More Deeply Real

1. Home, Awake, Midnight

During January’s Friday Workshop, while participants were exploring their lives through metaphor, archetypal image, and story, I made a series of cut-paper images.  I am writing about these images only now, almost 4 weeks after making them and “living with them” in my psyche.

I intentionally chose to work without drawing, or writing a story or plot before hand. Both drawing and writing – skills I am good enough at that I have illusions of some mastery of them – would have triggered for me efforts to understand too soon and to control the process in order to avoid the deeper pull of the unconscious, to distract myself from its challenge, to prevent my receiving of its invitation.

Earlier in the workshop, we had made a list of possible conflicts, using as mythic language as possible. On my list, I wrote: being woken from sleep by an unseen force in the middle of the night knowing that something must change.

2. Again, Responding to the Call, "Change Your Life!"

Having been through a series of changes, not all that many years ago, I certainly didn’t want to be there again – already! But, having learned from past changes that trying to avoid change is life-numbing, while responding to the call of true longing connects self to world and awakens the energy of soul, I knew now not to ignore this disturbing messsage.

I worked intuitively, not knowing what each image “meant” and not knowing what would follow each image until something emerged from the paper and scissors and my awkward efforts at cutting.  What began to emerge was a woman running from her home down a dark road  after being woken.

3. A Bit of Home Stone

She pauses to pick up a stone in order to carry a bit of “home” with her wherever she must go.

4. City, People Stautes

She comes to a city where the people are statues. She does not know why they are this way – perhaps they become this way because the work they do to survive here drains the life from them.

5. Let Us Have the Stone!

They all want to touch her stone.  Are they trying to steal it from her?  Will the stone heal them? Do they fear it and want to make her get rid of it?  Do they see the woman as strange, the rock as familiar,  finding it to be as hard and lifeless as they are becoming?

She wants to help the people. She wants to share the stone.  But she needs it for herself too.

6. Praying for Guidance

She withdraws from the crowds, exhausted, drained, not sure what to do. She kneels by a stream, near a tree, holding the rock against the Earth, praying for guidance.  This feels grounding, calming and  she feel deeply sad.

7. Explosion of Energy

Suddenly, there is an explosion of energy from the stone and the woman is sent into the arms of the tree. She grabs hold and swings.  A bird flies from the branches.

The story emerging from these cut paper images does not feel finished.  I anticipate that there may be additional images to create.  But I have not made them yet.

Immediately after making them, my schedule became very busy with unexpected work that calls me away from my studio, into the city, to provide community mosaic workshops for schools, work that I have done for 7 years.  It seemed, this fall, that the recession had cause that source of work to dry up and so I turned my energy toward developing new work opportunities and was feeling excited about their potential.   Despite my own financial uncertainty, I was also enjoying some much needed time at home, in my studio.

It seems now, that my life has paralleled the images that came intuitively as I worked with cut paper.  I have been pulled away from home, back into community work. But I am feeling overwhelmed by the city, and  people who all want something undefined from me. Working in this way will drain me, turn me into a statue.  The work feels old, heavy, uninteresting to me. I feel the need to pull away, to ask for guidance, to pray for change that will allow new creative energy to take me in new directions.

I do not know how I will respond to all these inner stirrings of need for change.  I do know that the changes made over the past several years have all been incremental steps toward living in a way that allows me to use my gifts in more authentic ways. I do know that I am an introvert – and I have worked for 7 years in a very extroverted manner. I feel the need to simplify. To protect introvert time. To claim studio time. To retreat. To free my energy for different work.

I trust that the creative spirit that communicates through art meditation, prayer, dreams, metaphor, and intuition will continue to guide me as the story continues to unfold.

Coupon for 20% Off One Workshop or Art Therapy Session with Liza

Occasionally, I check my blog dashboard to see if anyone is visiting it. Some days I have 20 views. Some days I have 1. Some days I have zero.

On the busy days, I wonder who it is that is visiting this site. Please leave a comment! I would enjoy hearing from you.

And, here’s a coupon for anyone who has been interested in one of my workshops or in individual art therapy. Think of it as a Golden Ticket for Dreamers. You can print it and give it to me when you attend something at Enbarr Studio and I will give you 20% off the normal fee! (To print, try dragging the image to your desk top and then printing it from there.)

