Two Worlds

Inside me resides so many deep thoughts, so many observations,... so many, that it touches that deeper place of "knowing", of deeper seeing. I want to go deep within... down under the surface - to the silent depths of what is true, what is real...

A sudden burst of morning sunlight breaks through the emerald canopy. It filters through and glows with divinity. And I am transfixed.

I try to balance myself between two worlds. One is real and serious and profound. It is creative and silent. It reveals great things without a sound.. it fills me up. Like the still reflection on the water, it is calming and invites me to look under the surface.

The other is loud, active, somewhat superficial and, at times, trivial... with salon-style chatter of so many words with nothing to say...it leaves me hungry for silence. Most of us exist here - all mixed in - with pleasure and pain. It can be fun, but it is distracting and leaves me empty. I simply cannot go through life without seeking some sort of deeper truth and universal meaning. I have found that when I have touch upon these things, the strength of the divine is felt.

I struggle to balance between these two worlds. Happily nature brings me back in touch. It brings the "me" back...the artist, the creator, the seeker.

It is who I am.

The Dead of Winter is Alive & Well

" Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps

a singing bird will come." - Chinese Proverb

A mist fills the morning landscape, lending a quiet mystery and restful beauty to my view. Like a downy blanket, it feels warm over the snow and wet ground. A single singing bird visits in the snowy landscape to remind me he is here. He sings because this is his dharma. He sings in advance of warm days to come. It all is a playful tease, hinting at spring, which remains, nonetheless, many weeks away.

By February, so many are tired of the cold, the snow, the grey days and heavy clothes. But I love my snow boots. I love the feel of cashmere and fleece. But realizing today that spring being six weeks away, reminds me to relax and enjoy the final days of winter.

It is easy to dismiss the end of winter... good riddance, right? Yet, I write this morning to remind myself to appreciate the sheer beauty that the natural world offers us in winter. To take comfort in the blanket of snow that holds the seedlings captive, the crocus dormant and all of green life, patiently waiting to burst forth when it can. This is the quiet time, the regenerative time, the time of stillness. A time to marvel how the squirrel digs his nuts he buried 6 months ago... to observe how the icicles grow, making marvelous sculptures. Yes, the harshness of winter may wear us down, but not if we use the time wisely... like nature... being dormant, being quiet, yet preparing for the energetic period of spring. Beauty exists all around us at every moment. It just is there -here - waiting to be seen... almost yearning to be noticed.

The Bright World

Today I think of Dante's description of "The Bright World" and my thoughts begin to dwell on those of Beauty, of light and of the earth and I sink into my true self - my artist self - then I think of of the dark world where many so blindly live... the destructive places, the holes and the dirty trenches - where like cockroaches - some humans dwell.

Do they not recognize the bright world - why do they persist to live in the destructive hell holes?  Thieves, addicts, abusers, cheats, traitors...

Our youngest arrivals - bright and full of promise - reflect the bright world in their sparkling eyes.  Yet for so many the sparkles will fade.  When does their world turn?  Why do some slip in the cracks -  fall into the hell hole?  Why do some follow - others even jump?  And my heart fills with such deep sadness knowing that the only way out is thru pain and suffering - like Dante's Journey.  Some will make it back to the bright world.  Some won't.  Some will forget that it is even there.  We all slip.  We all need a Virgil.

Is Virgil like the silver thread of faith and experience?  The hand that has passed thru the flames before us... the guide.  It is said that when we are ready, that a guide will come to us.  Will we know it?  Will we follow?  Will we once again see "the bright world"?

Bringing the Inner Journey OUT

Why Dante? Why the Divine Comedy? What is the Commedia really? Why do we follow Dante into the dark wood and on into the inferno of hell? Curiousity? Required Reading? I urge you to look beyond the mounds of historical data, the details, and the long tedious dialogue. Try to see it in its simplicity. Think of it as a guidebook for the living. By observing Dante’s journey, it becomes one’s own lesson for life.

I turned to the book in a great search for truths regarding faith, life and meaning. I naively bumped into Dante in the same woods. I found a parallel in my own life’s journey and in the end, afterward, was able to look back and see the amazing journey for what it was…a tour thru one’s darkest times, ones lowest emotional state, into the depths of despair, eventually to emerge to a place in the light world, the joy, the Paradiso.

One recognizes the light again, only this time, the quality is enhanced. The light in the valley is different from the light now seen from the Summit. And while the light emanates from the same source, it has changed. The light is purer. The air is cleaner. The seer has acquired wisdom and insight.

