Lemon Cake - Exploring Family Dynamics

These past two months I took a break from my weekly blogging to focus on finishing up work needed to submit my graduate school application.  The biggest wall I had to climb was writing the literary critique on a book I read. 
 
T felt the paper was forced.  Perhaps it was.  But, I think maybe it was more stressed.  A lot depends on this - like getting into graduate school. A dream..... 
 
The book I chose was The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender.  If you haven't read this book its Like Water for Chocolate at a different angle.  The books is about a family relationship.  Most of Bender's stories I have found are about relationships.  Specifically, they are about dysfunctional family relationship. 

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is about the masks and roles we play out in families. It is about not being truthful emotionally and going through the motions of being a family as seen on TV. This lack of honest communication creates a lot of missed opportunities to strengthen relationships.

Food is the primary symbol used throughout the novel's plotline. Bender uses it in a way opposite to how we think about it. The narrator, Rose discovers on her ninth birthday that she is a food empathic. She is able to taste the unspoken emotions of the food preparer. It starts with her birthday cake her mom bakes - lemon cake with chocolate frosting.

Before placing that first fork full in our mouths, we all can imagine what a lemon cake is going to taste like. The brightness, the citrus and the sunny energy. Rose can discern these flavors, but she also tastes her mother's sadness. She realizes that this is the opposite of the façade her mother appears - cheerful and all smiles. She discovers that no one is being truthful about their feelings after eating their dishes. Sadly, she discovers no one seems to be committed to changing.

A lot of people don't like the book. I think it has to do with reality. Not every story has a happy ending. There are some family relationships that are so toxic and you may need to just walk away. And, that is okay.  Some families can't be fixed.


The message of the book - you need to be honest with your emotions and be authentic with yourself and to the world.

Hiatus - Contemplative Practice that Leads to the Edge

"Suddenly Star Wars came out while we were on hiatus,and we looked like the old Buck Rogers series,
where they had cigarette smoke blowing out the back of the rocket ship." ~ Gregory Harrison


I've been on hiatus these past two weeks.  I am sitting on my bum writing my Personal Statement Essay for graduate school.  I'm focusing on my story which always send me into a panic.  I've done some research finding out how others have approached it.  It is a piece or conversation that lets people know who I am after they look at my portfolio.

The Personal Statement Essay is about my journey that is leading to the next threshold.  

My Wild Woman Project group talked about using the energy that is at the edge.   I think of The Fool who is about to take the leap.  This leap is fearful and perhaps dangerous, but looking at this face, The Fool is smiling without a care.  He appears to have the same blind faith like those X-Gamers.  I'm trying to harness that "stomach ache" and "run the other way" feeling and use it to help write my essay.  

One of the questions I've been pondering is why do I want to go to graduate school.  I think it comes down to Nettie's questions to me: 1) What is my life's purpose?  Answer: To help people and make the world a better place.  2) Have you ever thought about doing it another way?  Answer: No.  Why not?

This week I've been sitting like the rest of America post Boston Marathon.  I look at the faces of these two young men and ask: Why?  Why choose violence to get your point across?  And, what is the point that you think that violence is the only way?  Did you ever think about doing it another way?

They could have run and worn T-Shirts showing their cause.  They could have been like Peace Pilgrim at the end of the Rose Parade with her sign; the beginning of her peace walk across the US.  They could have written letters to the editor, written letters to their political representatives...  The could have joint human rights watch; volunteered at the UN.  But, violence?

I ask myself what was my part in their decision?  Where did I fail in listening and having a welcoming heart that someone had to resort to violence to get my attention? 

As a CCWWW, I believe we all are connected like blood.  We are all dependent on each other plants and animal and us humans.  And, even though I didn't know those young men, I come in contact with many people daily.  I ask myself: How do I treat them?  How do I treat those who look homeless on the street?  How do I treat those with an accent that makes me listen harder?  How do I treat..

