Learning to Love Your Life

Affirmation:  I savor life.  I glory in life.  I love my life!

I love my life. 

I haven't always felt that way but I wanted to feel that way and isn’t that what affirmations are for, to empower us to create our own reality?  

I can remember very clearly the first time I heard someone say, "I love my job."  I was a teacher in a rural middle school.  I'd been teaching for several years.  The gentleman who spoke those words was the English Chair of this very small school, three people in his department.  How much money could he have been making?  I knew that wasn't the reason for his happiness.  I didn't ask him why but over the years, I listened for others to say the same thing and I very rarely heard it.  How often have you heard such a declaration?  

Then, one day many years later, I heard a woman say to me, "I love my life."  She had shared with me in the past how unhappy she was, so this time I asked why.  She had made some very conscious choices and some very drastic changes.  She had moved to Italy, took up painting and dancing and fell in love with life.  Was it necessary to make such drastic changes in order to love life?  Were there other tools she could have used to find happiness without moving to another continent?  

Our dear friend Oie Osterkamp is the director of the Ronald MacDonald House here in Durham, NC.  Most of his life has been dedicated to helping other people.  His writing is all about making the lives of others better, richer. 

His first book is called Sharefish  (the opposite of selfish.)  He then went on to create Sharefish Int’l (http://www.sharefish.org) an organization dedicated to “bringing  hope to the hopeless” in Honduras.  I don’t know the exact number of people who interviewed for the directorship of the Ronald MacDonald House but I remember it was a very large number.  My husband and I were with him right after he received the news of his appointment.  Of course, he was ecstatic.  He told us “I was born to do this.”  What a gift, to be employed doing something you love.

At the time of this writing, Earline Middleton, Vice-President of Agency Services & Programs for the North Carolina Food Bank (http://www.foodbankcenc.org) has worked there for many years.  I came to know her through the Young Women’s Christian Association.  She and I sat on the board together many years ago.  Then, my mom, Margaret Grolimund, became one of their dedicated volunteers when she moved here.  One day, Earline shared that she had when she first took the job at the Food Bank she had no idea she’d be with them for so long.  She said she was “lucky” she had taken a job and found a passion.  

We’ve read about them, we’ve met them, perhaps we are them, one of those people who knew from an early age what they were destined for, what they were created to do.  Patricia Sprinkle, prolific writer and teacher shared with our class that she picked up a career brochure one day when she was fourteen which defined “writer”. She finished reading it and thought, “Oh, that’s me.  I’m a writer.”  And, so she is. Her passion for writing is palpable.  It truly is a gift, don’t you think?  When someone is born with a talent that presents itself to them at any point in their lives, but especially at an early age. 

I have always been fascinated by Dale Chihully, the famous glass blower.  His works are stunning, massive and he has exhibits all over the world.  He once created The Tower of David exhibit in a section of Jerusalem.  It was one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever viewed although I had to imagine the full effect by relating it to the exhibit I actually viewed at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.  I can’t imagine how he discovered that he was to be one of the best of such an unusual talent.  I think if most people had been born with such a rare gift, it would go unfulfilled.

Have you ever heard an adult say “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up?”   It seems to me, that’s most of the population but it’s never too late.  When I facilitate Artist Way workshops, we use Julia Cameron’s process to discover what it is that brings us fulfillment and joy.  What nurtured our creative spirit when we were children; what nurtures it now?  What is it that we get lost in doing?  I have watched many people come through the program with a sense of awe when they discover what they have set aside and almost lost in the name of surviving only to see their passion for their gifts is still there.  It’s just been lying dormant waiting for a little sunshine to bring it forward.  

Sure, if I moved to Italy or even went to visit for an extended period maybe, maybe I would feel like my friend.  But, maybe I can create, here and now, a life that I can claim to love.  I am the author of my own life.  I am the sculptress of what I want my life to look like.  With some soul searching, prayer and a supportive community, I can shape a life I love.  One of the most powerful tools to us is to come up with an affirmation affirming how one feels about their life.  Can one change the way they feet about life by simply stating “I love my life?”  I decided to try.  So, I created the affirmation,  “I savor life.  I glory in life.  I love my life!”  And, I claimed it, I wrote it, I read it every morning.  Then, it happened.  I realized, I did love my life.  I have surrounded myself with love, love of God, family, friends.  My life is really cool and I feel wonderful about it.  This is what I believed happened.  By the power of my affirmation, I slowly began to change.  I became more conscious about my decisions, about what I chose to do and not to do, about who I chose to be with and who I did not want in my life.  The affirmation worked just like affirmations do.  It slowly permeated every fiber of my life and without struggle I was off “living in Italy” painting, dancing and loving my life.  

