May 5, 2015 – Color is life

Velda’s palette after painting a recent Friday group. It was a painting in itself!

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It’s no secret to any of you that I am pretty much obsessed by color.  Looking back it started pretty early.  Like probably most of us, growing up I had coloring books and Crayola crayons.  I’m sure we had them at home, but my clearest memory of “coloring,” as we called it, was at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  My dad was an only child and was old at 28 when he married Mom. So when, in less than four years, the four of us came along, Grandma must have felt like she hit the grandchild jackpot!  She adored us.  And she devoted one of the six drawers of her dresser to us.  This was where all the coloring books and crayons were.  Often there were four full-sized Hershey bars waiting in there too!

I remember being a bit disappointed that no matter how hard I tried; crayons wouldn’t make a solid patch of color.  From the start, I’ve wanted color to be saturated!  When I was in elementary school, I used to love to make rainbows with both crayons and felt pens.  Starting with red triangles in all four corners of the paper, next came orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and back to red.  Then repeat until the lines, or arcs met to make a rectangle and fill the rectangle to the middle.  Much later, I learned that this is called a God’s Eye.  I loved how one color leads to the next and then back to the start in one continuous blend.  Such a perfect system!

I’d guess that most of us are drawn to seeing color in the spectrum in this way.  But, I just love being in art supply stores and seeing the color in all the paints, pencils, pastels.  And they are almost always arranged in the spectrum – it just makes sense to do this!  Here are some photos from the first time I went to the Sennelier art store in Paris.  An art supply store in Paris, for me it hardly gets any better!  My clothes in the closet are arranged in the spectrum. Color is the filter I see the world through.

When I’d been leading watercolor groups for about a year and a half, I received an email from a lovely woman in Montana who asked that I let her know when I have a weekend workshop, she’d like to come to California to take it.  Weekend workshop? What weekend workshop?  I asked my regular painters, if I were to teach something beyond what they get from me every week, they said: Color. You know a lot about color.

So I figured out how to present what I thought would be useful to convey about using color, pigments and paints – and a color workshop was born.  While I was putting this workshop together, I went to see my spiritual director, Sister Mary – a treasured source of love, affirmation and wisdom in my life. I showed her the cover of an art supply catalog that had the spectrum – the rainbow – in art supplies and I asked her, why do we love the spectrum, why do we love color presented in this way?    She said that the rainbow is light, which is God made visible.  And the complete spectrum has a wholeness to it. Oh, so, it’s whole and it’s holy!

Just after writing, I saw this spectrum at the kichen sink!

Since becoming a teacher of color, my natural curious nature has me learning all I can about it. Color is all about light, which is energy.  I’m sure most people know that the color we see is the part of the spectrum of light that the object does not absorb – it’s the portion of the spectrum that is reflected back to our eyes.  What blows my mind, is the capacity of the photoreceptors in our eyes to receive the different frequencies of light and how that registers in our brains to allow us to discern very subtle differences in color.  And that this is a capacity we can grow.  We can learn to see color with finer granularity.

Color is subjective too.  It’s amazing to me what Joe will call “pink.”  For me pink is pink.  For him it can be a color I see as a beige with a slight red in it, or even what I’d call violet. He’s not a “pink” guy, so anything tending in that direction is labeled such.  And color is personal. I’ve come to see that each artist has a palette.  Paulette does not like green-green, so she uses a lot of turquoise-green and yellow-green in her paintings and they are beautiful.  Gillian likes muted, sophisticated, hard to name colors.  Heather’s paintings are the opposite. She uses clear, pure color in a refined and delicate harmony.  Mine is a full-spectrum palette, especially as time goes on. I’m happiest when I can bring all six major colors of the color wheel – red (or pink), orange, yellow, green, blue, violet – in some form, into my paintings.  Some colors may dominate, of course, but having them all there gives me a sense of “all is well, nothing is missing.”  That said, red is not so much my color, for me pink is it!

Color is light – to see it there must be light – but not too much.  There’s no color in the dark, but, in blinding light, there is no color either.  The “colored” object is so awash in light that all of it is reflected back to us, which we see as white.   Since light is energy, color is energy.  The more color the more energy.  Right now, most of my paintings (which are life in full color) are at my mom’s office as we are in between the weekends of Marin Open Studios. The walls are bare and the house feels different. It’s spare and empty, not just visually, but at deeper level too.   Conversely, if you walk into the real estate office, you can feel the energy in the space from all the color that surrounds you.  I hear this all the time – it’s not just me!

