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Mysteries Unfolding with Cat Charissage

~ Making Meaning, Making Soul

Mysteries Unfolding with Cat Charissage

Monthly Archives: August 2016

Previews of some coming attractions

18 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by mysteriesunfolding in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Yetzirah

(c) 2015 Cat Charissage

Dear Friend,

I’m in the process of learning how to extend my reach further than my geographical locale here in Southern Alberta, looking specifically at conducting individual sessions by video call.  While that is in process, I wanted to share SOME of my plans for the coming academic year.

In addition to individual sessions, ,my most transformative offerings have been the Story Circles I’ve facilitated here in my home studio. These are one evening a month, for 10 months September through June.  After much pondering and reflection, I’ve decided to offer 3 different Circles this year, plus a monthly Open Studio for art activities.    I would be honored if you could join me in one or more of them.
The Sheltering Soul Story Circle will be reading selected chapters from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run with the Wolves, the best-selling book of stories of the recovery of the wild woman archetype.  Dr. Estes has been my teacher and mentor for the past 6 summers, and her book has brought depth, spirit, and treasure to those of us who have sat with the stories and commentaries, and then laid down our own lives alongside those archetypal stories of the initiations, challenges, and transitions in a woman’s life.  It’s a map of  how to live a healthy, soulful life, and how to recover health and soul when these have seemed to be lost.
The Untie the Strong Woman Circle will be reading selected chapters from Dr. Estes’ other major work, Untie the Strong Woman:  Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul.  These are more personal stories from Dr. E’s life, stories of the challenges and gifts of responding to the call to love, fully and unconditionally, and the transformations in our and others’ lives when we can heed this call.  Most importantly, it is filled with stories of how this Love is always, always available to us.  We will be discussing how our own lives have challenged us in similar ways, and how we have come to know the archetypes of Holy Mother and Limitless Love through our own life’s journeys.
The third year-long offering is Nighttime Wanderings:  Wonderings about Dreams.  As many of you know, I have been recording my dreams for over thirty years, and studying dreams and their possible meanings and influences in our lives for as many years.  With further training in analyzing dreams, I’m excited to facilitate a group in which we will learn more about these nighttime journeys and have the opportunity to explore our own dreams with the help of the others in the group.  You don’t have to be a regular recorder of your dreams in order to participate; in fact, you can participate even if you don’t yet remember your dreams.  The book we will use as resource is Jeremy Taylor’s Where People Fly and Water Flows Uphill:  Using Dreams to Tap the Wisdom of the Unconscious.
Each of these circles will meet from 7 – 9:30 on one specified Wednesday night per month.  I have not yet decided which group will meet on the first Wednesday, which on the third, and which on the last Wednesday of each month.   The format is that after a brief check in, I offer writing prompts and a few minutes for each of us to write in our journals in response.   The prompts give each of us a chance to take in the stories on a deeper basis and allow us to examine its impact for ourselves.  Then we go around the circle and each participant has a chance to read some or all of what we’ve written, or to otherwise comment on the question.  Sometimes very fascinating discussions take place, and in any case, it’s never been boring!
These groups are offered on a “By Donation” or “Pay what you can” basis — I will have my little “Abundance Box” present at our meetings.  The whole issue of charging for this work is very fraught for me, as it truly turns out that many of the women I am most inspired to work with are not usually bringing in big salaries, and neither do most have lots of discretionary income.  I am deeply committed to making this work available for those who desire and are willing to actually do the work.    Yet at the same time, I, too, need income and/or an energy exchange that recognizes the amount and value of the work I offer.  This is not a hobby for me:  it is my life’s work, and I’ve prepared for this work with all the energy, time, and resources I’ve had.
So my policy is to offer some programs and individual sessions that I do charge for, and I’ll be sending out the brochure of those workshops in early September.  Then other offerings, such as these Story Circles, are by donation.  Please don’t let lack of funds stop you from participating in the groups  —  when you “win the lottery” or get that huge inheritance we’d all like to be waiting for, consider sharing the wealth then!  Yet also don’t minimize the power of a dollar or a few to pay for expenses like tea, photocopies, and the help to keep the bathroom clean and the walks shoveled!  Conversely, if your situation is fairly comfortable,  please consider donating the amount you’d spend on a comparable course or activity.
The first meetings of these groups in September are for all participants to check things out and see if it’s a fit for you.  For those who decide to continue, because of the cumulative positive impact of these Story Circles, I am asking for a commitment to make every good effort to attend all the meetings during the year.  Of course I totally understand that life intrudes, people get sick, and the unexpected does happen, and you may not be able to make each meeting — I’m simply asking that you take this endeavor seriously and make it a priority if it’s a fit for you to be here.
And finally, on the afternoon of the last Saturday of the month, I am offering OPEN STUDIO, a time to join myself and others in different art activities.   All supplies are provided, and I clean up the mess!  I will have the topics for each month listed in my brochure coming in September.  These afternoons are “By Donation”.
If any or all of these Story Circles are calling to you, please let me know of your interest.  Seating is very limited (a maximum of 7).  Check out the books and their reviews on amazon.ca, or feel free to ask me more questions.  To find out more about my background, education and training, please check the “About” page of my (in construction) website, www.catcharissage.com.  And please pass this on to any of your friends or colleagues who you think would be interested.
Looking forward to laughter and deep conversation,
With much love,
Cat
catcharissage@gmail.com
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The Soul’s Lost and Found