Reach Your Full Potential

Affirmation:  I encourage my loved ones to reach their full potential.

This week I am sharing what my husband of many years wrote about his 2012 experience at the JCC Folk School.  I am so excited to know he has decided to use his hands more often to get in touch with his creative self.  I usually have a whole list of things for him on the weekends, all of which involve some sort of "hands on" activity.   I can't wait to tell him my affirmation and encourage him to reach his full potential.  I know he'll be so excited!

“Look at what I made!” The Hand Teaches the Mind Many Useful Things

Posted on October 13, 2012by Santo Costa

Last week I made the wooden bowl pictured here. Crafting this bowl is one of my most satisfying accomplishments in quite some time. It’s also a surprise that I could actually do it, adding to the pleasure and humor of the thing. At this point you may be saying to yourself, “This poor guy has lived a pretty shallow, uninteresting life.” But hear me out. The point is that I made the bowl with my hands.
Jean Anne and I have just returned from our annual pilgrimage to the John C. Campbell Folk School, at Brasstown, North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, far from the city. The school is one of the most creative learning centers in the country. Based on the Danish folk school model, it was founded in 1925 by John Campbell’s wife, Olive. Today it provides year-round weeklong and weekend classes for adults in craft, art, music, dance, cooking, gardening, nature studies, photography, and writing. As the school’s literature says, students’ experiences “in non-competitive learning and community life are joyful and enlivening”–exactly what we needed!
Folk schools are non-competitive, allowing students to learn at their own rate. As the website explains, “The folkehojskole (folk school) had long been a force in the rural life of Denmark. These schools-for-life helped transform [the people of] the Danish countryside into a vibrant, creative force. The Campbells . . . establish[ed] such a school in the rural southern United States as an alternative to the higher-education facilities that drew young people away from the family farm.”
This year I took a course in wood turning. I was taught by two highly skilled instructors how to carve a bowl out of a quartered log, a piece of wood in all ways similar to countless pieces of fuel I feed to our wood-burning stove with nary a thought. Another thing that was so remarkable is that at first I couldn’t imagine where the bowl “resided in” the piece of wood. Slowly, by starting out on the project though feeling I was working somewhat in the dark, I learned to see. And I recalled that after Michelangelo had completed his “David,” he was asked to explain how he’d taken a raw block of marble and carved the elegant yet strong figure of the young man. “He was in there,” the sculptor replied. “As I carved the marble away, piece by piece, I simply set him free—and there he stands.”
I chuckled to myself at that thought, knowing my 3-D imaginative gifts were far from the Italian master’s. But as I worked on the lathe, learning patience and focus, slowly finding the bowl’s best nature and adapting my hand and eye to what in nature that might be, I found myself becoming engrossed in the activity. I was soon completely caught in the moment. And I started to see, too, how therapeutic it is to work with your hands, bringing your own hands and eyes, your own energy into harmony with nature’s energy.

