Welcome to the art/life trail! I’m so glad that you are here.
Within a few short weeks we will jump back into the saddle and begin a fresh ride around the Natural New Year. On the art/life trail we’re tracking each next step in the ongoing and unlimited creative process. We benefit by remembering that imagination and creative expression are unique to each of us…no two creative voices are the same. How thrilling!
We’ve just left the February challenge of Renewal. Naturally I took the challenge…and as a result I have a new way to share the joy and wonder of the art/life trail with you…ta da…my first vlog entry:
Please leave a comment…I invite you to consider what this new walk around the Natural Calendar means for you. What do you dream to create? Thoreau taught me many years ago that to “affect the quality of the day is the highest of arts.”
Take this as your March month long challenge:
Sense into the deepest dream for your art/life. Journal, allow each hand to have its turn in responding to your inquiry. See what you are yearning to give birth to as you allow both sides of your brain to communicate.
Ask:
What do I want to have come of this time?
What is this time for?
What touches, moves and inspires ME?
We’ve been traveling down and inward since October. Now we begin to turn toward the Topside world. As we hop back into the saddle and begin to move out of the womb cave and into the bigger world we will be both challenged and ignited.
For these next two weeks you can prepare by consciously remembering to rest, replenish, wander and wonder. The idea is to dream the dream as you prep to midwife yourself into this never before opportunity.
It’s a super exciting and potent year as we open to a new Global creative Decade…as you step through the threshold of 2017 you and me and we are setting the tone and the timber for the unfolding of something wonderful to emerge. It requires guts and gumption to remain focused. You deserve to create the best of who and what you can be.
I look forward to sharing the trail ride with you and gathering ’round the fire’ to welcome and remember the way back to Center…together there is no limit to what we can create.
Here are two poems from my book Twenty Two Prayer Poems for Care Givers:
The Sun, the Moon, the Stars
“Twinkle twinkle little star…”
Dear Beloved,
I see and sense and feel the child
That is filled with wonder at this time.
I remember when You taught me that
We are all like library books on loan
From God’s library.
None of us know when it will be time for our return.
As I visit this one who is so soon to depart
My thoughts go to the beauty of the chapters
Which You have crafted for this life.
Whenever there was suffering or sadness
You brought relief.
Whatever obstacles or barriers
Presented themselves
You indicated a path to travel.
It is time now for this one to return to You.
Like any good book we wish for a happy ending.
Let this one be tenderly embraced during
This rite of passage.
Hold this one gently in Your loving light.
I can see the pages turn slowly signaling
“The end” and I weep tears of joy.
For having known this ones story
I can share it until I too am called back
Home to You.
Amen
Journal Page, Drozda, ink/paper, 14 x 11″
The Ancestors
“She who we have loved and lost is no longer where she was before,
she is now wherever we are.”
English Gravestone Inscription
Dear One,
I am with this one who
Now seems so alone
Lying so still before me
I feel that soon the soul will fly.
I feel the presence of the ancestors
Who came before and who now wait
To be reunited in spirit with this one.
Life is so rich and full and wonder filled
And so must be the passage that this one is soon to make.
I recall that You have taught me that
The idea of life and death is all an illusion.
You said think of it as a dream,
Consider the waking dream
Consider the sleeping dream
Ask often, “Did I dream this?”
You remind me time and again
To not take this place so personally.
This is an opportunity for me to
Practice letting go of my need to
Have things be different than they are.
I will weave a frame of holiness
Around this one and trust that
There is no death
For it is love that brings us here and
It is love that keeps our ancestors alive.
Amen
A Deep Hunger #5, Drozda, Acrylic/board, 18 x 18″, 2006
You are infectiously adorable in the video, Donna! I could tell that you were nervous yet much less so than when you did the interview with Medea 18 months ago! You look happy and very fulfilled. What I would really like to see is a video or a blog where you drop ALL preconceived notions of what you are going to say/write. The ENERGY of your being, your sincere desire to share your gifts with us, remains with me much more tangibly than any words you spoke. I think there is something completely unprecedented that wants to be born through you. And when it arrives, I look forward to sharing and rejoicing in its existence with you.
~ Hello Beth ~ Thanks so much for your feedback. I so appreciate your reflection because it brings to mind the beauty of taking one imperfect action after another as we travel the art/life trail…I applaud the completely unprecedented and extraordinary that is being conceived within each of us! That’s the idea of being on the art/life trail…traveling together supports all that we will each midwife within the community. As my teachers often remind, and as we each have learned, “You can’t become yourself by yourself.” Here we go…entering into the new, unprecedented Natural New Year! AH HO!!