I know bold color is not for everyone. Not only do we each have our personal colors, the world has its color trends. The interior design palette for some years now has been quite muted; neutrals, greys and black and white have been the style.  I read somewhere that colors become subdued when the economy is in a downturn.   I was recently given a subscription to House Beautiful magazine. I’ve not read these magazines in years. But I’m really encouraged to see the recent issues filled with vibrant color. Hallelujah.

For me, color is a nutrient. It feeds me. And this makes sense, as it is energy, light, God even.  Owning my love of color – and using it to express what is in me, has given me my life’s work.  The thrill of putting color onto white paper never gets old.  I’m watching the paintings in me become increasingly vibrant as time goes on.  I see this as a reflection of my clearing the way, of opening more to allow the life-force to come through me. Color and light shows up in my paintings and I show up in the world.  We each are a unique and precious expression of our source, of God.  Color may or may not be how you are channeled into the world.  If it is, I invite you to come out and play with me.  And regardless, whatever is your way, bring it on!

Love,

Cara

April 21, 2015 – Digging for treasure

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In the past week I’ve been clearing out.  Yesterday I went through the drawers at my husband’s contracting office of “my” files that were stored there.  I went through all the colored (!) folders and tossed two drawers-full of paper I’ll never need or use again.  This was after last Wednesday, when I went through every shelf and drawer in my office/studio here at home.  I’ve been hearing repeatedly how beneficial it is to de-clutter – not just for the aesthetic and practical reasons, but also for making space for whatever new life is awaiting me.   And the result has been exhilarating.  Standing here typing on my laptop, I can see in my peripheral vision, empty spaces on the desk and in the bay window that were covered with “stuff” a week ago.  It’s like a crisp breeze blew through here, taking away all that wasn’t anchored down by my need for it or my love of it.  Ahhh.

Some things were hard to toss.  I’d been collecting all of the return address stickers that came with requests for donations from charitable organizations – for years.  It irked me that I could never possibly use all these “gifted” stickers and they are not recyclable because they have a coated paper backing. The burden I felt in them, gave me the idea to do some kind of statement-collage-art with them.  They all have some kind of color to them after all!  The stack filled a file folder top to bottom, an inch thick, at least, and it’s now in the trash headed for the landfill :-(.  I told myself I can’t save the planet all on my own. The good news is, I’ve gotten off all of their lists and we don’t get them nearly as often anymore!

Then there were stacks and stacks of old postcards from past events with my art on them. I’d ordered more than were mailed out or given out at shows.  I tossed them into the paper recycle bin and with a tinge of sadness, I watched all these colorful images of my work cascading down – yes, I can be a bit sappy.   And I’m appreciating another kind of beauty – the empty space on the shelf where they were!  I just ordered half the amount, so they won’t stack up in the future.

I went through photos, cards, magazine and newspaper articles I’d saved. There were documents I’d saved from my years in the tech world, much of which I realized I don’t even understand anymore.  Out it went!  In the end I filled up our entire paper recycle bin at home and a good half of the huge one at the office.  The back of my car has stuff for the Good Will – and I did have to grit my teeth and put some stuff in the trash to be landfilled.  But, oh, what a difference!  This detritus that collects and fills the spaces around us carries weight.  For me it has made an actual physical difference to be free of it.

Years and years ago, I read Sarah Ban Breathnach’s books  Simple Abundance and Something More.  In one of them she talks about being an archaeologist, excavating for clues in your own life.  This is also what this clearing out has been.  I came across “artifacts” from my life-so-far that have me reflecting and appreciating where I’ve traveled.  I found the calendar where I’d penciled in my first date with Joe.  Yesterday I ran across the Polaroid photo the fertility center took of our 4-celled embryo – the one that was implanted in me and didn’t take.  And there was the tab from that wonderful evening at a restaurant called Othello in Rome that Joe and I talk about all the time.  Who knew that a simple meal of spaghetti with tomato, basil and garlic could be that remarkable?   But it was!  I saw my evolution as I went through my artwork going all the way back. There were menus, recipes, shopping lists and to-do lists from the retreats I’d catered – and files of notes from the various personal growth programs I was either a participant in or that I’d been part of creating and leading.

