Something as Simple as Water

I've been following Blood: Water Mission for quite some time now. It is a project that has a hold of my heart. Of all the things we take for granted in this world, would water be in the top three? Number one?
For the next two weeks only, any donations you make to Blood: Water Mission will be matched dollar for dollar. I am willing to donate 50% of the proceeds from the sale of any of my jewelry from this day, Wednesday October 20th until midnight on Saturday, October 23rd to a cause I hold very dear. Something as simple as clean water can change the lives of millions...a well, a water tank, or a simple water filtration container can drastically decrease disease and help communities and children to thrive. Children walk for miles each day to fetch water for their families instead of going to school. Imagine what having water nearby can do for countless communities across Africa. Water is a luxury we in America have all been born with. This precious resource has always been just a few steps away for us....just as far away as the kitchen sink. We take showers in it and bathe in it. We water our grass with it. We wash our cars with it. Please help give it to others who were not so fortunate to be born into having clean water within immediate reach...with the simple turn of a faucet handle.
I will have a special posting on Sunday about the donation I made that morning, in your honor, to Blood:Water Mission. All participants who leave a comment and make any kind of donation (even without buying any jewelry from my shop!) will be entered for a drawing for a pair of free custom vintage assemblage earrings made by me, just for you. In the color of your choice. You must leave a comment and say that you made a small donation to be entered into the drawing.
Today, do something beautiful...give the gift of water to a child today. Then in just a few days, you will find something beautiful in your mail box  to remind you of those you have helped. My shop is right here:
http://www.sacredcake.artfire.com

Blessings to You and to Yours,
Jennifer Valentine of Sacred Cake


Cyanika Sector, Rwanda from Blood:Water Mission on Vimeo.

Belle Armoire Jewelry and a Little Ol' Challenge

When my copy came in the mail the other day I was still quite ill...and instead of being in the moment, I was worried because since I was sick, I didn't have any really "good stuff" in my shop to make a good impression on folks who might visit after reading my article. I had to remind myself to be as kind to myself as I would be to others in this situation....I took a deep breath and told myself that not having my shop chocked full of Intention Lockets was okay. That this illness was present in my life for reasons. To teach me to slow down a little. To be kinder to myself. To remember what is important. to name a few.
And it is hard for me to feel deserving of such an honor...to be alright with being included in a beautiful publication such as Belle Armoire Jewelry with so many jewelry artists who do so much more than just put things together. They forge and twist and mold and pour and sew and bead...and all I do is stick things to things with glue and add some beads and stuff. I think to myself, who the heck do I think I am?! Anyone could do what I do. You don't really have anything special. No one is gonna care about your lame stuff after looking at everyone else's beauties.
Once again, I gently remind myself of the things I'd say to someone else. What you do IS important. What you do is relevant. Your work is unique and valid. What you do brings joy to others, and that is what matters most....not how many lockets are in your shop this week or how many opportunities you have  to get yourself "out there."
Readers, I challenge you all to do the same.

So often we are not as good to ourselves as we are to strangers, to friends, to colleagues or family. The next time you want to crush your self worth, or talk yourself out of the stuff that dreams your are made of, think of my challenge this week. Change your inner dialogue. Say the kind things to yourself that you'd say to others. Be as kind and as loving to yourself that you would be to someone else....and I promise I'll do the same.

True North

I received this letter today. It was resting upright on my jewelry table when I awoke this morning. Of course the tears came...in this letter he speaks of our favorite song together, Float On by Modest Mouse. And in the top right hand corner his letter says "True North". Something I told him years ago that he never forgot. I talked with him about what it meant and how to know if he was truly heading in the right direction in his life...what made him truly happy...and what his personal True North is. He has overcome so much in his 15 years of life. A rare congenital disorder, learning disabilities, being teased and bullied in school because he is so different. Still, he remains the tender hearted, creative, hopeful child filled with questions and wonder that he has been from the very beginning. My compass. My constant.
This child of mine....this child, holds a constant mirror to my soul. (I am tearful with joy and gratitude as I write this.) Such joy I find in my children...I know how fortunate I am. I know....
He says to me in his sweet letter, written in his best hand, that my father would be proud of me. That Jerry would be proud and that I am stronger than most and that he is proud of me....and to remind me, that no matter what, no matter how heavy things get, we will all float on alright.....my dear child, this I know. We will float on.....and on. Alright.

Crystal Springs and Dreams of the Sea, assemblage necklaces and Stories of Water and Wonder

When I was a girl, I went to Crystal Springs, Florida with my family...and rode in a glass bottomed boat. I will never forget seeing the fish swimming under the boat as we cruised along....the water, was so clear that you could see the bottom from where you sat in the boat...we gathered around a window to the springs....a window to the summer of my youth. I remember being a little scared, but feeling the comfort of family enough to bravely drape my little sun-kissed hand over the side of the boat and let my fingers trail in the coolness of the spring water....Yes, this necklace is about coolness and clarity, and summer and family, and the beauty and silent wonder of water.
You can see more of it here.

