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This is the print-friendly version of the August 2005 Newsletter
- Online Issue # 10
August 2005 Newsletter
Online Issue # 10
In this Issue:
See also, the print-friendly version of this newsletter (all the articles are on one web page).
Look for the next issue in December.
The Front Page
Lessons in Allowing
Standing at my kitchen window, looking out over the back yard garden that is still creating itself, I return to the word—allowing. And I wonder, is that what I'm doing with this garden now? Allowing it to find itself, create itself?
In the beginning I envisioned a back yard garden, but it was vague. Mainly it involved expanding the area for growing flowers and reducing the amount of grass to be mowed. There was no plan on paper, no picture in my head and no list of plants to be included. But there was a clear beginning, a day when I acted and the transformation started—with destruction.
My neighbor Dianne coached me from across the fence on how to kill the grass using twenty layers of newspaper weighted down with wood chip mulch and a few old bricks. Dianne explained that in a few weeks I could begin planting by cutting through the newspaper and the dying grass into the soil beneath, which I did. I put in a few plants and a few more, then more and more, although I no longer remember what came first and what all I planted. There still was no real plan.
At some point into the project I got excited about creating a butterfly garden and began selecting plants known for their butterfly attracting powers. It took a season or two, but the butterflies found the garden just like they were supposed to. Now, from midsummer on, I enjoy the sight of these lovely, gentle creatures circling the back yard in elegant loops in the warm afternoon sun. In all the years before this, I remember only an occasional butterfly in my yard, nothing like the regular visitors they've become. My attempt to provide a damp sandy area for them to drink was less successful, so this spring I finally dumped out the sand and turned the puddle into one more bird bath.
The garden, and my life, continues to evolve. Plants grow and multiply until they threaten to overwhelm and take over neighboring plants. Some plants disappear and are never seen again, even with repeated attempts to reintroduce them; pincushion flower and clematis are two that come to mind. Occasionally plants appear, brought in on the wind or by squirrel, bird or me. Some are welcome, some I eventually weed out.
I can see now that I'm moving toward allowing: giving up trying to control what is happening because a part of me really prefers it that way, needs it that way. I like the mystery and the surprise, and the relaxed, easy feeling. I look out the kitchen window now and I see a garden, which is what I wanted to see. But it's not the one I vaguely envisioned and it's not the one that was there last summer, last month or a few days ago. Even today the light is ever changing the garden, first highlighting one thing then another. The bloom cycles are moving through their year the way they do, maybe a little ahead of schedule this year. A few days ago I looked out back and was genuinely disappointed that nothing was blooming spectacularly. Nothing. And now, just a few days later, the bee balm is bursting out all over. It has invasive tendencies and I have allowed it to flourish, encouraged it to spread. I have allowed it even though it wasn't in my original vision. But I didn't know then how lovely and airy it is on a breezy day, how much it likes my backyard and how well it grows and spreads, compared to a lot of things that never survived to reappear and re-delight.
Sometimes, sitting in the back yard or on the back steps, I take in the whole of it in one giant sweep. My reactions can vary from “This is a miracle,” (which I love) to “This is so out-of-control. What have I done? Where do I start?” Then, instead of taking it all in and continuing to grow more overwhelmed and frightened, I make myself see just one thing in the garden. Something like one lily bud, growing pregnant with sweetness that will soon open to reveal excessive beauty. Or one drop of sunlit water, magnifying the lovely leaf veins of some green, growing thing. Or one animated chickadee, darting around spilling sunflower seed for the young squirrel eating beneath the bird feeder.
In allowing my garden to become itself, I'm also learning to allow myself what I need, what I desire and what I deserve.
“Give Thanks For Unknown Blessings Already On Their Way”
Earlier this year, I had multiple encounters with the above saying attributed to a Native American elder. I've been contemplating and appreciating the wisdom of these words and slowly discovering a thread of connection that circles back to this idea of allowing. I've been paying attention to how open and how willing I am to be blessed. Do I allow myself to be blessed? Do I allow myself to receive the blessings I am consciously cultivating? Do I allow myself to welcome blessings when they appear, in the ways they appear?
In June I had outpatient surgery to remove a benign cyst in my jaw. For a few days after the surgery, I felt like a wounded animal. I just wanted to be left alone in my safe, quiet nest of a home. I allowed myself that comfort and quickly realized that I also needed to allow my wise and knowing animal body to heal itself. Allowing was my finest option because I do not know how to grow bone, even with the help of a bone graft. Fortunately, my own body instinctively knows what is needed and is doing the healing for me. I did what I could: rested, chose soft nutritious food, took my medications / supplements, drank lots of water, and imagined healing. But mostly I allowed the miracle of healing. Actually, I welcomed, affirmed, imagined and allowed it.
