching the way we were used to being taught. For one thing, she wasn’t willing to give demonstrations, and said “no, I want to see what comes out of you without trying to imitate me.” That pissed me off and I almost got up and walked out.
I was trying to get the shading right on a nose, and it just wasn’t working. At all. I fought tears. What’s the point? I can’t draw. I’m wasting my time.
I gave up on the first drawing and started another. And then another. And then slowly, in my third attempt, something shifted. My breath slowed and I felt the frustration slowly seep from my body. Like osmosis. Gradually I entered that special meditative space where nothing else mattered but the paper, the charcoal in my hand, and my presence at the page.
Have you felt it? I’m sure you have. Call it zen, call it flow, call it prayer, call it meditation – call it whatever you like, but when you feel it you KNOW. It’s a mystical, spiritual thing that changes you, that heals you, and that shifts the icky stuff that’s stuck in you.
This past year it’s become more and more clear to me that this is the role art plays for me. I don’t ever intend to be a “serious” artist, but art has become a special touchstone for me, a spiritual practice. It’s how I meditate and pray, and more often than not, I walk away from the page with some deeper understanding of something I didn’t even know I needed an answer for.
For an upcoming retreat, I’ve been asked to put together a special station where people can spend time in quiet reflection and prayer while doing art & collage. It’s not a workshop, so there will be no instruction, but I’m putting together a page of instructions to leave at the table for those who want to engage. Here’s what I’ve prepared so far. Feel free to play along in your own home.
1. Before you begin, spend a few moments in stillness. Take deep breaths and try to free your mind of whatever baggage you brought to the table. Invite the Spirit to sit with you and to create with you. Inhale. Exhale. Open yourself to whatever wisdom or blessings you may receive (even if that blessing is simply a chance to be still and quiet for awhile in your busy life.)
2. Do not approach this as “a work of art that needs to be mastered”. This is meant for your eyes only and does not need to be shared. Think of it as your personal prayer or meditation, between you and God. Set aside your perfectionism or ideas about “what art should look like”.
3. Begin with a clean sheet of paper or art journal. It’s up to you how you fill that page. You can doodle randomly, splash bold colours on it, or cover it with images from a magazine – anything that feels right for you.
4. If you choose to collage, flip through a few magazines. Don’t look for specific images or words. Instead, pick whatever moves you at that particular moment. It might be photos, random words, or a combination. Either tear or cut them out and collect them without giving too much deliberate thought to what they mean or how they connect with each other.
5. Play with the images for awhile, arranging and rearranging them on the page, folding them, tearing edges off, whatever you like.
6. Once you’re ready, begin gluing them on the page in an arrangement that feels right for you, using mod podge and foam brushes. You may also want to brush mod podge over the top of the images.
7. Add paint, marker, glitter, or anything you like to the page. Sometimes the best way to connect with what’s on your page is to finger paint on it, meandering to different parts of the page with your finger, and feeling the various textures as you do so. Paint over some images if you like, or just paint between them.
8. Your mind will wander to many places while you do this, and that’s okay, let it wander. This is not about trying to corral your mind, but rather allowing it to freely connect with the images and with the Spirit that is with you in this space.
9. When you are done, sit back and reflect on what is on the page. Some of the images may surprise you. There may be themes you didn’t expect would emerge. There may be combinations of photos that communicate something to you. Be open to whatever you receive.
10. However, don’t put any pressure on yourself to see or interpret something on the page. Sometimes the value is just in the stillness and the meditative act, not in the final result. On the other hand, sometimes you’ll only notice something a few hours or even a few days later, once you come back to the page.
11. You may wish to whisper a silent prayer, but it’s really not important that any words be spoken. Remember that God is quite capable of hearing your thoughts even before they’re put into words, and quite capable of communicating to you in a deeper way than you could express in words.
by Heather Plett | Mar 3, 2010 | journey, Uncategorized
Here’s the thing… too much navel-gazing gets old after awhile, right? Even when it’s ME doing the navel-gazing. Smile.
You’ve done it too, haven’t you – clicked on somebody’s blog (probably mine now and then), realized that it was one of those long-winded navel-gazing posts, and then clicked away looking for something more entertaining? Yeah, go ahead and admit it – I won’t take it personally – even my husband admits to skipping some of my posts.
With so many thousands (millions?) of blogs out there, there’s a LOT of navel-gazing on the internet. Sometimes it seems like everyone (yes, myself included) has become egocentric and ethnocentric in their search for the right self-help book, the right guru, the right yoga practice, the right set of 400 thread count sheets, the right “10 steps to self-actualization”, and the right “dreams-for-my-personal-future”.
The thing is, if all of those things aren’t balanced with compassion, justice, and RESPONSIBILITY, well then everybody loses but ME, ME, ME! And how happy will we be if we’re lonely in that perfect self-actualized bubble we’re living in?
