Sage Woman Chronicles

Sometimes it’s Best to do Nothing!

The Duke and Isabel from a production of Measure for Measure.

“The sage acts by doing nothing.” ~ Tao Te Ching chapter 2

The fall semester has begun which means I’m busier than ever. It’s hard to believe that I’m beginning my twelfth year of teaching at the college. Where has the time gone?

Needless to say after all those years of teaching the same subject, I was getting burned out. I needed new ideas, a fresh perspective on how to engage with my students and help them understand the basics of theatre. Which is why, looking back I don’t really understand my decision to put extra work onto myself by directing a play. This was back in the spring of 2017. Remember THAT spring, the spring the Harvey Weinstein case broke leading to so many other revelations. The reverberations keep going. Ironically the play that kept nagging at me the previous fall was Measure for Measure, Shakespeare’s version of a MeToo situation.

To be honest, I was in over my head. I’d never directed a Shakespeare play before, not to mention the way the college had the performance class set up. There was not enough rehearsal time. I knew I was beating my head against a brick wall but something kept egging me on.

Then out of the blue, Dave Dahl contacts me. He’s a 25 year theatre professional, and he had done Measure for Measure seven times. What was even better, he’s a student of Shakespeare, and had a shortened version of the script. He wanted to help me with the production.

If that’s not serendipity, I don’t know what is!

The students and I felt blessed and grateful for Dave’s help. The play was a success. This began our professional collaboration. I asked Dave to be a guest artist and work with my acting students both semesters last year. Not only did the students love him, but I got that boost of new energy I’d been looking for.

As the year progressed, Dave and I talked about the fact that the area where we live is a kind of black hole for theatre. There are non-professional theatre troupes, but none of them have a permanent home. It’s a struggle for them to get funding, space to rehearse and perform, and even to get actors. But in the last few years there has been a new enthusiasm for the arts. It’s small, but growing. Dave and I wanted to help nurture this trend. So, we made plans and then went to my department chair to pitch our ideas, beginning with revamping the class schedule to make room for more rehearsal time for the performance class. Dave had enough education and experience to take over that class. A position was opened for him before the end of the spring semester, he applied, and then we waited. And waited.

The position closed sometime in July, but no word from the college. Then Dave got a rejection letter. I panicked and contacted my department chair. There was a mix-up. Dave resubmitted his paperwork, but it was one week before the beginning of the semester and I was wondering if I would end up directing another Shakespeare play, Twelfth Night, with little time to prepare.

Fortunately play rehearsals are not scheduled to begin until October, but still, with one week before the beginning of the semester and no word about whether Dave was hired or not we were getting antsy.

I had done lots of work, plotting out rehearsals and performances, checking out the rooms needed. Spreading the word about the changes to the theatre offerings so we could do one play each semester. Barry created a flyer for auditions, which we distributed. Dave had worked all summer on cutting the play and the musical and technical aspects required to produce it. If I had to direct, I was way behind the curve.

The day of the associate faculty convocation came and still no word. I couldn’t meditate that morning, nor concentrate on my work. I was so agitated. Finally, I stopped and asked the ethers for help. This is the message I got, “Do nothing.” In my inbox that day, my daily inspirational message from Neale Donald Walsch was just that. Sometimes, his message reminded me, it’s best to sit back and allow the universe, or God, or Spirit, to do the work for you. This idea of non-action was not new to me. It comes from the Eastern faith traditions. I’ve used the technique before, but I certainly needed a reminder that day.

So, I comforted Dave and said, we should sit back and wait. My dean told me he’d look over Dave’s paperwork when he had time. I knew he was busy getting the semester off to a good start.

Yesterday, on the fourth day of the semester, Dave got word from the college that he is hired! The background checks and paperwork process has begun. Whew, are we ever grateful.

Before I met Dave, I was ready to quit teaching and just concentrate on writing. Meeting him has presented me with a new direction. I’m definitely not giving up writing, but in a way, it feels like I need to give one last effort for theatre in my town. I don’t know where it will lead, but I’m willing to help the theatre program at our college grow. Maybe our efforts, Dave’s and mine, will help the administration see the value of all the art offerings at the college. After all there is more to life than making money to live on. We all need some kind of creative outlet to make life worth living.

