Here are several various focals I played with yesterday and got to “finished” and ready for adding to jewelry.  The hearts were hardest – I need to pay attention to where I put the hanging hole (which can also be an accent hole and the hanging done through the larger hole – it’s a personal aesthetic choice).  I must have tried 4 different designs with that green heart before I decided on simple. 

My favorite piece (and the only one that size) is the diamond in the lower right.  As easy as it sounds it took me more than several minutes to figure out how to keep the beads where I want them.  Simple as wrapping the wire (or even a crimp but I couldn’t find one – I think I’m out) – but it didn’t immediately come through.  Now, however, I’ve got it!

Imagine that!

Reading Patti Digh and using some of her work yesterday planted a seed.  This morning I woke up with the idea of imagination being a muslce that we lose if we don’t use. 

If we use it, the world keeps opening to larger and larger possibilities.  I call this parallel worlds.  String theory says there are (I think) about 11 dimensions  (parallel universes).  I’d explain it to you but it’s a bit over my head.  I get the concept, though, because I think about this all the time.  Were someone transported to my life from a life in the bush of Zambia, for instance, they would not believe they were in the same world.  I know when I was transported to theirs I felt as if I were in one!

When I visited Zambia, working  with Women’s organizations on self-empowerment by way of the League of Women Voters, I stayed in Lusaka (the capital) with a host who kindly made room for me in her house.  One day I joined a training in a walled space that was a manicured garden of Eden.  Literally right outside the gates to that were “houses” – one room concrete, maybe 6 x 8 feet, with open windows and doors.  Families – families! – lived in them (parallel universes butting up against each other).   

Here, right in my own country, I cannot imagine the universe where one pays $1,000 for a parking space at Redskins stadium.  I cannot imagine the life of those people who are paid millions of dollars a year to “oversee” their corporation to the detriment of the rest of our world and our people.  I don’t understand the “law of the commons” that says:  if I don’t take it someone else will – and so the Chesapeake Bay is regularly raped by people making a living from her resources and then whining when others of us would protect her because they cannot imagine doing things any way other than they’ve “always been done” even though they are putting themselves out of business. 

Okay – this took a bit of a rant turn.  Not what I had  in mind, but apparently where spirit decided to take me, so I’m leaving it there.

Meanwhile, here’s a great picture for imagining:  my pond.  I went to take a picture of the fish to represent all the yard work I did yesterday – raking lots and lots and LOTS of leaves, mulching, triming dead growth, opening up spaces in our forest so that lower things can grow.  And as I looked at the picture, I realized that because the pond is so clear and the reflection so precise, one might imagine the fish flying.  As good as pigs in my book!

I use the pond in my own story a lot – to try to imagine the pond I am swimming in and what I cannot see yet.  Now I will imagine that the pond itself reflects to me all possibilities I might look for- all I have to do is remain conscious of what I am actually seeing, what is in front of me, what is offering itself for joy. 

What stories do you use to help you expand your possibilities and exercise your imagination muscle?  I’d love to hear them!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

We tend to underestimate the range of our senses and our intelligence.  We do the same with our imaginations.  In fact, while we largely take our senses for granted, we tend to take our imaginations for granted completely.  We’ll even criticize people’s perceptions by telling them that they have ‘overactive imaginations’ or that what they beliee is ‘all in their imagination.’  People will pride themselves on being ‘down to earth,’ ‘realistic,’ and ‘no-nonsense,’ and deriede those who ‘have their heads in the clouds.” [or their fish in a tree].  And yet, far more than any other power, imagination … underpins every uniquely human achievement.  … You can think of creativity as applied imagination.  Ken Robinson