A Year to Dare Boldly
2015
Art and Words by Louise Gallagher
A 2015 calendar with original art and words for every month.
To view or order the calendar — click HERE
2015 A Year to Dare Boldly
2
Unapologetically Me
Bird of Contentment
Mixed Media
24″ x 30″
Louise Gallagher 2014
I created on the weekend. Spent time in the studio splashing paint and ideas and feelings onto a canvas that had hung around as something else waiting to emerge as what it was always meant to be.
It is the thing about creating.
Within every creation there is that moment where what is apparent is not what appears. Where what was becomes simply the path to what is.
The Bird of Contentment started out a couple of years ago as a landscape. Dissatisfied with where it was at, I applied a layer of cheesecloth and painted over and into the surface. A forest standing silent under a moonlit sky appeared. It hung around for while until this fall when the dark forest asked to become an autumn woods replete with riotous splashes of gold and red and ochre shimmering on the edges of a stream burbling merrily along its way.
I let it happen.
And still, it wasn’t fully expressed. It didn’t feel like my voice appearing on the canvas but rather, more like what I felt my voice should be if I was painting what I thought was easy, expected, common.
On Friday afternoon, I stepped into the studio and let my voice call me out into expression upon the canvas.
A thought had been forming for awhile about what wanted to be expressed on this canvas. I had heard it some weeks ago and let it simmer, let it percolate and coalesce into a calling forth from within me yearning to be released. Rather than just ‘painting over’, I allowed what was waiting to become apparent to give itself expression using what was already there as the foundation of what was looking to appear.
The expression of the Bird of Contentment evolved from the inspiration of a comment my eldest daughter wrote in her birthday card to me.
“Thank you for being so unapologetic about who you are, and what you stand for,” she wrote.
Birds are so delicate looking, so tiny and innocent and fragile and yet, so strong. They hang around the birdfeeder, sit on wires, soar above or float on the calm surface of a pond and are simply present to what is in the world around them. They squawk and tweet and sing and whistle and make themselves heard because that’s what they do. Birds are unapologetically who they are.
Birds naturally do what I have always dreamt was possible — fly.
I have always dreamt of flying yet, for many, many years, I kept my wings tucked into my body. I was fearful that if I let them out, I would not fit into the world. I truly would be the deep, dark secret the critter within whispered to me in moments of unease. “You are a misfit. You don’t belong. You don’t fit in.”
And, because I so desperately wanted to be liked, to be like others, to be part of the whole of the world I saw outside me, I tried to be who others thought I should be, the someone I believed I needed to be to get along in the world without letting my wings show.
And in my unease, I created a lot of ripples.
I like making ripples.
I like creating waves. Of love. Harmony. Peace. Joy.
But, because I was struggling to keep my wings tucked in, I often, unintentionally, created discord. Sometimes, I hurt those I love. Sometimes, I did things that didn’t make sense, that created bumps in the road and upended smooth sailings into tumultuous rides.
It is still possible to do these acts of discord – but in becoming free to express my voice, unapologetically, I am more adept at seeing when my actions create that which I do not want to create in the world. Discord and unease. Tension and pain.
It is the gift of time. When I see that I have created is not creating better in the world, I must breathe deeply into my unease, acknowledge the discord I’ve created and commit again to the path of creating more of what I want in my world. Love. Harmony. Peace and Joy.
It has been the evolution of my voice. The letting go and surrendering to my heart calling me to live from and through my own unique voice. To be unapologetically me.
And it has been the evolution of this painting.
From silent dark forest to tumultuous autumn woods to the Bird of Contentment.
I have splashed and sprayed and covered up and over. I have dug into and scratched the surface, I have wiped it clean and coloured it up.
And through it all, I have reached moments of discord. Those spaces where what is happening feels too raw, too real, too revealing, too vulnerable that I just want to stop. Step away. Forget it. Let it go and move on.
And still, I have persevered and persisted. I have kept digging into it. Keep moving through the discord to find the harmony and joy of being real and revealed.