Thanks for reading, liking, and commenting. Enjoy the end of summer.

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.

The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.

Love is in the Air Everywhere

As I write this it is our wedding anniversary so I’ll keep this post brief. I want to spend as much time with my fella as possible.

Today it feels like love of all kinds is in the air everywhere, we just need to turn our attention away from the news and social media feeds focused on the negative. Since I decided to make this day all about love, I turned to one of my favorite feel good videos to begin my day.

The video is by Matt Harding from 2012. It’s one in a series of videos titled, “Where the Hell is Matt?” with Matt dancing and spreading love with people all around the world. Sorry if there are ads. But I hope it brightens your day.

Thanks for following, liking and commenting on my blog. Find someone to share the love with this weekend. It will chase away those news blues.

The Work was Worth It!

“Forgiveness isn’t just the absence of anger. I think it’s also the presence of self-love, when you actually begin to value yourself.” ~ Tara Westover

“Self-love has very little to do with how you feel about your outer self. It’s about accepting all of yourself.” ~ Tyra Banks.

When I have a shift in how I see myself, or the world, I find it difficult to put into words just how different I feel. However, I’ll attempt to share with you an experience I had recently.

First I need to give you some background information. I’m sure many of you know what it feels like to dislike, or even hate yourself. Things happen that we perceive as negative and our response is, “Well, of course that happened. Everything and everyone is against me.”

I’ve been working for forty or fifty years to learn self-love. It’s been a profound struggle. For what seemed like forever, I was sure that I’d never have what I wanted out of life. Whenever I had a goal I wanted to accomplish, there were blocks in my head as if God didn’t want me to be completely happy. The universe or God had my back in certain areas of my life, but not all. I was sure that the obstacles were in the world outside, never considering that they might be internal.

Then something profound happened. I was complaining to God in my journal and I asked the question, “What am I supposed to be learning from this?” Immediately I began to get answers. Slowly two things dawned on me. First that events that I saw as negative were put in my way to shake me out of belief systems that were definitely wrong. Second that I was the source of my pain and suffering, and my healing. The choice was up to me. The answers to any problem I might face were inside me and always at my finger tips.

I began to read books by teachers like, Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, Gregg Braden, Caroline Myss, Marianne Williamson, Riane Eisler, and many others. I read lots of ancient texts as well and that started me on a steep learning curve over a period of five or six years. Yay! I thought my work was finished. I drifted through life thinking I’d arrived at enlightenment. Boy was I wrong.

Some devastating events happened about fifteen years ago that shook me to my core and knocked me out of my smug complacency. There was a lot more work to do on myself. So, I went back to reading books by a new group of teachers, Elizabeth Gilbert and Brené Brown among them. I watched Oprah’s show Super Soul Sunday every Sunday and went back to my journal. The conclusion I came to was that I still didn’t love myself. I needed to clear out more really old beliefs, attitudes and perceptions that were deeply buried in my psyche.

The most profound lessons were about how to forgive all the people that I was still holding grudges against. And no matter what was happening, I needed to be grateful for the lessons. In fact, I needed to grateful for everything in my life, the big and small.

Over the last few years of deeper work, I’ve had moments of insight and have felt small inner shifts in understanding about who I really am and what my purpose in this lifetime is.

The other morning I awoke with these words in my head, “I’m proud to be a woman.” At first I thought this statement came to me because I’m doing lots of thinking about my latest novel. Morgan’s story, again, came rather easily. But writing Jenna’s has been difficult. Getting to the core of the personal changes she makes while trying to effect societal changes seemed too daunting. Having her say that she’s proud to be who she is was a huge breakthrough.

It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized the message was a personal one for me as well. Of course it was. Jenna is a reflection of me and I was just as changed by it as she will be.

The change was a shift in the way I felt internally. Almost all the blocks to loving myself have melted away. For the first time I can honestly say I love who I am. It’s a liberating feeling, one I never thought I’d come to enjoy.