This “primary material” of our lives is quite compelling.  But, for me the most captivating was finding something I’d written in my own hand.  These bits of writing are views into my former selves.  And they are priceless – especially so because of one really great regret.  Several years ago, a feng shui person recommended I – ceremonially – burn all my old Artist Way Morning Pages journals, as they were filled with negative emotion from the time before, during and after my divorce.  And if I were to do this before the upcoming Sausalito Art Festival, I’d have a more prosperous show.  In pre-festival mode, I hardly found time for ceremony!  Since we only have a gas fireplace, I went to my parents’ and ripped chunks of pages off and shoved them in the side of their wood burning stove, giving my right arm a “sunburn” from the heat.  I saved (thank God) a few key pages that happened to catch my eye when I was tearing through to get it all done!  I’m so sorry I took her advice. It’s completely undo-able. This was my life, poured out into the page – including my time in Paris!  And from this vantage point, I have no idea if it resulted in my art selling well at that festival or not!  So, now when I discover things I’d written, especially if they are like journal entries, they are gemstones in the dirt.

Reflecting on the writing I discovered this week, over and over, I see the strength of my “want-er” muscle.  I’ve wanted so much, so deeply.  I wanted peace with my body and food.  I wanted to be free of my stage fright. I wanted to know my own loveliness. I wanted clothes that I felt good in. I wanted to feed people.  I wanted to have my voice.  I wanted my life to make a difference.  I wanted to help people live lives that mattered to them – starting with my own.   I saw how this wanting has power.

There are spiritual teachings that link desire with suffering.  Though I see the truth in this, I find it more useful – for my life – to actually cultivate my desires.  Desire is fuel and, if what I desire is aligned with life, it is a cause for good and can be trusted.  In the metamorphoses that my life has undergone in the past twenty years, the impetus for change has been in the twin forces of pain and desire. Pain is an inevitable facet of human life and some say is the prime force for transformation.  It certainly has been in my life.  But with just pain alone, I’d have been left despondent.

One of the heroes in my life is Father Richard Rohr.  He’s a Catholic priest unlike any other.  Earlier this year he was on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday.  I heard him say “pain must be transformed or it will be transmitted.”  How the world would be different if we all got this one!  What I want has given me a way to hold the pain, allowing it to change me.  This has kept me from transmitting the pain – or kept me from transmitting it as much as I would have!

Digging out this past week has created fresh, clear space to work in – and I’ve discovered/re-discovered all kinds of treasures – reminding me of the richness of life and the path it takes us on.  I heartily recommend it!

Love,

Cara

April 14, 2015 – Home *is* where the heart is

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I’ve been following Kelly Flanagan’s weekly posts. He’s a dad, husband and therapist in the Midwest and he writes insightfully and inspiringly about marriage, family and life in general in his blog:  Untangled:  tell a redemptive story of your life. now.  Last Wednesday’s post was:  Home is where the grace is.  He told of an experience with his young son in a homeless shelter and how “house” and “home” are not the same thing.  This struck me as, for a long time, I’ve had this sense too.

When I was learning French it bothered me that there is no real translation for the word “home.”  “House” is directly translated to “maison” but the closest translation of “home” is “chez____.”  For example, “chez nous” means “our place” in English.  It indicates the place where we live.  But home is not just the place where we return to each day.  As Kelly Flanagan says it’s not so much a place as an experience and that there are many ways to be “homeless.”

There is so much to the word “home” that is hard to put words to.  More than 10 years ago, when I was first working with my mom in real estate, I helped set up NIZ Realty’s first website.  For the home (!) page I wrote something about us and our brokerage that began with this sentence:  We come into this place we cannot name, we grow here, set roots here, love others here, we leave it and miss it, always to come back to it… home is one of the most important values in our lives. I was attempting to describe (with my writing skills at that time and with as much depth as was appropriate on a real estate website!) the something else that is home to us. Most commonly we think of home as something that is created in our house – the structure that provides our physical shelter. But in looking at it this past week, I’ve found home all over my life.

One of the great blessings in my life is that I was born into a profound sense of home.  The family that my mom and dad created held a deep place of belonging for all of us.  Family – my dad, mom and brothers – was home.  I was part of something, in an unspoken, even unconscious way. It just was. It’s beyond being welcomed, or being valued.  We were and are each part of – family and home was made up of all of us.

For me, one important way this was lived and fostered was that we ate around a table every evening, no matter what else was going on. (Well, except the one night a year when The Wizard of Oz was on TV – we got to eat with our plates in our laps, sitting on the living room floor – but only then.)

