SoulCollage® Slideshow

THE WELL - I HAVE A DREAM...

THE WELL
Women Who Draw Water From The Well For Others
Lo, are you Thirsty, Come to the Well…

I have a vision—a place where we as women gather to teach others how to draw water from their own well. We are all “Waterbearers”. Each of us have gifts that tend “soul”, gifts we long to share. Some of us have known about it for a long time. We’ve talked about it and laughed about it, but now, I SEE IT. I know it’s NAME.

I see THE WELL.

WELL—a flow of water from the earth; natural spring and pool supply of water; a source of abundant supply; a fount.

From Seena Frost, founder of SoulCollage®:

For over two thousand years, the archetype of the LightBearer has been foremost in human spiritual life. Certainly, at any rate, this is true in our western world. The Greeks told the story of the mortal Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and brought it back to humankind. There was Christ, who brought Light into a dark world, and Moses, who brought the light of law. Buddha brought the hope of enlightenment. The light symbol is also present in the Prophet of Islam. Each can be seen as an embodiment of the LightBearer archetype. These examples are, notably, all male. The absence of a powerful feminine archetype over the last few millenniums may well be one cause of the present imbalance in both our worldly and spiritual lives an imbalance that threatens the world and all its living populations.

I am certain that we live in a time when a feminine archetype is rising back into human consciousness, one that has been active and brooding deep in the world’s cosmic subconscious for eons. She is emerging and taking her place beside the male LightBearers not for the purpose of domination but, rather, balance. By adding her strong heart energy and compassionate waters to the light-giving wisdom of the male LightBearers, she restores to our spiritual lives a potent and missing metaphor. I call this archetype the WaterBearer.

This archetypal WaterBearer truly is rising! We are now in the astrological Age of Aquarius, and the traditional symbol of this age is the WaterBearer. This metaphorical Being is usually represented as a feminine archetype. No historical or even mythical characters leap to my mind as embodiments of her in western mythology or religion.


Waterbearer Cards

For several years now, I’ve been taken with empty water jars—or water jars filled with stagnant water. I’ve observed them and felt a tugging at my soul, but didn’t know why. I’ve taken scads of pictures of them, and even painted some of them. Then, last Winter, I made this SoulCollage® card.



I am the one who sees the empty pots.
I am the one who is saddened by all the dryness.
I am the one who knows that we give to others only what we have.
I am the one who is ancient, but I still have something to give…
I see the empty water pots, and I wonder…

Then, earlier this year, in a flurry of active imagination work, I came up with this drawing, and I call her “The Filling Station”.



I am the one who has been filled with living water.
I am the one who has dug the well,
Cleaned it out,
And waited to be filled,
And I am the one who has been filled.
I am the one who now waits to fill others.

Then, probably in May, I made this card.



I am the one who sees empty water pots.
I am the one who’s been on holy ground.
I am the one who’s been in the process of being filled.
I am the one who’s waited until now, and
I am the one with gifts to give.

It wasn’t until July of this year, after I got back from Los Gatos, and read from an old newsletter of Seena’s, that I knew this was my WaterBearer card. And I knew that the waterbearer archetype has been huge in my life.

Still didn’t put it all together until this last weekend…It started on Saturday, this brooding in my Spirit. Wouldn’t you know it!?!

Saturday was the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s, “I HAVE A DREAM” speech. And the Spirit kept brooding.

Yesterday I almost had a wreck on my way to church envisioning THE WELL.

Are you thirsty? Are you dry? Come to THE WELL.

This morning I have a dream, a place called THE WELL. I know so many women who have just been waiting, being filled, and now they’re waiting to give their gifts. They have water to share. We’ve been in a spiritual drought. The soul is dry and withered. We have water to share. Living water. Clean, pure, cool, WET water.

Now, all we need is a place to share what we have. I don’t have a clue, but I have a dream. I have a vision. It’s a seed. And this morning I plant it—here, now.

I have a vision:

Soul tending through massage
Soul tending through yoga
Soul tending through meditation, centering prayer, listening prayer
Soul tending through journaling
Soul tending through images

Ok. It’s planted. Now, let’s see what needs to happen to get this seed to grow.

Blessed be….