Gladness Factor

Maleficent from Disney Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Trickster Moon - Where do life's lessons sneak up on us/surprise us, and how can we greet these lessons with receptivity instead of resistance?  CAYA Moon Question

"Into the house where joy lives, happiness will gladly come."  ~ Japanese Proverb

"The most waisted day is one without laughter." - ee cummings.

“If we can just let go and trust that things will work out they way they're supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself.” ~ Goldie Hawn

The Gladness Factor (GF) was “discovered” as an essential for being a Fairy Godmother in the late 1990s by Dr. Leticia Foon.  Most traditionalists have scoffed at her discovery, because GF was always perceived important through oral tradition.  Foon just wrote it down and gave it a name which instantly professionalized it in peer reviewed journals.  Current students majoring in Western Fairy Godmothering now are required a minimum of three levels to help increase and maintain their GF skill set.     

 

Maypole Dance

Foon states GF predates 900 AD coming from both the English and Norse Fairy Godmother traditions (Note: Foon hasn't studied other traditions).  Paintings from this period hint that singing and dancing are important components for increasing the intensity of GF.   It wasn’t until the Elizabethan period did twirling and skipping became an aspect of GF.  This can be best illustrated in Shakespeare’s play Midsummer’ Night Dream.  Foon developed several GF exercises lifted from Eleanor Porter’s 1913 book Pollyanna.

 

Researchers have shown that deficiencies in GF can lead to misery, cynicism and exhaustion.  It can be best illustrated in the case study of Maleficent, now associated with the Sleeping Beauty tragedy.  If we look at the beginning of Maleficent career, her personnel file shows that she had high levels of enthusiasm, team player, and had the knack to solve problems where other’s didn’t seem to find them.  She was written up twice for singing staccato happy songs, because they caused a disruption in the office.  Also noted was she’d work overtime without meal breaks or going to the bathroom in order to get the job done.  We find that around twenty years into the Fairy Godmother business, there was a change in Maleficent’s personality.  She became more isolated.  Her annual review states: “She lost her nimbleness and flexibility when waving her wand.”  She seemed exhausted and cranky at staff meetings.  She had taken to leaving notes on the bathroom like: wash your hands and close the door.  We have learned her change was due to the work climate: reduction in resources, endless requests that agency couldn’t compensate for and a management attitude: if you want to keep your job you need to be tough and committed enough to suck it up.  The cumulative toll at the worksite and the oversight by the King and Queen were the straw that broke the camels’ back so to speak.  It drove Maleficent to curse rather than provide a blessing. 

 ~#~

Understanding trauma and how it affects us is important.  Trauma has a way of sucking the GF out of our lives.  One way is to take back lunch. 

My co-worker retired almost a year ago.  One thing I’ve noticed is I’m eating more and more at my desk.  I’m catching up with e-mails while eating my salad, soup, and yogurt.  J always made me step away from my desk and eat somewhere else. 

I’ve decided to be part of the take back lunchmovement as a way of break in what I do.  To put my work back into perspective.

~#~

 

How is this spiritual?  If you can’t laugh or sing songs, even out of tune with staccatos – how are you going to make magic?  How are you going to see possibilities?

 

Resource to learn more about trauma - required read for all Fairy Godmothers:

Laura van Dernoot Lipsky Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others

Forsythia – let there be flowering

BEMS@Copywrite

Maker's Moon - What wants to be conceived/born/shaped/made from our own minds/hearts/loins/hands? - CAYA Moon Question


"Forsythia is pure joy.  There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of saddness or even knowledge in forsythia.  Pure, undiluted, untouched joy."  ~ Anne Morrow Lindberg




I woke up today and the weather guy was droning on about “weekend of snow.”   There is a nice thin layer of cake frosting covering my car windshield and if this was January, I’d be smiling, but not so much now in March.  Then my son looked out the window and groaned:  “You’ve got to be kidding.” 

This past week I crunched across the community garden to our plot to bless it.  When I dug in to plant my egg, I quickly discovered that the top soil is still pretty much frozen.  This is very different from last year when we were having sweatshirt weather and the weeds were already up. 