I know some of you will think this is woo woo, but humans are changing as are our religious, social, financial, and political structures. If we look back at history, we can identify other times when humanity has gone through similar disruptive changes. People all over the world are feeling uneasy and uncertain about the future. Each of us react to these subtle changes in different ways none of which are good or bad. They grow out of who we are, and the lessons we came here to learn.

Since I now have a new confidence in who I am, I no longer feel afraid of the future. In fact, I’m excited to see what lessons I have yet to learn and what will happen next.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. I appreciate all of you who follow my posts and hope that what I share will benefit you in some way. Blessings to you all.

The Future is Female

“And though she may be broken, she is not defeated. She will rise unfettered, unbeaten, unimpeded.” ~ Sara Furlong Burr, When Time Stands Still

After I wrote last week’s post, I realized I have a lot more to say about movies and the impact they have on our intellectual and emotional lives.

When Barry and I watched Captain Marvel, twice the weekend of my last post, I realized something important. Over the last few years I’ve been reading many books written by women and watching movies and TV shows with female protagonists carving out a place for themselves in a man’s world. These stories are in a variety of genres, from different time periods, and situations. The women in these stories have one thing in common, they no longer fit into the good girl/bad girl boxes dictated by society and culture. It’s refreshing to read about and see characters on the screen who are well-rounded and who represent real women.

One of most used put downs leveled at women is that we are too emotional, as if that’s the worst offense in the world. In Captain Marvel, Vers, as Carol Danvers is known by the Kree, is rebuked constantly by her mentor Yon-Rogg for being too emotional. To be a good warrior, he claims, you have to suppress your emotions.

But here’s the thing, almost every woman knows that making the best decisions requires use of both our heads and our hearts. There is a powerful montage sequence in the movie that shows Carol Danvers standing up again and again after being knocked down. She’s angry at being told she can’t do things that are considered off limits for girls. She’s stubborn enough to do what she wants no matter what. Her character represents every woman who must overcome challenges and obstacles. There have been so many women through the ages who have not let anyone define them.

Even though her determination has made her tough, she’s also emotional. When she absorbs a tremendous amount of energy from an alien power source, she’s kidnapped and taken to the Kree home world. She has lost her memory and so is manipulated by her Kree mentor. Yon-Rogg wants to use her power to advance the Kree agenda. But when she crash lands on Earth during a mission, she begins to remember who she really is. She remembers that one of the best things about being human is that we’re at our best when we integrate both sides of our nature when it comes time to making important decisions.

After Carol remembers who she really is and what happened to her, she embraces her full humanity. She says, “I’ve been fighting with one hand tied behind my back. What happens when I’m finally set free?” At that point she shows Yon-Rogg just how powerful she is. She takes back her power when she says, “I have nothing to prove to you.”

There are so many female protagonists, Elizabeth Bennet, the Crawley sisters, Hermione Granger, Katniss Everdeen, Clare Fraser, and almost any Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck movie ever made that show us how powerful and intelligent women are. They create fulfilling lives for themselves in spite of their flaws and the expectations of society.

What these fictional women show me is that something important is changing for women. I don’t know how this has come about, but I’m excited to see it happening. Women aren’t keeping silent any longer. They are not letting anyone dictate to them how to think, what to feel, or what they should do with their lives. It’s an exciting time that has been a long time coming.

I think I became a feminist because my mom worked throughout most of my childhood. She did it to supplement dad’s income so we could live in nice houses, have food on the table, and clothes to wear. It wore her out, but she did it, and we all pitched in with household chores. Because of my mom, I thought it was natural for moms to work outside the home just like dads did. And because my dad was not the macho guy who expected his wife to do everything for him, I learned what true partnership between a man and woman looked like.

I’m inspired by all the female characters, and real women who keep standing up for themselves. And I’m excited to see what the future will bring.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. Welcome to my new followers. I hope all of you have a spectacular weekend.

Lessons From Unusual Places

Red Shadow Sky Magic Wand Sunset Cloud Girl

“Sometimes you learn, grow and give far more when your back’s against the wall.” ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

I love movies! If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that. I love them partly because watching and having nerdy conversations about them remind me of the great conversations I had with my dad about the ones we watched together. I learned a lot from those discussions.

