In How to Thrive in Changing Times, Sandra says,
I nurture the web of light whenever my heart calls me to… Truly our work is to learn how to shine our light into the world with each breath and step we take.
In a lovely novel, titled The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder, which was reviewed in The Seattle Times by Melinda Bargreen, we meet Calla Lily Ponder, whose mission is to change the world, one hairdo at a time. Here’s what Bargreen says about the protagonist of The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder:
Calla Lily is a sweetie who’s almost too good to be true. She’s pure of heart, spunky and resilient, deeply devoted to her adoring family, and equipped with magically healing hands that massage the troubles right out of the scalp of her hairdressing clients. She also hears messages from the Moon Lady…
Bargreen, who has written extensively about classical music for her newspaper, doesn’t mention the major roles played by music and dance in Calla Lily’s transformative ways, but she does note that the story is full of miracles. Calla’s parents, Papa and M’Dear, teach her the first lessons in happiness, both how to enjoy it and how to spread it around, by modeling an exceptionally harmonious married relationship. They run a dance studio where the local folk gather to have a good time and shake off the cares of hard-working country existence.
M’Dear also sends out ripples of joy and contentment into the world through her hairdressing business, where she passes on to Calla the healing rituals of everyday life. M’Dear bolsters the self-confidence of the insecure, reassures the aging of their continued attractiveness, comforts the bereaved, and generally exerts a constant positive influence on everyone she meets. M’Dear is apt to say things like, “You’ve got to celebrate every season, not just Christmas and Easter. There’s beauty in every day of the year.” She also teaches her young daughter about the Moon Lady, a benevolent spirit who watches over the whole town of La Luna.
M’Dear suffers a lingering illness, giving Calla plenty of opportunity to put into practice all the little ways of assuaging and cheering that she has learned. When she departs from earth, the beloved mother joins the Moon Lady as a helper spirit that Calla can always count on, through a life filled with extremely demanding friendships and a large share of tragedy. For instance, not long after M’Dear’s death, Calla’s boyfriend goes away to college, promising to write, but never does. She picks herself up, dusts herself off, and decides to spend some time in New Orleans at a really good beauty school.
Another legacy of M’Dear and Papa is a spectrum of healthy attitudes, somewhat unusual for the rural South, in such matters as race and sexuality. This is all for the good, because Calla’s next teacher (and Teacher) is a gay hairdresser named Ricky, who comes from the same tradition as M’Dear, telling his students how it’s no accident that “beautician” and “magician” sound very much alike. (By the way, did you know that St. Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of hairdressers? One of them, anyway.)
Calla’s gift for connection is so contagious, it’s irresistible. When Ricky introduces her to his cousin, you can already hear the wedding bells. Unfortunately, she loses this wonderful man to an oil-rig accident after far too short a time together. But there is a happy ending. The whole book is happy, even the parts that deal with hardship, because spirituality is always close to the surface. It does show marvelous examples of how we can all perform little miracles every day, no matter how humble our profession, how empty our pocketbook, or how harsh life seems at any given moment.
SOURCE: “The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder: a sweet, spunky dose of Southern charm,” The Seattle Times, 7/3/09
SOURCE: “How to Thrive in Changing Times”
Image by Kerala Tourism , used under its Creative Commons license.
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