A Blessing Box

I haven't worked on blessing boxes in awhile, but I have this one left for the next person who requests one. (Blessing boxes come with 50 or more inspiring quote cards inside.)

Blessing Dolls

I've been quite busy making blessing dolls (as I'm currently calling them). I'm not sure where their homes are yet since I haven't received any requests in the last two weeks , but I'm very happy keeping myself busy creatively. From now on I'm going to focus on the butterfly and bird goddess patterns (I'll add more photos tomorrow) because I'm thinking about calling them Transformation Dolls with the intent of encouraging/inspiring women in times of change and growth. Future dolls will also include various herbs and stones that have healing or other positive properties and possibly an accompanying note with a description of the kinds of energy I've invested in the doll.

Good Music: The Polyphonic Spree

"I'm projecting and reflecting a desire for you to come into my life..."

Isn't that a glorious lyric?

The Polyphonic Spree just released their new album, The Fragile Army. It's positively wonderful. I love their positivity and their tremendous symphonic sound. They're sound is so big it fills me up in a way I can't describe. It's soul music. I get goosebumps and/or tears sometimes, especially if I can listen to them on a loud stereo system or when I watch them performing live. You can see that these are people living their bliss, tuned into their Divine expression, and I think it's so overwhelming to me because there are so many of them expressing their Godness at once.

I love that even though this album is a response to the era of war that we are living in, it's still so lovely to listen to. It's not preachy. It's a little darker than their previous albums, but still witty and extremely joyful.

This link is the first video from the album for the song Running Away. The video is made up of 70,000 still images--it's pretty amazing.

Most people know The Polyphonic Spree by their song "Light and Day" which was featured both in the show Scrubs and the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (one of my favorite movies of all time!). Here is a video of a live performance of that song (so you can see their blissful performing). It's very sad that so many commenters on their videos think that people have to be on drugs to be so joyful.

Good News...Served Daily

Check out Gimundo, which shares good and inspiring news stories in a daily newsletter.

The Art of Gratuitous Praise

A compliment is verbal sunshine. --Robert Orben

"Feeling blue? Unloved? As if nobody appreciates you? Maybe no one can see your inner wonderfulness. Or maybe you deserve to be forsaken. Maybe you are unloved because you're such a jerk, simply unlovable. Maybe you're a victim of the old maxim: "If you can't say anything nice . . . "

So when walking along 14th Street NW, you might be surprised to hear a chime followed by a reassuring voice:

"You help create a brighter future."

The avuncular voice calls out from a bright red-and-white-striped box perched on a platform of bricks, with a speaker at eye level and a grid of ventilation holes in the side. A small sign explains, "The Compliment Machine." The striking colors, stark lines and sharp corners lend the appearance of some strange installation of the municipality, perhaps from the Bureau of Self-Esteem or the Ministry of Happiness."

Read more at this Washington Post article about The Compliment Machine.

A Literary Lover of Pronoia

“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”~ J. D. Salinger

I saw this quote on another blog today and felt it needed to be posted here. I do believe in the Universe conspiring to make me (us) happy, but never thought about individual people doing so.

What Blessing Means

"To bless means to wish, unconditionally and from the deepest chamber of your heart, unrestricted good for others and events; it means to hallow, to hold in reverence [...] To bless is to invoke divine care upon, to speak or think gratefully for, to confer happiness upon, although we ourselves are never the bestower, but simply the joyful witnesses of life's abundance.

To bless all without distinction is the ultimate form of giving, because those you bless will never know from whence came the sudden ray that burst through the clouds of their skies, and you will rarely be a witness to the sunlight in their lives." Pierre Pradervand, from "The Gentle Art of Blessing"

Update

I need to get better at recording the actual activities of the Conspiracy here.

Today I am sending out five packages, three were requested for friends and two are in response to blog posts I recently read at the Create a Connection blog. When I read stories about people who are having a tough time in life, I'll send an email inquiring as to whether they'll let me send them an art blessing. So far the responses have all been positive.

Packages are going out to Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Texas.

What in Your Life is Calling You?

“What in your life is calling you?
When all the noise is silenced,
the meetings adjourned,
the lists laid aside,
and the wild iris blooms by itself
in the dark forest,
what still pulls on your soul?

In the silence between your heartbeats
hides a summons.
Do you hear it?
Name it, if you must,
or leave it forever nameless,
but why pretend it is not there?”

