July 21, 2015 – I couldn’t have dreamed

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This December it will have been eight years since my spiritual God Mother, Donna and I went to a day-long event at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, being given by the Buddhist meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein and Sister Mary Neill – two spiritual teachers from different faiths who are great friends. After the event, Donna introduced me to Sister Mary as my spiritual grandmother. After meeting me, Sister Mary told Donna that I needed something from her and to have me come see her. This felt strange and also wondrous. Donna told me that she only sees ministers and therapists and other people who tend to a flock, so to speak. Then why me? What did she see in me, and what would I need from her? At the time I was a real estate agent who had taken some life coach training, and had just that month been asked to show my watercolors for the first time the next spring. I went to see Sister Mary in January 2007 (check registers are great for placing things in time!) And I most recently saw her just last Wednesday. She’s now my beloved teacher and guide. She puts my life, my struggles, challenges and blessings in the context of our faith tradition and helps me see and mark my own evolution.

I could never have dreamed I’d ever have such a deep and sweet relationship with a Catholic nun. But not only is she unlike any other nun I’d imagine knowing, she’s unlike any person I know. She’s spent her life studying and contemplating the psycho-spiritual elements of human life. Her foundation is the Christian path and she’s devoted to Jesus, and she brings in to our conversations Jung, dream work and archetypes, the Enneagram, Byron Katie, the Chakras and Buddhist meditation. She’s wise and whip smart, but also funny, funny and silly and irreverent. She’s always taking my hands in hers and dancing with me as she sings old love songs. She’s fearless (sometimes so much she’s scary) and seems more free than anyone I know. No one on earth affirms me and my journey in the way she does. I just adore her. I pinch myself that I have someone like her who knows and loves me as she does. I cannot imagine the unfolding of my life without her accompanying me.

She went crazy over my painting of Twin Dahlias. She has a large framed print of it over the table where she sees her clients/spiritual directees. In our sessions, she’s always pointing to it and telling me this is God living through me – it’s my expression of God. My time spent with her has helped me come to know this to be true. We used to sing this chant at church: “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.” This is part of a Meister Eckhart quote that continues: “my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” At first I was puzzled by this. But she’s helped me to understand that what and how I see – how we each see – is unique to us, even as it an expression of the divine, of God. I go about my regular life and I’m captivated by something I see – a delicate flower, a look in my dog Bo’s eyes, the blue-lavender edge on the pinky-orange plums in a photo I took out at my parents’ last Tuesday – all these things are little expressions of God – and, my noticing them is God too.

I have come to see that making art – and now teaching – creating the environment for others to create their art – is my calling. And an important part of this has been to claim it as a real profession – to take the calling seriously enough, and to have the audacity to say that I will make a living at it – make it central to my life, not just a spare-time hobby. And it has been really, really hard. It’s been an on-going negotiation in my marriage to re-arrange our lives so I can answer the call. And it has taken immense energy: the festivals, the emails, schlepping tables back and forth for classes, operating in the face of that critical voice that constantly chatters negative stuff about it all – while continuing to paint and FINISHING these paintings.

I had a very freeing realization a couple of summers ago. I have lots of time to think while sitting in my festival booth. It’s rarely so busy that I’m talking to people all day. I’ve spent hours wondering why my art has not been selling while there are so many people expressing such appreciation for it. Then it sifted in: I’m not in charge. I have no say in who buys my art, when they do, how they will find me or it. If I were, I’d never have any paintings to show! They’d be all gone right away!

While this is being posted, I’m in Santa Fe, New Mexico sharing what I know about painting watercolor with a woman from Texas. In early 2013 she found my art somewhere on line – she can’t remember where – and signed up to be on my email list. Then about six months later, I sent an email update with my latest painting “Summertime” (some of which I painted while on retreat with my Sister Mary that summer). She saw it and knew this was the one. She bought the original painting, after just seeing a picture of it over the Internet. Then she told me learning to paint was on her bucket list and she wanted for me to teach her. There’s no way I could have dreamed this up. If I were in charge, this amazing connection would not have been made and I’d not be here this week.

In the time that I’ve been seeing Sister Mary, my work in the world – my reach – has grown immensely. There is an original painting hanging in Australia and I have a great fan who writes me regularly from, as she calls where she lives, the desolate mountains of Scotland. There are dozens of people who have come to paint with me and find inspiration from the environment I’ve been called to create. And even with all the successes, we are still a ways away from my making a real living at it. I still need support from my husband. But I do know that I will continue to be supported to paint and to teach. This support is part of the deal. I don’t think we are given a call without it.

I have no idea what else is in store. Just as I couldn’t have dreamed up all that has happened; I cannot dream what is to come – or when. It never feels right to take full credit for the art I make and how I help artists with their paintings. My experience is that all this comes from the source of all that is, from God – and that all that comes through us has some divine purpose. Our part – my part – is to listen for the call – and then answer it: Hello, is that you, God?

Love,

Cara