January 3, 2017 – Gifts from last year

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Last week, just after finishing my post I drove up to Sonoma County to see my friend Cathryn Couch. Being on the cusp of a new year, on our walk she asked me what 2017 looks like for me.  I’d just written that I wasn’t going to project into the New Year, rather I’d let it unfold and live in the “futureless present moment.”  I felt a pull away from this – it’s what we do – we look into the future at this time of the year. Though I felt resistance from inside, through our conversation I recognized that it is good and useful to have at least intentions – to bring our desires in to play in the unfolding of our lives.  Otherwise we could be rudderless as time marches on.  Last Tuesday afternoon my intention was to carry forward the hard lessons from 2016 – and value myself more.  Cathryn framed it for me with the familiar analogy of putting on my own oxygen mask first.  The more I know that my life makes a difference, the more I must tend to my own energy and capacities – so that I can.

Then, while driving the next day I heard Terry Gross interview Francis Ford Coppola on her Fresh Air radio program.  He published his notebook from when he made The Godfather and they were talking about his making that iconic film.  He said something that struck me as really useful.  When he makes a movie he decides what it is about, what is its essence, in one word if possible.  The word for The Godfather was “succession.”  He said that when he’d come to a decision point about the story, the casting, what to edit in or out of the film, he’d ask himself if this furthered the story of “succession” or not.  I like this idea.  A lot.  What came to me is I could use it for this year – a theme to help me know how to respond, moment by moment.

Joe and I had spent the day Sunday putting away Christmas and getting the house, kitchen, refrigerator and pantry all cleared up from the holidays.  The house felt open and clean.  Then my dear friend Vicki called yesterday.  There isn’t anyone with whom I share the inner threads of my life with more than she.  It was a perfect time to connect with her – with all this spaciousness around me.  What came out of our conversation was the desire for my “oxygen mask” intention to start with tending to my physical body – sleep, exercise, hydration and food.  This sounds so close to the diet and exercise regime that many start a new year with, I know.  But it’s really not a resolution – I’m holding this as a re-tuning into caring for myself – so that I can have the energy and presence to do what is good and helpful to others in my life.

After we got off the phone I took Bo up the hill on our hike.  I get lots of insight and inspiration on mornings on that hill with my dog!  What came to me was the theme for this year:  Living my love.  It seems to apply to just about any area of my life – my health, my work, my creativity, relationships.  I like how this isn’t a resolution – it leaves room for the “futureless present moment” and life unfolding in its own time and in ways I cannot imagine – as well as it provides an organizing principle that keeps me from flopping in the breeze.

Living my love harkens back to something that came through me in the middle of last year – that what I do, what we who paint together are doing, is not just painting what we love, we are painting our love. This year I will attempt to apply it more broadly.  This prompted me to take a peek back to other insights that came to me last year because I’ve sat my butt down to write every Tuesday.  Here are some:

• Attention and awareness are vital – we literally create our world via what we pay attention to, and unless we are aware, or awake, it’s nearly impossible to respond in the moment, according to our intentions.  How can I live my love if I’m asleep at the wheel? (1/26/16)
• Cultivating right-brained awareness is important too.  It’s our right brain that sees holistically and is geared towards connection and relationship, and is open to what is new.  Navigating these uncertain times is a call to engage our right brains big time!  We live our love via our right brain. (1/19/16)
• Growing our capacity to hold suffering, starting with our own, heals us and the world.  Artists make this tangible in the art we make – we paint our redemption – our gift to the world.  Living our love in the real world is most powerful when we respond to pain in ways that at least doesn’t perpetuate it. (3/29/16)
• The sacred lives in ordinary moments – a good reason to practice being awake – so we don’t miss too many of them. (4/19/16)
• What we love makes us who we are.  We don’t choose it – what we love chooses us.  Giving ourselves permission to live what we love – and who we love – changes everything. (5/31/16 and 7/5/16)
• Paintings, projects and lives have phases.  I identified some of these phases in the making of painting – which can apply more broadly too.  It sure helps me to realize this.  It helps me stay out of the dumper – and makes it easier to return to living my love when I do go there. (8/30/16)
• We each have a voice, spoken, written, painted, played.  Everything we do carries our mark and speaks for us.  It is fueled by what we love – by what we value.  It is living our love made manifest – sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes it’s fierce. (10/25/16)
• Living our love is “soul on deck” in the words of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, which, as she says, shines like gold in dark times. (10/4/16)

Now my confession:  after turning off electronics at 9:30 and going to bed soon after, I woke at 1:30 this morning and haven’t been back to sleep.  My brain and heart were twisted up with the juxtaposition of having claimed “living my love” as the theme for this year and then having spent a good part of the afternoon yesterday being wholly unpleasant to someone I care about.  I acted through my irritation and frustration at a situation that wasn’t what I expected.  I just couldn’t seem to take it in stride.  In the wee hours I had all kinds of voices – some telling me I’m a sham.  Here it is – an opportunity to grow my capacity for suffering!  I have a relationship to attempt to repair and a situation to change so that I don’t go here again – at least not for this reason.  I know that living my love doesn’t mean that I won’t ever get upset.  It’s just so painful to be this hard on someone – including myself.

I’ve never been further from the hopeful place I’ve been in years past, facing a bright, shiny new year. And yet, I’ve also never felt as solidly myself (even after having been so lousy with someone) which brings another kind of hope to me.  Last year brought some hard stuff that has given me a sense of Cara that I’ve not known before.  This and the insights that arose on Tuesdays are gifts from 2016 that, to me, are worth carrying into this next year – a moment at a time.

With my love,

Cara