My Grandmother use to say:  “Three more snow falls after the forsythia bloom.”  I went to where my Forsythia are and and and …. No green, no green buds only twigs sticking up out the ground.  Disappointed I tramped back into the house.  Yes, the robins are singing and the rain sometimes smells like spring and the crocuses and snowdrops are blooming, and the trees all appear ready with their buds, but not the forsythia .  Ohio this year is having a traditional winter season.

I admit.  I was spoiled by last year’s early spring weather that started in February. 

As a CCWWW, I have a love of nature and a passion for the wild and elemental.  These are a reminder that all creation is a gift from the divine.  These are a reminder that I’m just one piece that is interconnected.  I'm longing to lay in the grass and watch the summer wind blow the leaves. 

~#~

Let there be new flowering

by Lucille Clifton

let there be new flowering
in the fields let the fields
turn mellow for the men
let the men keep tender
through the time let the time
be wrested from the war
let the war be won
let love be
at the end

 

~#~

Potential tomato plants

Part of my practice as a CCWWW is growing my own vegetables and herbs. It is having a relationship with the devias or spirits of the garden and plants. My garden is a special place were we can meet. It is a place where I have learned many things that are magical.  It is in the garden that I learned about the tomato love spell.

Tomatoes are relatively easy to grow: sun, light, water and dirt.  And, it ceases to amazes me that some people have never seen a tomato plant growing in a garden.  These same people have told me they have never felt their fuzzy vines or smelled their distinct fragrance when brushed against.  They have never taken a bite out of a sun riped tomato.  They haven't held their tiny seeds in their hand.  (Maybe this is what intimidates people from growing them?)

I want to make sure we're all on the same page.  In Ohio, you don’t get tomatoes off the vine from your garden until end of June (maybe) July and August definitely.   It takes about 40-50 days to get tomatoes ripened off the vine according to the package and Ohio Cooperative Extension.  It also takes a specific type of weather – hot during the day and cooler during the evening. 

Tomatoes are part of a big family of plants known scientifically as Solanaceae or to gardeners the nightshade family.    Below are some of the cousins, and as in all families some are good to have around (edible) and some are toxic.

Mandragora (mandrake), Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Lycium barbarum (wolfberry), Physalis philadelphica (tomatillo) , Physalis peruviana (Cape gooseberry flower), Capsicum (chili pepper, bell pepper), Solanum (potato, tomato, eggplant), Nicotiana (tobacco), and Petunia

If you are thinking of “making” your own tomato plants - you need about 8 weeks to get those seeds ready.  I usually count 8 weeks back from US Mother’s Day – so now is the time for Central Ohians.  Mother’s Day Weekend has been usually our last known heavy frost day.  Tomato plants are annuals here in Ohio and don’t like the cold.    Here's a map of the world for planting times.

You start the seeds in plastic trays purchased from your local garden shop – or you can reuse the plastic lettuce containers and cardboard egg cartons.  You fill the trays (egg cartons) with dampened sterile soil mix. And plant the seeds.  I’m using a heirloom mix this year.  The seed containers should be placed in a southern facing window.  What is nice about the plastic lettuce containers is that they have a lid.  The egg carton can be cut down to fit the lettuce container and the lid creates a mini greenhouse that is waterproof.     

Before planting the seeds I thank the soil, thank the water, thank the sun and thank the seeds for the tomatoes that will help feed my family.

To be continued……..

Ēostre/Vernal Equinox - Joyful Vows for Water

Joy of Clean Drinking Water

“Burn on, big river, burn on.” ~ Randy Newman

Walk between the raindrops by Donald Fagen

The River of Dreams by Billy Joel

CAYA is focusing on the element of water this year. I have decided to go along for the rafting ride by using their themes for my wheel celebrations.

