Mojo Monday ~ Impermanence

November 11, 2014November 11, 2014Michelle Fairchild

Impermanence expresses the Buddhist notion
that everything is constantly in flux.

Cultivating an acceptance of the transitory nature
of our current situation helps us deal with change and loss.

On January 8, 2010 Sharon Marroquin received a phone call that informed her she had breast cancer. Twenty-six months, three surgeries, sixteen chemotherapy treatments and thirty radiation treatments later, she wanted to make sense of the journey. Confronted with her mortality, angered and frustrated over her inability to handle the disintegration of her body, Sharon Marroquin begins to consciously deal with it through art and decides to create a dance called “Materiality of Impermanence”. Through the creation of the dance, Sharon escapes to another realm that is not confined by physical limitations, disease, childrearing, teaching and running a home. “Foreign Puzzle” is a visual testimony of the transcending power of the human spirit.

Please watch this brief video introduction about Sharon and the “Materiality of Impermanence.”

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/15778371″>Materiality of Impermanence</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user4842461″>realtalkies</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

“When I saw the photos they were beautiful,
it was a turning point because I realized that this horrible
thing happening to me had some beauty in it
and that’s when I started thinking I could make a
dance about this so that people outside of myself
could see both the ravages of what one has to go through
but also the beauty that’s within the human spirit”
~ Sharon Marroquin

Face to face with mortality- Sharon Marroquín — Face to face with mortality – Sharon Marroquin

“I have to learn to surrender to this journey
and to use it as an opportunity for growth, for learning…”
~ Sharon Marroquin

Video clips from the performance
“The Materiality of Impermanence”

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/96272112″>The Materiality of Impermanence (trailer)</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user19911064″>Sharon Marroquin</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

From Mandalas & Meditations for Everyday Living:
52 Pathways to Personal Power
by Cassandra Lorius

“Because nothing lasts, our natural reaction is to grasp on to people or experiences, but this can lead to emotional suffering. It is more healthy to learn to remain open to what comes into our lives and accept the situation when it leaves. We can become more adaptable and appreciative of the present moment. To do this, try to drop illusions and expectations, such as the direction of our own life and career, how we have imagined our parents’ and siblings’ life stories, our relationships, the need for someone to love us unconditionally and take care of us, our religious certainties, the kind of people we prefer our children to grow into, or our assumptions about health and longevity.”

Meditations on Impermanence

1 Think back to a time when you became aware you were holding on to an illusion. Recall your discovery that it was just an illusion, and remember how that felt.

2 Think about the new awareness that must have created the conditions for your realization that it was an illusion. What was the scenario that unfolded?

3 Relive the release when these illusions were dissolved.

4 Become aware of the spaciousness and sense of freedom you have when you live without illusions.

5 Let go of each and every one of your illusions, releasing them into the vast space of the universe.

Mojo Monday ~ Inspirational Odds & Ends

September 15, 2014Michelle Fairchild

Where do you look to for inspiration?

Even if you are feeling blue or overwhelmed have you
identified beacons of light that can
brighten up your day or offer a breath of fresh air?

Do you turn to nature, art, uplifting quotes and words,
music, writers, websites, or perhaps a combination of all of the above?

Do you subscribe to any inspirational magazines, newsletters or video feeds?

Share in the comments some of your inspirational touchstones.

Here is a list with links and notes
of those things that have inspired me or
perhaps provoked feelings and thoughts recently.

The course Hello Soul Hello Mantras by Kelly Rae Roberts.

Kelly Rae is an artist I have written about before
or mentioned in posts here, here, here, here and also here
because I have felt a kinship with her social worker soul
and her creative mixed media artistry. Her class was something
I decided to treat myself too after simmering in the blues.
The on-line course kicked off on September 8th and I am feeling very inspired.

Are there any courses you are taking that you would recommend?

The art and designs of PAPAYA! which predominantly
features the art of Anahata Katkin.

I visited the flagship store in
Ashland, Oregon in July and again at the end of August.
The store fills the senses with scents, colors, texture,
deep dark chocolate and so much beauty.
While one won’t get to taste the chocolate, feel the fabrics
or smell the perfumes and lotions one can visit their
website to explore the hundreds of inspirational images.

Are there any particular artists that inspire you?

My own Artist Room

I recently did some late summer cleaning in my artist room.
Partly in preparation for the Hello Soul Hello Mantras course.
It felt good to dust and do a little rearranging and clearing out.
Having a beautiful-to-me inspirational sacred space is important to me.