From Terma Collective's The Box.

A Serendipitous Blessing For Me

Today is my birthday and serendipitously I received a reciprocal package in gratitude for a blessing package I sent out a few weeks ago. Included was a beautiful handmade card and lavendar wand that smells divine. Although I never think about my gifting being reciprocated, this a spectacular blessing to receive.

She also donated some postage for future packages. What a lovely way to pay it forward!

A Gift of Lemonade

Check out the recent gift economy lemonade stand run by the folks over at CharityFocus.

A Peace Prayer

I am a sacred being.
I epitomize and personify peace.
There is peace within my soul.
I live a life of peace. I think thoughts of peace.
I eat the foods of peace. I pray a peace-filled prayer.
There is power in peace and peace in power.
In each moment, I meditate on peace.
I am supremely peaceful, so I draw all peace unto me.
I'm full of peace. Peace is my refuge,
for peace is in my divine friend, light, love and protection.
Peace is my refuge and strength.

Queen Afua, from Sacred Woman

Seva Cafe and Karma Kitchen: Love All, Serve All

Check out this KarmaTube video about Seva Cafe, a restaurant in India based entirely on the idea of a gift economy. Gotta love their slogan, Love All, Serve All.

One night a week, the Karma Kitchen now does the same thing in Berkeley. They don't only gift guests with food, asking only that guests pay-it-forward, they also gift art, flowers, and anything else that inspires them towards generosity.

The Power of Giving

Conversations.org is committed to the gift economy, so much so they give subscriptions to their print magazine for free--and there's no advertising attached!

Check out this article about three artists who gift their ceramic art (and soup!) in response to the war.

The Power of the Giving, Berkeley Art Center, Richard Whittaker in Conversation with Ehren Tool, Fariba Safai and Ashley Smith, Oct 21, 2004

"Fariba Bogzaron and Ashley Smith were still students at CCA when they decided to do something radical. They decided to prepare a large batch of home made soup (from a favorite recipe of Fariba’s mother), to construct a cart able to wheel a very large stainless steel pot along a sidewalk, and to make their way to Union Square in San Francisco on Black Friday[the day after Thanksgiving and largest shopping day of the year] where they would offer free bowls (that they made) of soup to any and all.

Ehren Tool, a marine who served in Iraq, upon finishing his tour of duty, enrolled at UC Berkeley to study ceramics in the Art Department. There he learned to throw on the wheel and found himself engaged in a new mission: making, and giving away, thousands of handmade ceramic cups—shaped like tea bowls and sometimes accompanied by a letter—each cup impressed with military emblems and images such as bombs, rifles and gas masks. Tool refers to himself as a “war awareness” artist.

The evening of our conversation only a modest crowd had turned out, but they were in for a special treat…"

The Shared World

This is the whole post from CharityFocus Blog:

The wonderfully inspiring Arab-American poet, Naomi Shihab Nye wrapped a poem around an unexpected experience of kindness she encountered at an airport in Albuquerque and sent it off to exactly two friends ... who passed it on to friends, who passed it on to friends who ... and so the ripple of poetry and goodness went, and courtesy of Daily Good reader, Cynthia Loebig, here it is in front of all of you. At a recent reading of the poem, Nye ended the evening remarking, that this spontaneous series of people passing the poem on had probably resulted in more people reading it than would have had it appeared in a print magazine ...

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal
by Naomi Shihab Nye

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew -- however poorly used -
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we're fine, you'll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let's call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her -- southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies -- little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag --
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers --
Non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American -- ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were holding hands --
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped-- has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

Sometimes Life Gets In The Way

I sent out five packages today and will send out another three in the next couple of days. These are requests I received over the month of June but I allowed life to keep me from fulfilling. I have a hard time not feeling guilty when this happens. I feel a responsibility to follow through unless I've posted a message letting people know I'm taking a break. Especially if someone sends a message because they are having a hard time and need a little light in their life. Yet, I still allow myself to procrastinate because I feel no inspiration or I'm distracted by family or work life. It's a struggle to understand exactly what it going on within me, why I'll suddenly feel like I have nothing to give, or no desire to give. All I can hope for now is that Divine Timing is also at work and the packages go out when they are most needed.

Please don't let this discourage you from asking for an art blessing! I'm back on track again and will do better in the future to post a note during those periods of time that I may not immediately follow through on requests.

Blissings!