So… after that rant, you’re probably thinking I’m ditching all that stuff and just preaching a “live a life of total sacrifice and self-deprivation, and don’t do anything to improve yourself” message, right?
Well, ironically, that’s not the case. Because I actually do believe there is value in self-discovery, IF it is done in the spirit of “if I give of my best, and challenge myself to recognize and share what I have, then I am serving the people around me as well as myself and we’ll all be better off for it”. Contentment begets contentment. Compassion begets compassion. Self-respect begets respect for others. Pay it forward. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A happier me is a happier you. You get what I’m saying.
I’m beginning to understand that the season of Lent is actually partly about digging deeper to understand ourselves better and, as a result, figuring out how to be what we are called to be. Here’s a quote from Frederick Buechner that inspired me recently…
In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year’s days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves…To hear yourself answer (such a question) is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end of it.
Asking ourselves the questions that Christ asked himself, and facing the temptations that Christ faced (to let pride, greed, and the desire for power become his guiding energy) are all part of becoming who we are meant to be. It’s about figuring out how we are meant to serve the world.
Christ was about to face the ultimate test of his calling (his own sacrificial death), but before he was ready for that, he had to spend some time alone in the desert. I’m sure that wasn’t popular with his followers who probably thought it was unfair of him to desert them. (How could somebody lead and inspire us and then ditch us?!) But he knew that if he didn’t do this, then his calling would not be fulfilled and his followers would suffer more in the long run then the pain they felt in the short term.
In the end, Christ and all humanity benefits when Easter comes and there is resurrection and redemption.
That’s not about navel-gazing, that’s about finding strength in who we are gifted to be, even when it’s not popular with the people who don’t want to see us change or step away from them.
This poem (via Christine) says it well…
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
– Mary Oliver
by Heather Plett | Mar 1, 2010 | Uncategorized
“Now that the party’s over, can I create a world under the table again?” Maddie asked.
She’d been rather hard-done-by when she’d had to pack up her little imaginary home under the dining room table when her sister’s birthday warranted two separate parties in two consecutive weekends. Dolls, stuffed animals, her plastic stool/anything-she-wants-it-to-be, magical boxes full of treasure – all had to be stashed into her bedroom until the rest of the family members stopped caring about the messes that guests weren’t supposed to see.
“Sure you can,” I said, wanting to encourage her imagination and knowing that these magical worlds always equal hours of independent play and less need for Mommy’s attention.
An hour later, I found her there, lying still on the floor, staring up at the bottom of the table. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m daydreaming,” she said. “I have to do it here because I’m not allowed to do it at school.”
“You’re not allowed to?”
“No, Madame says we’re supposed to read, not daydream.”
“Well,” I said, “in my experience, if you pretend you’re reading, you can still daydream without anyone knowing you’re doing it! I still do it and I’m 43 years old!”
Her eyes twinkled at the thought of mildly deceiving Madame – with her mom’s permission.
“Yeah, I do that sometimes,” she grinned.
It might not make me Mom-of-the-year where the education system is concerned, but I’m much more interested in Mom-of-the-year where Maddie is concerned.
True to form, she spent the rest of the afternoon under the table. Later I found her curled up in a ball completely covered in a table cloth. When I asked what she was doing, she let me peek under the table cloth. She’d hauled the battery-operated camping lantern out of the basement and was pretending it was her campfire under the tent.
It’s good to have a 7 year old around to remind me of magical worlds in ordinary places, the wonders of a plastic stool, and the value of daydreaming.
When’s the last time you created a magical world under the table? And when’s the last time you lay on your back just to daydream? Maybe you should stop what you’re doing and try it, just for awhile.
Take it from my 7 year old artist/guru – it’s a wonderful way to pass a Sunday afternoon!
(And in case you’re an educator and you’re worried that her daydreaming is keeping her from reading, she dove into her very first chapter book this weekend and proudly and delightfully read 137 pages!)
by Heather Plett | Mar 1, 2010 | Uncategorized
I had a post (or two) all ready to be written for today. But then my daughter got her heart broken, and, well… the words just dried up. All of the blog posts in the world mean nothing when your daughter is sobbing uncontrollably in your arms.
In the end, all I could write was a long and impassioned letter to the powers that be in the soccer world, imploring them to please, please reconsider and let her play her beloved sport this summer. And just for good measure, I let them know just how it feels to watch helplessly as your daughter suffers through a year of injury, surgery, and endless agonizing days watching her sisters and friends play the sports that mean almost as much to her as life itself.
All year, the thing that compelled her forward, the thing that motivated her to do nightly strengthening exercises and drag me to the gym at 6:00 a.m. was one simple dream… to play competitive soccer again in the Spring.
