What is on your easel?
In your heart? In your journal? On the page? On the altar?
Enclosed in this Red Thread Letter: An Invitation for you to join us for free in Creative Women’s Circle for 2017 to share what you are working on + My personal 2017 ideas + A Story from our lineage from Grace of Denmark who carried blessings from Lofoten, Norway to Mendocino, CA, US and then back to Lofoten on Winter Solstice – you won’t believe the photo she took…
Dear One,
What is rising up for you just in these past few days since the turning of the clock to year 2017? What are you noticing? Have you started painting, writing, dancing – or built a new altar?
I wanted to write and invite you, if you are called to deepen your creative spiritual practice in 2017 – we have a wonderful place, The Red Thread Cafe that has weekly support for your process, and it is free to our community members. More on that below. For now, l would love to share my 2017 musings with you – they aren’t goals, they simply, ARISE in my consciousness. Not a fan of goals or of resolutions – rather choices.
For me what is coming up is:
I CHOOSE To:
BE CONNECTED TO THE CIRCLE in a powerfully loving way
SURRENDER FALSE FEAR OVER AND OVER no matter what I feel
PUT MY BRUSH ON THE CANVAS because I can work it all out there
SERVE MY COMMUNITY with the PASSION I feel in my heart
REACH into the unseen DIMENSIONS as if I can really see them
They don’t feel too big or too small. They feel like practice. Creative, spiritual practice.
And my word of the year is PLAYFUL that sums it all up!
What’s your word of the year? A word that just sums up what you want to cause and create – and how you would like to FEEL. In your body – in your heart.
There is one more layer here too for me – which is exiting the collective fear field. I will write more on that another day. Today was about inviting you into creative space and sharing my ideas with you and hopefully we spark each other.
~ ~ ~
Today in the Red Thread Cafe Classroom, we have what we call WORK IN PROGRESS Day and it is our first WIP day of 2017! These days are hosted – women who are COLOR of WOMAN Graduates come share what they are working on, share a story and provide support to painters, poets, dreamers. You can even ask for painting support and be amazed at the insight you get. We have been having days like this for years now – and it is one of the things we do as community to support you in your process.
Below you can hear part of Grace’s story, see her image and learn more about our friendship and lineage connection – or better yet just come to the classroom and see it there and comment because it is a pretty cool story about connecting water from California to Norway.
You are receiving this email because you have registered or a class at one time or another or to receive communications from us or something cool we offered and we wanted to be sure you knew this resource was STILL here for you in the new year – women creatives come join us!
Whether you plan to join us for one of our yearlong programs like Imagine or Red Madonna, or you are in the big mama of all courses like COLOR of WOMAN training, or LEGEND or planning to join us for POWER CREATIVES TV (new class January 13 coming up) or the free class POWER CREATIVES TV MOJO YEAR on January 20 – or you just want to share in women’s creative community – there is REAL CREATIVE COMMUNITY here for you and I wanted you to know that…. and if you do want to join us all FREE and PAID classes can be found easily at www.cosmicowgirls.com)
This is a Red Thread Letter – what I send out to encourage and teach those I serve with Intentional Creativity. I hope our connections continue in 2017 and we get a chance to create together. Creativity creates resiliency. Power. Insight. And continues to reveal us to ourselves.
First a little context – I was taught by my mom, Caron McCloud and Sue Hoya Sellars how to create with intention in image, word and inquiry. This is what we call, Intentional Creativity. Sue was taught by New Deal Artist, Lenore Thomas Straus – we now have 200 teachers worldwide – who share with thousands upon thousands of women and men, this way of creating with mindfulness. It is really simple and ancient – just putting our thoughts into what we create. And it is a shift in consciousness.
Painting in process by Grace Steenberg from the Red Madonna – Cathedral of the Heart
Grace’s Story in the Red Thread Cafe Classroom on the first WIP Day of 2017
It’s the first WIP (work in progress) Wednesday of 2017 and I have the honor and joy of being your hearth tender today. I am Grace, a Color of Woman Teacher from Denmark and a Keeper of the Wisdom and Mysteries of the North.
I’m so looking forward to today! Please share your work in prorgess.
Today, as I gently open myself to the seed of light that was born on winter solstice and feel it sprouting and becoming more visible every day, I am in deep awe and inquiry.
