Here's a challenge...

As my steps take me into Week Four of The Artist's Way, I've come upon an interesting task: "Reading Deprivation Week".

No reading this week. No books, magazines, newspapers. And I'm extending that to "No Facebook", since reading there usually takes up a wholllllle lot of time. The idea is to be able to Listen to what's going on within. To DO rather than to read. For someone who loves the printed word as much as I do, this is going to be very very interesting.

I already made up a litte "off for a week" sign for my FB profile and signed out. I'm also going to limit chatroom, Yahoo, and email reading - in other words, stay off the computer just as much as I can handle!

So, Reading is out. Writing, however, seems to be OK... so maybe I'll post a little more here. That's creative, right? ;)

"Remembrance."

After a long, long period of creative drought... I'm back in the workshop (newly christened "Studio"!) again. I've been working hard at trying to unblock myself, using "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron and faithfully doing my homework. Wasn't quite believing it, but all of a sudden ideas are popping into my head. Seriously. After years of drought, and only three weeks on this program!

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This week, while I was doing my Morning Pages (three pages, longhand, of just anything that comes into my head), a sentence popped onto the page:

"(God Says) Use what you have, and I will supply the rest."

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Yesterday, the form of a little necklace started rolling around in my head. My sweet husband and I are singing with a small ensemble at church Sunday morning, for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks on our nation. I wanted something fresh to wear with a new black and white tweed jacket.

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Pale blue came to mind, in the form of some lovely blue lace agate beads I'd bought years ago. I had originally intended to make them into a rosary for my little Mom, but I never managed to get into the making of it. The more I thought, the more appropriate it seemed. Blue lace agate... Stone of high inspiration, supposed to help one reach high spiritual places. Calming of emotions, soothing for buildups of painful or irritated energy. I don't necessarily believe that stones have particular powers, but I do believe in the power of symbols on the mind and emotions - and what better influence for a memorial service for such an agonized, terror-ridden day?

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So, with those beads in mind, I went downstairs to the studio yesterday morning. And ended up sorting and cataloguing beads instead of making anything. Brainless work, it needed to be done, but I was suspicious that I was just delaying. Somehow it felt Okay, and I decided to just go along and see where I ended up. This morning, while writing my Pages, I suddenly found myself sketching and diagramming instead. Yesterday the idea was there, but fuzzy. Today, I was ready to start!

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Seems like a lot of to-do over just a simple little necklace. But I've been in such a drought, for so so long... the silver chain in my hands felt like water in the desert. The white clouds in the pale blue beads made me smile. My hands started remembering how to wrap the wire ends just... so. And I could just imagine Mom, my sweetest and best cheerleader, smiling as I used "her" beads.

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Remembering, on many levels. Remembering heart-rending pain and terror, remembering old beauty, remembering days when the world was sane and my Mom was here. Remembering how to do this work, remembering the joy in it. Calmness of spirit, coolness of blue and silver, and ready to lift my voice with my husband's and my friends' tomorrow in prayer and praise and solace for pain. So, only one name for this delicate little necklace:

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"Remembrance."