I'll Give My Life to What Gives Me Energy

Years ago, I wrote about a gas meter. I was 34, a new mother, working part-time. During the first year of my daughter’s life, wanting some way to listen to my imagination despite the complex stresses of that time, I gave myself the assignment to write monthly about one small square foot of earth in a narrow strip of land between the driveway and my house. I felt a loss of freedom for time spent other than at work or caring for an infant, and I hoped that this writing exercise would affirm for me, that even in the smallest, most ordinary, most easily overlooked of spaces – and moments – I would find a simple connection to the surrounding universe. These hopes were realized with each month’s writing. I wrote about a pansy that bloomed there mid-winter, frozen water in the downspout, a pomegranate that rolled from the compost pile, the gas meter against the side of the house, morning glories sprouting from last year’s seeds, my daughter’s first steps tottering toward me.

Yet these writings also always contained painful acknowledgements of how exhausted and poorly nurtured I felt. And when I wrote about the gas meter, I imagined, with longing, a meter connected to my heart, that measured precisely the physical and spiritual energy that I expended and that was – or was not – replenished in my relationships at work and at home. I heard the gas meter say to me fiercely, “This is what is being given away! This is what it costs! This is how much you receive! And this is what you truly need!” In my imagination, I saw the gas meter transform from a rusty, inanimate object into a wise and loving creature that touched my heart with compassion. And, while I could not say what it was that I truly needed, I began to understand that I was giving away more than was healthy for me, and that I needed far more than I allowed myself to want, let alone claim.

Writing about that gas meter was a powerful experience of how strongly the archetypal beings of the imagination call us to right what is out of balance, to serve what is truly valuable, and to not waste our lives. After writing about the gas meter, I entered a period of life in which I gradually came to accept what most of us come to know as we turn toward midlife: that our energy is limited; that how we chose to spend our lives will demand of us just that, the spending of our lives; that life is a precious fuel, a limited resource, only partially renewable; and that such renewal of our life-energy can only come with care, conscious effort, intentional living, and commitment to a generous spiritual practice. For me, carefully listening to and responding to the archetypal imagination is the most generous spiritual practice I know.

As I wrote about the gas meter, I did not know that what I truly needed would require me to leave, first, a job at which I was burning out, and, then, my unhealthy marriage. But, as I did those things, I sensed in my heart a wise and compassionate presence through which I learned I could gauge my spiritual, emotional, and psychological energy.

I know now to listen to this presence, this “inner gas meter, and have come to trust it. If some opportunity feels too taxing, too depleting, too draining before I even begin it, I say no to it. If something in my life starts to feel deadened or out of balance, I find ways to rebalance, or to let go of what is finished. If I feel energy for other pursuits, even if they do not seem immediately practical, I follow my excitement for them and give them space in my life. And through these choices, I find, and trust I will keep finding, relationships, ways of working, ways of living that nurture and energize both myself and others, that protect and inspire imagination.

Art meditation suggestions: 1) Choose one square-foot of land close to your home and write periodically about what you see there. 2) Draw an energy map of your life, showing how your spiritual, emotional, and physical energy is being spent and renewed. 3) Sit next to your gas meter. Write a dialogue between it and some part of yourself, such as your heart.

2010wfriday workshops

2010wComStudioWorkshop

The above links will take you to two beautiful new brochures about upcoming programs at my studio!  (Made by Gary Schmitt, Indy’s best graphic designer!)

Once a month, on Friday, come to the studio to slow down, create, reflect and renew by exploring specific art forms (such as storytelling, masks, dream tending, poetry, music, mosaic, printmaking, etc.) in a community setting.

Or, once a week, on  Monday evenings, come to the studio to create, reflect, and renew by practicing a variety of art meditations with others!

