As you know who follow this blog, I’m on fire because of the online art course, BIG, that I just completed. Luckily, the inspiration grows because of the Facebook tribe for all the BIG painters who have gone before me.

Hali has inspired me with her Art as Prayer project.  I intend to participate and maybe you’ll be drawn to do that too.

Then a video made by friends of another Fearless artist moved me with their artistic message for re-imagining our lives.

My own first attempt at presenting a slide show about Ecstatic Postures and mounting it on YouTube makes me laugh now that I have read the book, PresentationZen by Garr Reynolds. I can’t wait to redo the powerpoint with zen in mind!

And then, and then I’m powerfully inspired to create a new video to answer the question lodged in my soul: What is the ALL that I want to leave behind for my descendants?

Immediate answer: My love for living on this miraculous, mysterious, flourishing earth.

And then here comes Theodore Richards and his book Cosmosophia.

I began reading it two months ago and it is so full of deep thoughts and dense information, a global overview of religious traditions and early cosmologies that I stumbled and put it aside. I returned a few days ago and along about page 161 and Chapter Nine I started shouting Yes, Yes, YES. Dog eared page after page. I couldn’t keep up with writing notes to myself in the back. My book has actually changed shape with all those dog ears. I can’t imagine Kindle ever being so sensually gratifying!

Richards begins and ends the book with the womb, many wombs actually. I find that riveting because they relate to an epiphany in my own life. I have written several books, though never published. I’ve begun the “same” book three times now and was looking for inspiration in the Spring of 2008. I asked for a dream. And I got one – a huge one that relates to being truly born on earth. I’ll share that story, maybe on Friday, because I feel the need to paint it, too. In the meantime, I want to share a bit of Richards’ thinking on the subject of womb because it relates. On page 36, he writes under this sub-heading:

Cosmosophia: The Compassionate Wisdom of the Cosmic Womb

In keeping with the oldest of the Wisdom Traditions…wisdom can be understood not so much as something that comes from humanity, but is embedded in the mysterious processes of the cosmos. Cosmic wisdom is the capacity of the Universe to experience itself as a coherent and compassionate whole – a womb – even as it gives birth to novelty. As I watch my infant daughter in her crib, I can see in her eyes a yearning both to learn and grow and to regain the sense of safety and nourishment she felt in the womb. The newness of the world into which she has been born…allows for new connections to be made. . .and at the same time, there is something lost in her departure from the intimacy of the womb. For the rest of her life, she will strive. . .to regain a felt sense of the world as her new womb…What we seek is not a return to the womb we have left but to embrace the metaphorical womb into which we have been born.

Imagine the world as a safe and nurturing womb for all of us. Delicious idea, isn’t it. Makes me want to dance, to feast, to celebrate.

Then we held the Birthing Posture, remained in silence afterward and began painting how it feels to be me now. Ahhhhhh the color, the movement, the diversity…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Dragon, web of life, cosmic grid, royal bird trees, phoenix rising, cosmic serpents coiling, flames reaching, frustration, exhilaration, all of it inspired deep contemplation and ebullient recognition.

The following day, three of us shared over coffee, delving into our dreams for the August posture ceremony which we thought was going to be another masked trance dance. Our vision grew quickly, focused more precisely. August will be a new ceremony based on the ancestral wisdom coming through our Ecstatic Posture practice and the planet’s call for human awakening. It will be mythic, it will embody the living world, it will animate our modern souls and kindle the fires of cultural evolvement. It will help us be the pebbles in the universal pond of wonder, composting our too tight cultural boxes into fertilizer for walking the edge, for stepping into the truth of our own grounded experience.

Two questions were posed by Shannon and Victoria that rivet me. If I knew, truly knew, I was an ancestor of the future, how/ who would I want to be?  What is the ALL that I have to give?

We think we know the title of the ceremony is EDGE, an acronym for something more. BUT we plan to meet again next week, maybe camp in the high country. Only spirit knows where that will take us.

I hope you’ll join us in Sequim,  WA, August 16th to 19th.

