I am beginning to wish that people wouldn’t recommend
books to me. Some books I am simply too
mean to buy – the purse simply refuses to open and allow the debit card to reel
off its numbers. Other books, mostly the
Kindle variety, get a more positive response.
The book I settled on was “The Sound of Paper” by Julia Cameron. I read through a number of the reviews. They were a mixture of fives and fours with
the occasional one thrown in.
Each chapter comes with a craft activity and a writing
exercise.
Try this:
Gather fifteen to
twenty magazines with pictures. Buy a
large piece of poster board and glue (the purse said “No” to the poster
board reminding me that I had A3 drawing paper and the glue was harvested from
the old Sunday School materials box under the stairs – old but still up for the
task – a bit like me). Spend half an hour
cutting images from the magazines.
(I have lots of these – mostly food related – I refused to surrender any
writing magazines to the cause – not the same concerns with my husband’s history magazine).
Don’t fret about trying to make sense of the pictures you connect
with. Take another half hour to cut out
the images, arrange them and paste them on to the board. You are making a portrait of your
consciousness. What you see may
surprise, delight or even alarm you. Using words take to the page and describe
your personal discoveries.
I am surprised that it turned out so good. It would be really interesting to have
someone else look at the finished product and tell me what they see in, what it
tells them about my consciousness.
There is a chair in the centre of the picture. It’s very much in contrast to all the other
images on the page. The other pictures
are very active pictures. It could be
that the chair is all about my strongest desire being comfort, or than I am
basically lazy. God seems to be saying
to my heart that it is about doing everything from a place of rest. Resting in
His presence is where everything I do has its root and centre.
The top pictures, a set of tools and a hand scraping
clay, came from a car magazine I picked up from a garage waiting for tyres to
be fitted. I was fascinated to discover
they made a full sized clay model of a car before they made the real one – just to see
how it might look in light and shadow. I
think it is about the work that God is doing on me. He uses the situations I face like tools to
scrape away the bits of me that are not needed – attitudes and mind sets that
hinder growth. My part is to cooperate
with Him.
The bottom corner has boats and windsurfers and there is
a glass half full. I had windsurfing
lessons once. One lesson is never
enough. The surf board on the sand and
the sail dug into the sand is not preparation for the sea. I think this is all about taking risks. There is a kind of recklessness about some
windsurfers, but they don’t head out to the waves without knowledge and
experience, and cutting their teeth on baby waves. The half full glass reminds me that God has
confidence in me to take on risk and adventure and to not always to play safe.
The other corner is a colourful picture of a religious
festival that involves dye. It’s the Hindu festival of Holi. People throw
coloured powder and dye. It is a spring
festival about new life. Everyone in the
picture is covered in coloured dye. This
to me is about getting into the crowd and not keeping a distance. It’s about not expecting not to get dirty and
not minding, perhaps not even noticing.
It reminds me of time spent in a black orphanage in Durban, South
Africa. The smell of the place and the
children was very strong. I minded at
first, but then, as I spent time there, I got to smell just as bad as the
children and I stopped minding. I no
longer wrinkled my nose as I gathered them into my arms.
What else is on the picture? There is a letter. I used to write lots of letters. I tried to revive my letter writing but with
all the other demands on my time it never really happened. Mother Teresa once said that she was a pen
in the hand of a loving God who was writing a love letter to the world. Writing letters may not be the modern thing
to do today but it is the most lasting.
They can also be the most treasured thing that someone possesses. God writes His-story in my life, asks me to
tell that story through words, through actions, through prayers, through
forgiveness – through living.
Behind the chair flies superman against a background of coloured
cotton reels. I’m not superman or wonder
woman. I think this might be about me
giving myself permission to be normal. There are lots of pressures to deal with
– just the normal stuff but lots of it.
Add in to the mixture one or two of the not so normal things and life
gets manic. It’s not the worst thing in
the world to drop one of the balls – or all of them – and sit down and relax sometimes.
The cotton reels?
No idea on that one.
The word “vote” reminds me, not about the upcoming
Scottish independence vote. In more general
terms it is about being an active participator in life. The other day I asked a history teacher if she
could come up with any examples of non-violent protests that had changed the
world significantly – excluding Martin Luther King or Gandhi. From the top of her head she conjured up the
suffragette movement. To not vote is to
dishonour their memoires. And if I feel
I have nothing to vote for? Whose fault
is that but mine for standing idly by while those in power whittle away the compassion
of a nation?
The carrot? That’s about reward. The best way to get the best out of people is
to show them the rewards. Joe and I have
just started watching re-runs of “Alias Smith and Jones” – those latter-day
Robin Hoods of the wild west. The
promise of amnesty if they can keep out of trouble for a year dictates their behaviour.
The heart and spirit of a person is seat of all action.
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