Sovereignty, (c) Cat Charissage, 2015

Sovereignty

— Cat Charissage, February 2015

I am mine own.

No one owns me, though dear body

remembers too many generations of domestic servitude,

captivity.

But now, HERE I AM:

Full, beautiful, whole, kind.

Mine own.

Bounded, but bounded with blessing:

This far, no further.  Go in peace.

I will choose

where to place my attention,

how to spend my time,

whom I will be with.

And I do choose.

I choose to share the treasure of

pen and brush and needle.

I choose to create beauty,

to nurture liberty — for you are your own, too.

I choose

to surrender to the greater Love,

to take my part in the greater Mystery.

Here

I

am.

 

Dear Friends,

When I have posted my paintings and poems before, some of you have been so interested in seeing photos of my painting while in process, so I’m including them here.

Many blessings to you this last week of February of 2015.

Cat

Dear Friends,

You’re invited to my Red Thread Session, Entering the Labyrinth, on Saturday, March 7, here in southern Alberta:

ENTERING THE LABYRINTH

You can’t get lost!

(c) Cat Charissage, 2015

Saturday, March 7, 2015, 1:30 – 4:00 p.m.

Registration or questions:  catcharissage@gmail.com

   Am I willing to enter?

To steal James Joyce’s line,

“Yes I said yes I will yes!”

I want to go within.

I want visions, not illusions;

depth, not blather;

nourishment, not potato chips.

(Well, okay, maybe potato chips, too.)

We can trust the labyrinth because

WE CAN’T GET LOST.

One way in, no dead ends,

only life and more life

to find in the center,

my center:

Roses blooming

Mysteries unfolding

Iridescence flashing.

Open my eyes to see the blessings all around

so that after the journey, and the pause,

I can bring out the treasure to

share and share and share. . .

 

Will you enter the labyrinth to meet your Muse, the figure of your Inner Guidance?  Imagine what it would feel like to use Intentional Creativity as your tool for joyfully playing with image, color, and word to get to know this Muse within you!

What will happen when you allow both sides of your brain, the logical language side and the image filled, colorful side, to speak to yourself and to the world?  Explore the way of Intentional Creativity to access your inner wisdom of juicy color and possibility.

Join me in:

• Red Thread Circle
• Labyrinth teachings
• Labyrinth Creation and Meditation
• Writing a letter to your Muse, your Inner Guidance figure
• Written inquiry and invitation to write poetry
• Painting a first image of your Muse.

You will leave with images of 2 types of labyrinths, a prose poem, and an 11” x 15” outline painting full of luminous color.  No art experience necessary at all!

We will meet in the Red Thread Study in my home in Lethbridge.  All supplies are provided.  Since I work with microgroups (2-5 people) or individually, there will be plenty of time for individualized attention.

Your investment:  $150, or if two or more register at the same time, each will receive a 34% Discount, making your investment $99 each.

I am deeply committed to making this work accessible to those who want to participate; if finances are a barrier for your coming, contact me for work exchange or scholarship possibilities.  We can work something out.

Contact me at catcharissage@gmail.com for registration or questions.

Cat Charissage is an educator, mentor, and counsellor specializing in the exploration of life’s Depth Dimensions, helping people to articulate True Self and make meaning through the paradoxes and challenges that life hands us. She uses Intentional Creativity, writing, dreamwork, and art to help others to  grow spiritually and creatively and to recover from trauma, especially sexual violence.  A student of the wisdom traditions of the world, she has an M.Ed., 8 years’ study in theology, and 30+ years experience, including as counsellor and Executive Director of a sexual assault center.  She lives creatively with chronic pain and illness and engages actively in ongoing learning and reflection, most recently with Shiloh Sophia, visionary artist, and Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes (author of Women Who Run with the Wolves).

(c) Cat Charissage, 2014  “Tree of Life”

Dear Friends,

On this day before Valentine’s Day, where far too many of us are a little obsessed over who might or might not be giving us a card, or taking us out for dinner, . . . or for a coffee, I want to send this Love Letter.

This is a youtube recording of Emilie Zoey Baker performing her poem “Dear All the Women Who Ever Existed Over the Entire Span of Human History.”

Much love to you all,

Cat

— journal page, Cat Charissage, 2014

Dear Friends,

Join me today, on my Depth Dimension Day, in writing a bit about your own relationship with faith, God, and the religion you were born into (or if not born into one, about that).

In my last post I told you about going on retreat.  You may have noticed that I didn’t say anything about “God”.  Well, let me tell you a little about that. . .

It is my life’s greatest irony that as far as “God” is concerned, I “knew” a lot more about God 35 years ago than I do now!  As most of you know, I was raised in the Catholic church, and was deeply religious;  I was in the convent for 4 years (ages 19-23), and have my B.A. and 4 years of grad work in theology.  So I was VERY into that way of looking at life, and I clearly remember what it felt like to have a strong faith.  What happened is that as I learned more about the evils and suffering in the world, I fell into doubt and questioned how a good God could allow this to occur.  I’ve read all the reasons that humans have come up with about that problem, and, well, there is no clear answer to it.  Many have addressed this in their writing, but ultimately, we just don’t know why there is such suffering.  Or, at least, what reasons there are out there are not satisfying to me.