This is the meditation I wrote for myself and memorized to prepare for surgery. I read it to a few people afterward and they encouraged me to share it here, so I will.
I choose to have this surgery to restore my heath.
I am safe and divinely protected each and every moment.
I am grateful for each person who guides and encourages me.
I allow myself to fully trust the wisdom and expertise of my surgeon and everyone who assists.
I attract safe, respectful, kind and loving care.
I thank my body for cooperating with the surgery and healing itself.
I take time to rest and nurture myself before returning to the work I love.
Life is good and all is well.
I live with daily awareness of my extremely good fortune.
I crafted each line to directly and positively address my real concerns about the upcoming surgery. When I felt "complete" with the wording, I tested it out to see whether I had created a statement that expressed what I most wanted in this situation. I memorized all the lines and then repeated the affirmation to myself during the days before my surgery, while waiting on the day of surgery, and even afterward.
This writing exercise was another valuable lesson in practicing allowing and in making it real. I'm pleased to report that not only did I choose and affirm the lines I wrote, I also allowed them to be my experience. The blessings, that were on their way, did arrive and I opened my life to receive them—the healing ones I envisioned and affirmed, and many more—including the sun and the rain, and the butterflies that visit my garden.
With ever more gratitude,
Laurie Mattila
Good Books
Finding Meaning In The Second Half Of Life
How to Finally, Really Grow Up
by James Hollis, Ph.D.
Gotham Books, 2005
hardcover, $25.00
I was considering featuring two other books on the topic of midlife until I discovered this wonderful new book by James Hollis, Jungian analyst, educator and author. Hollis explores the many ways our lives, and our very selves, are shaped to be too small for the soul’s yearnings at midlife. By uncovering persistent but unconscious patterns that no longer work for us (some never did), there is the possibility for a growing consciousness leading to new choices that offer “spiritual enlargement.” Throughout the book, Hollis unravels fascinating dreams and stories from the lives of his clients, and sometimes from his own life, to demonstrate how our own inner wisdom already knows and can be trusted to guide us, with personal clues, into a more soulful, meaningful way of living the rest of our lives.
The seventh chapter—Career Versus Vocation—is a wonderful resource for anyone grappling with the issue of making a living while longing for meaning. “We may choose careers, but we do not choose vocation. Vocation chooses us.” Here, as elsewhere, Hollis writes honestly about the “considerable personal cost” we might pay to follow the soul’s leading and to “choose what chooses us.”
On the page preceding the Introduction, you’ll find a list of eleven questions that midlife asks each of us. Here are three: Whose life have you been living? Why, even when things are going well, do things feel not quite right? Why does so much seem a disappointment, a betrayal, a bankruptcy of expectations? Hollis returns to these questions in the eleventh and final chapter—The Healing of the Soul—where he writes, “We need questions that ask that we grow up.” Most of us also need a competent guide or guidebook; Finding Meaning In the Second Half Of Life is an excellent choice.
“We dream this way every night. And every day the world is full of clues as to the will of the soul, if we are willing or desperate enough to begin to pay attention. If and when we do begin to take this inner life seriously, our locus of sensibility, our psychic gravity, begins to change. From this internal change, profound changes of the outer world become possibilities.”
-James Hollis
FYI: If you’re interested in the other two books I referred to above, they are The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of WISDOM by Angeles Arrien (2005, Sounds True) and Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood by Suzanne Braun Levine (2005, Viking). They come to me highly recommended, but I haven’t read either of them yet.
What We Ache For
Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
HarperSanFrancisco, 2005
hardcover, $21.95
What We Ache For is the kind of book you want to give yourself: great title, beautiful cover design and nourishment for your deepest longings.
Writers, and those longing to write, will probably love the book best, because it offers an intimate and generous opportunity to discover how someone else is doing writing. Most of the insights, suggestions and ideas could be adapted by readers doing other forms of creative work (this is mentioned repeatedly), but I’m not sure the book will speak to the hearts of others as passionately as it speaks to the hearts of those aching to write.
There is a way in which the book doesn’t quite turn out to be the book described in the opening chapter; it ends up being better. What We Ache For is a more personal, instructive and practical account of how a writing / creative life might be arranged, supported, developed and sustained, even as it evolves. Time and again, it reminded me of the Brenda Ueland classic, If You Want To Write. So, if you do, Oriah Mountain Dreamer offers you a beautifully crafted writer’s companion with chapters devoted to beginnings, endings, seeing, silence, doing the work, being received, the artist’s life and more.
At the end of each chapter you’ll find “questions for contemplation and practical suggestions for doing creative work, followed by writing exercises.” These are thoughtfully selected and definitely worth exploring. The author encourages readers to experiment and pay attention to what happens. “If my insights and suggestions help you...then use them. If they do not, ignore them and try something else.”
