Quilting Bee of Women... Week 3

Beautiful Quilt by Joanne Cranfield


I think someone mentioned cranberry nut bread last week – yuuuuummmy!! Someone who is ignoring my need to loose a few pounds off my backside – brought chocolate chip cookies & a bowl of peanut M&M’s. The coffee is brewing – oh I love that smell and the tea is set out with honey this week. I have racked a nice piece this week – full of beauty, stars, moon, oceans & mountains , tell me what beauty your spot contains – what picture of bliss is before you? Hmmmm blisss – what is bliss to you?

Do you ever have the experience that someone is trying to tell you something ? Not your normal someone – SOMEONE! I have noticed something since I started writing here – certain subjects demand my attention. If I don’t pay attention – they keep coming up over and over in conversations and blogs, etc. etc. .. So…. This week the things I keep seeing are… what touches your soul, what is your bliss, what is your true North. Do you know?

Something I have noticed about things that touch my soul, that delightful feeling that fills you with liquid pleasure. When you see, touch, hear or feel something that touches you in that amazing way. I’ve noticed that as I have gotten older those things have changed. I find new things that overtake me this way of coarse. I guess it troubled me that somewhere along the line, some things that had given me that instant bliss, no longer did. For a while I wondered if I was just depressed. That I kept looking to those things that gave me joy and they didn’t anymore. I found it disturbing.

When I was young I was a huge John Denver fan. Don’t groan!!! I still am. I used to ride my horse to the top of our property in Tennessee (not very high) where I could see the mountains. Granted they were small – but I loved them. I deeply related to Mr. Denver’s love for the mountains. I felt it every time I saw them. When I was 16 we moved from Tennessee to Los Angeles! We drove through the Rockies on the way there. Honestly – it was better than bliss, I wanted to cry!

Well, I live in the most beautiful place – Coeur d Alene, Idaho. It is stunning here! Mountains can be seen whenever I walk. So when they failed to bring the accustomed thrill – I wondered if I had lost my deep need for them. Turned out, I had grown up. Well… at least I had matured. Not that I had had my fill of the mountains, just my bliss factor had changed. I found that I was not depressed but had reached a different stage of my life. I had to reevaluate. Who was this new me and what did she find to be blissful, what would touch my soul now? It’s not that my true North had changed, just that my compass needed to be readjusted.

So I sat down and wrote an honest list – was very serious with myself. What was I ready to let go of – my horseback riding – I still adore horses , just don’t fancy falling off them anymore. I still adore the wood and mountains, but have discovered a deep love for the seashore. Where singing was one of my biggest bliss fixes, it now my art. I used to adore dancing, now it’s yoga. I guess what I’m saying is at each junction of our lives, maybe we need to reevaluate what is our bliss, what gives our souls joy, what is our true North? That if your honest with yourself, sometimes those things change. That change isn’t always easy or lacking in pain. I had a very hard time letting go of my singing. To be ok just singing at home. I cried through the creation of this new list of bliss. But, it allowed me to follow my new passion fully, my art. That sometimes for the new things to come into our lives we have to make room for them to bloom into bliss, to feed our souls, to readjust our compass. Do you need to readjust your compass?

Ok, I’m gonna find some chocolate cookie and coffee bliss, anyone for cranberry nut bread?