Autumn Means It’s Theme Time

I have to take a brief break from the Creative Journaling series because autumn is near.  The leaves are showing tiny spots of color, and the chrysanthemums and sedum are in bud.  This morning I saw flocks of birds stripping the berries off the honeysuckle.  In my world, that means it is time for me to start my annual search for an idea for the next year’s theme.

I do this every year, and it is fraught with a sense of frustration and a vague feeling of upset, anxiety, like being homeless.  It’s understandable, because I’ve been quite at home with the current year’s theme (“Windows”), and now I have to move myself on to a new challenge, like a child, moving from a comfortable grade to a whole new class room, with so many unknowns.

I spoke some months before about themes in journaling.  Good themes are hard to find because there are so many choices, and at the same time they have to be appropriate to the individual person and where I feel I am inside at the present time.  They should be broad enough to offer a range of new ideas and accommodate new situations, yet just narrow enough in focus to offer new insights. 

And there is a practical problem, too.  In the past, I have kept the.New theme Candidates in a list at the end of my current journal – not a good idea, I’ve found from bitter experience, because I have to go back through at least thirty old journals as I consider previous good ideas, but not yet used.  This year, I’m smarter – I took a small miscellaneous note pad, and have transferred all my theme ideas into it.  It was tedious, but necessary.  So, from now on, all I have to do is add any brilliant new ideas to my on-going theme list in the “Journaling Theme Book.”  (Too soon old, too late smart!) 

However, with that in mind I thought I would share some theme topics I’ve considered, as they might spark ideas.  So here we go…

Morning Songs                         Oasis

Foot Steps                               Well-Lived

Connections                             Then & Now

Fear Not                                  Reflections

Left-Overs                               Sights Unseen

Sign Language                          Bricolage

Patchwork                                Trick of Light

Mind’s Eye                               Lost & Found

No Matter                                Inside Out

Pathway                                   Outward Bound

Breathless                                 Cracks

At that point, everything suddenly fell together.  I felt relieved, satisfied, happy again, as I set up and customized my journal for the new year, 2015.  I found my theme by remembering a quotation I had run into earlier this year.  It is the refrain of a lyric/poem by Leonard Cohen, called “Anthem.”  (see below.).  But it suddenly flashed new possibilities for me.- not for things broken, but for the new light which shows through and becomes possible, the new insights, which emerge because of them.  I think, too, it makes a good “next step,” from Windows to all the new kinds of light, of understanding which hopefully will become visible to me. 

Some Words of Encouragement:

·        “Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering;

There’s a crack in everything,

That’s how the light gets in.”  [“Anthem” – Leonard Cohen]

·        “Perfection is for the next world.” [Shoghi Effendi]

·         “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” [Plato]