My Next Online Art and Creativity Class Goes LIVE Soon!
I am pleased to gently remind you that my next online class, once again in collaboration with the Jeanne Oliver Creative Network is still open for registration, and will go live on August 19!
If you are on my mailing list, you’ve already received an email announcement. If you aren’t on my mailing list, just shoot me a quick email with your email address, and I will consider that as my permission to add you. I will be working hard in the months ahead to bring my email list the very best in soul-nourishing spiritual and creative encouragement - beyond even what you’ll find here on the blog. So thank you for signing up.
Here is a description of this upcoming class, titled “Middle Makers - A Blueprint For Late Bloomers”
"The Middle" is less an age-range, and more a state of being. The "middle" can feel like simply being scattered; you experience the pull, in all different directions, of this relatively new digital lifestyle. The middle can manifest as an unsettled feeling, a vague sense of dissatisfaction. There is often a degree of emotional pain, such as depression or anxiety. The result of these stresses common to midlife can be a whopping case of creative inertia.
The act of making physical things in the physical world is a powerful tool in your toolbox, for the care and maintenance of your midlife soul. After all, when your soul is well tended, you are better able to tend souls well. This world desperately needs women (and men!) in the middle, showing up in their full creative form, wielding their energy, sharing their wisdom, and revealing who they are and how they have been gifted.
We need you, as you, and with a flourishing soul!
Whatever your age, if you've encountered a little bit of "stuck-ness" in your middle, this course is for you. Through a series of spacious story-telling and doable art-making, Middle Makers will unfold a blueprint for blooming. This class is for the women who, for whatever the reason, may have put their creative lives on hold.
Until now.
Sheila Atchley is one who has known many of the deep challenges related to midlife. After a 20 year career in church ministry, home making, and education, she picked up a paintbrush for the very first time as a means of processing transition. The results have been breathtaking, in terms of the life and health that sprang up in her own soul. Her art is now found in every state in the United States, and most of the countries of the world! Teaching art has also carried her far and wide - as far away as Italy, and as wide as the coasts of the US.
She has had to overcome overwhelming inertia to be sharing her stories, and more than that, imparting a sense of luminous possibility to the other artists and creatives she encounters. Sheila is a firm believer in the fact that midlife women, after going through a seemingly isolated season of transition, can emerge as new, more creative than ever "Middle Makers"...
...and then we all somehow find one another.
So whether you are a stark beginner or a seasoned maker, this course, with its encouraging and informative writing, as well as the art techniques taught in it, can be a powerful blueprint for your blossoming as a creative "difference maker" in midlife.
One last time, here is the link:
https://jeanneoliver.com/middle-makers-with-sheila-atchley-registration-open/
I cannot wait to see YOU in class!
just a silly selfie - hoping to show you how delighted I’d be to connect with you, and coach you a little bit, in YOUR middle…
What We Need
What we need, is to hear Jesus say to us personally, “I am willing. Be made whole.”
What we need, is to feel the understanding of a true friend who sees us in our hard story, and is still willing to keep reading the hard parts - all the way to the better end.
More than anything, what we need is to feel the faith of a true friend who knows for sure that better things are on the way.
What we need is to know for sure that “this too shall pass”, and it shall not only pass, but pass into fruitfulness and beauty.
What we need is to look at our two hands, and whisper, “MAKE ANYWAY”. Because creativity won’t abandon us or ghost us like people do. Those callings of ours are there to stay.
God does not change His great mind.
Dear one, if you were hoping for a sign, this is it.
What we need, is to recognize the answer when it comes. Please consider this very post to be that very answer. Not “THE answer” as in, “here is the ultimate quick solution to everything”. No. Consider this very post to be the very answer as in, “Before you call, I will answer, and while you are yet speaking, I will hear” (says the Lord). Isaiah 65: 24
Whatever is in your windshield - the Lord is with you. He will never leave, fail, forsake, abandon, ghost, mistreat, or overlook you. The very hairs of your head are numbered.
What a friend we have in Jesus!