Last night that dream was dashed when the team roster came out and her name was not on it. Her injury (more precisely, the critical recovery period) prevented her from participating in the tryouts and nobody saw it in their hearts to give her a shot based on past performance.
Life can be cruel. It seems even more cruel when it happens to your 14 year old daughter.
by Heather Plett | Feb 27, 2010 | Leadership, navel-gazing, Uncategorized
Guess what? My failings are being made more and more evident these days and… I couldn’t be happier!
I recently hired staff into two brand new positions and both of them took tasks away from me so that we could grow in the areas of fundraising and communications (especially online) and so that I would have more time to twiddle my thumbs and get lost in online rabbit holes. Oops… I mean so that I could focus on the leadership part of my job since I now have 17 people on my team (gulp).
They’ve only been here for a short time, but within a few weeks of their arrival, both have made some fairly significant improvements to the way we do things. To be honest, it didn’t take long for both to out-shine me and put my past efforts in certain areas to shame.
Now, if I were feeling vulnerable and insecure, I might have taken this personally and gotten caught up in self-deprecation about how I wasn’t really good enough at this job, blah, blah, blah. (And there have been days when I could have done just that, trust me.)
But you wanna know how it made me feel? HUGE and utter relief!
For starters, things are getting done and I don’t have to do them!
But more than that, they’re moving the markers on things that I honestly didn’t have the capacity or sufficient interest to master. I’m not great at fundraising and database management, and yet it’s part of our team’s responsibility, and so I would slog my way through some of it and mostly fail at it. I’m not all that good at website maintenance and analysis, and so mostly I would ignore it and pretend it didn’t need to be done.
Now I’ve hired two people who shine in those areas and it doesn’t make me feel badly for the ways I’ve failed, it makes me feel GREAT about all the things we’re now able to do as a team!
Here’s a revolutionary thought…
You don’t have to be good at everything!
Let that sink in for a moment. It’s true – you don’t have to master every task that you tackle or that you’re responsible for. Early in my leadership days I didn’t really get that and I would try to do a good job at every task our team needed to perform because I was sure that otherwise my staff and boss would think I was underqualified to lead the team. You’ve heard the term “micro-managing”, right? Yeah, well, I may have been guilty of that a time or two in the past.
But somewhere along the line I realized – HEY, there are some people on the team who are WAY better than me in these areas and if I just trust them to do what they’re capable of, we’ll all be further ahead in the long run.
Take administration and organization, for example. I kinda suck in those areas. But I’ve learned to hire people who really shine – the kind of people whose cheque books are ALWAYS balanced! (Go figure.) When we interviewed my current assistant for the position, she told us that when she was a kid, she used to line up her Barbie doll shoes because she needed to have order around her. As soon as I heard that, I thought “BINGO! We need to hire her!” It turns out my instincts were right – she’s good at all the areas that I lack and she makes the whole team look good!
Here’s another revolutionary thought:
Letting other people shine in the areas of their giftedness is good for everyone!
If you let your ego get in the way and you think you have to show yourself to be capable in every area and you don’t let people have their spot in the sun, well the truth is that you’ll all suffer. You’ll look bad because you’ll perform in a sub-par fashion, and they’ll look bad because they won’t have a chance to perform at all.
My new staff are raising the caliber of the whole team and they’re making all of us look good. What’s not to like? Plus I get to spend more time doing the things I actually AM good at – leadership, visioning, planning, directing… and delegating! Woot!
This isn’t just a leadership lesson, this is a life lesson. Sometimes we put expectations on ourselves that are unrealistic and by slogging through all the things we’re just not good at, we’re not allowing other people to shine and we’re wasting the energy we could focus on the areas where we’re gifted. I have no trouble, for example, letting Marcel look after car maintenance. And I’m quite happy to pass my cell phone to my daughters to let one of them adjust the settings, etc. (Even though they tease me about being a techno-ludite.) And you can bet that if Marcel’s teaching term is extended, we’ll be hiring a cleaning person as quickly as I can pick up a phone.
Now, I realize that we don’t always have the luxury of hiring people to do things, and sometimes you have no choice but to step up to the plate (like I’ve done for the last five and a half years before the board approved these new positions, or all those years of cleaning our own house while we’ve lived on a single income), but sometimes there are creative ways to let other people shine in the areas we’re not good at – like doing a “skills swap”, or looking for willing volunteers or youth interns.
My point is this…
Admitting that people outshine you in some areas doesn’t decrease your personal value.
The truth is, it might actually increase it, because you’ll have more opportunity for the areas in which you shine.
(Says the girl who is fumbling her way through figuring out what it means to be a full time leader/director, rather than a leader/fundraiser/database manager/communicator/web manager.)
