Childhood Dreams – Sunday Deck Talk and Meditation

Images Above: Pet Shop 1967 Acrylic paint
Third Grade assignment: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Childhood Dreams

Recently, I made another pass at cleaning out my storage room 
and found this painting.
I shared it with my friend Barry. He recognized it as Outsider art. 
I recognized it as a rebellious 3rd grader wanting to get back at
her teacher for scaring her. 

This fear is not like the fear that children are facing now in 
war-torn countries.
Even back then, war-torn Vietnam 
was on the news, with young children in 
parents’ arms. 
This fear was nothing compared to then and now.

1967, innocently, I painted a pet shop, housing all the animals that
occupied my life. 

My dog Cinnamon would occasionally
get out, walk to school and sit to wait for me.
One day, Mrs. Passmore demanded
to know whose dog it was in the schoolyard.  
I raised my hand gingerly, and she angrily told me to take the dog
home immediately. 
The fear that I felt got embedded in my physiology and stayed there.
Realizing now, that is what stress felt like.
It stays in your physiology
until you can settle down enough to release it.
I re-cognize that I painted this out of fear.
I saw a way to hold my animals
in a square box at a pet shop with my parents present.
So my teacher could not get to them.
About 15 years ago, I ran into my teacher back home 
and said hello. I confessed to her my 3rd grade fear.
She shared how sorry she was, but that actually she
sent me home with my dog, so the dog pound truck would not
come and take my dog away. 

I am struck by a few things here:
How wrong I read the situation.
How important it was for me to have my own shop for protection.
How can we help the children of today not hold onto fear? 
 
Every day, we can energize our thoughts in positive directions and
bring that energy to all that we do…
And likewise, no matter what, we can also draw negative thoughts into our awareness,
thus cultivating negative energy around us. 
We sit in meditation, to give our bodies the capabilities of releasing stress.

Art is a way to recognize our inner feelings,
unexplainable at times, yet resonant all the same.
And Meditation is a way of releasing stress.
Maybe a craft shop for children in the future?
Along with Meditation. 
A perfect blend.

04.27.2025 Deck Talk available upon request info@fifthfloormeditation.com