Tag Archives: creativity

Memories Are Made Of This

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Most of my readers are aware of the huge downsizing I’ve had to go through this year. It wasn’t exactly my choice, though I’d been saying for years it had to happen.

If you recall last March I struggled with packing up our four-bedroom home and reducing my stuff to a two-bedroom apartment. Then I forced myself to part with more for a move to a one- bedroom apartment. My heart had to take a few more jolts to let go of my storage space conglomeration, and because I was moving again to smaller one-bedroom I had to eagle eye what I had left.

I think Marie Condo, the organizer guru,was on to something when she said, “Keep only things that speak to your heart.” The first move I found too many things that spoke to my heart such as my first doll, my first teddy bear, and mementoes from my children. With gritted teeth and help from a friend I let many of them go.

By the third move I was so tired I let things walk out the door with friends and strangers.

Yesterday I needed a large vase and tore through my cupboards looking for my favorite blue vase my husband and I received for a wedding present all those years ago. I realized it was one of the items that probably ended up in a thrift shop somewhere.

As much as I miss some of my “stuff” , and at times feel sad about it, I believe I feel freer now. I don’t spend my time rearranging or looking or taking care of endless objects that I thought meant a great deal to me. In reality they were just objects, some left from an era of family that had no meaning to me, but yet guilt wouldn’t let me part with them because they were family relics. Relics kept because they had meaning to past family members but escaped my adoration.

It’s exciting to fill my space with fun eclectic finds all new to me which speak to my heart as Marie Kondo advised. Yet, I find the few things I have kept from the past, whether I realized it or not, speak to my heart too.

From the pictures on my walls to the knickknacks gracing my tables when I see them they each have a memory of someone special in my life.

One memory may be strange but unique. The time of Lent and Easter is a reminder of not only the season for me, but of my mom. Every Easter season, on Palm Sunday we received palms. They were the tall, willowy ones. My mom would keep hers and braid it. She was very good at the art, and then she would put it n a vase where we could see it. I never asked why, or if I did, in my young age, I never paid attention to the answer. Doing my research I found the palms symbolize the warding off of evil and are supposed to be burned the following year on Ash Wednesday. The Palms having been blessed, should only be burned and buried, and it also is an old tradition to burn the blessed branches before natural disasters asking God to avert or lessen the coming disaster.

I found a braided palm when I packed up my mom’s house over twenty years ago. I remember the final years she lived in her home, it sitting in a vase in the window. I may not be Catholic anymore but the roots run deep,and I knew you didn’t throw the palm away. There was something about it that touched my heart knowing my mom’s love of her religion, and what the palm symbolized to her. I could see her braiding it with care. I kept it. It sat on my windowsill in a vase reminding me of her.

Fast forward to all of these moves. I took a little heat from people that I wouldn’t let go of that braided palm. They didn’t understand my stubbornness. I carefully packed it and unpacked it all three times. It’s brittleness making it a challenge to move so it didn’t disintegrate in the packing. Today it sits in another vase in my bedroom reminding me this Easter Season of the journey to the cross and also of the past, and the faith my mom had. And…of course her talent weaving and braiding those palms.

We pare down, let go of our past lives symbolized by the stuff we have saved, hoarded, hid only to bring out to see what was in the box and always feel guilty because our family chides us about all we keep. Yet, somewhere in the muddle of the junk and the regrets of keeping so much are the memories that are attached, because there are mementos which melt our hearts each time we look at them. They help us remember who we are, where we came from and what matters. Those are the items we need to keep to help us stay attached to our roots. The ones we have to ponder deeply, hold to our hearts and ask ourselves how deeply they speak to our heart and why.

Someday I will burn the braided palm. Or perhaps my family will in my last days. Maybe I’ll be surprised and it will be passed on down the family for as long as it will hold together to remind them of God’s love, His sacrifice of His son and the roots that are deep into our life called family.

Ringing in the Old

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As I read the news this morning I decided to do something different on my blog the next few weeks that doesn’t speak of the virus. As some of you might remember, I wrote a column for the Albert Lea Tribune titled Something About Nothing. I wrote for them starting in 2005 and quit in 2019. I decided to dust off some of my favorite columns and post them on this blog the next few weeks. I am going to take these columns and put them in a new book to be read, either all at once, or a little at a time. My goal is to lift someone up especially at this time. I find writing helps me and I hope my words help you.

This column is from way back and I can’t you what year probably 2009 or 10. Enjoy.

IT’S A MIRACLE

The beautiful tall tree in my front yard that shades my house and keeps us cool is withering. I called the tree doctor. He diagnosed stress from this spring’s weather. He told me my tree would come back but possibly not until next year. In the meantime, I see its withered leaves and know there is nothing I can do to bring it back to health. It has to heal on its own with the weather and the water from the earth.

It strikes me that the tree is like our lives. When the storms of life descend on us, we seem to wither and droop. We feel helpless because there is nothing we can do for some of the stresses in our lives, such as friends’ illnesses, financial problems, and other things over which we have no control. We can only wait and heal until spring comes again.

I have said that it will be a miracle if my tree makes it. We use the word miracle lightly in our lives. We throw the word around as if we do not believe miracles can happen.

Dictionary.com describes a miracle as “An effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause….”

Perhaps we are skeptical of miracles because we Christians believe miracles have to be huge. The Vatican and Lourdes carry out scientific investigations of miracles of healing. They have to meet strict criteria to be called a miracle. We also may think of miracles as those in the Bible, such as Jesus turning water into wine or Jesus rising from the dead..

