Live Bigger

I expect struggle. I expect to fall in love and lose you to another. I hold back. I protect. Until now. How can I keep this tenderness back? How can I not share this meeting of the heart? How can I not trust?

The wind blows. The ravens nest is empty. And my bare feet find the rough grass and the words LIVE BIGGER. I am sitting by the creek, taking a day to catch up with myself.

I want an adventure. I want to take an absurdly impossible step, knowing that to leave is not just a path; it is in itself an arrival.

I have arrived at this place of knowing, not about who I am, but of what my heart knows of living. The wind blows new seeds across my path, reminding me to continue and begin again.

My hair is lifted off my neck and I remember last nights dream in the woods
with you and a rabbit and the ache to love. I am not alone.

I have friendship in every room of my house. No time for doubt or even speculation. I am done trying! I hear myself saying out loud “I hand it over. It needs to come from my heart!”

The clouds grow dark. I have waited too long to return.
I am wet. I am water moving downstream. I know rock, soil, and green grass. There is no turning back now. I have said yes. Yes, there is no going back.
I belong.

Our Full Moon Ravens’ Nest

and wet grass,
carrying my friend’s book
and my cup of green tea to
the creek, hoping

I have never been here before.

Tuesday morning

Our creek has become a river. It’s April
and last year’s bridge has been broken.

Wading through knee high water,
my life requires me to trust the stronger pull

of everything I know to be true.
I’m 48 years old and there is nothing to hold onto.

Martin Rutte took these pictures of his painting in process in last week’s Wednesday morning creativity group. When he sent these pictures to a friend of his, his friend wrote back:

 What an amazing chronicle of the creative journey; almost like going on a pilgrimage with you….Thanks for sharing…

I love the idea of process painting being a pilgrimage.  That’s what it feels like.

We set out for a destination called forth by our inner being—the road somehow leading to a sacred place.  How long will it take us?  What will we paint?  What are we going to have to endure along the way? And what is our destination anyway?

My answer to this is:  The territory of the soul.  The soul is speaking and it’s our opportunity to listen; A meeting beyond the mind.  Our hearts get it.  Our bodies sure get it.  Our minds often don’t.

What’s waiting for us along the way as we paint as pilgrims—why do we need courage here?

Our fears will tell us to stop as soon as we get something we like onto the canvas.  Before we get to.” UGLY”.  Not to mention “messy”, “muddy”, “stupid.

Notes to self: Keep going, there’s more.  Stay in the Process

Instead of stopping, sometimes we find ourselves staying in the process, more interested in letting go then in controlling the outcome.  Continuing.  We drop our analyzing mind and partner with the moment, no matter where it’s taking us.  We allow our paintings to speak to us versus being ordered around.  We risk our hearts.

Note to self:  Prepare to risk what you’ve done (painted) or liking what you’ve done for what you might become (and what the painting might become)

Sometimes people tell me they end up LOVING one of their paintings even though they might not “like” it.  I also find that people want to keep painting once they’ve started.  What’s next?  The door is open.  And it isn’t just the door to a pretty painting.  It’s the door to the journey, to the Meeting, to what we care about most.

This process is like saying YES to life.  Who among us doesn’t want to be a pilgrim of the soul?  At least at some time in our lives?  As for our paintings, why not frame it, hang it in the living room, enjoy it—no matter what our reasonable mind thinks? Why not live with it? Why not let it speak to us of other great acts of courage?

Note to self:  Find the eyes of God…..aka.  Claim it, Frame it, Celebrate it!

I’ve been really sitting with this word, KINDNESS.  This surprising word  popped up in a meditative moment when I asked myself the question that Oriah Mountain Dreamer puts out in her book, The Call. What is my word, what is suprisingly waiting for me to know and embody?  What brings healing to my almost hidden self struggles, my fight with life?  What I am here to teach?  Boom!  Kindness came in.  Unusually quick, immediate–like a flash. Straight from my soul. There was no mistaking this for ego talk.  My new word that undoes me.

What would my life look like if I truly KNEW and EMBODIED KINDNESS.  hmmmm.  I aim to find out.  It undoes me everytime I bring it forward. I feel strangely committed to exploring this word and its surprising manifestations.  This is not about “nice”. I already am “nice”.  Nope, completely different.  This is not “good”, I got that.  This is kindness.  This is an undoing.  A half step back.  This is breathing before speaking.  This is allowing my being to fully presence itself in everything I do, everything I think.  This is about standing simpler, with more ease, with a gentler hand.

