I did the above drawings years ago. The newsprint paper is quite yellowed, which doesn’t show up here.
I had the words echoing in my mind this morning: “The Glory of the Ordinary.” It somehow seems to go together with my first drawing series “Things Are Alive.” (see side bar)
It makes me happy to know that what we consider to be ordinary can be much more– if we dare to look from new perspectives. The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue.
Postcard for “The Mystery of the Ordinary” (thanks to Katie Alley)George’s drawing the day of the opening at Side Street Espresso.George and Deb truly inhabit their place of business– it feels like home to many Anchorage folks.Side Street Espresso is already full of art– George does a dry erase board drawing each morning.One of Anda’s blessing pillows.Anda’s blessing pillows.One of Anda’s blessing pillows.My drawing series– “Entering the Void with the Eyes Open” (see blog side bar).“Entering the Void with the Eyes Open”“Entering the Void with the Eyes Open”“Entering the Void with the Eyes Open”“Entering the Void with the Eyes Open”Anda’s mixed media wall hangings.Anda’s mixed media wall hangings.“Effulgent Earth” (Anda)“Afternoon meets night but the birches are white.” (Pam)“Kathy’s Month” (Spring Equinox, South Edition, Anchorage, Alaska) (Pam)Detail– “Kathy’s Month” (Spring Equinox, South Addition, Anchorage, Alaska)
“Both the yogi and the shaman do away with their past and the ties that keep them bound to their karmic and family histories, breaking free of time to taste infinity. In doing so, they reach an unconditioned, natural state where they recover their original Self.”
– from “Yoga, Power, and Spirit: Patanjali the Shaman” by Alberto Villoldo
Laura Simms telling a story at the National Storytelling Festival (10.5.12, Jonesborough, TN)
HOW WE TELL OUR STORIES, HOW WE LISTEN TO OTHERS is the difference between entertainment that distracts from a more penetrating event that opens the heart, accesses inherent territory of transformation, and activates natural capacities for flexible mind, reframing our situation, and invigorating perception.
Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.
Stool made for me by my dad Robert Ray McDowell and painted my my mom Lois Ann Ely– July 1949My dad carved this on the bottom of my stool when I was 2 yrs old.
Most days I sit in the what we call the “craft room” in a chair with a little stool under it upon which I place my 67 year old feet. This stool was made for me by my dad when I was 2 years old, and my mom painted a picture of a tree full of birds on it. The painting began to wear, so when I was maybe 12 years old, I repainted it.
Yesterday I became especially aware of the stool and of the immense love my parents put into making it for me. I took this love into my heart.
What a wonderful thing to know– that we can receive the gift of pure love from our parents many years later. The Inka Medicine Wheel training has also reminded me that our ancestors have gifts for us of which we can become aware and receive– even though they have passed from this earth.
We can always become aware of what we have been given, even many years later. As a 2 year old, I probably had no idea of the love my folks had put into this stool. Now my own children are in their thirties and I am awakening to a whole new level of love that was given to me at age 2.
When I did the drawing series “Things Are Alive,” (see side bar), I became aware of the intention carried by material objects. In this case, the intention was pure love.
