pendant by Marci Molina Designs

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“It is grace
to be able to surrender
and to be whatever one is.
No more, and no less.”

- Nilo Tuomenoksa

Day 3 of interesting ways to use the InterPlay Inspiration Deck

Sometimes I do a three card spread. This is a way to use the cards that is similar to what you might do when you pick tarot cards or rune stones or animal medicine cards.

In this spread we will look at past influences, current situations, and future action.

Let me explain.

I have in my mind a question I am holding that I would like to have more understanding and information about. (you may even wish to do some journal writing first to flesh out your question or do some exformation with a friend to get more clarity.)

This time I am going to spread the cards out on a flat surface and close my eyes and pick that way. (you can use any method for choosing that you wish.)

The first card I will pick signifies the past. This gives more information about what may have been at play to create the situation.

The second card signifies the present. This gives me more information about current energies at play.

The last card signifies the future and the action that can be taken to help the situation or give more clarity and direction.

If you are still with me and want more details I will do a sample spread below:

Question/Issue: I am struggling with my current work situation and some of the personal dynamics and wish for more clarity and some help to change the situation and the uncomfortable dynamics present.

Card 1. The past. Babbling (upside down is how i drew the card).

~the answer is not so clear to me so I read the story on the back.(each card has a story in which the principle or practice becomes personified through character, symbol and color.) From this I am able to see that one of the past issues has been a lack of babbling or talking (maybe why I drew it upside down). Most of us work as subcontractors and there has not been a lot of interpersonal communication. There is also a lack of clear communication and leadership coming from the directors. (I can say that because I am one of them)

Card 2. The present. Big Body

~this message was clear to me right away. For a while now I have been bringing the fullest expression of myself to the workplace. I have been willing to begin the hard conversations, to speak the truth, and “feel the fear and do it anyway.” Big body’s message is inviting me to bring all of me!

Card 3. The future. Grace

~what I feel in my heart at this moment is that if I acknowledge the “sins” of the past, make amends and apologies for my part in creating this situation, and stay committed to “Big Body” and all of its wisdom, then the result will be GRACE. The atmosphere around the office will be able to move out of stress and into ease/grace.

Amen to that!

the newest mandala

It seemed like a good idea.  I decided to do a mandala about Grace several months ago.  I took a few notes and did a few doodles, and then put it aside.  My thoughts about grace were all over the place, but that only made me realize how much I needed to work on it.

This quote from Anne Lamott kind of sums it up, “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”

It is such a tricky and elusive word.  And working with it began to reflect my longing to pin things down, to understand the whys and hows and whats of my own life.  I want physical grace as well as grace on a spiritual level.  I want that ever popular state of grace.  I want it to permeate my thoughts and actions on all levels.  I want to live with grace and age with grace.

Yet my personal journey while working on it was not particularly easy, almost as if I were being shown how much work there is to do.  I’m not exactly sure what I learned, but I know that it made me think and look and feel a lot.

And that’s enough for now.

I had to laugh when I read Anita‘s eloquent blog on Tuesday because for the past week I have been immersed in working on a Grace mandala. She captured the concept so well, while it has been quite the struggle for me to grapple with the word and all its meanings.  Mine has been in the works for several months. I had made some sketches and had written down some of my feelings about Grace. But of course, once I started to draw it, everything changed.

And there is Grace in that for sure.

So many opportunities have arisen in the last few days to challenge my ideas about it.  I have to laugh about that as well.  It seems to be the pattern.  Once I make a decision to tackle a particular word, the lessons show up all over the place.

I will be finished with it soon, and will share it here along with more of the story about making it.  I wanted to use just a small detail of it for now, but the lighting was bad, and it is late, and it all felt just a bit beyond my technical capabilities.  So for now, these are the markers and the palette that I’m using.

I am on the lookout for GRACE.

grace

Saturday I found her in the tear streaked faces of the couple standing in front of me saying, I DO.

Sunday she was lurking in my dear friend Eve’s cervical spine as I released her tight neck muscles.

Monday she took my breath away as a huge trumpeter swan took flight right in front of me.  Have you ever heard the sound their wings make when they hit the water?  Not to mention the amazing whoosh as they flap their wings in the air.

GRACE …. pure GRACE

My dad dug the hibiscus stump out of the recycling a few years ago and gave it to me.  “I couldn’t let it die there”, he said. I felt the same way and have carefully nurtured it and keep it through the severe winters of the Northeast. Every summer the first bloom from it still makes me gasp!

The flowers only live for one day so i usually pick them and try to live up to their beauty, their colorfulness, their grace. They are right out there with all of it, and today, I will be too! Why not join me?

Let your beauty show today. Wear the “true you” proudly.

Let your colorfulness out today.  Wear orange or red and smile at strangers. (okay, be careful if you live in a BIG city!)

Let your grace live today.  Wear “it” instead of your stress.

And, by all means, do stop to smell the flowers.

“There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.”

– Spoken by Ratty to Mole in Wind in the Willows a children’s book by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932).

from the InterPlay Inspiration Deck

Message for today: GRACE

“….she has a way of knowing what is resting on your heart even before you do.

Her touch is comforting and her words uplifting……”

~from the InterPlay Inspiration Deck

She’s been dreaming
Of mercy
Ever since I’ve known her.

Has she found it?
Certainly it has not
Been a gift I brought her:
Change, frustration, comfort,
Struggle, more change,
Beauty, fear, change again,
Even occasional joy –
Yes.
Mercy?
I think not.

So, I think she is still looking
And the gift I long to give her
Is quite simply
The room for her to find
The mercy
That lives
Within
Herself.

~ by Stan Stewart
Copyright © 2011 by Music for the Moment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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…additional inspiration from Peter Gabriel and Anne Sexton…

Just for today
I put the critic aside,
Only offering
You …
And me
Affirmation and grace.

~ by Stan Stewart

Copyright 2011 by Music for the Moment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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