There was a moment on Friday where it was very apparent to me that this painting was going nowhere. Where everything looked discordant and so jumbled up and ‘blah’ that I thought the only answer was to just throw the whole thing out.
I wanted to quit.
But the voice of my wings calling me to fly free persisted.
Don’t give up. You can do this. Be present. Be patient. Be open to letting it happen. Trust.
And so, I trusted in the process and let my wings appear through the messy globs of paint yearning for expression on my canvas.
And in their appearance, the Bird of Contentment arose.
And that’s the thing.
I couldn’t see how the final painting would appear until I got over my resistance to letting go and gave voice to my fear of flying.
In the freedom to be unapologetically present as who I am in front of the easel, what was always there waiting to be revealed appeared and in its appearance, my voice sang out loud and clear.
I am free to be me!
I am content.
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- The first painting over with cheesecloth
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- Autumn Calling
And….
Announcing my first ever art Calendar!
I also created a calendar over the weekend of some of my art and words. It was a fun and joyful way to express myself. I’ve decided to take a step ‘out there’ and offer it for sale. There’s still time to order a copy before Christmas! 🙂
You can preview and order it here: 2015: A Year To Dare Boldly
Forgiveness sets you free…
Image
Birthday gratitude and other things
I had a beautiful birthday.
I worked from home, finished off an article I’ve been procrastinating on, sent it off to the editor and it is done.
A sigh of relief, of gratitude for getting it done, of satisfaction for a task completed, moves joyfully through my body.
That’s the thing about things that sit on ‘the pile’ waiting to get done. They don’t actually go away until I transform the energy I waste avoiding them, into the action of doing them.
Avoidance strengthens fear.
Avoidance not only adds to stress levels, it also creates a chemical reaction that, with every time we avoid a particular thing, sends tiny little messages to the brain that says, “See! Avoiding it actually felt good. Let’s get better at avoiding it so we keep getting that tiny fissure of relief in the immediacy of our avoidance!”
In actual fact, while that tiny fissure of relief is momentary, it can create giant waves of discord when activated too often.
Those waves of discord are created from the worry, shame, fear, excuses, blame… whatever emotions we encounter when avoiding doing something we know is good for us, or we need to do, or we have to do because…
In the case of the article I finished editing yesterday, it was a commitment made in the summer to a magazine for an article on the challenges of housing formerly homeless individuals in community. My former boss had asked if I would do it, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
And it was. It’s just, between the original draft and the final, there have been many revisions, and many other items, (not to mention excuses) that got in the path of completing the article.
Yesterday, I worked from home and got it done. It is gone. Off my desk. Finished. Final.
And while the fissure of relief from avoiding it repeatedly was kind of intoxicating in a sick and cyclical way, the relief from having it finished, never to be thought of again, never to be shoved aside or discounted or procrastinated over, is even greater!
Once done, I had time to review a document I need to work on this week — and the benefit is, I can work on it without thoughts of what I ‘should’ be finishing clouding my thinking.
It is easy to convince ourselves that not doing what needs doing is okay – at least until tomorrow.
Challenge is, tomorrow will arrive and the not doing will begin to take up more and more of our mindspace as we spend more and more time rationalizing why we’re avoiding doing what is there to do.
If avoidance strengthens fear, doing it creates peace.
And I like peace of mind and heart. I like the peace of knowing that I am right with my world and all is right within me.
I finished a task yesterday I’ve been putting off for awhile. Now that it’s done, I wonder what I was putting off for so long. Perhaps it truly was just the addiction to those tiny fissures of relief that were getting in the way of my seeing how easy it was to strengthen what I want more of in my life, just by doing what I feared!
Namaste.
And thank you for the Birthday wishes! It was a grand day.
Lessons in Giving
There was a time in the homeless sector when it was believed that emergency shelter was the only response to help someone in homelessness. No matter how long they stayed in the shelter, or living on the streets, someone had to ‘do the work’, like getting sober, getting on meds, or any other of the 5,342 things we thought they needed to do to make their lives ‘right’, before they could be housed.
