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I've been thinking about a play I saw last summer, which blurred the boundaries between art and life. The play, Guest Artist, by well known actor Jeff Daniels, focused on the relationship of a seasoned Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and the young playwright who idolizes him.

Predictably, both characters learned about their life and their art from each other. Through twists and turns, the elder writer taught his student the subtleties of being a great playwright, while the youth had the courage to question his elder’s motives and lifestyle. Fear, risk taking, and having the courage to speak your own truth, all of these were explored in the truly moving performances. But what was most striking to me was how both characters were uncompromising in defining their lives through their art.

At two different points in the show, both characters stood on bus seats, (the whole play takes place in a bus station) holding a manuscript, proclaiming at the top of their lungs, THIS IS MY ART! THIS IS MY ART! THIS IS MY ART! Both characters were exclaiming that their art defined them as people. So this got me to thinking… Our art isn’t just our manuscript, or our song, or our dance… but OUR LIFE.

What does it mean to think of our lives, themselves, as art? To consider every moment we live art?

The passion that these playwrights exclaimed about their work is the very way that we, as humans, need to proclaim the creation of our lives each day.

All of our life, each choice that we make, and each action we take – every moment is like brush strokes on a canvas. We are 100% in control of the art of our lives – we are the sculptor, the painter, the singer. Our lives are creations of ourselves. How do we choose to appreciate this? Do we choose to believe that we are in creation of our own life, having the courage to tell our truth? Or do we perceive life as something “being done to us” – allowing fear and attachments to what others may think to dictate how we paint on our life’s canvas?

Do we have the courage to honor the creation (read: the choices we have made) of our lives? Do we have the courage to tell the truth about which choices truly serve us? Do we have the courage to admit that we may be hiding behind our fear, anger, blame, and judgments?

Can we stand up on the proverbial bus seat and proclaim, MY LIFE IS MY ART!?

Rev. Sandra Bargman
Spiritual Counseling
Meditation & Guided Imagery
Oriens Community Leader

I’ve always loved cardinals. They are one of the few birds that stay north the winter time. When the landscape is gray and white, the bright red color of the male cardinal is stunning and exotic and always takes my breath away.  At my home in the Catskill Mountains, we’ve had a gorgeous pair hanging around our home for a few years now.

In February, I watched as the male started to feel his mating mojo and began a very curious ritual. He would sit in the bushes by the kitchen window and fly into the window, over and over again, banging his beak into the glass.  Amazed that he was not hurting himself, my husband told me Mr. Cardinal may be seeing his own reflection in the glass, and, thinking it was another male, simply defending his woman – and his little piece of the world. Every morning we would awaken to the thumping of his beak into the kitchen window.  It was loud! As time went by, his little ritual expanded to include flinging himself into the window by our bed and then, even more creatively, the rear view mirrors on not only my car, but our next door neighbors’ car as well. This bird was crazy!

Well past mating season, and babies fledging, he is still engaged in his daily rounds.  But now, when I hear the thumping on the window, I am oddly comforted. Somewhere over the last months, the bird morphed from being a symbol of crazy confrontation and destructive willfulness, to becoming a symbol of endurance, and therein the power of perseverance.  Rather than seeing his bizarre behavior as a mad response to competition with attack, I began to see this ritual as Mr. Cardinal meeting himself, over and over again, with perseverance, determination and patience.  He went from wacko warrior to Spiritual Warrior. Yes, the beat, beat, beat of his beak reminds me of the beat of my own Inner Amazon Warrior.

Physically, I understand endurance. The “no pain no gain” theory.  But I’m talking about a much larger sense of endurance – the spiritual quality of endurance. When I stumble and disconnect from my own sense of endurance, I can become mighty impatient and confrontational, mostly with myself

If we view life as something to willfully confront, to control and manipulate, then we are like my Crazy Cardinal, banging into a perceived illusion of competition and attack.  When we accept our life as it is, though, we awaken endurance, and we begin to use this new found sense of determination to strengthen our self-respect and self-love.  We become like my Warrior Cardinal, perpetually coming back to Self, meeting ourselves where we are, with perseverance and loving patience. It is from this place of self honoring that we can begin to make the choices needed to change our lives.

This is how we transcend our limitations.

Endurance is enhanced by a deep sense of gratitude for Life, for the gift of your Life and for the gift of being You.  Yes, gratitude…and patience.

Rev. Sandra Bargman
Spiritual Counseling
Meditation & Guided Imagery
Oriens Community Leader


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Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of Spirit.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability---and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually--let them grow,
Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only Source could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give the Divine the benefit of believing that her hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, (with minor adaptations)

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Sometimes you have the magic wand and sometimes you don’t.