There is a frequent match play—a verbal game, where we fence about unanswerable, and in most cases highly impractical, questions—“What is more difficult, more trying, to work with your hands or be making a living in a manner that is less physical, more brainy?” My answer is who cares? Particularly because there is a cultural elitism that believes folks who work with their hands are a notch below cerebral wage-earners. Rather, I suggest that a more rewarding exploration would be to reflect on which type of work is more nurturing? And, following on that, how can we make the other type of work, the head-centered kind, more nurturing too?
Understand that I am not suggesting that we slide out of our current vocations and apprentice to a blacksmith or a cobbler or a wheelwright. What I am suggesting is that instead of relying on the latest self-help book to right a teetering psyche via reading the book, a mental activity, let’s think about making a quilt or binding a book—really! When Charles Darwin was worrying over a difficult issue, he would go into his garden and weed the flower beds. Winston Churchill built stone fences when his decisions and responsibilities were weighing too heavily. Surely you know countless individuals who have been eager to retire into a more intensive study and practice of their favorite hobby, often one that caused them to create things with their eyes and hands in concert.
The fact is that working with our hands is one of the most powerful forms of meditation I can imagine. When you turn wood as it spins on the lathe and your cutting tool unearths the layers of cellulose fibers, you see a constantly changing symphony of rings. Colors appear against a background as you discover embedded knots and imperfections. Can you imagine a more magical way to employ your hands and your mind! And all of this benefit is without even mentioning the obvious: at the end of the project, you have made something new, something fine that wasn’t there before; and since you are now an artisan, not an artist, the new creation is beautiful and useful.
Because of my experience at the folk school, I’ve come to see that the best way to flourish at your thought-work daily is to make sure you take time daily, or perhaps for a good part of the weekend, to work with your hands. If your business has a mission of understanding more closely the world or some aspect thereof while improving the lives of others—and whose does not?—then work toward completing that mission by sculpting, building, making something every week. Here’s why: J. Bronowski, in his 1973 book The Ascent of Man, writes that “Discovery is a double relation of analysis and synthesis together. As an analysis, it probes for what is there; but then, as a synthesis, it puts the parts together in a form by which the creative mind transcends the bare limits, the bare skeleton, that nature provides. . . . Thus, we have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation” or intellectual problem-solving at our desks or in conference. “The hand is more important than the eye,” Bronowski concludes.

As I turned the lathe and carved my bowl last week, I was practicing bringing together analysis and synthesis of sensed data—wood, carving tool, force, motion, my hand in time—to make and do something—learning a practice that will help me to do a better and healthier job daily in what some people call my real work. But now I know that there’s more to preparing for that work than I thought. Plus, Jean Anne and I have a light-filled wooden bowl to use in our house.

May All Your Dreams Come True

Affirmation:  By pursuing my dreams, I help to make the world a better place. 

The newspaper article was about an organization called Wish of a Lifetime.  It explained it isn’t the only organization of its type.  There is also The Twilight Wish Foundation, The Bucket List foundation, Forever Young Senior Wish Organization and S.H.O.W. (Seniors Having One Wish.)  They all have the same goal; to grant a wish to an elderly person who is in desperate need of a morale booster.  The article’s photo was of centenarian Miriam Krause.  She was shown in the basket of a hot air balloon.  She had requested a ride for her 100th birthday.

 

 How do you feel about seeing dreams come true?  One of my prayers for my children is for “true dreams.”  My husband’s philosophy regarding a parent’s happiness is, “On any given day most parents are as happy as their unhappiest child.”  When he first shared this with me our children were teenagers.  Now, they are adults and that philosophy is as true today as it was then.  Therefore, it is my best interest to pray that their dreams come true.  Now, I have added my grandchildren.  Actually, my daily prayers request God’s “favor and blessings” on everyone I pray for, those I pray for by name and those in the world “who most need Your mercy.” 

Do you have a bucket list?  In case you need help putting one together there are all sorts of web sites that have lists on them to help you along.  One such site is Bucketlist.org.  It actually offers “10,000 things to do before you die.”  The first time I became familiar with the term, Bucket List, was from the 2007 movie by the same name starting Jack Nicholson & Morgan Freeman.  As of this writing, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are still going strong and I would imagine there isn’t much on which they have missed out. 

I was surprised that it’s fairly common for teenagers to have bucket lists.  My granddaughter has one.  So far, I think the fun for her is discovering those things she wants to add to the list.  Certainly, I hope she has as long as Jack or Morgan to work on checking off her dreams. 

Our dream list can be very different at different times, just like our prayer list.  In times of peace, our dreams can be very specific, like a new house or a vacation or perhaps time to enjoy our favorite activity.  When my husband and I went on a tour of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville we were paired with another couple.  The Ryman is the original home of the Grand Ole Opry.  As we were escorted into Johnny Cash’s dressing room, I noticed the gentleman on the tour with us became very quiet.  He almost looked like he couldn’t catch his breath.  I looked at him with concern when his wife spoke, “This is his dream come true.  He has always wanted to see the Ryman and where Johnny Cash had his dressing room.”  I loved being in this place with this man when he realized one of his dreams. 