And then, along came Housing First. A radically simple and effective approach to supporting people out of homelessness.
One such housing first initiative here in Calgary is, The Madison. The 16 suite apartment building which is owned by the Calgary Homeless Foundation, the Madison provides 24/7 on-site support and housing for 15 formerly homeless veterans.
Three years ago, when I began the Christmas at The Madison project, the intent was to raise money to provide gifts and a dinner at Christmas for the men living at the Madison. It was my way of giving back, and involving my family and friends in the act of giving.
I grew up in a military household. My father was in the RAF and then the RCAF and for most of my formative years, we lived on military bases in Canada and Europe. My father was a proud, and silent, man. He never spoke of the war years. He never spoke of his losses, his regrets, his sorrows. He soldiered through everything, including the heart attack that took his life almost 20 years ago.
My father taught me many things. One of them was the value of a good meal and when he passed away, I wanted to find a way to honour him, to say thank you for the love, the generosity, the many lessons on how to live life fully and completely.
The Madison has become such an opportunity.
Like my father, the men living at the Madison have all served their country. Silently. Proudly. Stoically.
And, like my father, they carry with them memories of the things that have happened, the things they’ve done, the losses they’ve felt and sometimes never known how to express or make sense of.
My father was never homeless, at least not in his adulthood. But, there was a time when he was rootless, lost, alone and feeling abandoned. He never spoke much about those years, about being sent all by himself at nine years of age from London, England to a Catholic boarding school in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan. The Atlantic Ocean and three-quarters of a continent lay between him and home, and he was heartsick. He ran away as a young teen to Montreal, Quebec and worked in a bakery and when war broke out, he lied about his age and joined the RAF.
From then on, his life was a silent story. A book that only he could read, if he ever dared to open the pages.
Giving back to The Madison is my way of giving back to my father. Of making amends for the harsh words I flung at him through my growing years, for the lack of compassion and understanding I never held out to him in his living years.
This year, giving back to The Madison is also a reminder of another very important lesson my father taught me.
For me, I feel like the Christmas at The Madison Benefit Concert is all about the little concert that could. Now entering its fourth year, I am excited to take each next step in its possibilities as it grows into its own strength.
Like the men living at The Madison.
Three years ago, a horde of volunteers accompanied me as we decorated and baked and cooked and served up Christmas dinner with all the fixin’s, including gifts for each of the residents.
Last year, we’d scaled back the size of the crowd so that we didn’t overwhelm the community the men had created at the Madison.
This year, that community of men, along with their team from Alpha House, want to celebrate Christmas of their own making.
It kind of feels like a miracle to me. To evolve from a building of singular men who had only two things in common, they were all veterans and they were all homeless, to a community that wants to create a special day for themselves, is incredible and inspiring and very, very heart-warming.
My father taught me long ago that helping people is very different than supporting them until they can help themselves. People fall in life, he’d say. It is inevitable. Sometimes, they need help to get back up. Never should we become their arms and legs, their hearts and voices. We can’t live someone else’s life, he told me. That’s their job. Just as it’s yours to live yours being and doing the best you can.
This year, the men living at The Madison are doing the best they can to create a Christmas of their own making.
I feel inspired. Giving is receiving and I am grateful for all that I have received.
Namaste.
Let me be the ripple
Not writing here every day has been a gift and an awakening. It has given me the opportunity to gain some awareness on the value and importance of ‘consistency’ and a chance to reflect on why I write and create, and the importance of doing it every day.
As I reflected on the value of consistency, my thoughts centered around the importance of knowing ‘the what’ of what it is I want to be through everything I do, create and say everyday…
What I want to be each day is inspiring, caring, kind, and loving.
I want to create more of what I value in the world — peace, love, harmony and joy.
I want to give the grace I wish to receive.
I want to be the ripple that inspires a tsunami of love all around.