Reading the Divine Comedy in its entirety takes one to a heightened vantage point both spiritually and intellectually. It leaves one humbled and in awe.

Pensive

The last glimmer of brilliant green,...transluscent green,...sunlight through morning lit leaves. I see this from my window. Open window, crisp cool air to relieve the stagnant collection of dust and artificially cooled air from preceeding days of exhausting heat. The jump from hot to cold is so quick. Too quick. Each moment of this day, with its lovely sunlight, it's fresh air filling my spirit must be appreciated. I just have to remember to notice. To withdraw from the "other" stuff filling my agenda, my list, my life and just take a deep breath and notice.

To be an artist is really a simple thing. It merely is the art of observation, meditation and introspection. And with this dedication and practice, creativity is a natural outcome. The challenge is withdrawing from rapid chaos of everything and permitting oneself a moment to LOOK and to SEE. In our ambitious American world of productivity and constant motion, this becomes a difficult thing to do at times. Or maybe its just me and my wonder woman generation of the do it all, be it all types. Because when asked what "I do" I first say I'm an artist and then pause and truthfully say that right now I'm devoting most of my time to my family, my three sons and husband. And this really may be the most important and creative endeavor anyone of us can attempt to accomplish!

A tear for humanity; a tear for VT

I am blank. No words. It leaves a hole too big and a penetrating sadness and reminds me terribly of my post about my grandfather.

It's as though a vile hand has reached up through the darkness and has grabbed my ankle and is determined to pull me in.

But I won't go.

A letter to my Grandfather and All Those Who Have Lost Someone in Violence

I remember that on this date, in 1991, it was your last day on earth. I remember your smile and the twinkle in your eyes. I remember your laugh. I remember hearing the distant sirens not realizing at the time that they were headed toward you. I remember that when they found you, you still had a pen in your hand.

I remember the shock and of lack of understanding. The inability to comprehend the phone call that you'd been killed? What? Who? ...What??? Like one wasn't hearing correctly.

I remember the nearly physical feeling of suddenly being cast between the known layers of time. Where regular time, present, past and future all cease and you find yourself in a space where instinct takes over.

I remember retrieving my grandmother, so fragile and innocent, and bringing her to you. She never recovered from that day, this day, and began to die herself from that day forward.

A piece of me died that day too. The shock waves of Violence and evil travel deep. They knock us down into the black from which it rose and the known path becomes lost. And all of life as we knew it remains in that space of time now defined as "before." It is packaged and sealed and is placed in a box seemingly separate and lost. The world becomes, for a time, a dark wood. Where one begs for light, but doesn't know how to find it, for all of the paths are overgrown and seem to lead one only deeper into darkness.

And I remember the feeling of joy "before" but can't seem to find it now even though it's been quite some time since someone murdered you, grandfather.

And one feels oddly connected to an invisible community of victims...those other people you read about in the newspaper; but you never signed up. You don't want to be a member.

And you live your life still feeling like you're slightly apart from the flow, separate and changed. And the optimistic joy that defined your life is inaccessible. And you go that way, day after day after day.

You smile and laugh, but you don't really. You chat about things that don't matter. You don't pity your plight. Worse, you just frankly don't care about much anymore and THAT is probably the saddest place to be...empty and without capacity for reciprocal joy.

But Grandfather, feel glad for me if you can. Know that I am OK. Know that this terrible thing has given me the greatest gift, even though I could not imagine it so many years ago, on this day. For eventually, in a most quiet yet powerful way, God presents himself to me in the form of a simple white flower; a fragile flower that appeared out of no where, that grew up in a crack in the exact middle of my expansive driveway, in the heat of July, in the middle of a drought. And when I saw that flower, I realized that despite the harshness of life and the odds of survival, even a seedling, in the midst of barely any soil, little water and intense heat, can find it's way. ..to be what it was meant to be. Even the fragile flower finds it's expression in life.

In such a moment, your heart re-starts, you gasp in recognition of what this flower represents and just as suddenly as it stopped, the WELL of hope and joy and all that you knew yourself to be is tapped. The path is illuminated and recognized.

And God has said, in an unexpected and silent way...I'm still here.

And you weep and weep and weep...and the tears of sadness mingle with the longed for tears of pure joy. And finally you know that you will be OK even though there is still healing to be done, the healing can begin.

I love you, Papa. The journey is never easy, but when the way is found, it is rich beyond words.
Is there any wonder why I find the Commedia to be so profound?