Another accident of birth that has blessed me enormously was to have been born here – in Marin County.  Roaming the hills around Woodacre, in the San Geronimo Valley as a kid, I had no idea how spectacular this place is.  It took becoming an adult and returning after being away, to see the beauty of these hills and valleys. I feel very fortunate to have been able to return to Marin after my divorce and buy myself a little house – before it became too expensive to do so.  It’s wonderful to still have home be where home has always been – and to have it be such a special place.

Yes, I know Marin has changed.  In the 60’s and 70’s it was largely middle class. It has become quite affluent, which has changed the make-up of its residents – their attitudes and expectations.  Regardless, there are many kind and good people – people who care about others and our planet – who live here, making it what it is.

I’ve always been a home-maker.  I hung a sheet that had sea shells all over it on the concrete wall of my room the year I lived in a dorm in college – to give it some life and softness.  Though just up for a couple of weeks, I had a five foot Christmas tree that holiday season, lights, ornaments and all.  Our room became a gathering place because if it.  My Paris apartment and a little place sub-let when I left my first husband – regardless how temporary, I need to claim the spaces I live in as mine. Flowers, candles, something familiar to hang on the walls – makes me home.  It’s also instinctive to invite people over – welcome them as if they live here – cook for them, feed them.  There’s something about hospitality that creates home for me.

In looking at this, I see now these other ways and places I’m home too:

• My emotional and spiritual path has been largely one of finding a sense of home inside myself.
• The ongoing transformation of my relationship with my body has allowed me to experience home in my physical being.
• I lived in Paris for six months where I first experienced my feminine self. I’ve traveled back many times since and it’s become a familiar place, where I feel at home – thousands of miles away.
• When I was part of the Fairfax Community Church, I felt a deep sense of spiritual home in community – something I’d never known before.
• Joe and I connected with Kauai in 1999 and have visited there pretty much every year since. Now, just getting off the plane at the Lihue airport and a feeling of home washes over us.

My experience is that it can take familiarity with a place or with a group of people for the sense of belonging to settle in.  Welcoming and acceptance are part of the mix too. But it also takes claiming.  We must show up and be a part of in order to feel a part of.  I’d like to think that home can happen quickly too, if we are willing to open to it.

I realize that this is what has happened in the on-going art groups that I lead each week.  It’s even started to develop with the Special Saturdays series started this year.  It is home – for me and for those who come regularly.  My mom has opened her office, her space, welcoming my groups to claim it as ours on Thursdays, Fridays and some Saturdays.  Like the theme song for Cheers it’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name.  We do know each other’s name – of course – but also each other’s art and stories and lives.  Everyone is missed when they are away.  It’s safe, we’re all accepted and everyone belongs. I’m certain that having an art-home makes a difference in the art that comes from us.

It is my intention that as each new person joins us, they feel this welcome and that, if we are theirs, they claim us and call us home – regardless of how long everyone else has been coming to the group.  Though history, shared experience brings depth and richness, it’s not most important.  What matters more is that the environment supports us to open and connect with each other.  The connection between human hearts is where I am most home.  I invite you to join in.

Love,

Cara

April 7, 2015 – Twenty seconds of insane courage

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Yesterday morning, on the way to my in-laws to take them some Easter dinner leftovers, I was listening to KQED, San Francisco’s NPR radio station.  Weekday mornings they broadcast Forum, a locally produced interview/call-in show. The guests are always interesting, which keeps my curious brain engaged, so I often listen when I’m driving between 9 and 11am.  Yesterday they had Bay Area-based poet Jane Hirshfield on talking about her two new books.  Just as I was getting off the freeway, the host, Michael Krasney, invited callers to share poems that have been transformational to them. One came right to mind and I had this crazy impulse to call in.  At a stop light I quickly tapped in the number in my cell phone (I know, I know… but once talking I am hands-free). It rang and was answered! I told the screener the poem I wanted to talk about. He said, great, that I’d be on very soon.  Yikes!

Sitting in my car outside my in-law’s house, with my heart pounding, on live radio I shared how Galway Kinnell’s “Saint Francis and the Sow” (above over a piece of my painting “Moonstone Rose”) had transformed my perspective on being in a body, especially a female body.  Part way through the short interchange I stumbled looking for the right words and wasn’t as articulate as I wanted to be, especially as I was being broadcast to millions of listeners!  When I got off the phone, I had this awful feeling, a self-expression hangover. Oh, God, what did I just do?!