Painting The Blessing focused and calmed me as I prepared to contribute to my friend J’s Celebration of Life yesterday. And, you dear readers of this blog, don’t know yet that my former son in law passed away on Friday. It has been an amazing experience to be with my extended family and grandchildren – filled with perfection, grace, engagement, healing and courage. The Blessing is for them as well.

I taped four papers together so the painting is roughly 44” by 66”.  Taller than I am! I began the painting yesterday morning and returned to it after J’s ceremony. I finished it this morning. A week ago, I thought this final painting would somehow feature me as a tree, and I think that’s why I started it with blue vertical stripes. I simply squirted color on and then smeared it with a brush, because I knew I wanted to get as much of the white covered in color as quickly as I could.

But my soul, hands and arms, cried out for reds and oranges, so that came next. I don’t know how I had the wherewithal to capture it photographically, but I felt as if I had to. I knew from the beginning that this painting would take me on an unexpected journey and so it did. I wanted to know myself how I got from start to finish!

The miracle of how my son in law slipped out of his body and into the ethers moves  me deeply and I keep feeling the presence of otherwordly helpers – angels, dieties, spirits – Quickly I gave over to that imagery. I’ve painted angels only once before and that was nearly twenty years ago but I think this is who showed up – and it is both me and thee.

I am empty now and full, open to the unknown around today’s corner, ready for what emerges and yet not eager to step forth – waiting, gestating, wonder-ing. May we all remember how blessed we are to experience living each moment we are here.

On Saturday evening, April  14^th, a dear friend unexpectedly died. Unexpected in the sense that he was meant to fly to Arizona the next day to receive highly focused, utmost modern, technologically advanced chemotherapy in the hope of remission so that a few weeks down the line he could have heart surgery. His heart had other plans.

A few days later, I learned that my 45 year old former son-in-law is slipping toward the edge of the planet. He’s been surviving and thriving with extremely rare and dangerous cancer(s) for the last five years…he’s rebounded from near death at least three times during these five years but this crisis seems different somehow.

And I’ve dropped everything in order to spend time supporting family and friends.

Everything about living is called into question by times like these. And so I’ve gotten behind on my BIG art assignments.

This morning I changed that and I’m delirious with the unknown trajectory this Fearless Painting experience is taking me. Our assignment was to paint: How It Feels to Be Me. I knew I had to paint my current condition – grieving…

I am happy, astounded, filled with gratitude, joy!

Funny things to say when my focus for painting was allowing the grief to flow. But grieving turned into the joy of being alive at this moment and experiencing yet again the flow of painting freely – trusting trusting trusting and even in poster paint on ordinary paper the magic of texture, underlying layers, symbols and unexpected meaning began to appear.

I began at the bottom, knowing I had to smear in lots of darks with a big brush – black and several blues – the darks representing the unknown, the mystery, the fecundity beneath the surface of the most mundane acts – working on the floor I moved to the other end and kept dragging the scratchy brush along until it was devoid of black paint. All kinds of interesting textures showed up as well as the curves that ended up being a madonna’s cloak.

I kept an egg shape open for the face and simply painted everything else as fast as I could – whatever tumbled up and spilled out – remembering all our exercises, I was cognizant of scribbling, flowing, filling in shapes, the child – all of it and then I began to cry as I began to see the power manifesting, the power of truly expressing my grief and the power of joy to express truly my grief in the beauty of painted expression. Grief and joy for me have always been intimately connected and that kinship showed up here.

I am beyond any more words at the moment but thank you.

I’m so pleased. Dr. Jeff Leinaweaver interviewed me on his new radio show  Gaialogue Radio,  hosted by Transformational Talk Radio. Here’s the link to Dr. Jeff’s page there.

http://www.transformationtalkradio.com/meet_shows.php?id=6150

If you scroll down you’ll find buttons for playing the show or downloading it. Soon, maybe I’ll figure out how to embed the talk here but I’m not sure if that’s even possible. We called the interview: Stories from an Urban Wild Woman.

That’s me! I’m reposting an illustration of me walking in the shoes of  both/and.

You can read the prior post about that here.

http://awakeningstorylines.com/2010/11/24/508/

( Please forgive the appearance of these links. My link button has not yet been repaired. I think they are working on it though.)

