Millennia harp by John Lozier
This past Friday sparked the beginning of the blog book group adventuring with Twelve Secrets Of Highly Creative Women by Gail McMeekin. Coinciding with the week’s theme of “Acknowledging Your Creative Self”, I received my Millennium Harp Quest award–a lovely 3 1/2 octave harp crafted by John Lozier (founder of the Harping For Harmony Foundation, which sponsors the Millenium Harp Quest) and a guitar-maker colleague. I love the bright, rich tone of this harp! I love how lightweight it is. It was such a surprise to be awarded the harp–and such an affirmation to receive it on this celebrate-your-creative self day: My Harp Quest involved a “weave” of harp, community, and the metaphor of the paper crane to discover what creative fire emerged. Appropriate, yes! I plan to lend out the harp to folks here who are interested in harp, to have it on hand at community events for folks to try, and to use it in therapeutic/clinical settings. It is just perfect for all those purposes!
That day also marked the arrival and installation of our little woodstove. I had no idea how anchoring it would be to have a hearthfire at the center of our house again–to be able to heat with wood again, cook some, and dry our clothes via a woodstove. Wow–I had no idea how much I’d missed the ritual involving Fire that woodstoves have provided for our homelife in the passed few years, and to the magic of my own day-to-day self.
So, it was interesting to experience the next morning. We had discovered with the initial fires (to cure the woodstove) that a protective coating on the woodstove was burning off, too. Ugh! Terrible fumes! My husband determined to burn off the rest of the coating, and so, with a few key windows open for convection, the fire burned. Terrible, toxic fumes and smoke! Now, here was interesting weather (as Stephanie Bennett Vogt deems the variety of holding patterns and emotional clutter) that moved through my system! Tears, jangly nerves, short temper–you name it! More than the fumes, I felt some invisible finger of fate and destiny jamming down on all my buttons! Actually able to witness the inner upheaval in motion, I forced myself to wonder: what protective coating is burning off of me right now? How was it toxic? How was it protective in my whole ’shipping’ to a new life/place process, and does it no longer serve me? –I can’t say I answered all those questions right then and there! But the very act of asking questions and opening to a response most assuredly guides you into a clearer place.
Definitly, I’d reached a signpost in clutter-clearing, as Sephanie Bennett Vogt describes in Your Spacious Self;. It’s the second signpost she describes:
Shift Happens–Embrace It
She writes a lot of good stuff here that I encourage you to read at some point. The flag in particular waving at me was a quote: “Your resistance to change is likely to reach its peak when significant change is imminent.” Well! This one phrase pretty much sums up some of the major weather systems I’ve experienced in the past months, and two years, and in particular, one I experienced at the New Moon, where I absolutely resisted tooth-and-nail to being where I am (in all ways) when I thought I’d been “done with all that”. Have I truly burned off that toxic old protective layer? Probably not, is my guess. But I do feel like I’m now grounded and re-grounded in the ways I can recognize my weather systems, and have tools and practices on hand to guide me through and clear-as-I-go.
I also feel like I have a pretty good “divining rod” in my crane bag. The Shift Happens concept and the quote above shines light on what I’ve observed for years with myself, with friends, with clients … about that tendency to really dig in one’s heels and throw tantrums, and do just about anything to calcify in your old place and state of being, just when you’re about to step forth into that creative fire of potential and emergence …. To be continued, I’m sure.
The Nature Of BrightMoon
This Full Moon is one of the brightest of the year, due to the fact that it coincides with the Moon’s perigee–its closest point in its orbit around the Earth., which occurred on the Tenth.
Some questions dance in my mind at the end of this Weave:
- How might this BrightMoon reflect your personal Creative Fire?
- What Creative Fire is closest and shines most brightly for you right now? What, of your many-flamed creative self, seems “closest to the Earth”–most imminent in emerging on this planet?
- Do you have a protective coating that needs to burn off or is burning off? How might it seem toxic as it burns? What is the solid, strong you that is emerging to support that creative fire that is all yours?
- Do you have a practice for keeping “the glass clean”? (We clean the woodstove window every morning with a bit of ash and vinegar, and newspaper. In life I have my own morning practice that keeps my being and vision clear so I can see/sense that heart-fire magic springing about!)