I also have a very scientific, rational, atheistic voice in my head that can belittle the language that people use to talk about spiritual ideas.  It has come from my desire to be as accurate, fair, and clear thinking as I’m capable of, as well as the desire to not deceive myself about difficult things.  I’ve heard more than my share of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (some of the “new atheists”), and can give a rational, psychological “explanation” for just about any religious experience.  I wonder at times if prayer is just talking to ourselves, or worse yet, to an imaginary friend.  I don’t, I can’t, believe in God as I was originally taught, nor as how God is described in most religions.

Yet, . . .  yet.  The very ground of my life is working with its mysteries, with the “deep and real” things we human beings are always about.  I have consistent spiritual practices that allow me to find and create great meaning in life.  I’ve spent all of my adult life reading from the wisdom traditions of the world, and I feel my life’s vocation whenever I can help others live a little more deeply, a little more authentically —- a little more soulfully.  But the combination of knowing deeply some of the world’s injustices and my deconstructive, rationalist voice renders me almost silenced when it comes to talking about this area of life.

Well, it helps to keep me humble.  I guess.

It’s so frustrating and so ironic that it’s funny!  The ultimate trickster-ish nature of reality!

I look for other ways to talk about this area of life, other definitions of God.  I like Anne Lamott’s explanation of her use of the word “God” that she talks about in her book Stitches: as “shorthand for the Good, for the animating energy of love; for Life, for the light that radiates from within people and from above; in the energies of nature, even in our rough, messy selves.”  I use words like “D&R” (deep and real), “Depth Dimension”, “Great Mystery”, “the Holy, the Sacred”, “what/who you meet in your innermost self”, “that which is greater — the Magnitude”, “Presence”, but I’m not sure if I’m talking about a noun or a verb, or . . . . anything.  If anything, I’m referring to the ultimate ground of reality, the energy underlying all that is.  I hope that it’s personal, and loving — but as I said, I see things falling apart as well as coming together in this world.

Where I’ve come to is that science and the spiritual are different languages that speak about different human experiences, and we can’t expect them to be interchangeable; nor can we expect scientific language to be able to fully explain religious experience as much as it tries.  Mostly, I tell that scientific voice in my head to be quiet or go work on a problem it can solve (similar to the way we deal with the critical voice in creativity), and get on with my everyday dealing with the D&R.

I don’t have the faith that I had before, but I do know there is SOMETHING that we’re trying to describe when we talk about spiritual matters.  Whether that’s human or divine, or both at once, I think that religious language is metaphor for something real. I call that soul.  Our world has had many descriptions of this, and many, many stories about it.  At their best, these stories invite us to be compassion incarnate, soul enfleshed, flesh ensouled.

And THAT is what I want to be about.

Now, you: what do you say about these things?  Of course you don’t have to comment, but it would be no waste of time to think and write about these things for yourself.

With love,

Cat

(c) 2013, Cat Charissage “Magister Veriditas: Hildegard of Bingen”

Dear Friends,

I retreated last weekend.  Do you ever get away by yourself?  About every year, I try to have at least a weekend in silence, away from voices and conversations and the internet.  Last weekend I went to a “Deepening Centering Prayer” silent retreat at the local Catholic retreat center.  Centering Prayer is a type of meditation from the Christian tradition, continuing the teaching of the mystics that most of us do not get in everyday life unless we really look for it.  I’ve practiced this type of meditation for many years.  I’ve had far more times of “monkey mind” and dryness than insight or mystical experience, but I keep showing up.  That’s the point —- to keep showing up.

As per usual, I didn’t have any aha’s or experience any fireworks.  Silence doesn’t usually work that way.  Silence is palpable, though, a kind of black velvet to sink into — until the velvet turns to mirrors and there’s all my own self to witness, over and over and over again!  Not always fun, but I get to watch my mind do its jumping around, usually telling me scary stories about what might happen in the future.  Then I get to extend compassion, once again, over and over and over again, to myself, and then let go of that particular thought, that particular story.

Sometimes the black velvet, a comforting sense of connectedness with something (many would say “Someone”) beyond myself, stays a little while before speeding to the next crazy thought.  The difference between the black velvet and my everyday mind is like the difference between relaxing with a favorite beverage alongside a special someone, and being alone wrangling a tired, hungry, and cranky two year old in Walmart on Saturday afternoon.

Come on, isn’t your mind a tired, hungry, and cranky two year old sometimes?  Hint:  go home; don’t go to Walmart (or wherever you get overstimulated by environments trying hard to artificially create sudden “needs”, with too much fluorescent lighting and too hard of floors).

On the Saturday morning, after a week of unseasonably high temperatures, it got cold and snowed about 4 inches.  The morning started out foggy and mysterious, like looking across the water to Avalon, but then the sun burst out to reveal diamonds!  The wind flung the powdery snow into the air and the sunlight created not just crystals but rainbows!  Growing up in snowy Chicago, I know grey skies and wet slush; now Rocky Mountain blue skies and dry powder snow always make me smile.

On retreat, I quit fighting what is and let go into compassionate acceptance.  On retreat, I alternately close my eyes to look within, and open them to see the world in ways I don’t usually make the time to notice.

If you can’t go on a retreat for a weekend, how about an hour?  A small table in an out of the way spot in a big library is my favorite place to hide out in silence for awhile.  Close your eyes, breathe;  open your eyes, see.  Repeat until done.

With love,

Cat