ARTFUL GATHERINGS

Shine

This is where I will be in two weeks and I am so excited. This will be my first artist retreat/workshop and I will be at Squam.

I am a slightly scared ( maybe petrified) because I do know a sole attending this workshop but I am also thrilled to meet new people.

I have been reading After the Ecstasy the Laundry. How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path by Jack Kornfield. I just read this amazing quote

Perhaps this is the best we can do: to help when we can; to witness each other with kindness; to offer our presence; to show the trust we have in life. Spiritual life is not about knowing much, but about loving much.

Fly Free

August 26 - August 28, 2007 Acceptance is the practice of being at home within ourselves, our lives and the universe. Being at home means that we claim our place in order of things and willing to summit to this order even though we cannot comprehend it fully. Christina Baldwin

Art as a spiritual discipline entails paying attention to images and opening ourselves to their unique expressions rather than trying to fix the problems we think they represent. The unsettling image is an ally of the soul that helps me reframe how I am looking at life and living it." — Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul Shaun Mcniff

Today I immersed myself in my journals. I repainted pages. I added images and text on to my journal pages. I just played and I let the colors, shapes and forms on the pages be my guide. I tried no to over think or rationalize my designs. I followed my instincts. I guess in reference to last year... today I was trying to just be at home to with  my ideas and to just accept them and not try to fix the designs.I was trying to stay open to the unique expression I had created and elaborate on the design not change it.  Maybe this could be a metaphor for life. To elaborate on ones already existing life,to fly free in the life one has created.

School

August 23 2007- August 24 2007  For  our children are but gifts that we are given, A moments grace we are asked to shape and share. C. Myss

August 25, 2007 Please God keep my family safe healthy and happy as they all return to school

My Children young and old  have all returned to school. My house is quiet which is nice (for me) after a very loud summer. I pray that my children's guardian angels keep them safe the entire day.  Tonight everyone will sleep well as the alarms started at chirping  5:30 A.M. this morning and will do the same tomorrow morning.

Now I must find my way to the kitchen. Everyone in this house is complaining that they need food and drink because they are starving. 

A toast to the start of yet another school year.

Runaways

August 21 2007 - August 22, 2007  Calvin: That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria! 

H : "What are you doing?" 

C : "Being cool." 
H : "You look more like you're bored." 
C : "The world bores you when you're cool."

Okay I altered my quotes from last year. But I just returned from seeing Megan in the musical Runaways (Runaways is a musical which was written, composed and directed by Elizabeth Swados, about the lives of children who run away from home and live on the city streets. The characters were taken from workshops conducted by Swados with real-life runaways in the late 1970s.) After a wonderful but tragic show I needed to laugh.

Dust

 August 20, 2007  "What you resist persists". Carl Jung

Tonight I am resisting going to bed. I am trying to eliminate a blue line that has appeared underneath my words in this post. I should be attending to random household chores especially dusting but that does not excite me this evening. Really playing with my blog or scrubbing a toilet? Is that a question that deserves an answer. So the dirty toilets and dusty furniture will be as they are one more night and possible one more day.

I am trying to get back to being more creative. I have been playing with my journals and adding color. I am experimenting with both oil and chalk pastels. I am also adding splashes of watercolor washes In hopes of proving true Pablo Picasso's words Art washes away the dust of everyday life.

Nature

 August 18 2007    "The truest measure of our heart is how we create love and hope in the hearts of the children." Kent Nerburn

August 19, 2007  Enjoyment, like praise, is one of the most beneficially healing and naturally occurring states, as children and beasts can teach us. Dr. Maria Jaodi

This morning I was rereading the quote from Dr. Maria Jaodi and I found the source or the article from which the quote was from. Here is an exert...."What kind of secrets exist in a state of wakefulness?  Rumi tells us:

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to
Kneel and kiss the ground. (4)

Enjoying nature is not just a weekend activity, or a one week family vacation.  It is a way of being and doing that pervades everyday life.  Enjoyment, like praise, is one of the most beneficially healing and naturally occurring states (again, children and beasts can teach us).  To bring such a state of creative seeing into our home and offices, schools and farms, would indeed change us from users into appreciators. " 

I love nature. I realized as I was playing with images from an old journal that my favorite colors are pigments from the natural world. I marvel at the different colors of dirt. Justin, my youngest loves shapes and colors of rocks. Megan loves flowers especially snapdragons. Allison loves water and she would prefer to live at the beach.  PJ now loves to play outside...skateboarding, snowboarding...As a child he loved animals and was always my child to find critters ( especially frogs and toads). With his vivid imagination he would  make them special habitats. The day I found a huge bullfrog in a square fish tank in the basement I convinced him that all frogs and toads needed to live in their natural environments outside. Our basement and garage were not natural habitats for these critters.

I have been blessed with the life that has allowed me to be a stay at home Mom and raise four children who love to be outside. Now if I could found a way to rent a villa in Tuscany for a month next summer....that would be the most amazing summer adventure.

Poetry

August 15, 2007  Friendship

August 16, 2007  Poetry 

August 17, 2007  You are me, and I am you.
Isn't it obvious that we "inter-are"?
You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.
I support you;
you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy.Thich Nhat Hanh

I have been playing with images to illustrate the words I  wrote a year ago. 

Friendship  

Poetry   

Intelligence

August 14, 2007  Intelligence  Through the course of our lives, this goodness, warmth and intelligence can easily become covered over by doubt, fear and egotism. We tend to fall into a kind of sleep or stupor, believing in the conditioning we have as the ultimate truth, and coming under the sway of fear. The journey of becoming fully human means seeing through fear and egotism, and waking up to our natural intelligence. It takes kindness—to ourselves and others—and courage, to wake up in this world.  author unknown 

"Intelligence comes from the Latin verb "intellegere", which means "to understand". By this rationale, intelligence (as understanding) is arguably different from being "smart" (able to adapt to one's environment), or being "clever" (able to creatively adapt)." Wikipedia

 

                                                                     

I am not sure how al these images relate to intelligence but I did not think I just went with my instincts. Who knows maybe later tonight I will  delete these images or I will write a post that will tie this post together. At this moment I need to be heading to be car because I am going out  for an early dinner with Megan and Rebecca at a new restaurant named The Black Hog. 

Strength

August 11 2007 - August 13, 2007 " Four Brothers meditation"... Intelligence, Friendship, Strength, and Poetry. These are the four virtues a person needs to be happy in life. I read this in Eat Pray Love

I am tired and I am calling on my four brothers to protect me while I sleep. The reason I am so tired is I adore the olympics and I am staying up late every night to watch swimming, gymnastics and diving which are my favorites sports at the moment. I am getting very little else accomplished. I did find images to represent one of the four virtues. For me these three pictures symbolize ......

Strength

 Strength

Defeated

August 9, 2007  I need to stop resisting, open wide to reality, and decode the message.

Elizabeth Lesser

August 10, 2007  Drum sounds rise on the air, and with them my heart. A voice inside the beat says, I know you are tired but come. This is the way. Rumi

 Today I am tired. The chores of life seem endless. I am feeling defeated. The clutter, the chaos, the disorder, and the rubbish have won. I cannot even finish this post because I must leave to pick up Megan.

 But I will return home and pour myself a glass of wine and watch the Olympics. I love the olympics and I am amazed at the accomplishments of the athletes. Maybe I will stop whining....just maybe.