In the first two segments of the radio interview, Dr. Jeff encourages me to share the pivotal points in my growing up when I purposely boxed myself into living a “half-life” in order to find acceptance by the civilized, intellectual, cultural norms of the time. In the 1940’s and ‘50’s, I didn’t yet have the guts to reveal my deeper self. In fact, though I knew I was burying aspects of me, I may not have known what those aspects even were. But then I move to Montana in 1980 and everything changes, a major mask falls off and then another and another and voila, in 1992, during two months of solitude, I reclaim most of the parts I had jettisoned early on. I imagine my life story is similar for many, especially women and especially those born prior to women’s lib. I’d sure love to hear some of your stories of coming alive.

I chose to do the blind exercise first. Meaning that we looked in the mirror and NOT at the paper as we traced the shapes of our faces. I tried it with a brush loaded with paint but found I couldn’t keep the brush filled with pigment long enough. I felt like I was cheating because I looked at the paper for where to begin the next loaded brush stroke. I decided to use a marker and try it again. I liked that one so much, I decided not to color it in but draw another one to paint.

Here are the first three.

Then came the real challenge. Drawing myself by looking in the mirror AND at the paper. Trying to make it look like me in other words by seeing and drawing the actual  relationships between cheek and jowl, nose and glasses. Oh god I wish I were young, I wish I were beautiful, I wish I were anything but what I am – until suddenly I love what I’m seeing, the strength, the wisdom, the sparkle, even the age spots…

This is nothing short of a blessing.

I realize I’ve only done it for two days, but so far, I love starting the day with drawing while I’m sitting in bed with my coffee and toast. Well actually, I read first while drinking my coffee and eating my toast. Then I draw. Somehow, drawing entices me in a way that journal writing every morning does not. This could easily become a non-verbal habit!

I think I’d become really balanced don’t you?

Monday found me sprawling with spirals then coloring in around them. Mindlessly, just letting the pencils choose themselves and marveling at the rhythm of the ins/outs and pondering why occasionally the out never led to an in and the almost enclosed space could go on forever. In some cases, rather than force the issue, I left it white and kind of liked that unfinished look of potential.

Last night, my spirit group met. I call the practice Ecstatic Wisdom Postures ( my links button hasn’t been working for awhile. You can learn about Postures right here on this blog by clicking on the Ecstatic “page”) and it’s based on our ancient ancestors’ art work – artifacts found in sacred sites around the globe. I had a profound experience of seeing the world through a whale’s eyes, then through a chained dancing bear from long ago, then through a bull’s in combat with the toreador, ( Have you seen that amazing image on YouTube? …the toreador humbled by the bull’s innocence and confusion reflected in his eyes. ). Rapidly I saw through the eyes of many other innocent creatures who have suffered at human hands, including innocent humans. I almost succumbed to anguish so huge I would have made a mess of the rest of the evening.

I realized during the ecstatic trance that eyes have been a theme for me in my writing and my art work for much of my life and it’s high time I do something more focused on the importance of eye contact.

So this morning, in my morning pages, I had to do a human eye and from that other eyes came forth all linked by that meandering spiraling line. This feels potent to me and I see how inadvertently there is a small eye in yesterday’s image and of course a spiral in today’s…no accident I’m sure though I didn’t plan that interconnection.

May you see with new eyes today, as I am, too.

Unless…I loved how the filmmakers – Dr. Seuss – played with that word UNLESS. Unless people decide to change, unless we wake up; unless we each fall in love with life; unless we decide to change priorities, unless unless unless. Unless reminds me of positive possibilities. Unless I paint tonight, my world is doomed. ha ha So something about that film, the book about whales I’ve been reading this week which also touches on the plight of salmon, both wild and farmed, ( Alexandra Morton’s  Listening to Whales http://www.raincoastresearch.org/home.htm )
something about my last painting, conspired to make me remember another memory related to trees.