C.S. Lewis stated that one cannot believe a miracle occurred if one has already drawn a conclusion in their mind that miracles are not possible.

I am currently reading Expect a Miracle by Dan Wakefield. This book is about miracles in everyday lives. I expected the book to tell of great miracles that happened in everyday lives such as miraculous unexplainable healing, instead the book opened my eyes to the miraculous things that happen every day.

Do we miss small miracles every day because we are looking for something grand and bigger? Do we throw the word around because we feel a real miracle can only happen if it is huge, like water being turned into wine? Or are miracles happening in small ways inn our life and we miss them because we truly do not believe in miracles? Or we believe a miracle cannot happen for us.

My friend recently had surgery for cancer. It went well. She has been through many surgeries through the years for this cancer. She has a cancer that most people do not survive. I consider her life to be a miracle. I am sure she does, too.

When I see a rainbow in the sky, I know there are scientific reasons for rainbows, but that rainbow always seems to appear when I need it most to give me hope. When my mother died in the midst of a cold February winter, a mourning dove visited my window. The mourning doves hadn’t been around since fall. Usually they come in pairs. That winter, one morning right after her death, one mourning dove visited my window. To me that was a miracle, and seeing that dove made me feel that things would be all right.

My tree is withering, but if just one leaf comes back, it could be a miracle that there is still life in my tree. Pat Gralton makes this statement as she listed one hundred miracles that she sees in her life. This is one of them.

My garden is a miracle. It teaches me everything about life that I will ever need to know: anticipation, birth, joy, changes in color and texture, different shades of the same color, buds, dead blossoms, killing frost, burial, saying farewell, hope for the spring, renewal. (Dan Wakefield, Expect a Miracle, http://www.danwakefield.com/id7.html)

NOTE: My tree lived and is thriving today.

Take A Risk: Look for the Gorilla In The Room

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Something About Nothing by Julie Seedorf
by Julie Seedorf published in The Albert Lea Tribune week of June 12, 2017

I saw the gorilla. I did! I did! Because I saw the gorilla it means I am a highly creative person. That is — according to one source.

I read an article this week that said highly creative people see the world differently. I didn’t necessarily think that the highly creative adjective described me, but I have been known to think out of the box and create something weird.

A video accompanied the article. In the video, people were passing a ball back and forth. In watching the video you were supposed to count the number of times the white shirts passed the ball. They did not tell you in the instructions that a gorilla was going to walk through the group as they were passing the ball. I not only counted the correct number of passes, but I saw the gorilla. According to the test, if you saw the gorilla you are a highly creative person.

I tried the test on someone else. They counted but did not see the gorilla. I was astounded. How could anyone not see the gorilla?

The results and the article made me feel better about myself. I have stated before in this column that I do not always feel comfortable or feel I belong when interacting in some situations. I just do not fit in. I realized I do see the world differently. I look at a wall and see what it can be or I look at a building and always see its creative possibilities. I get more than my fair share of skeptical looks when I put forth an idea. I must admit I am always disappointed when others do not see the possibilities, or when I see a change is needed, others don’t agree with me. I can’t believe they don’t see what I see. And they roll their eyes at my crazy ideas.

While waiting for a friend to get through eye surgery this week, I had one of those visual moments.

I was impressed with everything surrounding the surgery. The doctor, the nursing staff, and the care were excellent and so was the coffee. It was a quiet relaxing atmosphere and the staff did everything above and beyond to make my friend, the patient, comfortable. The surgery went well and was successful.

I was offered coffee and sat back in the outpatient’s surgery room to relax and wait. That is when this problem I have with visual creativity kicked in. The room was dark browns and tan and plain. It made the room feel smaller and was kind of depressing to a person that likes color. It was not cheery; it was drab. I felt someone waiting for minor surgery and was nervous, needed light, calming, cheery colors. I could visualize a positive, calming statement scrolled on the wall. I wanted to feel the ambiance of sunshine in the darkened windowless room.

Granted we weren’t there very long, but it was refreshing to leave the room to open skylight with sunshine pouring down upon us.

That is exactly the reason I get scowling looks at times. I see the visual possibilities when constructing something, which lifts our moods and makes us smile.

I loved the article and the test. It made me feel I was not alone in what I have felt all these years. It gave me permission to be different.

Many of us spend valuable time trying to be like everyone else so we will be accepted. There are those brave individuals who have invented outrageous things we have in our world today who were probably told their creative idea would never work or become a reality. In fact, sitting in the medical facility, our conversation centered around the technology for a vision that is so advanced, eye sight is being improved and saved –procedures that were dreamed of years ago but thought to never be possible in reality.

I like color. Others like tan and gray and others live with what they don’t like because it is more accepted to be tan and gray rather than risk seeing the gorilla in the middle of the room and being branded as different. Accepting those differences in each other would cause all of us less stress.

I have a friend visiting Ireland and Wales. She has been posting pictures of the rows of colorful houses in these countries. The pictures contain pink houses, green houses, yellow houses, purple houses and orange houses situated right next to each other. I envied those people. The last people who tried a purple house in my community were scrutinized and criticized because their purple Victorian house ruined the neighborhood. When they moved, the next owners painted it a neutral color. I was one of the few that was disappointed.

We are surrounded by color right now with the leaves and the trees. I got creative and painted some old dead bushes in my yard a soft green. I like my works of art. They let my light shine.

If you see the quiz, take it. Will you see the gorilla? If you don’t, will you let your neighbor who sees the gorilla, see the world differently and accept them for it?