Quilting Bee of Women - week 2

Well, here we are again our quilting bee of women!! So happy to see you here again! I have racked a wonderful piece to work on today, full of beautiful spring flowers and birds. I’ve set out coffee and tea. Thank you to all of you who brought treats and the wonderful selection of tea – can’t wait to try the lavender (thank you hon). Yummmm, someone brought whoopee pies and I see there are brownies, you guys are killing me!!! So please choose a flower or bird you would like to work on today, I think I will work on the violets. Please pull up a chair, I’m so glad you are here!!

As I get to know you all better and we create these wonderful pieces of our lives and stitch them together, something has come to me. I was thinking about divine intervention or guidance, muses and the like. It doesn’t really matter, I think, how your belief system works, or what you call it, it has been my experience that there is a universal phenomenon at work here. Have you ever had an idea, creative, inventive or otherwise just hit you out of nowhere? You have a light bulb moment!! OMG that would be a great book, or invention, or piece of artwork, or program…….! Then life takes over and it either sits in your mind or a journal until you see that someone else has done it? Been there, done that!

Well this is what I think, although I call her a muse… I believe that we are all given these opportunities to create something. We are given gifts and I think we are expected to use them. We can grab them and run or let them float on by to someone else…. and they do.

Most recently, about November, my muse, so very fed up with me and my lack of paying her any kind of attention – went on vacation to Hawaii for about 3 months. Thankfully she has returned and I’m clearly paying her more attention. Ok… so she’s a bit hyper and I’m a bit overwhelmed with all the ideas – but whooo hooo – it’s working for me!! Beyond my art she is pushing me to write – scary but I’m trying. Oy, she is a task master!

Which leads me to the other kind of gift we are given, throughout our lives. The painful and gut wrenching ones. Those ones that we look up and say,
“Uhmmmm, yeah, have had enough lessons for now, could I get a break and just use them or rest or something PLEEEEEAAAASE.”

These come from my other muse, in some ways the more important muse. I don’t like to see her at my door, but I know she is there for a reason. I get to experience some new fun lesson (yes is sarcasm there), so that somewhere, sometime I will understand and can offer an open and honest heart when I say to one of you… I understand. That I can be of comfort or offer advice. That my muse will use me to be of service to someone else. That the problems I have had in life are transformed from the pile of ashes that my pain has left behind, into a wonderful phoenix rising to become, no longer my curse but a blessing to me. Funny thing about this muse, have you noticed that she brings folks to you in very odd ways sometimes. Through blogs, and groups, at the bank or grocery store, they come to you. Have you noticed a pattern in your life that certain people with certain issues keep turning up? I believe there is a reason – that we are to use these other gifts too.

So for me, I have seen a pattern in our quilt that I recognise, that speaks to me! What patterns do you see? Please tell your muses thank you for me - you have all blessed me with your phoenix. I’m thinking that behind each of our chairs today stand two very happy muses. Anyone for coffee and a brownie???