Week 4 Tasks: Recovering A Sense of Integrity

1. Environment: Describe your ideal environment.

Cabin in the woods. Probably the easiest task ever...didn't even have to think twice about that one. There have to be tons of trees, and neighbors fairly close just in case something crazy happens (I would be terrified to live in a remote house. You know the ones--where you're on a road trip and you see nothing for miles, then a single house, and then nothing else for miles on end).

Oh and the cabin has to have that cabiny smell. Not sure if it's pine or what, but that smell of wood has to attack your nostrils when you walk in. And even though I live in Texas currently, where there are no mountains (at least where I live), someday I will have this cabin in the mountains. Possibly with a lake. And a dock near the cabin so I can jump in the lake whenever I want.

What's your favorite season?

Here is my post on my personal blog in September of 2008 (I was living in Utah at the time):

I love love love the fall. I look forward to it every year. The leaves change to this beautiful red-orange color, there's a bite to the air, and for some reason, it always feels like something so exciting is just right around the corner. I always feel closer to family and friends during this time too. Maybe it's pre-Christmas feelings...who knows.

Fall means football, which always meant bonding with my marching band friends (since we were together pretty much every day). Now football means spending time with my husband, and having something in common with my dad, who is obsessed with BYU football.

Fall means that the hot, yucky summer is over. Houston summers are never very fun, despite how much I love the humidity. Although Houston does not show the change in seasons as well as Utah, fall was always a looked-forward-to respite from the heat for me. Now I get rewarded with not only less heat, but so much more magic here in Utah.

Fall means that not only do the leaves change color, but when they fall on the ground you can hear that satisfying crunch crunch as you walk around. I have a distinct memory of {Husband} and I wrestling in those crunchy leaves outside of Helaman Halls. I've had leaf fights with roomies. They get caught in your hair, in your clothes--signs of a battle well fought.

Fall means love to me, much more than Valentine's Day. That's when I had my first boyfriend, my first kiss, fell in love for the first time...Although {Husband} and I started dating in the summertime, I don't really associate our "courtship" with the summer. He was gone for most of it at college while I was in back home. No, it was in the fall.

Fall means hot apple cider, pumpkin everything, and lots and lots of candy corn. That pretty much says it all. :)

2. Write your own Artist's Prayer:

O Great Creator
You are the Ultimate Creator--the God of all things
Help me to Create
To not be afraid to be laughed at
To not be afraid to be corrected, either.
For I am always learning...
Always shaping who I am
Into who I wish to become.

O Great Creator
Help me come closer to you,
Because it is through you
That I can create beauty
To spread that beauty to others
But first I must create that beauty within.

Help me to become whole.

Just for your reference, here is Julia Cameron's Artist's Prayer:

O Great Creator,
We are gathered together in your name
That we may be of greater service to you
And to our fellows.
We offer ourselves to you as instruments.
We open ourselves to your creativity in our lives.
We surrender to you our old ideas.
We welcome your new and more expansive ideas.
We trust that you will lead us.
We trust that it is safe to follow you.
We know you created us and that creativity
Is your nature and our own.
We ask you to unfold our lives
According to your plan, not our low self-worth,
Help us to believe that it is not too late
And that we are not too small or too flawed
To be healed -
By you and through each other - and made whole,
Help us to love one another,
To nurture each other's unfolding,
To encourage each other's growth
And understand each other's fears.
Help us to know that we are not alone,
That we are loved and lovable.
Help us to create as an act of worship to you.