Reflecting on those things I want to create in the world around me, I reframed my ‘wants’ into a ‘here and now’ statement. In the ‘here and now’, they become my daily intentions, the ‘thing’ I frame my thinking and actions for the day on because I know, this is what my day is all about. This is what will bring my heart peace. This is what will create the more of what I want in my world. And, like writing here every morning, the consistency of my intentions becomes my path. Centered on my path, I become that which I create and what I create becomes me. And in those moments when I fall off the path, I breathe and remind myself, Always begin again. And so I do. And so it is.
3rd Annual Christmas at the Madison Benefit Concert — what a ripple!
We were a small and mighty crowd. Together, we laughed and sang and listened to the performers with our hearts wide-open and in the midst of it all, we connected on the common ground of wanting to make a difference in the lives of those who once served their country and then found themselves far from home, lost and alone in that place called homeless.
It’s the thing about homelessness. It doesn’t care who you are or where you’ve come from. Once it finds you on the streets, it drains you of all sense of direction and leaves you feeling lost and alone in the land of no fixed address.
Last night, we gathered to celebrate the music of performers who gave up their time to share their talents at the 3rd Annual Christmas at The Madison Benefit Concert. We were housed and living the homeless experience, and it didn’t matter. The music found us. It stirred our hearts and opened our imaginations to the possibility of what can happen when people come together as one and share their talents, time and treasures.
Last night we raised over $1,500 to support formerly homeless veterans living at The Madison. It was a divine evening filled with great sounds that lifted our spirits and made everyone present feel part of something special and divine!
Thank you to all the performers:
Max Ciesielski
Shannon Jones
Matt Vermunt
Ken Swift
Perry Wilson
Sally Truss
Andrew Franks
Mikaela Cochrane
Felipe Paredes
Brian Pearson (and thank you Brian for being ‘The Sound Guy’. You are a wonderful gift to the world)
Mike Houston
and to our speakers:
Pat Cluff
Detective John Langford
Lorne MacKenzie
You all rocked the house and shone a light for the world to see beyond the label homeless into the heart of our shared human experience where we are connected to one another, no matter where we live. Take a moment please and click on the links in the names above — Like them on Facebook, buy their music and books, support them however you can. They are all uber talented and generous of heart and deserve to be heard the world over!
And thank you to the beautiful, kind-hearted Tamara Van Staden and her talented mother, Bev Boyden Van Staden who together form Heartprints — Kids for a Cause Foundation. I met Tamara when she was in grade seven and wanted to do a fund-raiser for a school project. Now in her third year university, Tamara has raised over $10,000 selling her home-crafted jewellery and knitted designs.
Big thanks also to Lynn McKeown at St. Stephen’s Anglican Church and my generous of spirit friend, Tamara Zaleski. For the past week, Tamara and I have been making Christmas cards to sell at the concert. We’re thinking of changing our art collective name from the Basement Bombshells to The Glitter Gals! (just kidding) — but, my studio is awash in shiny, sparkly glitter, and all the good times we shared creating.
And thank you Megan Eichhorn for the wonderful poster design, Jim Ellis at Petrotech Printing for the help in printing the postcards, my daughter, Liseanne McDonald for her help organizing and staging the concert and Jenny Howe of CBC Radio and Craig Lester of 660 NEWS Radio for helping promote the event. And of course, Kathy Christiansen at Alpha House for the wonderful treats — and for the awesome work you and your team does of caring for homeless Calgarians. You make a difference every minute of every day in so many people’s lives, and you do it with such grace and love and kindness. Thank you.
And of course, to my beloved C.C. who so willingly supports me in whatever way he can — and then has the grace to know when to move out of my way when I’m on a mission! I can be a tad focused at times and forget that others may not see what I see or know what I need (partially because I forget to tell them..:) ). Thank you C.C. for being who you are and for encouraging and supporting me with such love!
Three years ago I started the Christmas at the Madison Benefit Concert as a way to pay tribute to my father, and to support Kathy and her team at Alpha House who manage the programs and services at The Madison. Each year my sisters and friends have come out to support the concert and I am always touched by how blessed I am to have so many wonderful people in my life.