 

Last Friday, S and I were standing on the porch after book club.  It had just started to rain softly.  I took a breath in and smiled.  The rain had finely changed its wintery scent.  I looked over at S and said:  “Smell, spring is here.  The rain has changed.”  We moved out from under the porch and into the rain, both breathing in its earthy fragrance. 

I was listening to NPR this past week.  The US Federal EPA put out their report on mercury levels in lakes, rivers and streams.  Ohio’s rivers were on the list.  There were officials playing down the report and others stating it wasn’t strong enough.  There was a group discussing how much this clean­-up was going to cost and how much the burden of cost was placed on businesses for preventive mechanism.  Health officials told about health conditions due to mercury exposure: neuropathies, hypertension, and kidney failure and memory loss.  

This story to me is familiar.  It reminds me of the stories that preluded the 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire.  The river had been polluted for decades from industries along the river.  Cleveland became associated with water pollution.  But one thing the public forgets, this was the tipping point.  People put aside their differences and the nation developed and implemented clean water standards.   

~#~



Stink Spirit before the bath and soon to
reveal that it is actually ancient river spirit

All the Stuff that came out of the River Spirit

In Hiyao Miyazaki’s animated movie Spirited Away (2001), a stink spirit comes into the bathhouse.  The main character, Chihiro is forced to take care of it by treating it with respect and by giving it a bath regardless of the smell.  Chihiro showers the spirit with clean water and realizes that something isn’t right.  She begins pulling on what appears to be a stick piercing its side.  The stick turns into chains, bike, car…. And the stink spirit is transformed into an ancient river spirit.    We learn that water pollution has done this to the spirit of the river.     The spirit rewards Chihiro’s kindness with a healing biscuit.

Photos by: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc51.2009/SpiritedAway/2.html
 

~#~

We can all agree water is essential to life.  However, I believe many in my country have forgotten the joy that comes from having clean water.  We stick our glass under the faucet and take a drink.  It’s automatic like blinking.  It’s just like our easy access to a flushing toilet and a hot shower.  Call it taking it for granted or it’s something we don’t have to be concerned about – it’s something only those other places have to worry about.  Places where contaminated water cause severe diarrhea and death from Cholera, dysentery and parasites happens daily.  

I know several people who have been a part of the Marion Shallow Well Project in Malawi.   The purpose this project is to bring clean water by installing a shallow well and a pump in rural villages.   The overall project costs around $400 (US Dollars) and $5.00-10.00 yearly for maintenance.  The wells are built and maintained by the villagers.  The Project assists with the materials and training they can’t afford.  One of my friends described the celebrations that occurred every time when the clean water came out of the well for the first time – dancing, singing, music making and feasts.  There were joyful tears from parents who didn’t have to worry anymore for their children.       

~#~

 

I have been following the blogger AskaWolfSong – author of Stone Soup and Heart Song.  Her posts describe how our waters are becoming so polluted and we need to sit-up and take action to help the spirit of our planet.  Recently, I read her essay about how the First Nations are calling for international healing prayers for our waters.  It is distressing to learn that our waters are becoming so polluted from farm run-off, industry and our unwanted stuff (i.e., plastic water bottles, Styrofoam cups, pop cans, and plastic bags). 

I think back to the Cuyahoga River Fire.  There is no joy in water without life.    

AskaWolfSong shared this wonderful concert by R. Carlos Nakai with me from Youtube recording.

R. Carlos Nakai at National Geographic's "Water Is Life" celebration on Martha's Vineyard. THIS FULL ONE-HOUR version includes rare video of Nakai sharing his LIVING PHILOSOPHY about the evolution of humankind and the flute music of various civilizations through time - along with an expanded selection of his Native American Flute music to flow with this celebratory water event
 

~#~

 

Vow: Solemnly promise to do a specified thing ~ Merriam-Webster Dictionary
 

Joyful: Feeling, expressing, or causing great pleasure and happiness ~ Merriam-Webster Dictionary

~#~

My joyful vow this year for water is to appreciate it more.  When it rains this summer, put the umbrella down or put my feet in a cold steam and give thanks.  I’ll be mindful each time I take a drink that I can drink safely.  I also vow to save $5.00 a week for others to have the joy I have.  The money will be placed under my CAYA “water jar” and shared with the Marian Shallow Well Project at the end of the year. 

