June First Quarter Moon

Tonight is the first quarter moon; we are one-quarter of the way through the moon cycle. The moon is waxing - growing in light and energy, creating a time for decisive action.

I use this June quarter moon's energy to help me find a balance of simplicity and abundance - I am embracing the paradox of the expansive, free, effortless ease, and rich, complex, and vital profusion that is summer. 

Agenda Today:

1. Journal queries
2. Make a full effort plan
3. Write a mission haiku
4. Read the Creativity Book

1. Journal queries:

Today, at the first quarter moon, I prepare to give full effort to my priorities. I remember that for each opportunity in life there is a challenge. The challenge to abundance is limitation. If I feel restricted in any way, I’m not truly open to abundance. Practice opening doors and stepping through.

What potential challenges, restrictions, limitations, and obstacles do I face this week and month? How can I best meet these challenges?

What doors can I open, and how best to step through? 

How can maintain ease as I also invite abundance?

From my journal: The limitations I feel are time restrictions. My schedule is expansively dominated by children, so my adult activities (studio time, reading and writing, peaceful time in the garden) feel pinched. But it's only an illusion, and a matter of priorities; I need to take care to preserve and embrace the adult time I have and step through the door of the studio when I get the chance!

2. Make a full effort plan: 

I'm thinking today about full effort as a teacher. I have so many opportunities still, even though I'm "retired", and this is the gift I have to offer the world.

Full effort requires attention; you remember your intentions - what it is you want to do and your deepest reasons why - and also notice your emotions, energy, challenges, etc.

My intention is to be proactive, and take time each week to really plan and prepare to teach within my many roles: Teachable moments with my grandson, my painting class, my Ducks-in-a-row cohort, my Earthcare community, and my wider Friends community, neighborhood, and the entire internet.

My plan / schedule:

1. Sunday: Research and plan for teachable moments with my grandson, and my other roles, by writing about themes, projects, skills, and opportunities for teaching this week.
2. Monday: Gather all the supplies and books for the week of teachable moments in one place - ready to go when the time is right - because it's very satisfying to catch the moment when it comes, and be able to hold attention and interest, and to be able, then, to build on the excitement.
3. Tuesday and Wednesday: Research for Medicine Art teaching, and plan ways to share a transformative eco-justice model of living with my community, perhaps with small Saturday classes, because this promises me a uniquely proactive response to climate change.
4. Thursday: Plan and prepare to teach painting, with a defined project, exercises, and demonstrations; look for project and theme ideas, brainstorm new methods, and seek new sources; because it's satisfying to encourage and see growth.
5. Friday and Saturday: Continue to review Get Your Ducks in a Row, with the goal of healing overwhelm and lighting a fire for transformation, because growing creative, ethical, and adventurous souls is my calling.

3. Write a Mission Haiku:

My missions are my various big projects or directions in life. Today I'm going to continue to look at my mission of TEACHING within my many roles. I'll write it as a haiku, because a poem has a unique ability of getting to the core of a Truth. Here's the steps I use:

1. Write a brief, evocative sentence or two describing this top mission in my life, and the significant issues that surround it:

Teaching is my life-long vocation, and I'm good at all the parts: research, inspiration, plans, encouragement. The only obstacle is finding students. 

 

2. List the most exciting or pleasing verbs that describe what I want to do with this mission:

Inspire, nurture, encourage, research, plan, write, teach.

 

3. Next, list some core values that go with this mission:

Love, Equanimity, Creativity, Learning, Purpose, Unity with Nature, Witness, Celebration and Play

4. Turn these sentences, verbs, and values into a haiku, an unrhymed poetic form consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively (or a Cinquain, which is five lines, with 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables), that gets to the core of my mission, and gives me a framework for my actions.

Teacher plants the seed,

after finding fertile ground;

gently nurtures sprouts.

4. Read the Creativity Book:

A few years ago I started but didn't finish this book by Eric Maisel (one of my favorite writers). The subtitle is "A Year's Worth of Inspiration and Guidance." Who doesn't want that? 

I'm on Week 5: Forgive Yourself for All Your Failures. 

Maisel talks about the accumulation of failures we all inevitably have, and says, "for many of us the chance to become an everyday creative person is ground away by these inconsequential failures that subjectively loom so large."

Not one of us can create well every time we try. We need to forgive ourselves our failures, learn from them, and move on. We need to take as our model the rare way of being "so empty, so curious, so stubborn, and so passionate" that we can endure a thousand failures, and can sometimes create a masterpiece.

Maisel has a few exercises designed to give you the experience of practicing forgiveness. The one I like the most is Pardon Yourself: "Creativity is your religion. Your religion is yours to design. You get to make the rules about compassion and forgiveness."

He suggests you get a ballpoint pen that clicks and make this your "pardon wand"; click it whenever you denigrate or chastise yourself for procrastinating or being untalented, or etc.

Click it, name the charge, then say - "Maybe so, maybe not, but in any case, I am pardoned, and I'll do better." Build forgiveness and a commitment to doing better into your daily routine.