Shining My Light in All Its Refracted, Multi-Faceted Brilliance

As I bless the world with my glorious gifts

You are only as shiny as you allow yourself to be.

Yesterday at church, we heard that we are each responsible for our own feelings. If this is true, and I reluctantly believe it is, I can no longer say things like Vanessa’s outburst made me scared, or my roommate’s rude comments made me angry.

We all have personal responsibility.

This is not just for our feelings but also because that lovely light that Nancy Blackman reminds us of is also ours to shine in the world.

You mean I don’t just naturally shine and light people up?

I believe some of that does happen.

I just returned from my favorite fast lube, Oil Changers. While chatting with the young man who worked with me, he mentioned the mileage on my car, which impressed him because I don’t drive a lot; I happened to mention my own mileage. I’m seventy, I said.

His eyes got big, “No! You can’t be seventy!”

Now I know he’s learned to do that. It’s great for the little old lady's business retention, but we both lit up. I beamed and patted my head, “Must be the new do.” And we laughed.

But that’s the rare exception. Mostly I’m invisible.

So Nancy’s idea makes sense. No one will see a light I don’t consciously shine. Instead of moping because no one notices, I can be mindful about when, where, and for whom I shine and turn up my light as bright as I choose to at the moment.

My soul is made of Light — God’s Light — and it’s always shining

That doesn’t mean everyone automatically sees it. Maybe their soul light has to shine at an equal or brighter brilliance to see mine.

This is similar to what I understand about vibrations. We’re all made of energy vibrating at various frequencies, some high and some low. And we most naturally connect with other people who vibrate at a frequency similar to ours.

Hence, someone can be in our personal space, yet we barely notice them. Even if they’re trying their darndest to get our attention, or someone may not respond to our fervent efforts to be seen or known.

On the soul level

This may even explain how we connect with folks we consider our soulmates, whether or not they’re our romantic partners.

I have a mentor I consider my soulmate because we have so much in common. She, too, loves to write and make art journals, has food/weight issues, and responds emotionally the same way I do, much of the time. Turns out, we’re Scorpios, with birthdays a day apart! From the very first time I met her, I felt a powerful connection, as if she were a long-lost sister.

So with that as a backdrop, what about my gifts?

I love Nancy’s image of the clear crystal gem.

Come to find out that the way a beam of light enters and leaves a cut facet of that gemstone gives it its brilliance. According to the University of Texas, Refraction, Reflection, and the Critical Angle,

“The bending of light as it travels through a facet on a gemstone is of great importance to a gemologist because it provides an important means of gem identification (refractive index), and because it is a main factor influencing a gemstone’s brilliance.”

It's no wonder she writes, “Think about a beautiful clear crystal gem that, when held up to light, refracts and gives off a bright light. Those refractions are your gifts.”

Like the facets of a gem, there isn’t just one. Nancy invites us to name our top three. I’m assuming there’s an ‘as a minimum’ implied in there. So with her invitation and without further ado, here comes my brilliance!

First and foremost of my gifts is writing

A gift I dearly love, by the way. Words turn me on. I play with them night and day. Even when doing improv, my favorite games are word games, Convergence being my all-time fav.

How words sound is just as vital as their meanings, which is how I approach poetry: rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, and assonance. How vowels sound together makes me hot! Notice the o and ou sounds in that sentence?

Poetry is not just for poems, by the way. I pay attention to the sounds of words in blog posts and in my novels, of which I’m writing two at the moment: Man Pregnant is a social satire, and Long, Hard, & Twisted is a noir-fantasy spoof.

Given that, I don’t really have time to blog here daily, so I make time. Why? Because I love it. Writing this and getting to play with light and soul and facets and metaphors lights me up—with or without the gifts part.

Next Comes SoulCollage®

Have you heard of it? Yes? No?

What is it?

On their official website, SoulCollage.com, offers this introduction:

“SoulCollage® begins as simple creative fun that may suddenly surprise and awaken you! Create your own deck of cards with deep personal meaning to help you with life’s questions. All you need is a good pair of scissors, pre-cut mat board cards, and images.” [And some kind of adhesive.]

SoulCollage® is a way of listening to the songs our souls sing to us when we stop and get quiet. Since our souls speak in the language of images, we let our Soul Selves browse for compelling images that grab it for whatever reason.

We let our Soul Self play, combining and arranging them, discovering what wants to go with which and where. Then we glue the images to a matt board or other surface. Once made, we ‘read’ our soul cards, discerning the messages they have for us.

I use SoulCollage® to inform my writing.

I use it to create and develop characters, especially mischievous villains. It’s helped me figure out what needs to happen next in a story. And I’ve created cards to inspire poems. I’ll do that right now. Let me dash over to Canva.com and grab a soul card.

I feel a poem coming on…here it is:

Melancholy keeps me company today, Slipping into my despairing awareness on little cat feet. Marking the many ways I feel defeated by the world, She accompanies me in my dis-ease for as long as I please,

Until she’s had enough. Then she pours me a cup of my favorite frivoli-tea, Points to the preposterous poster of me poignantly pretending to be sad When in fact, Duddles, my clown persona, cheers me up when I don her downer duds and drag my ass around as she.

Cuddling kitties, sipping tea, I get another look at myself, Putting doldrums up on a high shelf, letting laughter have its way with me.

Nothing like a sad clown to cheer us up!

This leads right to my next and most recent gift — comedy and clowning.

What ties those gifts together is my humor

I am verbal, witty, and, at times, quite erudite. For example, I like to KISS—keep it simple, Sweetie. That’s why I do my best to eschew obfuscation whenever it rears its ugly head.

I also adore physical comedy. My heroes are Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball, both masters of it. Thanks to Stagebridge, a performing arts school for adults 50 and over, I’ve had a chance to study improv, comedy, and clowning. That’s where I met myself as Duddles, the clown version of me in the upper right of the above SoulCollage® card.

Are those all my gifts?

I think not. There’s at least one more. I love to pray, especially out loud with and/or for other folks. Yes, I write prayers as well, but my experience at improv, coupled with my spiritual explorations, allows me to close my eyes, go within, and receive or conjure the right words for the current occasion.

It’s more than just a gift. It’s an honor to be asked or able to pray this way.

So let me conclude by saying that we may all be blessed with a deep understanding of how the facets of the gems we are shine. May we be moved to turn up our brilliance so that the world is blessed by the convergence of all our shining lights united together in one big, beautiful bouquet of blessings. Namaste!

Thank you so much, Nancy Blackman for asking!

Marilyn Flower’s a sacred fool who writes fiction, poetry, and blogs, inspired by the practice of SoulCollage®. Her books: Developing Characters: Fun Ways to Cast Your Fiction, Creative Blogging, Bucket Listers. Follow her Sacred Foolishness or SoulCollage® for Writers, and Stay in touch!