THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Let the words you read fuel your creativity

CREATIVE LISTENING

There is something about listening
really listening,
which opens our creative energy
and allows us to express ourselves
in ways which are surprising,
refreshing,
and unique.

Listening is more than just hearing.
It is about really listening to each other.
It is about paying attention in a way that
is quiet and fascinated.
It is about being drawn in and
attracted to what is being said.
It is about being in the moment
and listening with a sense of
holiness

When we listen in this way,
we open ourselves up and
allow the creative forces within
to emerge,
to flow,
to present new thoughts,
and wisdom from the Ultimate
It is about holy listening which allows
for creative expression
through all the mediums
gifts, and
talents
with which we have been blessed.

CARING FOR MY HEART

Go to the gym
because your body needs
exercise.
Eat healthy.
All things in moderation.
These are a few of the things
I hear about caring for my body.

My heart needs more than
a cardio workout.
It needs love.
It needs to be touched,
caressed,
molded,
educated, and
refined.

It needs words,
actions,
feelings,
sounds,
images,
scents,
and ideas
which reach in and
caress my heart.

It comes to me through prayer,
meditation,
music.
art,
poetry,
and the whispers from above.

Sometimes it is the
creations of others
and sometimes it is the
conversations of my soul.
My poetry is
one way I speak
to my heart
and hopefully
to the hearts of others.

MOM MEMORIES

Maybe its because Mother’s Day is rapidly approaching or that a picture of my mom appeared in my Facebook memories page, or that we have been talking about mom memories as Pampered Chef consultants, or all of the above that has me thinking about my mom and the lessons she taught me in the kitchen.  Even though my mom passed away in 2001, the memories live with me. There are days I can even smell the memories coming out of my oven, even thought it is not on.

My mother was an amazing baker, but necessarily the best cook. However, one thing she taught me was to skim off the scum from the top when making chicken broth. She would tell me the scum would rise to the top and I needed to skim it off. What needs to be removed will let you know it does not belong here. So I would always skim it off. She told me mixing it back in would give a bitter taste to the soup because I was not listening to the soup telling me what needed to be removed. This process continues to teach me to listen to how God speaks to me about who and what needs to be removed from my life.

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MY YEARNING

I sit and close my eyes
and yearn for the depth,
the closeness,
the longing to know you
and know you as completely
as you know me.

It was you who gave me the capacity to love,
to speak,
to determine,
to dream,
to hope,
to create, and
to survive.

You know me
completely
just as I yearn
to know you
with the same depth
you know me
but I don’t.

I know I will again,
perhaps not until
I am with you again
but that day will come.

Until then, I allow you
to use me,
to mold me,
to help me
become a spiritual warrior,
constantly seeking
to know the me
you created me to be

So the yearning continues
and teaches me about myself
about you
and all the other me’s you
bring into my life
who teach me and deepen
my yearning for you .

C IS FOR CHEF’S SILICONE BASTING BRUSH

I was having a Sesame Street moment as I thought the letter for this week is C. We have so many C items it was hard to choose, but I decided to pick the C item that gets the most use in my home, the Chef’s Silicone Basting Brush.

What is interesting is that I use it less for basting then I do other things. I use it to easily spread oil on my stoneware and my metal pans. It gives me an excuse to play for a moment as I paint my pans with oil. Sometimes I take a moment to let my inner child play and paint an oil picture and then I paint over it and prepare it for whatever I am putting on it next. Other times I do use it for brushing sauces, butter or oil on whatever I am cooking at that moment. There is something about having a brush in my hand that makes me tap into my inner artist. Even if what I am painting is the slices of tofu with my Maple Bourbon sauce, I can have fun painting my “canvas”

One of the features I love most is the hook on the handle which allows the brush to rest on the side of the bowl or measuring cup that my “paint” is in. I never have to worry about it sliding into the “paint” and my having to dig it out, clean it off and pray it did not slip in again. That hook sometimes reminds me of my faith. How it is my faith that allows me to hang on to my relationship with my Higher Power and know I am going to be okay.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

There is not a limit on personal creativity or creative energy. So use as much as you would like

GETTING CREATIVE

http://www.brampton.ca/EN/Business/BEC/whatsNew/Pages/getcreative.aspx

Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Last night, was a great example of this for me. I had dinner all planned in my head. I was going to make a vegan egg roll in a bowl for our dinner. Love that dish because it comes together so quickly in the 12” nonstick skillet and with the addition of Chow Mein noodles, Zoe would have the crunch she likes in meals. All was going according to plan until I started gathering ingredients.