Then, there are Dreams of the Sea... several years ago when I could still feel the gentle rush of the ocean over my toes, and the crush of tiny shells beneath my feet; I fed the seagulls on the Jacksonville shore with my mother. It is my absolute fondest memory to date...our hearty laughter mixed into with the whipping ocean winds and the cries of a huge flock of gulls overhead. They were so close we could look into their eyes, and they were riding on the wind...somehow they remained stationary above us, and all vying for the perfect spot to catch the next morsel. Some were brave enough to eat right from our outstretched hands. I remember the feel of a rough beak grasping the tips my fingers for a moist crust of bread, and the boisterous laughter and  the wonder in my mother's bright eyes when she looked at me... In that moment, it was only she and I and the ocean and everything else between us dropped away; lost to time... lost to the sea.

You can see more of this necklace here.

Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright

Last night I broke down just a little...just a little. At my jewelry table in the darkness (surrounded by the circle of light from my old desk lamp), after reading an email from one of my most precious patrons. There was a feeling of profound gratitude for her words mixed with a deeper sadness. Kind of feeling sorry for myself mixed with the sweetness of life and the knowing of how fragile it is. How transient we all are.
...focusing on others tends to keep that ghost away. The ghost of sorrow and worry and the confusion of the questions and the why me?
I have thought about sharing what I am going to share with you this morning, and whether I should. I have told one of my special customers, my dear LoveLady about it, and a few friends and family. Maybe I fear that it will be minimized and brushed aside again, as it has by some so close to me.

But this is real and this is my truth. I suffer daily from quite a bit of physical pain due to arthritis in my spine, and a very rare disease I was recently diagnosed with, called Fabry's Disease. It causes severe nerve damage and severe pain among many other disturbing things....it shortens life. It makes life a little harder. And then a lot harder later on.  A little sweeter too...in a strange way, and I'm scared. That's it. I'm scared.

Over the past two years, I have gradually lost the feeling in my feet almost completely now. Nerve damage is a strange thing...I can no longer feel the dewy morning grass or warm beach sand beneath my feet, but I can feel the pain of my nerves that rage at me incessantly because of their lack of feeling....and now the dullness is creeping up my shins....and I am now loosing feeling in the tips of my fingers. That's where it starts. I knew it would come, I just didn't know how soon. I've been dropping things...
And so it begins; the loss of my hands. And I feel helpless.

I have accepted the loss of my feet. I had hope that a rare treatment option, a monthly two week infusion, would bring them back, though I know that once a nerve is severely damaged it is gone forever.
But now, my hands are leaving me. My tools of bliss. My joy. My life is here....in these weathered gems with which I speak.
There is a treatment available, yes. There is. But not just yet. It doesn't always work. Sometimes the treatment is worse than the illness. And I think the letter I received from the company the other day took some of my hope with it as I filed it away...it basically said, that treatment (the infusions) will be delayed indefinitely. No new patients. My heart sank.
This translates into more pain and more damage to my body ...but the worst part. The worst possible part, is that this disease has a hold of one of my children. Her treatment has also been delayed. Fabry's has been given a beautiful pale-skinned canvas...to paint what it will...to muddy the colors of her perfectly painted insides....to ravage her spirit.

Last night, as I sat creating under my little circle of light in the 2 a.m. darkness, I began singing this song to her as she slept near me. And I woke up with it in my head and thought I'd share it. I am thinking of us. E. and you out there and me here, and how we are all here together. Each of us with a story to tell. Each one of us, touched by pain of some kind. Each one of us so fragile. So human. So needy.

Each day, I search for God. And each day I find God; even in my sorrow and in the questions.
This morning, I found God in my childs breath rising softly from the early morning. This morning God was in my prayer for healing for me, for my talented and quirky E. and for all of us. This morning is a gift, and somehow this illness has become a gift. Life has more intensity. More purpose. More urgency. More beauty. More intricacy.
God was the sunrise and the song and the gift of another day.
This morning, God was Bob Marley with a sideways sunrise... and a laugh when after much trial and error, alas, I couldn't figure out how to fix it upright.

