Imagine

 wooden temple installation
Renwick Gallery

Musing…

“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”
 ~ Albert Einstein

Charise’s Turn:

It’s that time again, the last month of the year. In 2018, here at Meet Your Muse, we’ve talked about: savoring, persevering, flowering, blooming, wellness, synchronicity, and living on purpose. We hope that our posts have sparked your imagination! When you imagine something other––other than current limitations, other than negative forces––you are contributing to a better world for everyone.

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.”~ John Lennon

Get Fired Up:

Go ahead, daydream. Inhabit possibility. There’s nothing lazy about imagining––it’s a gateway to change. 

                                                                                    

 www.charisehoge.com

Savor

Musing…      

" The root of the word savor is the same as the root of wisdom.  I have been reminded again and again to slow down and linger over these incredible moments I have been given. To savor life's moments.” –– Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE 

Kate’s Turn:     
Autumn offers us a harvest to savor. A trip to the orchard demonstrates this bounty in apple-laden trees, bending to the ground. No effort needed – sweetness at our fingertips, more than enough for all. Processing them into applesauce gives an extended savoring throughout the year. 

We, too, are suffused with that same life force energy and contain the capacity for generating abundant fruit for others in all the ways that our creative nature manifests. There is more than enough; we are enough. Mindfulness savoring, breathing deeply into our Being, nourishes and sustains us as we participate in this infinite cycle of receiving and giving. Cultivating my own sweetness becomes the fruit for others.

“Each of us has a particular kind of heavy sweetness to give to the world. The kind that overflows naturally when we experience ourselves as nourished.” –– Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Get Fired Up:
Reflect on your own heavy sweetness that you give to the world as you indulge and savor the abundance all about you. I am grateful – I am abundant – I am enough.

 www.kroskalifecoaching.com

Persevere

Musing…

Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody. 

―Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Charise’s Turn:

Notice the word “severe” in “persevere”? That’s a nod to the intensity and strictness required by the action. Often, this means picking up again after a setback, forging ahead despite disappointments. As a writer, I know well the feeling of rejection by a publisher. What I’ve learned is to go ahead and submit the same work somewhere else. Don’t believe one person’s opinion; don’t give up on your art! 

I was moved by the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford to write a poem in empathy with her experience of sexual assault. I submitted that poem to two publications that focus on topical pieces. Both submissions were rejected. After a few days, I gave it one more effort, mostly because the news kept echoing this particular poem. My third effort proved successful, and I’m grateful to Tuck Magazine for publishing “Lost” (http://tuckmagazine.com/2018/10/05/poetry-1747/ ).

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.” 
―Isaac Asimov

Get Fired Up:

What work do you have lying around that begs to be shared? Are you mulling over ideas that want creative expression? Have you stopped short of the most you can do in support of your creativity?

Start again––get going––persevere.
Please don’t cheat yourself of the next opportunity.

www.charisehoge.com

Coincidences or Synchronicity

Musing...
“All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.” —Carlos Castaneda

Kate's Turn:
Here are some ideas from my summer reading about creativity. The prominent Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, coined the term synchronicity a century ago, believing strongly that we are all intimately connected via a collective universal consciousness.  When we see something over and over again, is it a message for us to pay closer attention to the infinite amount of information that is right in front of us, just waiting to be acknowledged? Are these unusual and unexplainable patterns really the universe’s way of trying to communicate with us? I agree with Carl Jung; I view synchronicity as a cosmic sign that I’m headed in the right direction. I notice more synchronicity when I’m being true to myself and it seems to fade when I step out of alignment.

Meditation helps with alignment. The practice of meditation is a great ally in the development of our creative potential. Your innate creativity becomes the avenue through which you relate to life. Imagination is a great tool for stimulating the inner creative resources. It involves opening your eyes to new things, like creating shapes out of random patterns, or consciously bringing to mind images that help to amplify our capacity to see beyond the obvious. It calls us to be warriors and capitalize on that synchronistic moment.

Get Fired Up:
Now let’s put these ideas into practice. Identify a dream or a goal….and put it out there. Start trusting the universe to help bring this thing forward; this helps open the floodgates of synchronistic messages. It’s almost like the universe is saying, “Okay, now that you’re going to put this out there, you need to start paying attention.” 

 www.kroskalifecoaching.com

Well-ness

Musing…

“There is a quiet water in the center of your soul.” ~ James Kavanaugh

Charise’s Turn:

Consider the word “well” in “wellness”. “Wellness” itself is not only a buzzword, it’s a cultural movement. There are wellness coaches, courses, practices, and books. What about the metaphor of a well that exists in well-ness? The metaphor suggests drawing from a source that quenches your thirst, that gives you sustenance. Now locate this well within you, there for you to draw from.