I have worked in the homeless sector here in Calgary for almost 10 years and throughout that time, Kathy has inspired me with her compassion, passion and capacity to honour the humanity at the heart of homelessness. Every day, Kathy, who is the Executive Director at Alpha House and her team create safe and courageous spaces for people to find themselves, no matter where they are, on or off the street. Kathy cares and in her caring, she makes the world a better place.
As C.C. said when our heads hit the pillow, it was a great event, I think you may want to check the schedule for the Grey Cup when you schedule next year’s.
He’s right!
And in the end, it didn’t matter if the Grey Cup was on or not. As Brian Pearson said before the concert, those who are supposed to be here, will be here. He’s right. Those who came shared in creating something special and have started a ripple that will continue to move out and change the world.
Together, we can end homelessness. Together, we do make a difference.
.
Christmas at The Madison Benefit Concert – today!
It’s here!
It’s today!
yeah!
and yes, while I know it is Grey Cup Sunday in Canada, it is also the Christmas at The Madison Benefit Concert. The concert is to support formerly homeless veterans living at The Madison, a 16 unit apartment building owned by The Calgary Homeless Foundation and operated by Calgary Alpha House Society. Alpha House provides housing and supports to 15 formerly homeless veterans as part of Calgary’s Plan to End Homelessness.
If you’re in Calgary and area, it would be lovely to see you there.
The Girl with the Heart of Gold (Part 5: conclusion)
When we left off in Part 4 of The Girl with the Heart of Gold Carrena had asked the king, “Does fear get you more of what you want in your life or less?”
And the king could not answer. He could only stand in front of her and stare with wide open eyes as the sun slipped away from the turret windows and eased beneath the far distant horizon.
And memory invaded his mind and one, tiny, precious tear escaped an eyelid.
************
Part 5.
“It’s you,” the king whispered, staring at Carrena. Another tear eased up over his eyelid and slid down his cheek. and then another and another and another until his eyes shimmered and his face was washed in tears. “Tereza. It’s you.”
Surprised at his words, Carrena took her hands off the soldiers arms and stepped towards the king. There was a gasp from the everyone around her. No one took a step toward the king without permission. No one. At least no one who had ever lived to tell the tale.
But the king didn’t notice. He just kept repeating, “It’s you. It’s you.”
“How do you know my mother’s name?” Carrena asked. “Did you know her?”
The king blinked. “Your mother? Tereza was your mother?” The king could feel a strange sensation inside the walls of his chest. A loud humming sound filled his mind and he felt like his body was tingling all over. He couldn’t remember ever feeling it, even before… No. He would not, could not go there. He looked at Carrena again and demanded, “Was Tereza your mother?”
“Yes, but she died when I was a little girl.” Carrena added as she reached beneath her blouse to pull out a golden locket that hung on a delicate chain around her neck. “Do you want to see her picture?” she asked the king. “She was very beautiful.”
The king took a step back. “No. No. I can’t,” he whispered.
He closed his eyes but the tears kept flowing. The pounding in his body was growing stronger. The humming in his head louder and louder and the tingling in his limbs sharper.
Around him, his minions didn’t know what to do. They feared he would collapse but they dare not touch him. and then it happened. The king began to crumble to the ground.
No one moved, except Carrena. She raced to the king’s side and caught him as he fell.
“Come quickly,” she called to the knight. “Help me ease him to the ground.”
The knight broke through the phalanx of soldiers who stood waiting to imprison him and rushed to aid Carrena.
Gently, he helped her lower the king to the ground.
The king was unconscious to the activity around him. Huge, gasping sobs wracked his body. Tears poured out of his eyes and every part of his being shook.
Carrena knelt beside him where he lay on the ground. She placed one hand on his back and began to rub it. “It’s okay to feel sad,” she whispered to the king. “Tears are the words the heart cannot speak.”
