Artful Life Moon Circle - New Moon! Creating Sanctuary

I found this image on this Twilight series fan page (I was just googling new moon images - honest!) I don't usually love this silky airbrush fantasy style at all - but there's something about this that evokes the soft and magical marine new moon twilights of the place I live.

Welcome to the first Artful Life Moon Circle! (You can read about this circle in this post). I'm very much looking forward to sharing our New Moon intentions, and feeling the power of those intentions increase as the moon grows. To get you started, here are some ideas for positive intention setting:

• Small steps are best. You can build on small steps. My ambitious intention to "transform my home into a sanctuary" can begin with the do-able intention to "organize and beautify my bedroom this month, and cultivate the habit of keeping it that way!"
• Maybe you have a long list of stuff that could be better - and you want to do it all. I know! But wholeheartedly committing to your one intention allows you to focus, and succeed. There will be many more moons!
• What area of your life needs the most attention right now? Can you set an intention for nurturing that area? The seven keys to an artful life include these facets of life: body, spirit, self-care, livelihood, home, creativity, and relationships. Which facet is crying out for attention in your life?
• Once you set your intention, find some quiet time during this new moon day to write about it (or collage it!) in your journal, and share as much of that writing as you want here. Give yourself some manageable action steps and ink them in to your calendar "On Friday I will paint my bedroom floor white." " Next Tuesday I will go to yoga class" etc.
• So... your intention might look like this: "My home is crying out for attention. It doesn't reflect how I really feel inside, and it doesn't feel like the orderly, nurturing, sacred environment I want it to be! I want my home to be a sanctuary! This moon, I will start by bringing the feeling of sanctuary to my bedroom. I will organize, paint the floor, and slipcover the chair. I will spend 5 or 10 minutes daily keeping it orderly and clean. I can commit to this intention. .. it is the first step towards my ideal of home as sanctuary."
• Please share as much or as little as you'd like here. You can tell us what is hard, what you want, where you feel stuck, and how you would like to begin.
  

So my own intention for this moon, as you've heard, has to do with creating sanctuary. A sanctuary is a holy place, a place of protection, a place of refuge. How deeply I want my life to better reflect that ideal! I want the feeling of sanctuary to fill my heart, and spill over into all areas of my life! Notice I have said creating sanctuary; not the more usual finding sanctuary - because I am coming to see that the sacred and peaceful heart is made by us every day; it is created piece by piece through our accumulated actions and thoughts. This all sounds quite grand! But for this Moon, I want to begin creating sanctuary in the most tangible and mundane way - by beginning to transform my relationship with my home.

I have always seen the wisdom in the ideas that our physical surroundings mirror our psychic state, that transforming the energy flow in our homes can transform our personal energy, and that, to put it plainly, gentle order is good for the soul. At the same time, I have struggled with the drudgery, and the politics, of housework, and my inner rebel has balked (digging in the heels of her Docs) at engaging wholeheartedly in something so... well... conventional. Don't get me wrong - I like making my home beautiful, and my friends occasionally accuse me of being organized. The thing is, the process has never been joyful. There has been intentional self-denial and self-sabotage. And fear. And a lack of authenticity. And plenty of grime and dust bunnies (which are sooo not as cute as they sound.) And I really haven't been able to figure it out, or find a way to joyfully and consistently create sanctuary in my surroundings. Which is what I want to do! But now... somehow, mysteriously, over the last few weeks, something has clicked into place for the first time: caring for my home can be an act of self-love, and act of devotion, a creative outlet, and a spiritual practice all at once. Wow. I kind of got this in theory before, but I'm starting to feel it, and with that feeling, find some ease in doing it. This is all really new, and it feels good, and I want to use this New Moon to really set that intention to begin to joyfully and consistently create sanctuary in my surroundings........
and watch what other gifts and lessons this doing might bring into my life.

That's it! And you?