 

Friendship – starting with yourself

Girl Looking in The Mirror by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1912)

Maker's Moon - What wants to be conceived/born/shaped/made from our own minds/hearts/loins/hands? - CAYA Moon Question

“We are not humans having spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings having human experiences.” ~ Teilhard de Chardin

 

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” ~ C.S. Lewis

“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.” ~ William Shakespeare

 

 

To be a friend is hard work.  To be friends with yourself is even harder work.  I believe I heard this from my creative journaling teacher Nettie.  If not, it would be something she would say. 

 

This week I’ve started this blog entry over twice, because the theme “friendship with yourself” kept coming up.  You might say I got zapped by it from 6 different places this week:  Hildegard mandalaclass, 21 Day Meditation Challenge, Wild Woman Project, Findhorn Inspirational message, my New Moon Goddess Card of the month, and a fragment from a Hallmark Channel Movie due to channel surfing between basketball games.  Since I’m a firm believer in the law of synchronicity; I scraped the gardening piece for this topic. 

 

When I talk about being a friend to yourself, I’m not talking about being a narcissist.  That type of self-love in which one believes that they’re better than others and have a desire to tear others down in order to feel successful.  No, the one I’m talking about is giving yourself the same compassion that you give to others you are deeply in love with.  This was the message I kept getting zapped with.

 

~#~
 

Audacity: 1.bold courage; daring   2.shameless or brazen boldness; insolence ~ Webster New College Dictionary.

~#~

It has been my experience that the foundation of magic is belief.  You must believe in order to create or make something.  And, you must continue to believe all the way to the end.  More often than not, we find that our creative and magical endeavors become prey to sabotage by our own inner voices.  These voices have a way of squashing our passion and what ends up happening is the majority of our spells, creations and ideas our sitting in the basement in a box unfinished.

In talking to friends this week about the inner voices, we all came to the same conclusion.  We’d never say the things our inner voices say to someone that we love.  And, we’d probably wouldn’t say this to someone we don’t like.   My voices revolve around not being able to complete projects, perfectionism and fear that I’ll be rejected, self-judgment, education lacking by not having taken the right course work or involved with the right project.  These all seem to twist and haggle inside my head to the point I often stop.  Bottom line, I’d never say these things to a friend; I’d do the opposite.  I’d cheer them on.

March’s New Moon Wild Woman Project theme focused on having the audacity or courage to love ourselves.  We used one of Louise Hay’s mirror exercises.   The exercise asks us to call to mind a person that we deeply love.  We were to imagine looking in their eyes with compassion.  The last part of the exercise was to look into the mirror and with the same look of compassion see ourselves.  When I did this, my heart was crushed because I have never done this.  I have never looked into my eyes with that same look of charity. 

Kristin Neff, Ph.D. writes in her book about how self-esteem and self-compassion are intertwined.  Her research showed that a person with high self-esteem didn’t berate themselves when they were failing.  They did the opposite, they were kind to themselves.  These people in her research were able to embrace themselves with all their flaws and outperformed the opposite group.  Neff describes the science behind this.  When we berate ourselves with our inner critics, the flight and fight hormones are released.  Despite what our culture says, these hormones don’t drive us to the finish line they make us angry and cripple us from moving forward.  When we treat ourselves with kindness and sympathy, endorphins are released and we feel motivated to try again.  The endorphins make us feel good. 

Neff also found that the more we were able to keep our hearts opened for ourselves, the more we have available to give others and pursue our creativity.  She states that when the critics pop up 1) we should face them and tell them to soften.  Then provide kind, empathetic words to ourselves.  2) To look at the full picture and ask: how am I the same as others?  (e.g., Yes, I haven’t gotten this spell down pat but others have been here like me.)  3) Practice mindfulness and being in the present. 