So, I am off from the tundra of upstate New York to the exotic paradise of Florida. OK, 65-70 degrees feels exotic compared to the -3 degrees I’ve traveled in to get to the airport.

I’m off to Florida to take my niece, who is turning 21, to Universal Studios, and in particular, The Harry Potter Theme Park. She has grown up with Harry, Hermione, and Ron and this is her dream come true. Being the only person on the planet that remains un- Harry Pottered, I’ve immersed myself all 6 movies on DVD. I am hooked. Magical.

So, I get to the airport. I am sparsely packed. I am cheerfully greeted at check in and it’s only 7am. I breeze right through. I get in line to go through security, and again I am kindly greeted and I think to myself, “Ok, today I have the wand”. This is only fitting as I am headed down to Hogwarts, The University for Witchcraft and Wizardry. I think my niece is bringing her Harry Potter wand.

I throw my suitcase up on the conveyor belt and gather my pile of plastic crates, start stripping off my coat, and it happens.

“Do you have any liquids or gels in here?” he snaps. Did he audition for Snape?

“Yes, I have some liquids and gels.”

“Please take them out”, he positively snarls.

Here we go. He goes through all my toiletries, demanding to know what they are for. He calls over a superior, who tells me at the TOP OF HER LUNGS that my bottle of Listerine definitely MUST go, and that I should decide now what needs tossing. Did she audition for Mr. Filch? I clearly do NOT have the wand.

I tell her that my Listerine bottle has not been opened; it still has the plastic seal. She demands to know if I need it for a medical reason. Wow. Isn’t that what it’s for?

OK. Then she throws everything all my gels and liquids back in my plastic bag. Apparently now nothing needs to go.I look at all the other attendants. They look away with mortification. They don’t seem to share in her glee. I smile and breathe deeply, and head over for my pat down.

On my flight home nobody makes a peep. Sometimes you have the magic wand and sometimes you don’t.

It’s August 27^th, 2010 and today is the anniversary of my beloved Mother’s passing. It’s not an easy day for me… and this could very easily be a real downer for the topic of my blog. But the truth is I see it a day to celebrate her life, and mine.  I have also come to realize that by sharing my (our) grief, by telling the story of my (our) grief, I can come to understand it’s power of transformation. This, too, is something to celebrate.

My mother passed away after a long battle with cancer. While her struggle with the disease and the attending pain was devastating, the drawn out nature of her passing offered the unexpected gift of time to make sure all had been said, shared, and tenderly held. When I received a call from my father giving me the news that mother had been given a prognosis of “3-6 months”, the inevitable screeched into my mind, and all fantasies of dramatic recoveries were over.  I was sitting on the back porch of a friends’ home.  At the precise minute that I hung up the phone with my father, frozen with disbelief, poised to explode into tears, a hummingbird arrived, buzzing right up next to me, mere inches from my face.

Native American wisdom, which is a part of my personal spiritual practice, speaks of the “medicine” of animals. According to this belief, each animal has great wisdom, or medicine, to impart. It is said that Hummingbird conjures love as no other medicine does, and that Hummingbird feathers can open the heart.  Without an open and loving heart, you can’t drink deeply of the ‘nectar of the flower’, the great joys of life.

My mother loved life. Like a Hummingbird darting from one beautiful flower to another, she tasted the many joys of life. She brought people together and brought out the very best in them.  Harmony and beauty were her gifts to all of us. She had loads of Hummingbird medicine to share.

In that split second when I received the call and the hummingbird came, I had this strange glimmer of recognition that there was going to be a gift of beauty and joy for me. And somewhere inside me, I could have clearly articulated that, even in that moment.

My mother did not see 6 months, or even 3. She died 24 days later. I was with her in that tremendously painful and overwhelmingly beautiful moment. A precious gift.  The grief that engulfed me after her death became my great teacher.  Wise, unyielding, paradisiacal. She was my best friend in life, and her death broke my heart – but a broken heart is an open heart. 

I descended into grief, but slowly, ever so slowly, I ascended, with a deeper appreciation for the joys of life, for the gifts she gave me, in life, through her illness, and in her death.

In honor of my Mother, and the Hummingbird medicine that we now both have, I’ve hung a hummingbird feeder on my back porch. As I write, there are 2 beautiful Hummingbirds feeding.

Rev. Sandra Bargman
Spiritual Counseling
Meditation & Guided Imagery
Oriens Community Leader


Need to talk or work something through? Rev. Sandra can help!