Have you created or found an inspirational space for yourself?

I receive via email every single day an uplifting and positive article
from the good folk at Daily Good ~ News that Inspires

Some articles I read that very day. Others I read at a later time.
The team that gathers the articles from near and far,
as well as research and writes about the
wide variety of topics and people, do an amazing job.
I am impressed that it all began with a single person.

“DailyGood was born in 1998, when one college student
started sharing inspiration with a half a dozen of his friends
by sending them an enriching quote every day.

Today, DailyGood leverages the internet to promote
positive and uplifting news around the world to more than
100,000 subscribers through the daily and weekly newsletters.
Readers receive a news story, an inspiring quote, and a suggested action
that each person can take to make a difference
in their own lives and the world around them.”

Do you subscribe to a regular newsletter
or email subscription that inspires you?

If you have yet to check out TED Talks
I encourage you to do so.

I receive regular email updates for their latest videos.
This week I was particularly moved
by the video by Zak Ebrahim entitled
I am the son of a terrorist. Here’s how I chose peace.

Are you already familiar with TED Talks?
If yes, do you have any favorites to recommend?

The last topic that has been on my mind has to do with the heart.

On Thursday I learned that one of my aunts was
to undergo heart surgery on Friday.
The good news is that the surgery appears to have been very successful
and she is recovering very well.
Then on Saturday I learned that a matriarch in my creative community
is also very unexpectedly scheduled to
undergo open heart surgery this week.

I have been sending prayers for healed hearts
and my inquisitive nature had me reading about the heart.

Did you know these very interesting facts about the heart?

Inspiration is swirling all around us.
Sometimes when I am blue I can get tunnel vision.
Reminding myself of all the beauty and wonder
in our world brings me back into the light.

Mojo Monday ~ Love Letters

July 7, 2014July 7, 2014Michelle Fairchild

Love letters. I have written my fair share. As a long time lover of snail mail and years of living long distance from a few of my beaus I have spritzed letters with perfume and imprinted them with ruby red lipstick. Yet not all love letters need be of the traditional romantic genre. Throughout the years I have also sent hundreds (maybe thousands) of letters and cards to family and friends that were infused with my love. While living overseas in France for a year and a half, prior to having access to email and phone calls being prohibitively expensive, I wrote many long letters to family members and college friends back home. I would even find amusing images in magazines and tear them out and make my own envelopes. Right now just thinking about it makes me want to make some again. I have not forsaken snail mail as I still adore it as much as I always have, but I do know that the long letters I used to write are more abbreviated notes added to sweet cards I buy from local stores or artists I admire.

How long has it been since you sent a “love letter” to a family member or friend?

Learning about a project called More Love Letters that was created by Hannah Brencher has me contemplating again the power of a longer letter to connect, express thoughts and feelings, tell a story, inspire and spread loving energy around the world. I first learned about Hannah Brencher through her TED talk. Here is the video where she shares how already being a huge fan of love letters, as this was her own mother’s way of communicating with her long distance, that upon bottoming into depression after college she began writing love letters and leaving them around the city for strangers to find.

After watching Hannah’s introduction to More Love Letters in her own words I encourage you to visit the web page for this movement. It has been beautifully created and executed.

The world doesn’t need another website. It doesn’t need another app or a network.

What it needs is really basic. Simple. Bare-boned.& often forgotten in the race to get followers, likes & status.

LOVE. Pure, old-fashioned, never goes out of style Love. Ridiculous, oozing, cannot pack this thang into 140-characters kind of love. Fearless, bold, unstoppable love.

And that’s where we come in… We’re going to tell you that we leave love letters all over the world for others to be blessed by. We’re going to ask you to write letters for Love Letter Bundles for people you’ll probably never meet. We’re going to invite you to nominate someone you know for a Love Letter Bundle. You are going to think we are a bit crazy. A tad loopy… But let’s be honest, you’ve been looking for a website that leaks love all this time.

Fair warning, we could really care less about love letters.

We’re only interested in you. The cracked parts of your own story & how you can use them to lift someone else. It’s about how each of us can morph our lives into love letters… lamps… lanterns… to light the paths of others who needs kindness and love today.

It’s official. Now, more than ever, the world needs more love letters. So get involved. Check out the current letter requests. Join our subscriber list to never miss a beat.

Your cursive means the world to us.