Last night I made myself listen to the recording on the Forum website (if you want to hear, start a bit before halfway – I’m the first caller.) Yes, I stumbled, but I wasn’t as terrible as I’d remembered. I don’t think I made a complete fool of myself.  And I’m very grateful to Jane Hirshfield. She knew the poem, related to what I was saying and used beautiful words to describe just why the poem is so powerful.

This is actually the third time I’ve called into this radio program in the past several years. Once I called in when Anne Lamott was on and another time when they were talking to a pastor who was part of a group updating the Bible.  I don’t know what gets into me!

This is so not me – at least not historically.  I have a history of crippling stage fright.  For at least the first 35 years of my life, I made decisions based upon how to minimize my visibility, sometimes with consequences – like taking a lower grade. I’d do all I could to avoid the pain of the spotlight.  This fear carried into my first career in the tech world. I remember one time giving a presentation to a group of customers.   My face turned deep red, was even swollen, I sweated from every pore in my body and the inside of my business suit was soaked.  What’s worse is that I went blank – I know well the feeling of “deer in the headlights!”  My boss, Jim Chen, was in the back of the room watching me flounder. It was just excruciating – and embarrassing to have such a visible reaction to being visible.  It seemed completely uncontrollable. I certainly wasn’t choosing to have all these awful symptoms!

But there was something in me that sought help with this fear.   I went to Speaking Circles in my late thirties, early forties. Here I experienced the safety that can be found, in – of all places – intimacy, in connecting, in making eye contact for a few seconds with one human being at a time. This allowed my nervous system to start calming down.  Around the same time I became a very active member of the Fairfax Community Church, when my beloved Sara Vurek was the pastor. The tradition at the time encouraged lots of participation from the congregation in Sunday services.  I started by doing readings and then one Memorial Day weekend when Sara was away, I lead a contemplative service to just eight sweet souls.  I was so nervous I hardly remembered it afterwards, but was told I did ok.  The community was such a safe place for me to stretch and grow; I ended up leading and co-leading services a dozen or more times over the years.  The safety provided by Sara and this community was the perfect place to heal my fears of being the center of attention.

I’ve come a long, long way. I am here today in a place that I never dreamed possible from that consuming fear and its so-obvious manifestations!   Last year at Open Studios, I was asked talk about marketing to a meeting of participating artists.  The professional PR person who spoke before me so totally covered the tactical part of marketing, I had the thought, oh, crap, now what do I say?  I got up, looked into a few people’s eyes and what came to me was to speak about the deeper experience of marketing our art.  I was completely unprepared – and it was fine.  And I’m guessing what I said was lot more helpful than if I’d talked about postcards and email lists.  Fifteen or twenty years ago, I could hardly have said my own name without feeling like I wanted to find a hole to hide in.

Someone in my life – and I can’t remember who, I’m so sorry I can’t give you credit – told me about the line from the movie “We Bought a Zoo” when Matt Damon’s character tells his son, in talking about a girl, that sometimes all we need is twenty seconds of insane courage and something good will happen.  The thing is, maybe something bad will happen- that’s the nature of risk.  But something will happen.

Courage is a muscle and for whatever reason, some people are called to flex it more than others. I wonder what makes this so.  Is it environment?  Is it motivation?  Seems like it could be related to both.  It is astonishing to me that I’ve ended up in a life where I find myself flexing my courage muscle.  This seemed like the last thing I’d expect of myself in the days when I was so paralyzed by my fears.

Yesterday, I had no conscious motive in calling in to share a piece of myself on live radio. I didn’t even really think about it. I just did it.  And by doing so, I scared myself, I felt vulnerable in the aftermath – and I felt alive.  A well-known poet engaged with me on a poem that meant something to both of us.

I’ve heard it said that everything we really want is just outside our comfort zone.  I’m glad it’s just outside, not way outside – this way, all we have to think about is those first 20 seconds.

Love,

Cara

March 17, 2015 – Renewing my appreciation for work

I have been work-ing on my painting. Almost done!

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Families have cultures. My family’s culture surrounds two things:  food/cooking and work/being productive.  My dad was a high school teacher, and before my mom went to work full time when I was about junior high age, we had both of them around all summer.  My memories of those summers are filled with all the stuff that got done – projects, lots of projects:  the vegetable garden and fruit trees and fences and putting up fruit and painting walls. My brothers made a tree fort in the oak tree on the side yard.  Mom did macramé sculptures. Dad threw pots in the ceramics studio in our garage.  Mom taught me to sew and I made clothes for my dolls and later for myself.

