Welcome to our first week on the February art/life trail ride. This week we take a moment to be grateful for the space that we created during January’s Clearing.
‘Marsh Morning’: from ‘My Island Home’, Drozda, Acrylic on canvas, 1989. 54 x 40″
Now, for February, we turn our attention toward breathing in Renewal.
Renewing and renewal are enlivening creative words, don’tcha think?
I personally resonate here as I am born in February so it is my ‘gift keyword’ and renewal has always been easy for me to access. In February I am all about renewing my world view, my connection to others and my relationship to the art/life. We can all be dedicated and even devoted to this vital exercise during this month.
In February we’ll consider what may renew creative vitality and life force.
To renew is to become active. Yet we are still in The Mystery and therefore we are not yet ‘hot to trot’ rather we continue to remain inward and intuitively turned toward recreating and visualizing the dream of what will manifest when we are once again in the saddle. Keep in mind that 15 minutes per day can bring this experience into alignment.
The action we take now is more of a ruminating, mulling, imagining, aspiration sort. Here are some Renewal prompts from Dictionary.com…can you apply them in a quiet and inward manner as you sniff the air and lean toward the coming spring?
Renew: verb (used with object)
to begin or take up again, as an acquaintance, a conversation, etc.; resume
to make effective for an additional period
to restore or replenish
to make, say, or do again
to revive; reestablish
to recover (youth, strength, etc.)
to restore to a former state; make new or as if new again
Verb (used without object)
to begin again; recommence
to renew; a lease, note, etc.
to be restored to a former state; become new or as if new again
Synonyms
recreate, rejuvenate, regenerate, reinstate, mend. Renew, renovate, repair, restore suggest making something the way it formerly was.
To renew means to bring back to an original condition of freshness and vigor: to renew one’s enthusiasm.
Renovate means to do over or make good any dilapidation of something: to renovate an old house.
This month we renew by utilizing the energy of ‘Compassion in Action’…click here to read the full 2016 Lifecycle Forecast: the creative climate for the year ahead.
How might your compassion be renewed?
February is the perfect time for the flowering of compassion.
Listen to the voices of the Ancient Ones as they penetrate the winter stillness:
The seeds are beginning to stir
In the dark womb of the Earth Mother.
Days grow longer and Brother Bear stretches
In his den.
As our hearts likewise stir
And open in love and wisdom…
Joan Borysenko
Consider renewal simply, easily and with a sense of grace.
Simplicity carries you into The Mystery. Our winter quadrant comprised of the 12 weeks between winter solstice and spring equinox might be thought of as a portal. A portal is an opening…a threshold…a place to look through to see what’s coming next.
‘Anima Mundi’, Drozda, reprint of painting as journal page with Rumi quote
WISE WOMAN OF THE WEEK
Welcome our Wise Woman companion on the art/life trail this week.
Long devoted to the simplicity of Zen: Carole Leslie turns her artist eye to the liminal and numinous.
Field Notes, Carole Leslie, Mixed media, 2015
Buddhism & Art…if I had to pick two words that give an overview of what I am up to in this world those would be my choices. Buddhism is the ground upon which I rest all else.
I like to think it brings me some sanity. It helps me think in some logical way about what I am doing and look at it as deeply as possible.
What did I just do?
Why ?
What’s that all about?
To try and look at my life without sliding over things or fooling myself…To be present for life, not rejecting or preferring one experience over another.
Buddhist practice makes my life full and rich, sometimes filled with joy and sometimes with a deep experience of the suffering present in this world.
On the Easel, Carole Leslie, photograph, 2016
After all those words does it seem odd to say that it is the simplicity of Zen that appeals to me?
This inclination to simplicity pulls me to try and integrate my practice and work, to paint Buddhas, to observe my process as I work.
I am drawn to mixed media, integrating script and words with images and colour.
Carole Leslie
http://zendotstudio.blogspot.com/
‘Used to be a Buddha’, Carole Leslie, Mixed Media, 24 x 24”
‘New Studio’, Carole Leslie, photograph, 2015
Thank you Carole for bringing us ‘Compassion in Action’ breath by breath.
See you next week as we continue to relate to Renewal in a way that prepares us to get back on the trail. We’ll be hopping back into the saddle in just a few short weeks.
Compassion Action for this week…
Introspect your relationships with The Mystery by renewing with these inquiries:
What can I simplify?
How do I meet the liminal and numinous?
In your wise woman series you have featured two women who I admire and whose work I admire. Both Valerianna and Carole have a calmness about them that shines through their beautiful art. Lovely posts Donna. My word for the year is LISTEN. After reading your words of wisdom in an email a few months ago I decided to listen to those wise women who cross my path…. you being one of them, of course. Thank you 🙂
Listen is an action word that I have much respect for. I often wonder why it was not chosen by Sun Bear as one of the 12 keywords for following the rhythms of the Natural Year. Thanks for bringing it into the conversation during this month of Renewal Robyn…Listening for where in our art/life Renewal is making itself known can rock the boat and instigate creative expansion.
Listen UP^
Thank you so much for bring forward the state of Liminal, “the sensory threshold”. The word literally rolls off the tongue. This is a place that it’s wonderful to languish in. Liminal is also the “in-between” state, not quite here or there. This kind of “other” requires me to seek grounding and balance even though there’s magic to find within it.
RE: your RE words. I was on a New Year’s retreat in 2008 where we shared our new years intention and vision. I had come up with a big list of re words, most on your list. I’ll add that relate to renewal: recreate, release, recollect, reach, ready, real, revenant and relevant. I find it fascinating the prefix re can hold so much. It holds both an indication of previous condition and reputation of action. We so live in a re world. Lets make it extraordinary and REmarkable.
Namaste’
Joanne
~Thank you Joanne~
Your reflections on the liminal are poetic and add to the ways that we can breathe in and make this liminality our own.
…how delicious, during this time of The Mystery, to be invited to peer deeply into this dream-like sill opening to the REmarkable, relevant, and reverent next steps on the art/life trail ride.