Saturday, July 14, 2007

Living room report

Living Room went well yesterday, even if there were only eight participants this time. Many were on holidays, or just feeling the summer laziness.

We focused on a poem written by one of our members.

Briefly, it's about a cracked vase that is threatening to break but looks beautiful as it tries to keep up a facade - not being real. Realness would mean pain; it would mean being broken and exposed. It would probably mean death (it thinks).
One day the vase falls and breaks. "Humbled, it is stripped of all its glamour; its realness is exposed." The Master Potter restores it, though it's a long, painful process. But in the end the vase becomes whole again, a new strength holding it together. The cracks don't disappear but there is a Light shining through the cracks. At last, the vase is real.

The discussion that followed was really neat. I think all of us could relate to that vase on some level. The Cracked Vase is a poem with amazing depth. I'm so glad this member brought it.

As we all know, so many of us with bipolar - and with unipolar depression as well - are creative. That's one of the things I value about living with this disease. I can see the talents emerging in our Living Room group and hope that more members will come forward with their poems, stories, songs and artwork. An idea I have on the backburner (w-a-y on the backburner) is to do a little book of things our members have done. One day perhaps we could produce something rich and beautiful like that.

The picture above has absolutely nothing to do with this post. But I think I will periodically (or maybe each time) post a picture with whatever I'm writing - just because I need to do something with all the pictures I have. And who doesn't like seeing pictures of little kids?



4 comments:

Sarah said...

i deleted my problem of pain blog marja and i'm sticking to the christian one only. if you read both blogs it seemed like i was contradicting myself and the other blog stopped being therapeutic. But just to let you know there's still another blog waiting for your visits.

marja said...

I'm glad, Sarah. Thanks for letting me know. I will definitely visit often.

sbwrites said...

Very nice post. It's always so uplifting to read your blog and learn about your myriad activities and creative ideas.

Susan

Sarah said...

i know what you mean when you talk about becoming legalistic. in that particular ocasion i knew it was the enemy trying hard to make me too tired to post. like sometimes we're too busy to pray or when we dont want to do things God commanded us to do. But the thing is, i believe we always ought ot do what God commands, willingly or not. you know what i mean?