November 15, 2005
The Encourager
Volume 1 No. 6 November, 2005If you know a Square-Peg-Person who would appreciate reading encouraging words, please forward this newsletter to them.
In this issue:
What's New at Square-Peg-People.com
Square-Peg-Spotlight
Square-Peg-Stacks
Looking ahead
What's New at Square-Peg-People.com
Because the holidays can be stressful, we're having a Square-Peg Support Price Break!
Do the holidays get you down? bring on that "less than" feeling?
If so, check out Square-Peg Support - because everyone can use a little more encouragement!
This note is more about what's NOT new: The goal oriented podcast I told you about last month is still not "out there". It's recorded - it's in mp3 form, but I haven't totally mastered the podcast format. I'll let you know when I'm able to make that available.
This month's issue of The Encourager looks at Zura Ledbetter, a deep, spiritual woman and The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, a deep, spiritual book.
Both Zura and Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, have a heart for women.
Sue Monk Kidd described that heartfelt concern this way: "She discovers there is fire in her, a passionate struggle for women."
The author, Sue Monk Kidd, uses her writing to encourage women. The artist, Zura Ledbetter, uses her art and e-courses to do the same thing. Both motivate us to move into deeper places - open up to our inner life. To live fuller - deeper.
Square-Peg-Spotlight
Zura Ledbetter is the Managing Director of Artella ~ Words and Art. She is also an artist, a grandmother, a seeker of Spirit, a leader of women, and a lot of fun. Plus she's got a cool (Texas) accent.
Here's how Zura answered the Square-Peg-Spotlight questions:
I’ve always felt different.
When I was young I didn’t know the real reason. My family was poor, so I blamed it on social class.
As I got older I started to rethink that. Alot of times it (feeling different) was a creative thing - but I didn’t know it.
When I was with other creative people - when I heard other artists talk about their behavior or habits (like keeping things that other people considered trash, or getting stuff out of the trash) I “got it”.
I had been hiding that from people - I didn’t want people to know what I kept to use in my art.
High school.
I tried really hard to do the things that the people I wanted to fit in with did - and I did - according to high school standards -fit in.
I hung with the popular kids. But I just acted like them. I wasn’t like them.
Very secretly, in high school, I did art. I used it sort of as an outlet - to release emotions - it calmed me. I drew and wrote poetry.
When I asked Zura to talk about the path from creating art secretly to being an artist selling her art she told me:
Several years ago I became ill and unable to work. While I wasn't working I had the opportunity to do a lot with art, and I discovered some new areas in art that I hadn't done before. So, when I started feeling better I decided that rather than return to the medical field, I wanted a career in art. And it has worked out wonderfully because I still have limited energy and this I can do at home in my pajamas and when I need to rest I can.
I want to give some mature, enlightened answer, but the truth is that I just stay with my “tribe” now. My family, my art friends, and those friends who “get me”.
I am not inclined to try to do PR for creativity to those who don’t understand or don’t want to.
I’m too old to try to fit in with the “in crowd”.
I use humor. I’ll make fun of myself - point out how I’m different.
I suppose my favorite trait is that I have a never-ending flow of ideas. Ideas about absolutely everything!
They are washing through my mind continually, and when I want I can just reach in there and grab one and follow it through to completion.
This affords me the luxury of never being bored. There is never a moment in my life when I can’t think of something to do that’s fun!
Read more...
In The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd takes us through some of the ups and downs of her spiritual journey to find the Sacred Feminine.
The path she takes us on haunts and hurts before it speaks of healing.
She talks about experiences that all women will connect with - the silencing and discounting (wounding) of women - from small to big, that comes out of being born female - in earlier times and in the present.
Though the book is centered around women and their spiritual journeying, it ultimately is not “just” a woman’s thing - the message reverberates like a pebble thrown into a lake - circling out further and further...the bigger reverberations - the bigger story - being the healing of humanity - bringing us into wholeness.
This book touches the core - the place where we are more alike than different. And our core - all of us, whether we are aware or not, cries out to be seen and heard - to matter.
The Dance of the Dissident DaughterThe book is powerfully filled with information as Sue Monk Kidd hunts back through her own spiritual traditions for the Divine Feminine. She finds much suppression - lost meanings of words, words that have been squelched out of spiritual writings, ancient rituals that we no longer know.
She brings in facts and theories from varied sources and she also bring in stories - many stories, many quotes - another acknowledgement of community. Honoring the fact that we build with each other and on each other’s knowledge.
This book is deep, personal and wise.
In a section called A Spirituality of Naturalness Sue Monk Kidd says:
“Patriarchal spirituality becomes a flight from earth, flesh, temporality, and the present. But Sacred Feminine consciousness seizes us by the shoulders, looks in our eyes, and tells us with passsion and simplicity: If you don’t get anything else, get this. This is your life, right now, on this changing earth, in this impermanent body, among these excruciatingly ordinary things. This is it. You will not find it anywhere else.
A natural (and feminine) spirituality tends to incorporate three very organic, basic, but overlooked things into our sacred experience: the earthly, the now, and the ordinary.”
Sue Monk Kidd speaks of a kind of thinking in pictures - she describes using art often - to go deeper in her journey.
She says, in bold print: “Why didn’t I see this before? That my creative life is my deepest prayer. That I must pray from my heart, from my soul. Not from my head or my need for securtiy or approval or to gain some sort of repute...”
Read more...
Also, we'll have two new grief articles by Dr. Patti Devine-Wickham in the Dealing With Grief section.
And - I'm going to stop giving dates for when I plan to have things up on the site. I've noticed that my excitement is far ahead of my technical (and organizational - grin) capabilities...so I'm going to wait until things are done before telling you about them.
See you next month!
Square-Peg-Stacks
Reading The Dance of the Dissident Daughter gives me more questions than answers. Hard questions - wrapped around integrity/authenticity and things like: How do I want to live my life?
Looking Ahead
Next month's interview is with the awesome doll and jewelry maker, Brenda Delaney. She'll give us her website link in the interview.