In times of strife, our dream list can be more universal.  Our dream may be for a world filled with peace, good health and safety for all.  For me, the greatest dreams are those that will improve the world’s conditions.  Of course, one cannot deny that when an individual makes his or her dream come true, the world does become a better place.  But, when I see and read about those people who dream really really big and bring them into reality, I am awed.  In the same newspaper issue that had the Wish of a Lifetime story, there was also a story about Hunger in the USA.  It highlighted several organizations that glean food. “Volunteers descend on farm fields and reclaim some of the estimated 7 billion pounds of fresh produce left in the fields or sent to landfills each year, recovering it for the plates of millions who can’t afford it,” according to Chuck Raasch of USA Today.  Many of the volunteers are school aged children.  Gleaning is not something new.  It was practiced as far back as biblical times.  I like to imagine, however, that the modern creation of gleaning was someone’s dream.  They saw the waste and decided to gather it up to feed the hungry. 

My church, Saint Michael the Archangel in Cary has a sister parish in Honduras.  Each year we contribute to the needs of the people in that parish.  We provide books and clothing for children, build buildings, provide medicine and the ability to acquire clean water.  A team of parishioners travel there each year to do whatever they can for the sister-parish.  My daughter in law, Belen Baca Costa and her family have an organization that raises money for the poor of Ecuador so the children will have presents at Christmas time and those families, therefore, won’t be forced to beg on the streets (http://hotelcotopaxiecuador.com/NoBeggingProject/tabid/333/Default.aspx)  When I was at the John C Campbell Folk School, my teacher, Patricia Sprinkle, author and creative writing teacher, shared the story of her journey to India to teach creative writing to the “untouchables” and of her work in the Church of the Brethren with whom she had recently led a group to help children in Louisiana after hurricane Isaac.   Thank God, these are just a tiny example of the good people who are doing by pursuing their dreams.

Of course, one need not look to or go to a foreign country to make a positive difference.  Every day people walk out their front doors and head off to help others.  Our volunteers can be found in hospitals, homeless shelters, food banks and schools to name just a few.  I myself had the dream of creating a yoga retreat for breast cancer survivors and from that dream came the Pink Ribbon Yoga Retreat (.org)

Organizations that are born from the dream of someone who wants to make a difference in our world must also be part of God’s dream.  End abuse, cure cancer, bring solace to suffering, food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless; the dreams of a higher order and each individual who steps out to add to the comfort, to bring “favor and blessings” to another are part of the vision our world so desperately needs. 

There are so many dreamers in our world.  What’s one of yours?  So many dreamers have made their dreams reality.  Whether it’s a trip to a far away place, a new charitable endeavor or a ride in a balloon, it’s important to pursue our dreams. Yes, each time a dream comes true, the world becomes a brighter place and isn’t that exactly what the world needs, more joy and more light?

Put on Your Glasses, Change Your Vision

Affirmation: I am a lifelong learner.

Our vision is a gift, one of our most valued senses.  How we see the world colors our whole attitude.  Have you ever heard "It's 10% aptitude and 90% attitude?"   What about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist?  "A pessimist is right 100% of the time."  We get to choose moment to moment whether or not we will see the glass half full or not.  What if we could simply put on a different set of specs to help us change our perspective?

There are people who want to expand their view of the world and then there are those who want to stay in their safe places.  Unfortunately, it's easier to stay "safe"  especially as one ages.  If you're not careful, your world can become smaller and smaller.  You may start making choices to stay safe which begin to limit your experiences.  One must make a conscious choice to continue to learn and to grow.  I once heard it said,  "You can be green and growing or ripe and rotten."  It's our decision.

It's helpful to be able to see when we want to move forward.  Sometimes, however, it's more important to look back, to see where you've been and what you've learned from the road previously taken.  No matter in what direction we are looking, or from what vantage point, high or low, we can use our vision to enhance our experiences. A top ten Toastmasters speaker used the topic "The Click that Sticks" to talk about his life experiences and how instead of trying to capture everything on a camera lens, he chose to imagine his eyes being the camera and recording the event onto his brain, making it "the click that sticks."