And then she began to sing. “I walk in beauty now. Beauty lies before me. Beauty lies above me, behind and below me.”
The king stopped weeping and gasped, “That song. She used to sing it!” And he began to weep even louder. “Why did she leave me?”
“Who?” Carrena asked. “My mother?”
“Yes!” wailed the king. “They came and stole her from me and I searched and searched and could not find her. And they took my daughter with her. She was just an infant. A tiny, precious baby. And they took her!”
All the staff and minions and soldiers and knights stood in silence around them. They had heard of this story before. But never had the king spoken of it. And none of them had been in the castle at the time. The king had killed everyone whom he blamed for the loss of his wife and child. No one had survived.
“She used to sing that song,” the king whispered as he gulped for air between his tears. And then he stopped talking, sat up and look at Carrena intently, his eyes boring into hers. “What is your name?”
“Carrena,” she told him as she unhooked the locket chain from her neck and opened the locket to show the photo within to the king. “She was my mother.”
The king looked at the photo in the locket and gasped. “No. No. It cannot be.”
Carrena stared at the king where he sat on the floor. He didn’t look that scary or fierce. He just looked very, very scared and sad.
“When I was a little girl my mother told me stories of you,” she told the king. “Lots of them. She told me you were the kindest, most loving man in the world. She told me your heart was so big all the world felt safe in it.” She gestured to the king’s staff standing straight and tall, their eyes not looking at the king but staring straight ahead. “I have wanted my whole life to meet my father with the loving heart and instead I find a man whom everyone fears. Does this make you happy?”
The king shook his head from side to side. “They broke my heart. They broke my heart,” he repeated.
Carrena reached forward and touched the king’s hands where they rested in his lap. “My mother always told me that a broken heart is an open heart and an open heart is a loving heart. What they did was wrong, but you have chosen to keep your heart broken in pieces. Is that what you want?”
“No!” cried the king. “I want Tereza back!”
“So do I,” whispered Carrena gently. “But she cannot come back. She is gone but the love she felt and knew and shared so freely is always here. She taught me that. For years we lived locked inside a castle turret,” and Carrena stopped and motioned at their surroundings. “Much like this one and always, my mother told me that no matter what was happening in the world around us, Love was always the answer. I was only five when she passed away and I still remember her telling me that if there was one thing my father would have wanted it would be that I never give up on Love. Have you given up on love?” she asked the king.
“She is truly gone?” the king asked.
Carrena looked into his eyes. “Yes. But she is here,” and she reached forward and touched the place on his chest where his heart pounded. “She is always in our hearts.”
Quiet, gentle tears flowed down the king’s cheeks. “You look just like her,” he told Carrena. “You have here beautiful blue eyes and sweet, gentle voice.”
“And she always told me I have your heart of gold.”
And the king sighed and the people awoke and from that day forward, the lands began to flourish, the cattle began to give birth and the crops to ripen. Streams began to flow clear and flowers began to bloom in riotous colour all around the kingdom. Carrena married the knight and the laughter of children rang throughout the castle as the sun continued to shine and the moon to rise.
And for eons to come, the story was told of the girl with the heart of gold who melted the king’s stone cold heart. Even a heart of stone can be warmed in loving hands, the people would say. And so it was. Always and forever.
The End.
The Whole story.
Part 1: The Girl with the Heart of Gold
Part 2: The Girl with the Heart of Gold
The Girl with the Heart of Gold (part 4)
At the end of Part 3 of The Girl with the Heart of Gold, the king entered the chambers where the knight was trying to convince Carrena to run away and save herself….
The knight was frightened. But then, living in the kingdom, he was always frightened. The king was unpredictable, a taskmaster and a tyrant. The knight always feared for his life, but this time, his fear was different, it was for another. He feared for Carrena’s life and he didn’t know what to do.
As the king entered the chamber, huffing and puffing from the long climb up the turret stairs, the knight stepped in front of Carrena to block her from the King’s view. He bowed his head and knelt down on one knee. It was the way the king insisted on being honoured when he walked into a room.