Looking forward to more music and warmer weather

Now is the time of year that we hear talk in the media of New Year’s Resolutions to loose weight, stop smoking, exercise. This is all well and good, but I often feel that talk about resolutions often includes focus on faults, guilt, and superficial appearances. To me, being healthy includes living with compassion, creativity, and in rich relationship with myself and others. And so, instead of making resolutions to change my flaws, at the beginning of each year, I like to think about what my creative life is calling me for and to give myself the gift of following that longing in some small and attainable way. For instance, one year I realized I had been reading only non-fiction about the environment and that this had been enlightening. But I was hungering for more playfulness and hope in my reading, so I chose to devote a year to reading fiction again. This choice wasn’t a rigid choice. If a non-fiction book that was truly inspiring came across my path, I read it! But I also had a great time reading fiction, exploring new authors, and found that my own creative writing came alive in new ways. Last year, I decided to take some risks playing my harp and singing – in front of other people, no less! I am still limited by “stage-fright” musically, but last year brought some progress and I am more in love with music because of it. This year, I am feeling pulled toward poetry and journaling again, and I especially want to explore creating a multi-media journal with images, writing, music, interwoven.I feel unsure of how to do this, so haven’t started yet. Hopefully, some of what occurs in this effort will make its way onto this blog.

What are you feeling creatively drawn toward? What are some of your creative resolutions for this year?

The Studio Space

With less than two weeks until Christmas, all my time and creativity is busy with holiday preparations!  But my thoughts are also turning toward the new year and what Enbarr studio can provide for those seeking a place to create, grow, deepen, and come home to their longing.

Another Studio View

I have heard from several readers of blog that they are eager to come to one of the upcoming programs at the studio in 2010.  I am excited about sharing the studio with you!  Here are some pictures of the studio space, ready and waiting for us to come together again in January.

There's Room for You!

When I have more time, I plan to write next about beginning the new year not with last year’s uncompleted resolution, but with creative openness to renewal and change.  Over the holidays, if you have any thoughts about how you might honor your creative life in the coming year, post a comment on this blog. Maybe we can get a conversation going that will inspire and encourage us all!

Happy Holidays!

Artist Trading Card

I have observed countless times a surprising potency and energy that awakens in people when they participate in community studio art meditation and spiritual reflection.  Sometimes this renewed vitality inspires outer changes related to jobs, physical health, home environments.  Sometimes the big change is internal. Either way, there is a swiftness, an inner quickening, an instinctive knowing that those old choices that weren’t working anymore no longer need to be maintained. New choices, new ways of living are possible.

This energy, this potency is the soul’s innate creative strength,  strength that is with us all the time though we become disconnected from it. It is frightening. We feel it as an ache, a longing and mistakenly assume that we need to get rid of it – fill it with something external, something that will finally satisfy it and silence the longing.

Years ago, I read the  book Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue and was deeply touched.  He says:

If your soul is awakened, then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging. Your longing is safe there. Belong is related to longing. If you hyphenate belonging, it yields a lovely axiom for spiritual growth: Be-Your-Longing.  Longing is a precious instinct in the soul.

Real longing cannot be resolved, brought to a conclusion, finished, explained, understood, or completely satisfied because then it ends. It dies. The longing of the soul is meant to live.  When speaking of longing, the verb “be” is essential. Being means living. To be longing, we live longing.  We long for longing. We allow longing to be an open question, a fire within us, the indescribable emotion that stirs in us when we touch upon the mysterious life at our core.

This longing is what is awakened in us in the community art studio process.  The products we create together might look like nothing more than a small and humble doodle or an unfinished experiment. But they are actually doorways that open our hearts and lead to our longing.

Finding Beauty in Brokenness, collaborative mosaic

I have been making mosaics with communities since 1997. In those 12 years, I have seen how the art form, which creates beauty from brokenness, offers not only a symbol of healing, but a rite of creating renewed wholeness for those who make the mosaic. I have made mosaics with groups dealing with domestic violence (either as victims or as those working to help the victims). I have made mosaics with students in preschool, elementary school, secondary school, college, graduate school, even seminary. I have made mosaics with teens and adults in prison. For the past three years, I have overseen and facilitated The Cancer Mosaic Workshops for Indiana University Simon Cancer Center and have created mosaics with cancer patients, their caregivers, and doctors and nurses at IUSCC.

In all these experiences, I have witnessed people acknowledging their feelings of being shattered by illness, violence, abuse, loss, grief. And I have also heard people describe how the pain of these experiences gave them the  gift of being broken open to deeper love, fuller living, authentic healing.  I have come to understand that we “… must be broken open and remade, perhaps many times, to come to awareness,” as art therapist Pat Allen says in her book, Art is a Way of Knowing.