~#~

 

Ho’oponopono

Hawaiian Prayer

I’m sorry.

Please forgive me.

Thank you, I love you.

This prayer was shared by one of my mandala classmates when I began describing how I was critical of my mandalas.  I was wishing to soften my judgment.  This is the prayer she tells herself when her inner critics begin to talk. 

Embers – la Chispa

Juliette Gordon Low center founder of Girl Scouts

Maker’s Moon – What wants to be conveived/born/shaped/made from our own minds/hearts/loins/hands? – CAYA’s Moon Question

“Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without spiritual life” Buddha

 O ignis Spiritus by Hildegard of Bingen

"Scouting rises within you and inspires you to put forth your best."  Juliette Gordon Low

According to Mrs. Z, in order to make a good campfire you need: patience, a good foundation, fuel and a mechanism to start it.  Oh and using safety precautions. 

Mrs. Z was my Girl Scouts Leader from juniors through senior scouting.  She was a hands-on leader – meaning everything we did she did.  My first fire building experience started with a 30 minute training walk in the woods.   We gathered three different types of fuel: tinder, kindling (finger to wrist size), and fuel (bigger that your wrist).  She was very keen on the “bleached out wood.”  This type of wood was found without its bark on the floor of the forest.  It appeared to me looking more bone like in color.   Mrs. Z described how this particular kind of wood had been aged and now had a minimum amount of moisture in it.  This would allow it to burn well.  Mrs. Z also liked it because it didn’t give off a lot of smoke. We would next bring the wood back and stacked in its categories next to the bucket of water which of course was several feel away from the stone circle campfire. 

Mrs. Z was a purist.  She didn’t believe in chemicals to start a fire.  Her idea of a Girl Scout was someone who was concerned about the air and taking care of nature to show to our Grandchildren.  This would always lead to a discussion about factories and acid rain falling in Western PA and the poor Cuyahoga River catching fire.  We were to use one of the following, dryer lint, pine needles or saved wood shavings from making marshmallow sticks to get the fire going.  Her favorite fire structure – the tipi. 

I was always amazed at how Mrs. Z had a knack at getting the fire started from something unsuccessful.  I can still picture her blowing gently on the embers.  Coaxing it with a little more lint to leap up and ignite the rest of the wood.  She’d rebuild the wood structure to let more oxygen in giving the revived embers the best wood - that “bleached out wood.”

~#~

O Comforting Fire of Spirit

By Hildegard of Bingen

O comforting fire of Spirit,

Life, within the very Life of all Creation.
Holy you are in giving life to All.

Holy you are in anointing

those who are not whole;
Holy you are in cleansing
a festering wound.

O sacred breath,

O fire of love,
O sweetest taste in my breast
which fills my heart
with a fine aroma of virtues

~#~

Sometimes my creative spirit becomes like an ember dying.  It’s a half burnt wood with a tiny glow that’s just hanging.  The reality is that my creativity hasn’t gone away.  I haven’t tended it by giving it fuel or a gentle puff of air to get it going.  I haven’t found space to allow it to grow.  Often, I’ve allowed the nasty voices to get in the way that extinguish my creative passion.

The same can be said about my spirituality.  I find it easy to conform to other’s truth rather than lacing up my hiking boots for my own unique journey.     

Sometimes you don’t know where your journey will take you.  Last year I became a member of the PBP, and I’ve been lead through many different twists and turns.  I accredit my 2013 Lenten study of Hildegard, creativity and mandala making from a fellow PBP.  It was through them I read a quote about the sacredness of nature and I followed it back to the source.  I crossed over through a door to a community made up of women from many different traditions.  They were discussing and practicing creativity and spirituality.  It was a group I never knew existed.

A new type of wood has been laid.  The fire is crackling.    

~#~

The Three-FoldFire of Brighid

Fire in the forge that

 shapes and tempers.

Fire of the hearth that

 nourishes and heals.

Fire in the head that

 incites and inspires.