Behind him, he could feel Carrena standing tall. He reached back one hand and tugged on the soft cotton of her skirt, trying desperately to get her to kneel.
People had been beheaded for not kneeling in front of the king. He wouldn’t let that happen to Carrena.
But Carrena kept standing. And as sunlight streamed in through the turret windows, she stepped around the knights bowed body to stand beside him. She placed one hand on the knight’s shoulder as a beam of sunlight shone through the window slits in the turret walls. It cast a golden glow around Carrena’s body.
Blinded by the light, the king shifted his eyes to look around the chamber. He gasped when he saw its soft drapes and boughs of flowers and the sleeping mat with the blanket of moss. It was unlike any room in his castle. Fear rose up as memory of another place, another time stirred in his mind, fluttering as gently as butterfly wings.
“Why have you prepared the room for her like this?” the king demanded of the kneeling knight, completely ignoring the young maiden standing in the light beside him. “You have wasted my precious resources on a peasant.” And he turned to his minions crowded in the doorway and ordered them to remove the fittings to the room. “This room is grander than my own chambers. That cannot be so!” and the king turned back to the knight and ordered him to stand.
“You have offended me. You must die.”
The knight stood and bowed his head lower. “Yes my liege. At your command.” He had been the king’s right hand knight for three years, a record achievement in the king’s circle. No one before him had lasted that long without being killed for doing something to offend the king. He knew his fate had been determined the minute he tried to protect the girl.
Carrena gasped. Kill the knight? For what?
Just then, two sentries stepped forward to apprehend the knight. She could not stay silent. She stepped out from the ray of sunlight streaking in through the turret windows and stood in front of the knight. Gently, she put one hand on each of the sentries arms as they approached the knight. Like the knight, they too felt the unaccustomed warmth of her hands and were entranced. They stood still, soaking in the beautiful feelings of warmth and comfort that her touch evoked.
“Is this how you treat all people when they have done your bidding?” she asked, looking directly at the king. Her voice had the lilt of a morning bird’s song, its clear notes echoing throughout the chamber. “He came to my home and brought me here against my will, just as you ordered and now, you want to kill him? Does that make sense to you?”
The king, unaccustomed to being questioned by any of his staff, let along a peasant girl, began to huff and puff and sputter. His face grew red. His eyes bulged as he bellowed, “No one dares to question the king without paying the consequences.” The king spluttered and frothed at the mouth. He closed his eyes tight as if wishing away an apparition. He balled up his hands into tight fists.
Carrena softened her voice even more. “I experience you as someone who has long forgotten what it means to feel loved,” she said.
“What? What?” the king shouted, once again opening his eyes wide. “Do not dare to speak to me about love! You don’t know anything!”
“I know that I am here at your command,” Carrena said. “I know that you seem angry and that you are behaving in ways that hurt your heart and everyone around you fears you. Is that what you want?”
“Yes!” yelled the king, puffing out his chest and pounding it fiercely with both fists. “Fear is my greatest weapon!”
Carrena smiled and in her smile the memory of something long ago stirred once again in the king’s mind. He could feel it, tugging at the back of his mind, pulling at him like a child tugging on his sleeve pleading for his attention. He wanted to swat the memory away. Shove it back into the pit of darkness where he had buried the past. But it would not rest in peace.
Around him, his staff stood in slack-jawed consternation. They had never before heard anyone talk to the king in such a soft and gentle way and they had never ever imagined the king would allow it.
“Does fear get you more of what you want in your life or less?” Carrena asked.
And the king could not answer. He could only stand in front of Carrena whom he could see for the first time with clear eyes as the sun slipped away from the turret windows and eased beneath the far distant horizon.
And memory invaded his mind and one, tiny, precious tear escaped an eyelid.
Conclusion tomorrow….
Part 1: The Girl with the Heart of Gold
Part 2: The Girl with the Heart of Gold
Part 3: The Girl with the Heart of gold
Dare Boldly 