02 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by mysteriesunfolding in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

20160724_165057

The Soul’s Lost and Found
—Cat Charissage, July 2016

“Mommy, I found you!!!
“I lost you!
“I looked there,
and there,
and there — but I couldn’t find you!
“I lost you!”
My son, at two, was just learning to talk.
Those were some of his first sentences.
I never took him back to daycare, and he hasn’t lost me since.

I, too, know what it is to look
there,
and there,
and there,
for someone.
You were lost, and I yearned for you,
for it to be like before.
I thought I might die, looking.
Then I wanted to die, if I could never find you.
Every day grey.
Had I made you up?
If you’d never been, why did I long for you so?

I kept finding places where you’d been,
but now you were gone.
I searched the stories,
the myths,
I searched in other people’s lives.
Even when they said “There! See?”
I couldn’t find you.
Gone, forever? Never been?

Walking the hills, the sun and wind pushing me forward
I dug and dug into the earth, my earth.
Found not just dirt, but soil. And life!
Critters and worms and roots of small plants,
taking my garbage and making compost.

Down there, I found you.
I found me.

Dead? No.
Asleep? Yes, dreaming our new world,
the earth my body, my history turned to gold.
Swirling life, making treasure,
giving treasure all the time I thought you were lost.

Who are you, oh Mystery? And who am I?
Who are we?
Making meaning, making soul.

 

Hello dear friend,

What is beginning in your beautiful life at this new moon?  For me, as I processed what I had taken in during my training in June with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, I realized how deeply frustrated I am that I cannot easily speak clearly about that which is most important to me, about that which is the core of my life:  my search for and relationship with Great Mystery.  Sometimes painting and poetry are the only way to approach anything like an accurate communication with others.  

As many of you know, many years ago I had a strong faith as a Roman Catholic.  Suffice it to say that as I learned more, my faith changed deeply, and for many many years I felt both deep loss and anguish with discovering more about so much unmerited suffering of so many in this world and throughout time.  In the past 5 years or so the anguish has lifted; now I know how much I don’t know about “life, the universe, and everything”.  At the same time I commit to living out of as much compassion as I’m able to, and to an ongoing curiosity and study of all the ways that humans have made meaning throughout time.   And so I talk of soul, and mystery, and love, and life, and solidarity, and compassion.

This painting started out without any words or clear ideas.  I loved the idea of a woman of the earth, in the earth, of Gaia, of underground treasure.

20160708_121442 (1)

As I continued to paint I followed an intuition here, a color there.  I adhered crumpled tissue paper to the entire surface (and forgot to take a photo of that step).  For me it illustrated that life rarely goes smoothly.  The Buddhists’ first Noble Truth is that All is Suffering, which actually translates more accurately as “Everything is sort of messed up; life doesn’t fit; it’s all out of sorts.”

Yet I’d just been at a training entitled “The Heart of the Wounded Healer”, and I realize how it is also possible for humans to develop increased compassion and sensitivity, and including other gifts, if there are enough inner and outer resources as well as the deep challenges present.  My physical body is often in pain, and the wrinkled surface of the tissue paper expresses this well.  And somehow, I have accepted this life I have, and somehow, the wounds can also be accepted as potential gold if they are portals to new worlds and understandings.  This is when I added the gold into the woman’s body, and spirals of energy into the sky and sun. I also added my everyday self as the tiny figure, searching for soul.

20160724_134904

As the poem began to form, I added spirals of energy into her large body, and formed the hills to look a little more like the coulees here in southern Alberta.  There is much more to say, but that is enough for now.  Here again is the final painting:

20160724_165057

Thank you for witnessing and hearing the story,

With much love,

Cat

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