The Gentle Spirit of SoulCollage® and the Storm Survivor

I am so taken with the gentleness of SoulCollage®. One of the principles of SoulCollage® is “the answers are already inside you; you have everything you need”. And it’s true.

Over the last few years, I’ve gone through my own “dark night”, questioning everything I’ve ever been taught, listening to all the judgments I’ve ever made and questioning my conclusions, and finally deciding for myself what to keep and what to let go of. My questions have been: Who told me that? Do I really believe it? Is it really of value to me? Is it any longer useful in my life?

That’s a hard thing for a 55-60 year old woman to do. My faith, my beliefs, my values, my politics—everything seemed to be caught under the lens of a microscope. It was all turned upside down.

Hebrews 12 tells of just that kind of “shaking”: “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven. This phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—that what cannot be shaken may remain.”

This piece of dirt called Sheila has been shaken, turned upside down and shaken until her teeth are about to fall out. I never knew that verse even meant my religious beliefs and the values I walked through life by.

I’ve been shaken, and so has my family. And it’s been brutal. I’ve watched the dreams I’ve had for my sons crumble—and I’ve had to grief what I had hoped for them.

But back to SoulCollage®--Thursday was my day to go tape a 30-minute segment for a local TV station. And I had already decided to let intuition run the show—after all, that’s one of the grandest gifts of this process. It believes in and trusts intuition.

So that morning while going through my things and getting my “stuff” together, I happened upon an image that really drew me—a silhouette of family: a mother holding the hands of two children, and a dad kind of off to the side. There were words written across his body, and since he seemed a little distant, I cut out the silhouette of the mother and children and decided not to use him.

I still wasn’t sure I would use this picture, but I thought of it all morning.

And it was the image I used in my demo. I worked with this image and a stormy background. I “knew” she was coming out of the storm.

“I am the one who has walked through the storm, bringing my family with me. I am the one who is now walking into blue skies. The storm has, for the most part, passed. I am walking into blue skies in peace. I have peace in my heart, and peace is my theme. I am a storm survivor.”

After the taping was over, I found out another piece of my family had broken. Somehow, I already knew it. I am sad, for them and for me, but it’s been part of our shaking. And we are all storm survivors. Blue skies are just ahead. We will walk into our tomorrow in peace.

Yesterday morning, I read some of Psalm 18, from Nan Merrill’s book. That Psalm has so been the theme of the last few years for all of us. Somehow, it was the “icing” on the cake and confirmed for me that we are almost through this “shaking”. Thanks be to God.

Psalm 18

I abandon myself to You, O Living Presence, my strength.
You are my rock, my stronghold…my tower of strength…
the source of truth and light.
I call upon You, Heart of my heart,
singing praises to your Name and fear no longer holds me.

The demons of darkness assailed me,
the blindness of ignorance led me astray;
The shadows of fear paralyzed me,
the anguish of loneliness confronted me.
In my distress I called out to You…
You heard my voice…You harkened to my cry.

Then did You, O Divine Presence, show unto me a vision:
the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations of the mountains trembled
and quaked, as if to slough off the ravages of destruction…
On the wings of the wind, You did come,
with darkness a covering around You,
a canopy of thick clouds dark with water.
Out of the brightness before You
there broke through the clouds hailstones,
coals of fire left from the mountain tops.
As your voice uttered in the heavens,
thunder and lightning stormed the earth…

Yet there was no safe haven,
no hiding place from fear.
Then the channels of the sea were seen,
and the foundations of the world laid bare,
The earth gave a might shudder
then settled down to heal
in Silence.

O compassionate One, You reached
from on high, You took me,
You drew me out of many waters.
You delivered me from the fears
that bound me, and
from ignorance that blinded me;
for they threatened to overcome me,
to separate me from You.
They came upon me when I looked not to You;
yet You, O Merciful One, were ever present.
You brought me forth into the Light;
You released my fears,
You delighted in me.
O Holy One, You see the intentions of my heart;
As I surrender to your love,
I grow in peace and gratitude.
For to lose my life is to find Life;
O keep me steadfast in love
for You, Life of my life!
The spirit of your Word is ever
before me,
the Counselor ever present to guide me…
May I walk with You justly, with mercy
and in peace,
a mirror of you love in the world…

You are the Light of my life;
You shine through my darkness…
You ways lead to wholeness…
How tenderly You live in my heart!