On this past Saturday, November 14, 2009, as part of Indianapolis’ Spirit and Place Festival, a group of people experiencing major illness and/or life changes gathered at the IU Simon Cancer Center to  create mosaics. We began the day with introductions, writing, and storytelling about our experiences of job loss, a rare bone disease, lung cancer, breast cancer, loss of loved ones, long-term physical disability. We then wove the healing imagery within these stories into collaborative mosaics.

At a Mosaic Workshop, November 14, 2009

In the photos shown here, several of the workshop participants are piecing together a mosaic of a lighthouse. The lighthouse symbolized to this group  the ways in which, in the midst of their own sea-changes and rocky  journeys, there have been people and places that shone a light for them, guiding them, helping them find their way.  The lighthouse also symbolized for the group the ways in which they have given a guiding light to others.

As the mosaic took shape, I observed much laughter, eagerness,  and enthusiasm in the faces, voices, and interaction of those creating it.  I knew that not only myself, but everyone in the room was feeling a surprising joy.  Community artist  Lily Yeh, who has made art and mosaics with such people as genocide survivors in Rwanda, describes what we were experiencing in this way:  “It is really through the depth of living, the chaos, the brokenness that I find peace.  Joy is rooted in the depth of our suffering.  It is out of my own brokenness, and the brokenness of others in the darkest of places, that I find that sense of joy.”  (Lily Yeh, as quoted by Terry Tempest Williams, in Finding Beauty in a Broken World, page 270.)

I sometimes imagine no longer having to haul numerous heavy boxes of tiles around the city, even the state, in order to bring mosaic workshops to interested groups. But there will always be suffering in the world, in my life, in yours.  And rather than trying to trying to ignore the pain of living, or to deny it, or defend myself against it, I chose to live and work in a way that both does not create unnecessary injury , and also compassionately accepts the pain that is here, now, offering us growth, change, healing.  It is because of this choice that I continue to provide community mosaic workshops.

I will be facilitating Cancer Mosaic Workshops for cancer patients and caregivers on March 6, May 1, July 10, and October 30, in 2010. Additional information about these workshops and how to register can be found http://www.cancer.iu.edu/mosaic.

For information about scheduling community mosaic workshops for other groups, please contact me directly.

Colors of Longing, pastel on paper

Group Creation, mixed media on paper

Recently, five women gathered at Enbarr Studio for an eight week course –  Beyond Burnout Prevention: Creative and Spiritual Renewal for Social Service Professionals.  Over the weeks, we talked about our work as therapists, social workers, school counselors.  We acknowledged the grief, the frustration, the worry and the exhaustion that comes from such work. And we acknowledged our own dreams, our need for nature, our search for what is wild and  alive inside ourselves, our deep longing.

Reaching for a Star, mixed media

Every night, after checking in and talking about readings related to depth psychology, art therapy, and eco-psychology, we made art. And we began to see that our images are alive, with much more to tell us than could be grasped in only eight weeks. We met in our art work women with wings, birds, animal people, moving colors, mountains, rain and trees.

Who is This? - chalk on paper

On the last night of our time together, we brought to the studio everything we had made and we spent the evening looking at it again, seeing connections in each others work and our own.  More than one person said that the greatest gift of the group was learning that creating things together in community holds a power that is missed when trying to create alone.

Opening the Door, acrylic on canvas

After everyone carried their art back out into the night and drove home, I stood in the studio feeling how full it was with life. Here are some of our living images.

In the Rain, oil pastels on paper

Enbarr from Irish Mythology, oil pastel on black paper

In case you are wondering, Enbarr Art Therapy Studio is named after a horse from Irish mythology who carries riders from the immortal land of Tir na nOg to the land of men.  Enbarr means imagination, a fitting name for a wild being who travels between two worlds. Such travel is what  imagination does. It connects the world of dreams, images, soul to our  waking world, our  ordinary consciousness.

I have always been drawn to  Irish stories, music, and mythology.  This spring, after  having a dream in which a musician skilled in Irish music gave me a horse for which I needed to make a home, I began immersing myself in the story of the harper Oisin and his travels to and from Tir na nOg. It was through studying this story that I learned of the horse Enbarr.

My studio has recently gone through a few major moves in the wake of my own travels, and so it was in need of a new name to honor the new home I have made for myself, my work, and for imagination in the world.  I hope to see you soon at Enbarr Art Therapy Studio!