Happy Holidays!

It’s been a year full of sorrows and joys. On a personal level, one great sorrow: my mother’s passing, and one great joy: the birth of my first grandchild. For our country and the world, many sorrows: hate, violence, man-made and natural disasters, and a continued assault on truth, science, and universal values. Kindness and hope, however, continue to abound, and there are many lights that continue to resist the darkness.

Art, books, music, and nature are medicine for my body and soul, and my faith in a merciful and loving God gives me the spiritual strength needed to move forward with my creative work.

Finding quality time to create is a challenge when you’re working full time, but I press on! I’ve learned to accept that I can’t get as much done as I’d like (especially blogging!), but that I musn’t let that diminish my bliss.

I love working at the library, and I’m learning ways to use my job to complement my creative work. Being a library clerk also gives me the opportunity to make small but significant connections with many different people. Making someone’s day a little brighter brightens my day in return. Add to that the blessing of having access to thousands of awesome books!

All things considered, I’ve had a productive year. I’ve completed three bilingual picture books (text only), three children’s illustrations, and seven botanical drawings. You can take a look at my art at E. Pla Art. Some of my pieces are presently on display at the Hampden Branch Library Staff Art Show, which is a fun and encouraging way to end the year.

Wishing you all a blessed holiday season!

“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living.” —Joseph Campbell

 

Reflect on the Harvest and Carry On

Denver autumn colors have been spectacular this year. I’ve been enjoying the striking changes in the vegetation and the cool weather. The huge maple tree in front of my townhouse has now shed most of its leaves, and the sidewalk and grassy areas are covered with a thick and crunchy golden carpet. I love it. October has been the loveliest and nicest month of 2013.

Unfortunately, it has also been a month full of unexpected expenses: car trouble, health problems (minor, but expensive), and more. Living a simple, frugal life can be surprisingly difficult sometimes. I’m glad I can look out the window and be comforted by the beauty all around me.

For almost two years now, I’ve been striving to create a simpler, slower-paced, more mindful new life for myself. I’ve made much progress, but I’m not there yet in terms of the life I’ve envisioned. There is still much to learn, and there are many obstacles to overcome. However, life happens in the present, not the future. This new life is a journey, not a destination. It’s a process of spiritual and emotional growth. It’s a never-ending labor of love.

Let me stop to reflect, then, on the journey so far and on how I have arrived to this here and now. Let me reflect on God’s will for this present moment. On the importance of resting in Him and following His guidance –today. And let me appreciate this precious, beautiful day, for it will never return. Let me seize it with courage, intelligence, determination, and–above all–peaceful trust.

“If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It’s a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it’s time to reflect on what’s come before. —Mitchell Burgess
(From TV series Northern Exposure, Thanksgiving, 1992.)

“Keep calm and carry on.” (British poster, 1939)

On Realities and Paradigms

A bit of food for thought:

We create our own reality.

Granted, we are born into the reality of our parents and a particular society, culture, and moment in history, but the choices we make as we grow and develop into adults, slowly and inevitably place us in our own, separate experience. Whether we decide to conform to the world around us, accepting the predictable consequences of that choice, or whether we decide to think for ourselves and make choices that take us into unchartered waters, either way, we are the authors of our own story.

Think about it.

We also create our own reality as a society and culture. We do this by developing collective paradigms and assumptions (what is sometimes referred to as our cosmo-vision) based on the knowledge, understanding, and revelation that we have of ourselves, the world, and the universe, physical and spiritual, in our particular moment of history. These paradigms and assumptions change as our knowledge and understanding increases and as we receive further revelation. And that’s the way it should be.

(The universal values that define us as human beings don’t change. Love, of course, being the greatest of them.)

Our goals — individually and collectively — should be to learn more, to understand more, and to gain further insight about all things and as a result, evolve as human beings so we can create a better reality for ourselves and for our children.

That doesn’t mean we reject our past paradigms. They are all part of an edifice of knowledge, understanding, and revelation that humanity has been constructing throughout history. All paradigms taken together from every society and culture — past and present — make up the whole of the collective created experience — the reality — of the human race.

I believe we should have the courage (and the joy!) to be open to new knowledge, new understanding, and new revelation. But we should also be humble in our endeavors, recognizing that no matter how much we know or think we know, what we really know is very, very little.

