Like many of you, I have always cherished photos.  That rush of excitement to see how the camera captured a moment in time, and that sense of gratefulness for the ability to remember not just that moment, but also that particular time in your life.  My 1960s and 1970s photos especially have me peering behind the picture’s subjects to the background objects that also got captured.  “I remember riding in the back of that brown station wagon!”  “Oh, how I loved that round lamp table with the beautiful, wavy lampshade.”

I happily jumped on the scrapbooking craze.  From 1996-2006, I spent countless hours creating photo scrapbooks for our family.  Then life became crazier, more digital, and the flow of that hobby was harder to maintain.  Ah, but what a fun ride that was.

Images can capture other things as well ~ our moods, our dreams, our longings, our inner voices.  They can spark emotions, and we may not even know why.  Likely we haven’t even paused to wonder why an image evoked an inner response.  Have you ever flipped through a magazine and stopped to soak in a certain picture for a few seconds?  Or have been moved by a painting, an album cover, or a particular expression of a perfect stranger’s photo?

There is a reason these different “sparks within” happen.  We connect with images because they mean something to the many parts of our unique selves that are important ~ those influential voices in our heads, the soft murmurings of our hearts, the parts we celebrate, or hide.  Those parts cause us to think, feel, behave and respond in different ways.  They are present within because we have experienced life.  They are all to be respected.

The practice of SoulCollage© teaches us how to collect images that give us any emotion.  Then, through a very simple, cut and paste process, we make cards from these images that allow us to greet the different parts of us in a gentle, gracious way, and to learn about ourselves in the process.  It’s satisfying.  It’s fascinating.  It’s meditative.  It’s revelatory.  It’s fun.

My website page for SoulCollage© will tell you even more, as well as the next time I will teach a 3-hour beginner’s class on Zoom.  Whether you end up making a few cards or many over time, you’ll find that every single one will be very special to you.  Because they will illuminate the multi-layered wonder that you are.

Share this

My word for this year is “Hope.”  I haven’t always chosen a special word, but I find it really does help me, and then through the year I seem to come across different words, images, lyrics or such that support my focus on the meaning behind that word for me.  Recent yearly words have been “Devotion” and “Unfurl.”  One time I even attended a wonderful January online event which helped me choose a word for the year in a gentle and satisfyingly effective way.

I almost passed on “Hope,” but I stopped myself from looking further.  At first, it seemed too general to be maintainable, let alone provide contemplation.  Yet it spoke ardently to my spirit, as truly so much of my own work within is around settling in, even nestling in, with Hope.  Not the type of clingy hope that I realize had been my norm for years, but the hope that comes with relinquishment and trust.

It’s been a long road learning to breathe deeply here, and my body still defaults to an initial clenching at times, but I more quickly gather strength from staying still and quiet right where and when I am, praying for God to be in this thing at hand, and then Feeling it – the Hope.  Reconciling to the mystery.  I spent twenty of my earliest years in the throes of a wretched obsessive-compulsive disorder, the very opposite of “reconciling to the mystery,” so the slow morph there has been, uh, significant.

To fortify my personal development and faith, I often use the practice of SoulCollage®.  It helps me to reinforce my present way and to strengthen the way for which I’m striving.  This is spiritually enriching work which directly affects the nourishing of my mind and the flourishing of my body.  Simply, it’s good for me.

So, I choose images that cause me to have a glimmer within.  And then I write:

I am one who will glow with hope.  I am one who has decided not to be attached to an outcome, but to hold life loosely and with immense hope.

I am one who relaxes in this hope, knowing things can even be better than ever before, that patterns can be changed, and life transformations can result in permanent shifts.

I am one who relaxes in the time ahead and isn’t fixed on chronological time.

I am one who sets her gaze with a smile and a huge, huge hope, sending out peaceful energies and frequencies, and above all, prayers for the best of those close to my heart. 

I am one who basks and warms in the flow of what is to be, knowing there will be what I need when I need it, and I may very well not even need that which I think I will need.

I am one who invites the possibilities, not based on what has happened, what is happening, or how I perceive either, but on the glorious potential ahead.

Share this