An Early Morning Rain

Today there was an early morning rain. My little son came running in to me excitedly to let me know...he had gotten up before me and raided the freezer for some Ben and Jerry's Cinnamon Bun ice cream for breakfast. (he knows better, but I was asleep so it was fair game)
When I asked him if he'd like to go out in it, his eyes lit up and we proceeded to go through my beconning and messy studio to the back door and he excitedly ran out into the heavy downpour. Dancing and laughing and playing like a five year old would. Then he asked me to join him....at first I said no because I was still in my pajamas. But then I remembered, this life is the only one I have. As I remembered from Simple Abundance, this is no dress rehearsal. This is it. This one life. And  so I ran out into the warm summer rain in my black faux satin Walmart special p.j.'s and I stood there under the sky and I felt so connected to the earth and to God at the same time as the rain pelted my body. In that moment, I remembered again, that this joy....this kind of high, can be attained every. single. day. It is all about living in the moment. It is all about mindfulness. It is all about realizing what really matters in this life; and it isn't about what the neighbors will think of me out in the rain in my pajamas. We all know what it is, but if you are anything like me, you get lost sometimes....and you need a good rain to wash away the dust of day to day living; the film of weariness that sometimes covers us...we get jaded and we loose hope. But know this; you are not alone in this world.
I need to hear that every now and then. I just need to hear it, I need to read it I need to feel it I need to breathe it.
Today, I felt it in the rain. I felt the splendor that this world can hold in a single raindrop. The wonder of life and the joy that comes with just being.
If I could bottle it somehow and give it away....that kind of simple joy that I felt today...well, this is as close as I can get...this blog is a message in a bottle, of sorts.
My message to you (and to myself) would be simple. My message would be:

The 4th of July

I think of this little girl every fourth since I found her picture almost 6 years ago. This, aside from family photographs of course, is my most prized and adored photograph. I have made up a thousand stories in my mind about her and a thousand questions....where was she?what was her little name?who decorated the buggy?did she tie her own boots? Did she have a good life? Somehow, does she know what she means to me?Though I know she has most likely left this world already....somehow does she know that I send love to her every time I see her face?
I'd like to think so. It gives me peace to think so.
I don't think I could manage this life if I lived it believing there was nothing more after this world...that this was all there is...that there was nothing divine about our humanness...

Somehow this has me thinking about my father and how I hear his voice speak to me often since I learned of his death. In the small and quiet places when I can talk to him out loud, he answers me. Is he really speaking to me, or is it just a way to cope with his loss? to cope with the profound loss of the hope for reparation that came with his passing from me? Does it really matter?
My thought is, that as long as love and gratitude and wonder take the place of hate and despair and hopelessness, then the world is better....humanity is better....and healing takes place. And that is what works. It is those things that make a difference. It has nothing to do with religious rites or "moralists" or the people out there trying so adamantly to prove that no God exists. I think it is about loving the questions and regarding the mystery with wonder.
This little girl, the one in this photograph, does she know how she's changed the world? By posing for a photograph on a hot July day so long ago. Simply standing there in her boots and in her innocence...she has changed the whole world. And she knows it because I tell her, and she hears me...and because I am here to tell her story with love and gratitude and wonder.

Secret Star, assemblage necklace, Intention Locket

Beautiful clear organically shaped glass beads are paired with vintage chain to create a simple and elegant backdrop for the secret behind the star...the secret being the song that is in your heart, the dream you want to share, a favorite poem that gives you strength, a photograph that warms your heart...or your intentions, typed or written in tiny hand, to keep close to your heart. This secret locket with its aged charm, is perfect to hold those things. It has seen many years locked away and now it is time to shine...the same is true for you. It is your time to shine.....

Celebrating

I try not to be a self absorbed blogger...but my attempt to connect; to relate with you, the reader, also helps me to connect with myself...and something about "putting it out there" in space and time seems to make it more real. How much better it is to go to a play or a show with someone else, so you can turn to them and say, "Wasn't that amazing?" "Aren't you glad we came?"
I guess that is what I need. To feel that connection with humanity, to satiate the hunger that I have for goodness....for the knowledge that there is inherent good in a world filled with the constant bombardment of sex and rage and the push to be more than all you can possibly be.
Here I am. And this song of myself, is also a celebration of you.

I celebrate my eyes and for all they have seen.
They have seen births and deaths;
tears wiped away in frustration and anger,
in sadness and with immense joy...
because they see you.

I celebrate my ears,
because I hear you.
My aging earlobes pulled south now, ever so
slightly, by earrings created with my wrinkled hands...
hands that have felt the smoothness of a child's skin
and felt the emptiness and the wonder of death.
Hands that have joined in prayer for you,
not ever knowing if you feel it.
But still, I pray.

and I celebrate my mouth and the song
that wafts from my throat
though you may never hear it,
I sing for you, and for the missing
of those I can no longer see
ever again or maybe just for a time.
I am grateful for the voice and the song that appears
from the corners of the creases and the scars
and the age of my lips.

and I could go on, and on
but I am so tired today.
The essence is this

I'm so glad you're here.
I'm so glad that I'm here, so that I
can see you.