The book is full of good mentoring.
“Sometimes you have to give up the idea of the creative work you thought you were going to do in order to let the creative work you ache to do happen.”
-Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Make Your Creative Dreams Real
by SARK
Fireside, 2005
paperback, $16.00
This is SARK’S twelfth and latest book now out in paperback. It has her characteristic look and feel: vivid colors and quirky sketches with lots of stuff for you to do. You’ll learn about SARK’S journey to make her own dreams real, while she offers guidance and encouragement for your dreams. Although the book is designed as a 12-month program, one chapter for each month, you can use it in whatever way works best for you.
Whether you already know your dream and want help to make it real OR you want to discover your own dream to make real, SARK provides a surplus of playful ideas to move your dream along and keep it alive. Some of the steps / ideas are so small or so silly that you might be tempted to undervalue their potential, but they are doable. And that is the point: accumulation in combination with sustained attention. Especially helpful chapters include Finding and Naming Your Dream - chapter one and Nourishing You and Your Creative Dreams - chapter nine. Beginning in chapter seven, Inspiring Stories and Examples of Creative Dreams and Dreamers, you’ll meet a handful of SARK’S friends responding to her questions about their own experiences making their dreams real.
If you’re already a devoted fan of SARK, you’ll probably like this book too. But if you’ve never taken time to explore and work with any of her books, this might be the one to choose first.
“When we think of living our creative dreams, many of us become afraid. Our main fear is usually that we’ll fail. Of course, the real failure is in not trying, but fear hypnotizes us into forgetting that. Fear’s job is to make sure we don’t try...Then we’ll be SAFE. Safe and small and not dreaming at all. ”
-SARK
Profile — Calling All Profiles
The profile that was planned for this issue met with unexpected circumstances. Look for the Profile Page to be back again in the next issue in December.
If you’re really disappointed by its absence, consider sharing your story in an upcoming newsletter. If you want more information about volunteering to write for the Profile Page please contact me by e-mail or by phone.
e-mail: LaurieMattila@aol.com
phone: 651-644-7766
If you’re new to the newsletter and would like to read profiles from past issues, look for the list of the Archived Newsletters on the Free Online Newsletter page of this website.
Upcoming Calendar:
Discovery Writing: Creating A FutureSM
For NEW Students:
Discovery Writing: Creating A Future
This six-session class uses process writing as a way to explore what you truly desire; it is also a path to follow in creating your future.
Fall Schedule 2005
Saturday mornings ( 9:00 - 11:00 a.m. )
September 24 October 8, 22 November 5, 19 December 3
Tuesday evenings ( 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. )
September 27 October 11, 25 November 8, 22 December 6
Winter Schedule 2006
Saturday mornings ( 9:00 - 11:00 a.m. )
January 21 February 4, 18 March 4, 18 April 1
Monday evenings ( 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. )
January 30 February 13, 27 March 13, 27 April 10
View the online flyer to learn more about Discovery Writing: Creating A Future
For FORMER Students:
2005 Discovery Writing Weekend Retreat for Women
The 9th annual Discovery Writing fall retreat is scheduled for the weekend of October 14-16 at StoneyWoods Retreat Center. The theme for this year's retreat is “To Go Beyond.” I've invited Terry Pearson to join me as the first guest co-facilitator. Terry is a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Facilitator who teaches at the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota and also at The Marsh.
Invitations will be mailed in late August to all of the women who have taken Discovery Writing classes. If you hope to join us for the fall retreat, please pencil the dates on your calendar now. Depending on how quickly the retreat fills, I might offer several openings to women who are interested in Discovery Writing but who have not yet taken the class.
2006 Year-long Group
I will offer one, possibly two, year-long groups beginning next January and meeting monthly through December 2006. The year-long groups are a wonderful way to continue the listening-writing process and support ongoing discovery. Detailed information about the groups will be mailed to all former Discovery Writing students around Thanksgiving.
Intentional Living—Meaningful Work SM
For New Students:
Intentional Living—Meaningful Work will be offered again this winter through The Compleat Scholar program at the University of Minnesota. The four-session class will meet at the Continuing Education and Conference Center on the St. Paul campus on the following Wednesday evenings:
February 1, 8, 15, 22
from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Registrations will be handled by The Compleat Scholar Program at 612-625-7777. Feel free to contact Laurie Mattila directly if you have specific questions about the class itself.
About the Newsletter
This newsletter is created several times a year for my clients
and students, and anyone else interested in listening to and trusting
their own deep knowing. It is designed to support your process of
discovery and growth, and to bring you up-to-date about my practice.
It offers encouragement, guidance and resources for you.
You will find new issues posted on my website in the months of
April, August and December. I hope you add my website to your favorite
places and check back when the next issues are scheduled.
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