I read through some of the Requests for Letters. One in particular moved me deeply. Here is the description taken from the site:

R E N E E

please mail all love letters by July 15, 2014

A loving daughter wrote into us requesting letters for her mother. She wrote “My mother is undergoing an enormous transition period. At the age of 32 and happily married, her husband and my father, passed away in a tragic car accident on Valentine’s day that year. She was left with 5 kids under the age of 7 to raise on her own. My twin brother and I were just 8 months old. My mom just turned 60 and finally retired after 28 years of bouncing around jobs to provide for her family. The first time in her life she has no kids to take care of, no job to report to, and she is finally free. And she is scared. No one needs her, which is what most of her identity has been defined by. My mom needs a love letter that will inspire her to live again and finally, learn to take care of and love herself.” Join us in writing a letter of love & encouragement to this awesome mother.

PLEASE MAIL ALL LOVE LETTERS TO:

Renee’s bundle

c/ o Hilary C.

4505 Avenue A

Austin, TX 78751

Whether or not you feel inclined or inspired to join the More Love Letters official movement, consider right now making a commitment to send some love letters. How about you send one today or this week? How about a commitment to sending one or more a month? Will you send it to someone you know or will you leave it on a chair in a cafe, on a shelf at a store, in a dressing room, or on a park bench? The ripple effects of sending out love on a physical piece of paper can have more impact and power than you can fully grasp.

If you do send out a letter (or two or three or four…) consider sharing about how taking such action impacted you. What feelings did it invoke? What stories unfolded? What did you find yourself sharing? Where did you leave it or send it? Did you send it to someone you know or did you prefer to leave it for a stranger?

Mojo Monday ~ Scheduling Joy and Growing Your Soul

March 17, 2014March 17, 2014Michelle Fairchild

Is your calendar full? Do you wake up thinking about the things that have to get done? Does your chore list seem a mile long? In the midst of the laundry, taking the kids to softball practices, doing your time in the 8 to 5, feeding the pets and making meals, have you scheduled joy into your day? Jonathan Robinson, author of Finding Happiness Now: 50 Shortcuts for Bringing More Love, Balance and Joy Into Your Life has some ideas and recommendations for getting happier and one involves actually scheduling joy into your life just as you would a doctors appointment or a meeting at work.

What if you aren’t clear on what brings you joy? Jonathan Robinson recommends writing out a Pain and Pleasure List (PPL). The PPL is a list of at least 10 things that you enjoy doing and and a list of 10 things you don’t particularly care for. He states the point is to clarify what really turns you on in life and what you do only because you have to — or think you should.

As an example he shares a list that a client completed when given this assignment. Here is the clients lists:

Ten Things I Don’t Like To Do

Go to work
Market myself or my products
Clean the house
Cook
Be around disagreeable people
Spend time with my parents
Taxes and paying the bills
Give my wife a massage
Go shopping for clothes or gifts
Argue with my wife

Ten Things I Love To Do

Ride my bike
Be by myself, reading a good book
Play with the dog
Eat good food
Travel
Get a massage
Spend time in nature
Make love with my wife
Drive & listen to music
Watch a good football game

The author then shared that after his client completed his list he asked him to estimate the number of hours every month he spent doing each activity. Jonathan writes “When he finished this part of the exercise, it was brutally clear why he was depressed, stressed and messed-up with his wife. The total number of hours on the ‘pain’ side of the list was a whopping 215 hours per month. The total number of hours on the pleasure side of the list was a meager thirty-two hours a month. That’s almost a seven-to-one ratio of pain to pleasure. I’ve found that when the degree of pain compared to pleasure rises above a five-to-one ratio people dislike their life. In order to feel good again, such people need to spend less time doing ‘painful’ activities and more time doing what they enjoy.”

The author then adds for his readers “The first key to changing your life and behaviors is to be aware of whats currently not working. If after completing your own PPL, you see a similar pattern to James’ then you’ll now you’ve been denying yourself too much. You need to put pleasurable activities at a greater level of importance in your life.”

Take some time right now to complete your own PPL List. I’ll complete one too.