Many Beautiful Things

I've been meaning to tell you all about Stephanie Lee for months. The incredible metal and plaster book she gifted me sits quietly on my dresser..well, more like an alter of sorts I guess, in my bedroom on a stack of my collection of jewelry boxes I spoke of many months ago. I pass by it each day and I remember her words to me, the only ones I remember by heart, "Now that the sweetness of your jewelry is in the world..." and I think to myself, who could give such a gift....a gift created with so many hours of work and given so freely. I cried when I opened it, I remember....

because I knew about the hours, the smell of the solder, the hand stitching, the carefully smoothed plaster pages...I knew of the self that goes into an artists work, and each time I pass it by, I smile to myself in disbelief that it is actually mine.

So many times, I've caressed it and admired it and brailled my fingers over the smooth cool plaster....thinking to myself, whatever goes into this book has to be, must be as amazing as the treasure itself...as beautiful as the one who created it...

...and It  finally happened...only yesterday; and want to keep this tiny memory for the rest of my days, and retrieve it when I begin to wonder if I've really made a difference in this world...as I do sometimes....as I think maybe we all do.

We have five children. Our oldest girl, now 19, is on her way to her own life. She still lives at home, working and going to college and saving little by little. She is becoming her own woman now, yet I see the little girl in her emerge now and again. The little girl who sleeps with kittens...

and brings me feathers....yes, she knows of my adoration of feathers and birds and natural things and somehow she carries that inside her everywhere...a seed that I planted so long ago, when I would take her for strolls and present her with gifts of colored leaves and feathers and dandelions to blow and make wishes on. Before her memories began.

Yesterday, she brought me the tiniest, most perfect feather. Not just any feather, but one she found and carefully carried all the way home from her walk from work...and presented to me as if she knew how much it would mean; like she knew she was giving me everything she had, as she smiled to herself with the light of wonder in her eyes.

A first tiny entry into "Many Beautiful Things". Not a favorite poem or a love letter or a concert ticket or a pressed blossom or leaf, but an ordinary yet extraordinary feather and the memory of that smile and a mindfulness; a single profound thoughtfulness from one so understandably caught up in the swirls of her 19th year.

Later, I will write a line or two on light paper and "marry" it to the beautiful plaster page, as Stephanie so eloquently says to do. and I shall find a tiny vellum envelope for my tiny grey feather...my gift of love that will reside within a gift of such love.

Hands

            Of the things in my life I remember most, I don’t know, maybe it’s strange….but I remember hands. Hands say so much about a person, I think, and when I remember those I love and of those I have loved so much and lost, it is their hands I recall first.

            I remember how my mother quietly painted her nails at night when I was a girl, and how I loved the smooth colors and the paleness and the fragility of her fingers as she waved them in front of her mouth to blow them dry. Sometimes I close my eyes and I can hear the click-click-click of the little ball inside the polish bottle as she shook it up, and I am there again in the quiet of the night with her and the missing of her softens enough to finally succumb to sleep.

            My grandmother has the palest wrists and hands. When I was a girl, she always wore the same gold watch and gold bangles and charm bracelets that would jingle together as she patted my left shoulder…It was Afternoon Delight on the radio and there I was, sandwiched between two of the greatest loves of my life in the front seat of that big ‘ole maroon Lincoln. I remember her hands and the shape of them against my smooth tan young summer skin. Even now, at 41, I still crave them. And now, as I face the tougher things in my life, in my selfishness, I still need them to jingle and pat some of this pain away from me….even as she struggles against the things that 80 years of living and loving brings. I am in need of her and her healing hands.

             I also think of Jerry’s hands…tan and lanky and strong and his own. I secretly adored him and his hands as he showed me his newfangled digital watch,  But those hands were mine too. I coveted his hands because they belonged to the angel that came to my mother and my sister and I when despair had hung its hat by our door once again. No, I will never forget his hands…how they healed us, or the joy and the laughter he brought to us. They are the hands I so sorely miss. Even after more than 27 years has gone by, sometimes it feels like yesterday he waved goodbye to me in the morning light.

            And my father’s hands, they were so large and so calloused and rough…they enveloped mine twofold, but I knew in my heart it wouldn't last. I’d say the story of his life was written on his hands. He lived under the hoods of cars and trucks doing only what he knew he could do best. His hands were his life and they were large enough and strong enough to carry a hunk of greasy machinery, but not large enough or capable enough to hold on to me. And he and I were not something his roughness could fix. And that’s ok.

          But these…these are the hands that now hold my heart. These are the hands that guard me and hold me and offer to me, the world within them. The hands of my dear one, who walks this life with me. The one who can so melt me with the mere touch of them. The one who can hold time in his hands and so often repairs the brokenness found in the world and in the silver and gold roundness of long forgotten antique time. He has even healed some of the brokenness in me.

 There are stories there, in your hands………there are stories there.

leaves

Christian came home Friday with a suprize for me. "I know how much you love leaves mom." he said, as he reached deep into his coat pocket and produced a bulging handful of brightly colored leaves...