Sunshine Coast SoulCollage®

Council card: The Fool

A synchronicity of symbols

While in Vancouver, BC recently, I was delighted to discover an art installation by Yue Minjun, an avant-garde Chinese artist, newly in place at English Bay. It’s a sculpture collection of giant laughing human figures, each bearing the artist’s own face. Yue Minjun has made such laughing self-portraits, done in many media, his creative trademark, part of what has been called China’s “cynical realism” movement.

I had never seen these figures before and yet I recognized the faces right away: they were the same ones that appear on my Fool card (above) and on my Shame card. When I tore them out of an art magazine to make my SoulCollage cards, I had no idea who Yue Minjun was and paid little attention to the artist. Yet I discovered them in Vancouver in three dimensions, the same morning I was there to do my first SoulCollage workshop in the city.  That was a great surprise and reaffirming touch of synchronicity. 

What stories do your SoulCollage cards reveal?

Share your stories

If you have a special SoulCollage story, please feel free to email it to me with a jpeg version of your card and at least one related I AM ONE WHO phrase.  I will share a selection on this web page.

Breast cancer card #2 by Anne Marie Bennett

Here’s a story of courage from Anne Marie Bennett, a SoulCollage facilitator in Massachusetts and a breast cancer survivor:  

December 2001. Breast cancer was the furthest thing from my mind. I was busy: a husband, a home, three stepchildren, a good job. Then, a routine, suspicious mammogram. A phone call. Mammogram #2. A stereotactic core biopsy. 

I look good. I feel good. Yet nothing can quiet the storms of fear that sometimes threaten to overwhelm me: the insidious fear that the breast cancer might return. The intimidating fear of another fateful diagnosis.

I have meditated and prayed about this. I have talked about it with my therapist and with other breast cancer survivors. I have tried guided imagery, journaling, and art journaling. These have all tempered the fear to some extent, but only for a short while.

I began practising SoulCollage® and my inner dynamics began to change. . .

I AM ONE WHOSE left breast was disfigured.

I AM ONE WHO covers her breast with her hand to protect it, even now that it is too late.

I AM ONE WHO looks in the mirror with dread and disgust at my mismatched breasts.

I AM ONE WHO survived the lightning that destroyed my left breast.

I AM ONE WHO grieves the loss of my perfect, full breasts.

  *                              *                               *                          

Committee card: The Writer

I want to share my Alice Walker inspiration:

As a professional writer, I cherish my Committee card The Writer, which  includes an image of author and activist Alice Walker. I admire her sensitivity and insights, her willingness to speak boldly against injustice, and the skill and power behind her words, as revealed in her Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple.

Years ago, I felt immediately drawn to the picture of Walker that now appears on my card. I bought the image as a postcard in a bookstore, even when I was barely familiar with her work. In 2008, as a Canadian working temporarily in San Francisco, I felt delighted to hear Walker read from her latest children’s book. Her message of nonviolence, combined with her powerful presence and spontaneous, insightful words, inspired me deeply. She seemed like a kindred spirit to the SoulCollage community.

After her reading, I approached Walker and showed her my Writer card, which I felt bore an element of tribute towards her. I explained the process of SoulCollage. It seemed that as soon as she heard the word “Soul”, she cried out: “Oh, I love that.” She took my card and signed it on the back with a big heart,  which now appears on this site’s home page.

I was thrilled. This connection gave me a palpable sense of the strength and breadth of community in SoulCollage, particularly since I was away from friends, loved ones, and my spiritual network while in California. The process of SoulCollage can reach out to people in many unimaginable ways, both immediately and over time.

From Frank McElroy of Marblehead, MA and Roberts Creek, BC, Canada:

Meditation card

Meditation is probably an essential part of connecting to our world, to life.  I’ve never been able to sit still, empty my mind in a small space, except when driving.  Early experiences were trips with my dad, especially, from New York to Toronto or Georgian Bay, Ontario:  eight to 12 hours in a sort of suspended state. 

Over the last three years, I’ve driven between Marblehead and Roberts Creek five times, 3,500 miles in 54 hours or less (with one exception).  Despite the exhaustion, it has been a healing time, alone, in the car, driving way too fast in the middle of the expanse of North America.  The faster the better, often way over 100 miles per hour. Nothing to see but the plains, hills and mountains that fashion the horizon, particularly heading west, my favourite direction.

 Now that I’ve promised me and my spouse not to do that drive again under similar circumstances, I find that I miss some unexpected parts of it, particularly the 600 miles of South Dakota and its three or four turns.  There is something extraordinarily beautiful, even intoxicating, about a giant expanse without the invasion of humanity. 

In all those hours, I never played the radio or a tape or DVD.  It was like being at sea in a sailboat, or crossing Lake Ontario in 1973:  a direct connection of sorts.  In all of those meditations, I never stopped to see a single attraction. 

I remember seeing Devil’s Tower in Wyoming from 30 miles away and thinking about a close encounter there.  That will be the trip I take with my spouse, one that will take more than a month and average about 30 miles per hour.  It won’t be my meditation.  It will be an experience of love.