Collaboration: SPARK 15

A bit back, I introduced Amy Souza, an amazing woman who encourages collaboration between artists and writers through a project she developed called SPARK.  SPARK came into being in 2008.  Since then, Amy has been bringing artists and writers together four times a year with results that are just inspirational, to say the least!

Personally, I have participated in several such collaborations.  This session, though, I took up the challenge to work as an artist, rather than a writer.  The results have been wonderful! 

Today I will share with you the work that Heidi Mordhorst and I have done together.  She sent me a poem she wrote for inspiration and I sent her a photo I had taken and digitally enhanced.  The results, I think, were wonderful!

Here are our mutual shares:  First, Heidi's inspirational poem with my response picture:

Side by Side in the Outhouse


One night late I’m brushing my teeth
when my dad says, “You know, son,
we’re poor.

“Here we are three bathrooms in the house--
one of them with double sinks--
and nowhere to have
a midnight two-seater talk.
Here, when you have to go in the night,
it’s a lonely affair.”
I have to ask what he’s talking about.

“When I was a boy in New Mexico,
if I had to go in the night,
I’d wake my father up. Together
we’d take our flashlights and
head to the outhouse.
Side by side we’d do our business,
alone in the deep dark of the desert.

“And then, since we were there, and up,
my father and I would sit for a while,
side by side in the outhouse,
in the cactus-flower glow of the flashlights,
with the Sears catalog handy for
paper and inspiration, and have
a midnight two-seater talk.
Yessiree, we’re poor these days.”

I hang up my toothbrush; Dad turns out the light,
and we sit down
side by side on the edge of the tub.


~Heidi Mordhorst ~all rights reserved

 "Tub" by Linda M. Rhinehart Neas 

This next collaboration is my inspiration piece and Heidi's response to it.

 

"Window Pains" by Linda M. Rhinehart Neas

WINDOW PAINS

To ash the hands who built the frame

to dust the hands who hung the drape

which taking pains to hammer nails

and taking pains to stitch and so

Painstaking made a house and home

to hold the combs and loaves and soap

that close and fill all cracks and holes

but open doors just out of sight

Blew the weather in and out

wore the boards and warped the house

how time and climate tore it down

the cloth to rags uncovering

Glass the last to fall holds in

panes taking gray gone finger prints

pressing through the house’s skin

a spirit of the hands intact

~Heidi Mordhorst ~all rights reserved

Later, I will post the other collaboration I did for SPARK 15.  In the meantime, I encourage my readers to visit the SPARK site and enjoy the wealth of creative work found there.

Thanks to my collaborators, Heidi and Anthony for this experience and of course to Amy Souza, for bringing us all together!

Namasté! 

Related articles

• Lisa Kilhefner and Linda M. Rhinehart Neas (getsparked.org)
• Amy Souza and Kathleen Finn Jordan (getsparked.org)
• Jane Hulstrunk and Linda Rhinehart Neas (getsparked.org)

Why Forgive?

Asking For Forgiveness (Photo credit: hang_in_there)

In the last post, my guest blogger, Margaret Norton, began a dialogue on the Gift of Forgiveness.  Since that post, several people have emailed me to say, "How can I forgive?"  "Why forgive? They only keep hurting me."  "If someone hurts someone else that I love, they hurt me, too.  But, it's not my job to forgive them."

To these readers and others of like mind, allow me to repeat a truth that I can testify to wholeheartedly - Forgiveness is the greatest gift you give yourself! 

What does this mean?  The gift you give yourself when you forgive someone, is the ability to go through life without carrying around a bundle of hate, despair, fear, outrage, anger, disappointment and so on. 

An old wise man once asked me if I would carry around a bag of excrement.  I, not surprisingly, was appalled!  "Of course not!" I stated most vehemently.  "That is totally disgusting!"

"Well," he said, with a twinkle in his eye, "why are you toting around that bag of pain from all the hurt in your life?  Don't you know it stinks?  Don't you see how foul it is?  You have a bag of shit weighing you down!  Get rid of it!"

His direct approach floored me; however, after thinking about what he had just said, I realized the truth.  The anger, pain, hurt, fear, etc. that I felt towards those in my life that had wronged me was keeping me from living a full and happy life.  This bag of emotional excrement was actually causing me to be ill.  The stress of maintaining my pain and anger was lowering my immune system, causing me to be victim to every virus and bacteria within close range.

How did I release all this and forgive?

For me, what worked was to go to the beach.  I sat quietly, picturing each person in my life that had hurt me.  I consciously made an effort to see them as children. This allowed me to see their divine nature, thereby, allowing me to forgive.

Others, I have known, have used journaling or letter writing to release their anger and pain.  While others, found it helpful to speak directly to the person that caused them pain.  Honestly, the way we come to forgiving is as diverse as we are.  The point is, by forgiving, we release ourselves from the bondage of pain, anger, fear, etc.

Here is a beautiful song that illustrates this concept.

 

Before I end, let me say that forgiveness does not mean that we allow people to use us as doormats.  His Holiness, the Dali Lama has said that we can show others loving-kindness, forgive them, but set boundaries so that they do not continue to hurt us.  Remember, a snake is a snake.  Keep one as a pet and you could get bit.  Forgiving others does not mean we must be their best friends or even casual friends.  What is does mean is that we attempt to see the Divine within the other person.  However, we can do this at a distance, which allows us not to put ourselves in continued peril.

May we all learn to see the Sacred, even when it lies in the souls of our enemies.

Namasté!