In 1973 we had a bigger house built – more projects!  It was a very 70’s style house – sided with rough cedar – it had big open beam ceilings and a partial shed roof.  My dad and mom made all the interior doors, by hand, out in the woodshop.  And they built the stone paths in the garden – with the blue-green serpentine rocks we all had to gather from the property, and scrub clean of dirt in a wheelbarrow full of water.  My dad and brothers poured exposed aggregate concrete patios and built stairs and decks.  Mom tiled floors, counters and an entire sunken-tub bathroom. We never ate store-bought desserts of any kind. They were made from scratch – along with breads, jams, egg pasta noodles, pickles.

There is a word in Croatian – my mom is full blooded – that she uses: “vrijedan”– it has a complicated meaning, it translates in English to:  active, agile, busy, deserving, diligent, hardworking, industrious, rich, studious, valuable, worthy.  To be called vrijedan in my family is a good thing, a really good thing. I intuitively know what it means, having heard it so much all my life, but it was interesting to look it up and see the range of words needed to translate it! This absolutely reinforces my sense of the word and how it was used. It was instilled in us that being worthy means being capable and working hard, which would (hopefully) lead to being rich!

And someone who was the opposite my dad described as having their “hands painted on.” It was relatively recently when I realized what this actually meant!  It meant being like a wooden toy that didn’t have actual hands, just the illustrated shapes of hands painted on its body. (I always thought it meant someone with wet paint on their hands and thus couldn’t use them!) If your hands were painted on, you are unskilled, clumsy, inept.  And this is a not a good thing to be called.

In my quest to know what being feminine is like, to know how to really find ease in life, I wish that I knew more how to rest and to play.  This has me bemoaning how deep this working-hard culture is in me.  The vacations we take most often – to Kauai and Tahoe – I paint a whole lot. I love to paint – but it’s not rest. It can be really hard!  I’m amazed at how infrequently Joe and I think to go do something “recreational” like head to the beach or even go to the movies!  Some of this is a lack of energy (from working so hard!), but some of it is that we just don’t think of it!    And yet, I wouldn’t give up knowing how to work, and even work hard, for anything.

Making art is hard.  Growing a business is hard.  Learning to speak a new language is hard.  Mastering a musical instrument is hard. Sometimes marriage is hard.  I see my family and dear friends with kids and think being a parent has to be the hardest job there is.  All of these things require of us to apply ourselves and work, yes, often work very, very hard.

The alternative – if someone does not know how to work hard and/or does not know the value of working hard – is far worse.  We live in a manifest world, where stuff has to get done to support our physical lives.  Someone has to grow our food, and build our roads and houses and cars and make our clothes and devices – and on and on.  To dis-honor work is to disconnect with the web that supports our existence.  And it disconnects us with our own power, our own capacity to have impact in a real way. I think that all humans want, along with love and belonging, to know that they spend their life in a way that matters to others – to make and thus be a contribution.

Making work real is so in me. I look back at my own progression – I was totally inspired to be a life coach, it was/is in my bones, but, after taking all the courses, when it came down to actually building a practice I was stymied.  Something was missing.  Now I know.  What happens in my watercolor groups, though it’s not as focused and consciously oriented, is life coaching of a sort. Lives are transforming, while they are doing something that is real – learning to paint.  And there are real outcomes – paintings and practical skills that have been gained.

A couple weeks ago I heard an interview of UC Berkeley sociologist Christine Carter who has recently written a book “The Sweet Spot – How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work.”  The sweet spot she talks about is doing work that gives us energy, instead of taking it away.  It’s an ideal and not all people on earth have the privilege to do this, but it’s a place to look – especially for those who either are used up by what they do or those who for various reasons and life circumstances are disconnected with their own capacity to work and how it’s good for them.

Also if we don’t appreciate work, we don’t fully appreciate the hard work of others.  Work – even in the “sweet spot” – requires fuel.  The most important – and effective – way we can help restore others who work on our behalf is to offer them our appreciation.  Meister Eckhart is quoted as saying “thank you” is a prayer; I say it is also the cheapest and most renewable form of energy on the planet!

Thank you for fueling me to keep writing each week.  If I didn’t have you there, knowing you are reading, I would not have it in me to do this!

Love,

Cara