I wonder if people's height has anything to do with how they see the world?  I know I love being up high.  I love it when I have the opportunity to look at the world from a plane, a mountain or a even a hill. I'm 5 feet tall, so usually my vantage point is upward.  One day many years ago at a NCAA basketball tournament I left my seat during intermission to find a pay phone (many,many years ago) and call home.  The sign for the phone was several yards up ahead at the end of this very long line. My view was so limited that I could barely see the top of the sign because of all the tall men in front of it.   I was surprised so many people needed to use the phone, until I got closer.  I was in line for the men's room.  My vision had been so limited, I waisted time waiting on the wrong line.

At some point in our lives most of us find ourselves wearing glasses to help us see.  Some need glasses at an early age, others not until they are older.   There are many different types of eye conditions that require some help to allow people to see clearly.  Sadly, for some glasses can't help at all, they are blind. 

Have you ever been in complete darkness, no little LED lIghts anywhere, no moonlight, nothing but blackness?  I once participated in a smoke lodge ritual.  The rocks were heated for several hours before they were placed in the center of the makeshift tent.  Once the inside of the lodge they reached a sauna like temperature, then we were invited into the session.  The heat enveloped us and began to immediately sooth any aching muscles.  Then, they closed the flap.  I couldn't breathe!  Suddenly, the heat felt like I was being wrapped in a heavy flannel blanket, from head to toe.  "Deep breath!"  "Deep Breath!" I told myself.  Then I noticed there was a tiny bit of light seeping in under the edge of the flap.  I was saved!  I found my breath. 

Helen Keller was blind from birth.  Not only blind, but also deaf.  Her story so well know as The Miracle Worker tells the tale of a young girl completely isolated from society because of her disabilities.  But, with the help of a gifted and dedicated teacher, Anne Sullivan, she became a world renown author, political activists and lecturer.  She was the first deaf-blind person (man or woman) to earn a Bachelors of Art degree.  She had "vision" even though she did not have sight. 

One of my efforts to stay green involved going to a writing workshop at the John C Campbell Folk School.  There Patricia Sprinkle, our teacher and gifted author asked us to write a description of a familiar place.  Seven students sat in the cozy "writing lab" overlooking the green meadows and tree covered mountains.  It was the beginning of fall and the trees had just begun their colorful metamorphosis.  We all wrote about some place we knew well and then we shared our stories.  But, we had left things out, things like the doors and the windows of our familiar places, things that we saw all the time but had stopped noticing.  Patricia suggested we put on our "writer's glasses" to enable us to see things in a new light.

One of my study groups in my church is working on how we can improve our relationship with God.  The lady who does the DVD lecture told a story about wearing her "blessings from God" glasses.  She said she imagined them to be rose tinted and enabled her to more easily see the gifts God bestowed on her on a daily basis.  Now, our writing instructor was telling me to put on "my writing glasses" to enable me to see the world differently than I was use to seeing it, to help me see it from more than one vantage point or to renew that which had become familiar to me. 

I like the idea of putting on different lenses to see different things in my life not only more clearly, but differently.  Perhaps, that's what it was like for Helen Keller.  Even though she couldn't see and she couldn't hear, she put on the "glasses" that Anne Sullivan created for her and she was able to see the world in so many different ways, perhaps more clearly than many of us sighted people. 

Shakespeare wrote "The eyes are the windows to the soul."  What happens to our souls when we put on different glasses?  Anything?  Does it expand and grow?  Does it change color, become kinder, warmer?  Does our expanded vision bring us closer to our spiritual self, to our God?  The answer is, it's up to you.  You get to choose what you want to see and how you expect it to impact your life.  My newest pair of glasses to don are my "writer's glasses" and I'm very curious to see what my new "glasses", my new vision will reveal to me.  What about you?  Is there anything you're interested in seeing from a different perspective?  It doesn't have to be a new subject for which you might need different glasses, perhaps it's a relationship or it might be a philosophical perspective.  Put on your new glasses, change your vision, broaden your horizons.  It may just be the tool you too need to see your dreams or concerns in a whole new way.