I’ve had ongoing tinnitus for five years now. The five-year mark seems significant; and while there is no relief from the sound, vibration, clogging sensation and hearing loss in my left ear, I’m celebrating my ability to cope and how I choose to experience wonder each and every day. I’m sure anyone with a disability or impairment understands the importance of such a choice. Meditating is never quiet, but I can tap into the deep silence of that well within me to feel replenished, nevertheless. 

Get Fired Up:

Visualize a well within you that is life sustaining. Visit that image from time to time, knowing you can trust that source. Any talk of wellness needs to honor this well.

www.charisehoge.com

Living on Purpose

Musing… 
"Reach out and help others. If you have the power to make someone happy, do it. Be a vessel, be the change, be the difference, or be the inspiration. Shine your light as an example. The world needs more of that." ~ Germany Kent 

Kate’s Turn:     
I’ve been grieving the sudden death of my friend of 48 years.  Her light in my life gave me so much throughout our friendship.  For example, she coached me through my fear of water in order to enjoy all water sports.  She taught me to sail; this had a significant influence on me as this became my passion that eventually led me to live on the sea in a sailboat in the Caribbean for 8 years.  Being confronted with the inevitability of death brings to mind a review of what entails a life well-lived.  This is a question I often ask when I counsel or coach; it helps explore one’s purpose of life.

“It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?” ~ David Brooks, New York Times, 4-11-2015

Don’t ask a person what they do––that will give you the flat, specific, boring details of their work situation. Instead, ask them why they do what they do. This question engages their cherished dreams, their most valued hopes and most important relationships.

Get Fired Up:
A life well-lived––what comprises that for you? Allow your choices to create that life, the ultimate manifestation of your creative nature.  What virtues are you cultivating through the choices you make?

 www.kroskalifecoaching.com

Being Blooming

Musing…

“How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.”  ~ William Wordsworth

Charise’s Turn:

The summer solstice will soon be upon us…the day with the most amount of light. How is the increasing light infusing your being? As a dance/movement therapist, I know how dance expands your range of movement choices, bringing possibilities for change. While we have habits and limitations, the desire to break through to new choices and abilities is part of our human nature. Stay with that desire for a while…open your heart to what is possible…in a nanosecond you’ll be on the other side of a breakthrough, however small or grand it may be. And isn’t “small” pretty grand in the long run? 

Get Fired Up:

Here is a yoga mudra to sit with while you sit in that heart-centered space of all possibilities:

Create an open flower position with your two hands, connected at the wrists with the thumb and little finger of one hand touching the thumb and little finger of the other while all other fingers spread apart. Hold this mudra at the level of your heart center at your chest and breathe as if smelling the fragrance of a blossom. A minute or two is enough…and easily repeatable. 

“I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” 

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

www.charisehoge.com

Out Standing in your Field

Musing…       
“…We must remove the clutter from our lives, surround ourselves with beauty, and consciously, relentlessly, persistently, give it away until the tiny world for which we ourselves are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that is God."  ~ Joan Chittister, The Illuminated Life

Kate’s Turn:    
“With beauty before me may I walk. 
With beauty behind me may I walk. 
With beauty below me may I walk. 
With beauty above me may I walk. 
With beauty all around me may I walk.”  

~ from Navaho Way Prayer

Spring is a time to set aside some of the plans and open ourselves to our own blooming.  The world needs each and every one of us to be outstanding in our field, flowering out of our true nature, and then generously offering the blooms/fruits in the tapestry of our life.

As Nkosi Johnson––a South African boy born with HIV who became a national voice for children with AIDS before dying at about age 12––once said:

Do all you can, with what you have, in the time you have, in the place where you are.

Get Fired Up:
Enter the fire of your passion and let it burn brightly. Claim your beauty and let your aliveness overflow.

www.kroskalifecoaching.com

Imaginary Gardens

(Dale Chihuly glass art)

Musing…

"Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads." 

~ Marianne Moore

Charise’s Turn:

It’s National Poetry Month, cause for celebration! People who pursue the writing of poetry are…well, that’s the topic of a poem itself. What strikes me is how many are writing, name after name after name after name. Whether or not you are reading them, the work they are doing is shaping things, not least of all, themselves. In this way, poetry is like meditation. A quiet, awake, aware human phenomenon. Here is an ode (with real toads) to this phenomenon. 

Rampant Writing

no one will read…for poets
are cropping up like a luxury

of weeds: sagebrush, mugwort, nettle;
not the sort of plant anyone chooses
for plots aiming to be garden beds,

but the kind that catches by
surprise,

causes sneezing
that creates a seismic shift
along cranial synarthroses,

refocusing the eyes, and somewhere
someone will say “bless you”

~ Charise M. Hoge

Get Fired Up:

Find poetry to spark your imagination. It’s everywhere: online, in journals, at readings, bookstores, and where the toads are.  

"Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth." ~ Mary Oliver

www.charisehoge.com

Spring Flowering

Musing…      

"Creativity takes courage."  ~ Henri Matisse

Kate’s Turn:    

Poet David Whyte has a beautiful line in one of his poems where he asks, “Why are we the one terrible part of creation privileged to refuse our own flowering?” The animals and the elements live their fullness without holding back and in them we can discover what it truly means to become our true self…as in One with our true nature.  They teach us how to live out our own Spirit’s authenticity by no longer refusing our true nature.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."  ~ Mark Twain

Get Fired Up:

Allow your true nature to spring forth, flowering the expression of your true Self.

www.kroskalifecoaching.com

Bask in the Blur

Musing...

"Can we bask in a blurring of lines to refine our sharp divisions and definitions? This is the edge that creativity brings us to." 
~ Charise M. Hoge 

[Art by Gyöngy Laky, "Thinking Clearly"]




Charise's Turn:

For five days in January, I wrote for The Best American Poetry blog as guest author. My topic throughout was the interface of dance and poetry, as well as the importance of our relationship with our embodied selves. The quote above is lifted from my final post that week, and here is the initial post which begins a discussion of the blur:

Dancer and Poet Meet at the Barre

How does a poet know how to phrase writing? How does a dancer know how to phrase movement?  In a turning point of enjambment the phrase hangs in mid-air…this sounds like dance, and this is poetry.  The poetic term enjambment comes from the French “jambe” for “leg”. Lines have legs.  They reach and extend.

If you’re beginning to experience a blurring of poetry and dance, this is my intention. The vocabulary of both includes: line, phrase, rhythm, sequence, punctuation, spacing, form, narrative, and so on. There’s the blank page and the empty stage. The oft quoted “dance is poetry in motion” could be inverted as “poetry is dance motioned into word”.  

As for those opening questions, they aren’t exactly rhetorical but they are akin to trying to solve a mystery. The best answer I can give is: attention to timing and artistry of creating suspense. Other poets have taught me, by their example, the brilliance of a line without an end stop, comma or period. And choreographers have demonstrated during rehearsals, calling out, “no stopping, don’t let it stop”. The feeling of sustainment as a dancer is sublime––it’s like the breath that hovers around a dangling phrase of a poem, until continuation allows the exhalation of completion. When you watch the great ballet dancer Nureyev on archival footage (I did see him once live, near the end of his career), you will see that his phrasing is relaxed in the demands of his craft, and full of surprise. 

http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2018/01/reading-between-the-lines-by-charise-m-hoge.html

Get Fired Up:

Let's start conversations that help us understand 

• each other
• the seemingly disparate worlds we inhabit 
• our common creative urge 

www.charisehoge.com

New Year Intention

Musing…

"There is a voice that doesn't use words."   ~  Rumi

      

Kate’s Turn:    

The New Year typically has us pondering resolutions, goals for the upcoming year.  I listened, wrote, painted, and pondered until my intention crystallized within me: Embody light or “embo-delight”.  Not so much a ‘doing’ intention but more of a ‘being’ focus.

Get Fired Up:

Now it’s your turn!

Allow this blessing by Kayleen Asbo to inspire you…and write your own!

A Blessing for the New Year      

As the hours of darkness begin to slowly wane from the winter sky,
so too may the fearful places of your heart unclench their grasp on your life.
As the presence of light begins to grow with greater sureness with each passing day
may your own courage blossom to open more brightly to truth and love.

Let this be the year that you turn off the television and silence the talk radio chatter
in order to pick up the writing pen, the paintbrush,
and watch the candle slowly burn.

May this be the year that you delight
in seeing how much joy you can extravagantly spread.
May you discover just how much beauty you can recklessly shower
upon this thirsty world.

May this be the year that you tune both the dusty piano in the corner
and the inner listening of your care-worn heart
so that both can play in harmony with the chorus of creation.

May you break the invisible yardstick of impossible expectations
and learn that just as you are,
you are enough.
May this be the year that you cease trying to march to an imagined ideal
and instead, wrap your arms around the messy wonder your life really is,
hold it close
and do the tango.

Let this be the year you befriend your soul in its radical particularity,
not forsaking it yet again for the bland demands and cravings of the masses.
Instead, may you elope with the wildness of your own true calling,
marry your soul to its deepest longings
and invite the hungry world to the wedding feast.

~ Kayleen Asbo

 www.kroskalifecoaching.com