When pondering questions about life, the universe, and everything, I like to keep in mind the following two quotes:

“All I know is I know nothing.” –Socrates

“All you need is love!” –The Beatles

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” –Henry David Thoreau

In Abba’s Hands

Once again, here in lovely Colorado, sadness — resulting from senseless, insane violence — grips our souls. We mourn for little Jessica and pray for her family. The beauty of the season now has a different poignancy — a melancholy that will stay with us for many days. Let us lift our eyes to heaven and seek God’s presence and comfort through prayer, reflection, and silence.

While reading from Walking on Water — Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle, I came upon these thoughts:

“Jesus told us to call the Lord and Creator of us all Abba. Not only Father, or Sir, or Lord, but Abba — Daddy — the small child’s name for Father. Not Dad, the way Daddy becomes Dad when the children reach adolescence, but Daddy, the name of trust.

“But how can we trust an Abba who has let the world come to all the grief of the past centuries? Who has given us the terrible gift of free will with which we seem to be determined to destroy ourselves?

“We trust the one we call Abba as a child does, knowing that what seems unreasonable now will be seen to have reason later. We trust as Lady Julian of Norwich trusted, knowing that despite all the pain and horror of the world, ultimately God’s loving purpose will be fulfilled and ‘all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.’ ”

Can we do this? Can we place the present pain and horror in Abba’s hands and trust that in the end “all manner of thing shall be well”? Give us the strength, dear Heavenly Father.

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” John 6:68

 

 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4

 

The Magic of Autumn

My favorite season is autumn. To me it represents renewal (perhaps because my birthday falls on its onset). Autumn is a time of transition and introspection. A time to reflect on the passing year, on the things that still need to be accomplished, on the changes that the coming new year will bring. Past, present, and future are celebrated with the beautiful colors of fall — a celebration of the flow of time, of cycles, of possibility. Autumn is the season of magical dreams. It asks a silent question: What will you do with the rest of your life?

OCTOBER WALK  by Elsa Pla

Oh, riotous autumn!

Summer greens pale and

Give way to the splendor of

Your burgundy reds and fiery oranges,

Your golden yellows and rusty browns,

Expectancy and possibility

Painted on each and every

Leaf that falls.

—

Lit by sunlight,

The luminous leaves explode.

The world is aflame!

Trees glow like bonfires,

Leaves drop like sparks

Igniting the ground

With golden fire.

—

I walk the flaming corridors of fall,

Embracing the blazing colors

Until I, too, catch fire

And join the conflagration:

Life, like a phoenix,

Burning itself up;

A million willing flames

Heralding rebirth and hope.

—

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
George Eliot

—

If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It’s a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it’s time to reflect on what’s come before.
Mitchell Burgess
From TV series Northern Exposure, Thanksgiving, 1992.

—

Every leaf speaks bliss to me,

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

Emily Bronte

The Light We Have

Three weeks of retirement have gone by. I’m in an in-between place, a place of reflection and renewal, a retreat away from the stress and strife of the world. I’ve been able to rest, think, organize, and plan. It’s been miraculous and wonderful. But this retirement is not about staying put; it’s about putting on new tires and starting a new journey: re-tiring and moving on. To move on, however, I need God’s guidance.

“I (the Lord) will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” Psalm 32:8. If we believe in Him, if we believe He loves us, if we believe He has our best interest in mind, then we can easily trust Him and depend on Him to show us the way. Trusting God helps us stay the course while remaining focused, strong, and productive.

I’ve been reflecting on how this trust thing actually works:

Psalm 97:11 states that “Light is sown for the righteous and strewn along their pathway.” If light is sown, that means we must wait for it to germinate and grow. We must be patient and focus instead on the light already shining in our hearts and minds. We must walk along the path that has been illuminated and stay calm and trusting when the way grows dark. The dark path is the signal to rest in God, seek spiritual nourishment and growth, and wait for God’s light to shine anew. For before we can do the good work, we must be the good work.

Thus, I move forward according to the instruction and direction I have received in my heart and mind. I will trust God to sow the light and cause it to shine. I’ve been organizing my materials and resources, my workspace and my work, and making decisions and plans for the new journey. I’m following God’s light and committing all I am and do to Him.

“Everyone has been made for some particular [good] work, and the desire for that [good] work has been put in every heart.” –Mevlana Rumi

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have.” –Abraham Lincoln

“The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come.  At the darkest moment comes the light.” –Joseph Campbell