I’ll watch a movie in almost any genre, but my favorites are the ones that make me feel good, give me a new perspective, or teach me something I can use.

This fall I’m going to be teaching my absolute favorite class of all time, dramatic structure. In the class we watch movies and analyze the stories and characters. And sometimes my students say things that blow me away. They point out things that I never thought about before.

My students always amaze me. They, or nieces and nephews, recommend movies, TV shows and books that I most likely would never consider watching or reading. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is just one example. Buffy is a kind of phenomenon. College classes have been taught about the lessons the show teaches.

When I take the advice of the young people in my life, I’m always pleasantly surprised by the depth of truth the stories they recommend tell. The characters might be in fantastic circumstances, or have unusual powers, but somehow the writers create characters with real human struggles. I love that!

This is nothing new. Storytellers have been teaching us things for centuries. There are plays from Ancient Greece that are still performed and analyzed today. Shakespeare’s plays are another example. My new friend, Dave Dahl, who is a theatre professional, said recently, “Shakespeare’s language may seem daunting, but the plays contain human emotion and that has never changed. That’s why we still perform them today.” That’s going to be true of many of the stories that are popular today.

For sometime, I’ve wanted to write a post about Captain America. He is my favorite superhero. Barry and I got hooked on superhero movies because or our youngest nephew. He’s a really intelligent kid who is already a master at analyzing the motivations of the characters in the movies he watches and thus in his real life too. Captain America is my favorite, I realized while writing this post, because he’s like my dad. He has a strong moral center that helps him when he’s faced with problems. He’s able to see what’s really going on in complicated situations as shown in Captain America: Civil War. Some of the other Avengers are manipulated by unscrupulous people with hidden agendas, but not Cap.

In story telling there are often key moments that cause everyone to reevaluate their beliefs and assumptions. This happens in real life too if we’re paying attention.

In the last two Avengers movies Thanos accomplishes his goal to wipe out half the population of the universe. He thinks he’s saving it by doing this, but the chilling thing is, he doesn’t care that he’s killing billions of beings. He doesn’t realize an act like that never brings peace.

The original Avengers are left to cope with their failure to stop Thanos. But two things happen. First, when Captain Marvel shows up in response to Nick Fury’s call for help. Rhodes asks her where she’s been, in essence accusing her of failing to prevent Thanos’ destruction. She replies by saying something like, “There are lots of other planets in the universe that needed my help. Earth has you guys.” Wow! She’s challenging them to take responsibility for what happened. That’s always painful. But she’s also challenging them to accept that they have extra-ordinary abilities and perhaps all hope is not lost.

Of course since this is a story, the second thing happens that allows the heroes to save the universe. Ant-man, previously thought to be dead, arrives with a possible solution for how to go back and defeat Thanos and set the universe right again. Well, at least, restore all those who were turned to dust. Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel, has challenged the Avengers to find solutions to the big world problems once Thanos is defeated. In essence she’s saying Earth has us! We are the ones who can save the planet and ourselves.

I’ve been watching movies for a really long time. I can name any number of classic movies that surprise my students with how their themes speak to contemporary problems. It’s another of the reasons I love teaching dramatic structure. We like to think that we’ve advanced so much as a species. Then we watch a movie from the 1930s or 40s and see that we’re not so very different from our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents after all. Like Dave said, human emotions haven’t changed that much. But hopefully one day we will grow up into more compassionate, cooperative people.

I’d venture to say that’s one of the themes of the first batch of MCU movies. The superheroes learn to set aside their differences to find solutions for the huge problems they face rather than continue to assert that they are right and the others wrong.

It takes courage to admit that maybe we are wrong, that we are responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves. Alice Walker wrote the book, We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness. I’ll be reading that book because I need a push to be like all the characters in my favorite movies who had the courage to face and solve their problems. This will be a ongoing process. I have to remember that and not give up.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate your comments and likes. Have a fantastic weekend.