West Meets East, and a Book Review

This morning a made this SoulCollage® card, Jesus in the Lotus. It’s based on a book that I’ve recently finished, and I’ll discuss the book in a few moments, but as I read the book, and made this card, I pondered this painting I did in 2008.

It’s called “West Meets East”.

The painting of it seemed to heal a split in my soul—the split between East and West that had filtered through much of my Christian teaching as a teen and a young adult. Anything from the East was considered “New Age” and off limits. But the last few years so many of my “splits” have begun to heal, including this one. I’ve ventured into the Eastern thought concepts and found so much more! What I had before was like trying to purchase something with only one side of the coin. Marrying the two, East and West, has given me a whole coin.

We tend to forget that the historical Jesus came from was Middle-East, implying that he was “Middle-Eastern”, more East than West, I presume. Paul, the Apostle, took the Gospel to the West and the western filter has been huge, but Jesus’s filter was probably much different. I recently found out that Galilee lays on the Silk Road, that great viaduct of human commerce which connected the lands of the Mediterranean with the lands and culture of Central Asia and China. The Silk Road went right through the city of Capernaum, where Jesus did a lot of his learning and his teaching.

Who knew??? That wasn’t something I was taught in Sunday School. I’ve studied Scripture all my life, and I’ve studied church history, but no one every pointed out to me this little fact. Or maybe it just didn’t stick.

For a long time, some have thought perhaps Jesus went to India (or East) before his 30’s, but Cynthia Bourgeault points out in her book, The Wisdom of Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—a New Perspective on Christ and His Message, that the simpliest explanation for the “eastern” sound to so much of his teaching was because the East more likely came to him!

All that to say this:

Russill Paul’s book, Jesus in the Lotus, the Mystical Doorway Between Christianity and Yogic Spirituality is a beautiful book that expresses so much of what I’ve felt since I opened the door to the East. I’ve practiced centering prayer and Christian meditation off and on for a number of years, and I love my yoga practice. It’s nothing but exercises for the body, but my heart and soul has entered into some of the spiritual pictures yoga has taught me.

And now, Russill Paul gives me this little book. He was a monk at Fr. Bede Griffiths ashram in India for 5 years. I learned about Fr. Bede at the Cenacle. He was simply a saint. And for me, Russill Paul may be on his way. He is Indian, and he was raised in a Hindu culture, but his family was Catholic, and he was Catholic. His stay with Fr. Bede helped him “marry” the two.

Paul, the author, is careful to explain the differences between Christian spirituality and Yogic spirituality, and some of his explanations made my heart leap with “YES, THAT’S why I still choose Christianity!” For example, on of my favorite sections of this book was his sharing of the gifts of Christianity. In our culture today, it’s often hard to say, “I’m a Christian” because of the stereo-type of Christian fundamentalism that has gripped our country, but I choose to still call myself a Christian because of two things: LOVE and community.

Regarding Love, Paul writes: “The Yoga of Jesus is to love, despite the other’s ego, despite their karma, despite their ignorance, for the power of love can transform their ego and their karma and their ignorance. It may not do so immediately, as we evident from Jesus’ death on the cross, but the transformation will take place eventually and will be far more powerful than any other means, for love is the ultimate tool of transformation.”

And regarding community (personally, I have a love/hate affair with community, but I recognize it’s importance)… Granted, community is tough! Relationships are hard, but that’s a distinguishing mark of Christianity according to Paul. He writes: “What distinguishes [Christianity] is its awareness of the power of one’s soul to influence the communal process of enlightenment. From the deeper Christian point of view, individual choice has a role in the grand fulfillment of the universe that has been “groaning in travail.”…Christian enlightenment, then, is the call to actively participate in the Divine vision for humanity…from the Christian point of view, the human response to this cocreated consciousness is prompted by love rather than a desire for truth or even knowledge of the Self….”

One of the other beautiful pictures he gives in his book, is the Yogic desire to reach for God, and the Christian knowledge that God reaches for us…That’s another card I made:




Earth reaching for heaven and heaven reaching for Earth, and the once and for all marriage of the two…spiritual partnership.

Namaste.