Tag: love

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When Too Much is Coming Down the Pipes

Covid, variants, residential school tragedy and trauma, heat dome suffering and deaths, fires, smoke, unmarked anniversary’s

It’s time to look for the beauty again.

Ten Simple Things I’m Grateful For Right Now:

Getting To The Heart of The Matter

1. My people. Every single one of you, and all of the love you continuously share with me.

2. Air fans. Workhorses that run as long as there is electricity.

3. Electricity

4. Toothbrushes. Clean teeth help to immediately improve my morning attitude.

5. Cold, clean tap water. Hot is nice, too.

6. Windows that open and close. Options are such a privilege!

7. A clean, crisp, high quality white sheet or two. Pure pleasure.

8. A gentle summer rain. I enjoy getting caught outside in one.

9. Mobility. My legs are strong.

10. Garden fresh produce. There’s nothing more nourishing.

What’s on you right now list?

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On Perfection…

The Art of Making

I’ve always loved making things, especially without rules. If it’s been done one way before, why try to replicate it exactly when we have machines to do that. I am a ‘change it up’ advocate. I find doing the same thing over and over life sucking. Yes, I steal what is special or important and I work on boosting my tool belt by adding to my supplies and knowledge, but then, I make something new. It’s a great way to avoid comparisons and competition. Both are seriously effective ways to entirely squelch my creative juices.

Perfectionism is born of comparisons and competition, and it is a wasting disease. It creates feelings of lack and dissatisfaction. It stops up pleasure and joy and replaces it with suffering. It disguises beauty as ugliness. It tarnishes this amazing journey.

Wonder and awe, gratitude, play, love, those are the tools I consider most necessary for a good life and creative flow. Giving those tools more importance than competition and comparison shifts the light from fear and suffering and can’t, to the magic of endless possibility and do!

Think about it. Any healthy ecosystem is diverse. An ecosystem full of the same thing, fails. In nature perfection just isn’t necessary. A hermit crab needs a shell with room but the barnacles on the outside don’t matter. An annoying grain of sand making its way into an oyster can be changed into a smooth pearl and pearls aren’t all one shape or size or colour. A chipped tooth on a lion won’t stop it from growling when it needs more personal space. And, a limbed grand fir still stands tall next to the non-trimmed tree.

And speaking of nature, nurture is what I’ve been doing lately. I’m a grandmother for the first time. I have a new job description, more to love, and appetites to tend to. The baby is perfection just because she’s arrived. She doesn’t have to do anything or be anything more than herself.

Even during pandemics, beauty surrounds me. And one thing I know for sure is that:

Sweet lil Grandie

“Beauty will change the world”https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1525117216

The ‘art’ of raising a child is perhaps, one not spoken of in the halls of the Louvre, and yet I can most definitely view it as an act of creativity. There is no perfect one way to do it, but do it with wonder and awe, gratitude, playfulness and love after meeting the child’s basic needs and I’m sure you’ll be near the mark most of the time.

Until next time, may all of your coming days be sweetened with spring’s unfurlings. May you celebrate your many gifts or at least, introduce yourself to them.

Everything is going to work out!

Xoxo Sherri

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Opportunities and Collecting Art

  I’m number 32, as seen in the art edition; Home and Garden Magazine UK.  When a ‘magical’ opportunity shows up in your life, what is your first reaction? For me, this is what seems to happen: 1. Joyful surprise and excitement. 2. I check it out quickly but thoroughly. Hello, Nancy Drew! These scammy days, everything needs a thorough checking out. 3. I pay attention to the possible winning details of the offering and then weigh those against what I’ve been thinking, wondering, wanting and, of course my financial means. 4. I say yes when everything lines up, without too much delay. 5. I wait in joyful gratitude without second guessing my decision because I did the due diligence groundwork and because I believe every ‘yes’ to opportunity opens my world just a little wider! I’m sharing this because, I believe the world is a much better place than it’s being ‘painted’ of late. Yes, there are huge, maybe even insurmountable problems, and yes there is pain, but the goodness and love I have seen in the people I’ve met in every place I’ve ever travelled to, and the beauty I can find in even the blandest of vistas, makes me think the lens we are living our lives through needs a thorough cleaning. The ‘human condition’ allows us to chose our ‘side of the sword’. What side have you chosen? I used to think we had doomed ourselves and most other species. It hurt my soul. It hurt my psyche. Thankfully, I was provided the opportunity to polish and shine my lens. Now, I completely understand Dostoevsky’s prophesy, a prophesy that has long intrigued me, spoken by the prince in The Idiot. “beauty will save the world” So ….be beautiful… love. Be loved. Beloved. Open to magical opportunities and say yes when you’ve done your due diligence. Buy art. Collect art. Train your eye. poppies Without art, without that trained eye, there is much less beauty available to you in the world. And, you are surrounded by it!    

If you’d like to add a piece of my art to your collection, developed or developing, email me, Sherri Jean McCulloch, at roxgroandmink@gmail.com

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Artist Residency; Last Day

I’m all packed up. I created a lot in a month, some of it good, some of it pure process that I can toss or remake. I guess that was the point. Making. Painting.