What will the seed for 2017 grow into?
What do I long to call into my life and claim?
What mysteries have the Great Lady planted in my heart that I can awaken to and unfold?
My WIP today is the finishing touches on my ‘Cathedral of the Heart’ painting from Red Madonna 2016. She reveals to me how we are all One in the Heart. We all have our unique gift to share and weave together. And we are all needed in this great time of awakening….
My other WIP is a wonder that is flowing in my heart, of how the Great Lady works in mysterious ways: Last year at this time, I had just graduated from Color of Woman and I had my Soul Work projects ready and claimed for 2016. As some of you know, my soul work included a journey to the Lofoten Islands in Norway, to the origin of our Lineage of Intentional Creativity (through Shiloh’s teacher Sue’s teacher, Lenore Thomas Straus – and a journey to be and connect with my sisters at the lands of Terra Sophia (Sue’s land in Mendocino, CA)
A full circle of weaving the Red Thread globally. I managed to do it all and I loved every minute of walking my sacred path. What I didn’t know, was how the Great Mother works in mysterious ways. When I came back from the Lofoten Islands in May, I carried sacred water for ceremony to bring to Shiloh Sophia as a gift. It had been quite hard obtaining the water, I had had to be without drinking water for a full day and I had to carry it on my back with everything else that you need in arctic climate.
When I came home I placed it on my altar, leaving it there for my future journey to Terra Sophia. The next morning it was gone – and I found the bottle almost empty on the kitchen table. My love drank the water!! He was thirsty and saw my drinking bottle, and simply drank my sacred water! I was devastated and flooded with tears; I honestly didn’t think I could ever forgive him. Later when tears and anger had quiet down a bit, I realized that on an unconscious level he might have needed the blessing of the energy that the water carried, who knows? When he realized my despair he said: ‘don’t worry, I will just take you back to Lofoten and collect more water’
It was a generous offer, but easier said that done. For me Sacred Work of my soul, such as painting a painting or going on a pilgrimage is a call, and for me works in its own mysterious way. Then six months later, in middle December, my love asks if we could go on holiday over Christmas. It turns out that it would work out fine with our kids and family and suddenly I remember his offering and remind him. When we look for tickets and possibilities of going North into the Arctic Night, it is more or less impossible and the one chance that opens, we simply grab it. Little did I know, that the Great Lady was working in her mysterious ways, and I found myself sailing into the Lofoten Island on Winter Solstice, to be able to do Sacred Ceremony and weave the Light Filaments of Love from our community and back to our Ancestors! Here in the great darkness of the North, where the love and wisdom of our ancestors flows abundantly into mother Earth through the Northern lights, a New Year circle was once again born on Mother Earth.
As I stood there, with my love collecting Sacred Water, I felt a tremendous blessing for all of us. The love we carry forward in every little courageous and loving act of creativity and sacred prayer is a blessing to all living beings on Mother Earth. We are the love of the thousands of ancestors that walked the earth before us and it flows freely and abundantly through our heart into this beautiful Earth. May we all awaken to the blessing and mystery that we are here to share. Aho
So this year I open myself even deeper to the calling of the Great Mother… my Heart only knows what she has planted there.
Grace
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For me this rocked my world. A graduate of Color of Woman, Grace, who never met Sue, traveling to the sculpture my teacher’s teacher made – making blessings on our behalf as a community, she even brought something from Terra Sophia back to Lofoten – see below.
Also this year in the Color of Woman interviews, the Red Thread that Grace originally brought to LOFOTEN is the one I used in our calls. Just too cool these connections of care and creativity.
Photo by Grace Steenberg – Lofoten, The Tender Stone by Lenore Thomas Straus
I asked Grace today what she brought BACK to LOFOTEN from Terra Sophia – our family land in Mendocino – she said:
Here are the offerings I carried with me, before they where arranged and offered in a beautiful Despacho: water from Terra Sophia, a rock and a feather from a bird with blue wings I found at Terra Sophia, rose petals from the little bag of watercolors I was gifted with at our Quantum Heart Gathering in August at Terra Sophia and the red thread that I have been carrying on my wrist which was tied in ceremony at Terra Sophia in August.