That is when I discovered that the bag I knew was vegan sausage crumble was actually a bag of frozen raspberries. I had frozen everything in the refrigerator but sausage and time was now ticking before Zoe came home and dinner was now not going to be on the table. Not that she cares about that, but I like dinner to be ready when she gets home from work.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Do you have courage?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Embrace your creativity

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

As your fears melt, your creativity and authenticity emerge

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Creativity comes when we are willing to step forward in faith and move through and above the fear

GOLDEN SHADOWS

Dear Garnishelli,

I know I normally start my personal journal entries with Dear God, but since you were the one who asked me to reflect more on this, I am writing this one to you.  God knows this is as much for me as it is for you, and who ever else reads this. See the truth is that the Ultimate Consciousness, really wants us to be our most vibrant and creative selves. We were each given the gift to express something unique and amazing, which will help raise the vibrational frequency in the world in some way. It is just that so few of us, myself included, consistently remember we have these powers. We forget to always embody the bright light within ourselves, our Golden Shadow.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung called our submerged creative potential the "Golden Shadow." Whenever we have intense admiration for others, we are actually seeing our Golden Shadow. The qualities we admire in others are the qualities we have not yet owned and embodied in our own lives. In other words, our Golden Shadow is our submerged greatness. It is our dismissed and unknown strengths. Most often they are hidden and disguised within our deepest emotional pain and hurt.  Our Golden Shadow is the part of our souls which offer particular strength of love and healing. It comes from the spaces in our life where we have experienced the most pain and challenges in our lives.

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AND GOD CREATED UNITY

Years ago, when I was in seminary, one of my professors Rev. Dr. Gail Ricciuti, challenged me to think about God as an artist. I fell in love with that idea, partly because it reminded me of one of my favorite children’s books by Martha Hickman called And God Created Squash. She tells the Creation story with a God who has an awesome sense of adventure, play and creativity talking to himself in the Garden of Eden about all that he wants to create. He envisions things and creates them by calling them into being. One inspiration leads to another. For example, God falls in love with the word squash. "I like that name . . . I think I'll use it again. Acorn squash. Butternut squash. Even zucchini squash. I might have a game and call it squash. Or put my hand on something and press down hard and call that squash." This creative process continues until God ends by fashioning some company for himself--something, "well, more like me."

This whole idea of God as an artist was the inspiration for one of my first sermons, called Divine by Design. Here I argued we are Divine by Design because we were designed by the Divine. If we had a label that we wore, some sort of trademark, it would say Divine Design.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

If we were indeed created in the image of the Ultimate source of creativity, the Divine, then we know we were born to be creative. So today tap into your power to create. In doing so, you connect with the Divine within you.

HANDS

Hands have always fascinated me. When I was younger, my grandmother used to let me play with her hands. Her skin, as I remember it was wrinkly, soft, and baggy. Baggy might seem like a strange word to describe skin, but it was. She would play this game with me. She would pinch my skin and it would go right back into place. Then she would let me pinch her skin and it would form little peaks and valleys. Her skin became like clay that I got to play with and create landscapes. Her skin had also become more translucent, you could see the veins, and they become streams of water flowing into the peaks and valleys I was creating in her hands. Her hands would fascinate me for hours as I sat and moved skin around creating ever-changing images.

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Sit. Be still. Feel the power of your imagination and creativity.

WATCH, DO, BUT NOT ON

Anybody who has ever had a conversation with me about food knows that I am a Chopped junkie. In case you are thinking I need a 12-step group to help me overcome my addiction, I do not. I thoroughly enjoy watching this show for a number of reasons, some of which have nothing to do with food itself. One of the reasons is that so many of the chefs who are on the show have such amazing stories to tell about their lives that I find inspiring and remind me of the power of the human spirit and the transformative power to manifest our destiny, often times building them out of rubble. There have been episodes I have watched that the stories have moved me to tears as I have listened to how people have come through numerous bouts with cancer, loss of limbs, homeless, and addictions and as Maya Angelou once wrote, “And still I rise.” This show has also reminded me of the importance of being humble. I have always found it interesting how the humility one brings to the ingredients and the creation of the food somehow seems to translate into how the dish tastes. Simultaneously, I find myself rooting for those who seem to be the most humble and to be focused on honoring the ingredients. For me, ingredients are like people. There are those you enjoy being around more than others, but each is a gift from the Universe and should be treated with dignity and respect. 

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