But you know, Despite having my guard up, I was totally seduced by the beauty of the place. Ziggy Attias, the owner and conceptual lead has created an experience I have only ever dreamed of.

We artists have resided together in the utmost comfort of our own spacious, castle like rooms above shared living areas decorated in a luxurious style true to the Napoleon Trois building. The shared, beautifully outfitted bathrooms have served us easily and the studio rooms gave us inspiring views of the little valley. Importantly, the natural light was fantastic during the day and the walls and floors could be dripped on without worry.

As a surprise, we also had most of our meals prepared for us by a gifted French chef, Marie. The food was excellent and Marie was always happy working in the kitchen. It freed us up to paint and it created a jovial family like atmosphere for evening meals.

Ziggy’s house rules were few and easy to live with. Generally, any minor tasks we shared in were carried out without discussion. They just got done in a manner that was respectful of everyone’s time. With that level of respect in a communal space, it’s easy living together.

I will miss my new friends but I suspect we’ll all keep in touch and meet again. They’ve touched my heart and become a part of me. I also plan on returning to this beautiful place one way or another. It had the best double rainbow I’ve ever seen anywhere before. There was actually a golden shimmer beneath it. How could I not want to come back?

I am filled with gratitude for this experience in France coming on the heels of my retirement. It has transitioned me.

Thank-you, Ziggy. Thank-you, Universe.

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Celebration Needs Music

IMG_4388July has been an exciting month. My daughter, the first of my three to wed, created her fairytale woodland wedding on the bank of the Koksilah River at the rustically beautiful Eagle’s Nest Sanctuary.   It was a misty day, perfect for pictures, perfect for fairy’s and their magic, perfect for sharing love. It was nothing short of beautiful. We laughed and we cried, we listened and spoke, we ate and we drank, we danced and we reminisced, and we remembered what romantic love for another can do.

My daughter, an ornithologist, is also an artist. She sings and plays guitar, banjo and uke. She is at her most joyous when she is creative.  And so, her band, Holy Crow, played at the wedding, her new husband standing or dancing nearby. It was a joyful, super fun celebration.

In my thesis on learning communities that I wrote in 2005, I spoke about the power of music and how it brings people together and fills their soul. I stick by it.

Yesterday I saw Tony Robbins in person for the first time at Vancouver’s Power of Success conference with my husband. I’d bought him the tickets for his birthday present this year. Tony provided three hours of peak performance training. For me, it was as much fun as a rock concert, and I love a good rock concert. Hello Tom Petty in Vancouver, August 17th! Thank-you children! Here’s why, music fills my soul up and makes it flower. Tony has a great, loud, soundtrack that everyone jumps to the beat. No, I am not too old, even at 56 soon to be 57 to jump around to great music. No such thing as too old. It was another joyful super fun celebration.

And then today. Today at the Vancouver Art Gallery I breathed in Monet‘s process; his colours, his strokes, his layers, the fragrance of his garden. Amazing. An then more came…Emily Carr‘s forest paintings…their rhythm, each of them a unique symphony, an opus, of temperate rain forest green’s. I was completely immersed in celebration for the rainforest. And then, I was ready to go home. Away from the city. To my quiet corner in the forest for which I am so very grateful.

While I write this, I am again filled with gratitude for my amazing month and if you follow me here or on instagram, you know that I know gratitude is the way to joy. Here’s the next tidbit.

Joy + Creative Exploration create the conditions for Interior Light; the light that wakes us up and opens us to love for self and love for others. This deep, knowing love allows me (and you) to walk in beauty and “beauty will save the world”.

I am a creativity coach.

I help people to reconnect with joy…and begin the next leg of this wonderful journey.

And, I am an artist.

I will always dive into my colours and begin new canvases, boards, paper, whatever. As I paint, I  welcome the music I  listen to and I allow it to fill my soul until it is my soul that is creating. Celebration needs music. Creating is soul celebration.

 

 

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The Habit of Gratitude

Love your body, love your work, love your food, love the energy of the money that comes your way…it has a story of journey, love the place you live in, love your home, love the love you are capable of holding in your heart, love it all. That’s appreciation of the abundance that’s come your way.

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Be Love. Gratitude for Abundance.

When I shine my light, it is because I am steeping in gratitude like a delicious tea. What was there, inside this little bag of me, loosens into all corners of the universe and mingles with what is there.

 

It is sweet, desirous, attractive.

It is the easiest way I know to move from brokenness to wholeness when practiced habitually. When broken, a little or thoroughly, it requires a conscious spoken effort; a prayer like daily repetition. Saying it, praying it, wanting it, calls the light.

Truely. Don’t stop. Be patient. Call that light until you know you are the light!

breath

I am sorry.  Mistakes teach me and move my evolution forward.

Please forgive me. I forgive me. I am forgiveness. Forgiveness releases me.

I love you. I love me; body, mind and soul. I am love.  I am open to receiving and giving an abundance love.

I am so grateful. I am gratitude. I am open to receiving and giving abundance in gratitude.

breath