Somehow it’s connected to choosing our paths and that lightning bolt of white that so intrigues me in the painting featured in my last post. The memory is of being stranded with a woman friend after dark in the wilderness with no flashlights or candles on a black and stormy November evening. It’s a good story but too long to share here. What got me home was following the sky above my head. Seriously, it was literally so dark in the thick pine forest that I couldn’t see my feet nor the trail – that dark, really that dark. A “lightning bolt” of happenstance made me look up. I realized that the trail we were following could be seen as a ribbon of slightly paler dark strung against the darker dark of the forest. Although I can see that skypath as a pale imitation of a lightning bolt, too.

There were no stars. But to capture the feeling of being supported by invisible spirits and the sleeping trees themselves, I had to spatter. I love the effect. . The painting really does bring my memory alive of the magic and trust I experienced walking with my eyes turned upward rather than down.

And reminds me that every lightning bolt is an opportunity for UNLESS.  It only takes a stroke of imagination, recognition, compassion to change everything.

So here’s what happened. My curiosity took me INTO the tree I was hugging in the last painting. I wanted to know more about how the tree responds to being recognized by a human, experiencing my love. I knew I wanted to paint bigger so I hooked two pieces of paper together to make a 36 inch square approx. and decided I needed to kneel on the floor. I had the sense I was going to get physical in this one.

I started out thinking I was going to paint my ear, up close and personal, even googled some images of human ears so I knew what they looked like. Then I changed my mind.

I started laying in the trunk again with a broad brush, but the brush didn’t hold enough paint for my pleasure, so I actually drizzled paint right from the bottles onto the paper. I’m using poster paints – I love their silky texture. I stroked them with abandon to make the trunk and then felt moved to streak texture across them. Early on I used a brush. Later my fingernails, replicating the wind from the earlier image. Then to represent my human self, I needed to do hand prints. I did hand prints in two colors all over the left side of the painting and took some time to highlight their interesting shapes by painting blue all around them. Blue represented my dream that humans will awaken in time for us all to thrive on this wee globe.

But then, but then the painting asked for more hands, all the clambering hands of humanity, 7 billion of us soon to live here I learned a few days ago. Hands climbing all over that one poor willow, whose heart still beats strong, eager for humans to return to reverence for life. I started with white right hands and black left hands overlaying the first ones, but then the demand came, more, more, more hands of all the people who rape and pillage and destroy, who don’t realize they live on a sentient being whose stories might illuminate our own. I added yellow hands…then to bring in hope for the greening of our souls, I added green hands, and then I heard the statement. It’s not that easy. The forces of darkness need to be recognized in order to strengthen my resolve to contribute. So I squirted lots of black paint along the left side and then used my hands to push it in tracks obliterating the lovely blue and white patterns I had made earlier. If I hadn’t been in such a flow, I would have gotten my camera out because it would have been fun to see all the rapid changes to this painting.

The white slash to the left came by “accident”…I think I may need to follow it next!

So here’s what happened to me oh those many years ago. The storm blows in. Lightning cracks, thunder growls, just like in a fairytale! The tree begins swaying like a wild thing about to start rambling around the neighborhood, sort of like those walking trees in Lord of the Rings. I grab on tighter absolutely sure I need to ride this, need to stay where I am no matter what. I feel the energy of something building. Another gust rocks the tree and to stay in it, I grab reach around it harder and hug myself tight into the trunk with my left ear pressing against it. I rear back. The tree is talking in my ear – loudly muttering. I’m shocked and frightened, but the wind forces me to press my head against the tree again. She is talking, no question about it, and I feel as if I understand her completely. I hear every creak, groan and shimmy in her gut and it astounds me. She is alive like I am. I know her to be a friend.

That knowing of her aliveness is what I had to paint. What is new is this. I laid in the trunk first so I would have a place to put me. I painted one side dark and one side light as I am wont to do since I’m always thinking about lights and darks. Without thinking about why I chose one side or the other to be light or dark, I just did it and because I always paint colorfully, the dark is laden with blues and purples along with blacks and the light is laden with orange and red and yellow and white and even a little magenta. As I began to paint my head – which really looks more like me as an adult than a kid – I suddenly realized why the trunk is light next to where my ear is to be pressed.

The tree is glowing with the aliveness imparted by our new kinship.

She is inspired by me as much as I am inspired by her
and
that folks
is really how the world is.