Ten Things I Love To Do

Read (extra bonus points if it is in a hot bath)
Be in nature and soak in the beauty
Take photos of things that make me happy
Laugh
Listen to music with positive lyrics
Play/do something fun with the family
Create (paint, draw, make collages)
Share juicy and uplifting conversations
Feel connected to others/nurture relationships
Eat/drink something delicious that also enhance my health & vitality
Ten Things I Don’t Like To Do

Clean the cat box
Be in a cluttered and messy living space
Cook after a long day at work
Have too much work to complete in a day
Deal with technical difficulties
Be overbooked
Fall behind on writing deadlines
Listen to complaining
Experience conflict or be around conflict
Take care of sick people

Add some of the things on your Things I Love To Do list to your calendar, be it techy style in Outlook or iCalendar or the old fashioned paper one hanging on your well. How did it feel to add these onto your calendar? Does becoming more conscious of making time for joy shift anything?

How about growing your soul while also making time for more joy? Does the concept of growing your soul sound daunting, challenging or even painful? I have some good news. According to Kurt Vonnegut growing your soul can be both simple and fun.

In 2006 Ms. Lockwood, an English teacher at Xavier High School, asked her students to write a letter to a famous author. She wanted them to discuss the author’s work and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was the only one to write back. He even signed off with a drawing.

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

Right now let’s do Kurt Vonnegut’s assignment and write a six line poem. Keep it simple and easy and just see what flows out.

Did you learn anything new about yourself after completing your poem? Was there a message from your soul?

Mojo Monday ~ SHE: A Celebration of Greatness In Every Woman

February 17, 2014Michelle Fairchild

SHE ~ She Harnesses Everything

“SHE is a book of qualities illustrating the greatness and strength of all women. From ‘everywoman’ to exemplars Madame Secretaries Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright, to visionary artist Shiloh McCloud and poet Maya Stein, these woman represent the very best in the human spirit. Author-artists Mary Anne Radmacher and Liz Kalloch have gathered these fierce and fiesty females along with their best advice for our life’s journey on the topics of leadership, friendship, adventurousness, collaboration, risk-taking, happiness, compassion and much more. With words of wisdom from Madeleine L’Engle, Laura Schlesssinger, Rachel Carson, Oprah Winfrey, Harper Lee, Lucille Ball, Cheri Huber, Julia Child, Drew Barrymore and many others.”

The book SHE: A Celebration of Greatness In Every Woman is a work of art. Each page is richly designed enhancing the beauty and power of the words that were written by authors Mary Anne Radmacher and Liz Kalloch. This work of art also includes words of wisdom from Shiloh McCloud, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Deanna Davis, Jennifer Louden, Christine Mason Miller and more.

I can recall how in January of 2013 Mary Anne Radmacher emailed me asking if I might be able to give her Shiloh McCloud’s private email address, as she wanted to contact her about a particular project. I knew Shiloh wouldn’t mind so I shared it with her. Later that same day I heard back from both Mary Ann and Shiloh about their delightful exchange regarding this very book project. Here it is finally in all its glory.

My friend and Cosmic Cowgirl tribe chief Shiloh was selected as the representative for the Mystical in the book. Here are a few images from the book for this particular topic.

There are so many more brilliant words of wisdom in the book. More quotes to inspire. More image and designs to please the eyes. It is a feast for the senses. The only thing missing is a musical soundtrack to accompany the book.

Here are some more images and quotes from the book to enjoy.

Authors Mary Anne Radmacher and Liz Kalloch are about to begin a tour with their new book.

One of the big book events is taking place on March 8th
from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm in Napa, CA

Here are more details:
Celebrate International Women’s Day in a festival-like atmosphere!
Join inspirational author Mary Anne Radmacher and artist/co-author Liz Kalloch
sharing their new book, She: A Celebration of Greatness in Every Woman,
as well as Dr. Rhea Zimmerman (producer and director of Love Bomb The Movie
and local author Pam Burns-Clair, MFT
(We Who Took a Leap – From Where Our Mothers Left Off),
followed by lunch (which may be purchased),
book signing, wine tasting, local entertainment and
a room filled with inspirational women sharing
their unique talents/contributions in our community.
This event is FREE to both participants and the public.

Visit the Facebook page for the book SHE here.

You can find Mary Anne Radmacher on Facebook here.

Liz Kalloch is on Facebook here.

Lastly you can also find cards (even SHE cards) and prints by
Mary Anne Radmacher and Liz Kalloch
at a web site called Applied Insight.

She Nurtures Greeting Card (She)
“She nurtures. She gardens.
She calls her friends to play in the fields of excellence.
She commands respect by never demanding it.
She grows all kinds of goodness. She lives with intention.”