This is the word I’ve been waiting for and i didn’t even know it.

What word comes up for you?  Anything?  You may want to check Oriah’s book out and read her section on this, it’s quite lovely.

Oriah puts it this way,”Living your word, embodying it in your life, in how you are with yourself and the world, is never about doing.  It is always about not-doing, about being with what is.  Your word is your key to stopping your war with reality…….What’s the thread of thoughts and feelings I need to stop following into doing, opting instead to simply be? …

….

I knew from the beginning that it could not be truth or beauty or love or peace.  These words are essence words, the words all of us are here to return to.  Our individual words are smaller words, are about the ways in which particular human beings learn to live and embody truth and beauty and love and peace.  ….”

“I have heard it all my life, A voice calling a name I recognized as my own,  Sometimes it comes as a soft-bellied whisper.  Sometimes it holds an edge of urgency.  But always it says:  Wake up my love.  You are walking asleep.  There’s no safety in that!”
-Oriah Mountain Dreamer-

As I head into this weekend’s intuitive painting workshop, Painting Into the New Year, I feel the excitement building.  Five people gathering to explore the unknowable together, wood stove going.  As I prepare selected poems and inspirations, I’m struck again by how little I “know” about what’s going to show up this weekend but also–how interested, how plugged in my heart is.  I LOVE THIS.  It feels risky.  It feels new.  We gather.  We listen.  We paint.  We listen in particular for the voice calling out our name. We wake up.  Who knows what will happen!   What experiences help you listen to the call?

Since everything is sacred, staying close to what is sacred is a matter of presence and attention more than travel to some secret place
Mark Nepo,

…Today– I started the day knowing I had a list that would be five pages long, if I actually wrote one, of things that had to be done and that I wanted to do.  No list.  No go.

Today was slow.  And close to home.  And I felt like I was sitting in space, waiting to know something.  Wanting to know something. Not knowing what would rise to the present moment to be known, out of those five pages of material. Today felt sacred.

After a couple hours of stoking the fire and making tea,(how much tea can one person drink in a day?), it occurs to me it’s time for me to schedule my weekend painting workshops for the year.  Out comes the calendar, the pen, the pencil. Sifting through dates and prior commitments, I start feeling a wholeness, a picture surfacing.  A life unveiling itself. For most of the day somehow I am free of the rest of the list.

And as I struggle a little with the finishing details of this project, some of what didn’t happen starts to show itself.  What about this, and this, and this? But I feel like saying I DID IT.  I stayed close to home.  I let myself dwell.  In the sacred.  In what was coming through today.  It’s enough.  Are you as hungry for these “enough” experiences as I am?

photo credit:  David Coleman / tea bag is mine

Everything’s different after sitting at the creek. I become part of it, no longer SEPARATE, no longer owned by my ideas for the day, instead—sister to the trees, child of creation itself, like the grasses, the ice, the mud, the broken branches, the talking ravens. What a change of perspectives. My teacher. My ground. My spirit. Sometimes happiness. Sometimes it’s just about sanity. It’s also my place to come when I am hitting bottom, WHEN I REMEMBER. I can lay down and ask-sometimes beg- for help as I hand over all of it to the ground beneath me. I am not alone. In these moments I am not an individual. I just am.

Today, even as I feel groggy from the long nights and work in my office, there is part of me that remains with the creek, with the oneness. This makes my day worth living. IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS.

Yes, I have a wonderful job as an artist/coach and Yes I have a loving relationship and so on, but NONE of this is the reason that getting up in the morning REALLY MAKES SENSE. No substitutes possible. Sometimes if I’ve been spending time here regularly I can stand almost anywhere and connect with the nearest tree as if I am again revisiting GOD. In these moments, in the zone, I have my finger on the reset button.

So my prayer of gratitude this year is this:
THANK YOU MOTHER, CREEK, TREES, BRANCHES, DIRT, ANIMALS, ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN PART OF MY LIFE THIS LAST YEAR, THIS COMING BACK TO ONENESS. THANK YOU FOR TAKING ME IN, LOVING ME UP AND ALWAYS BEING HERE FOR ME.

MAY I FIND YOUR COMPANIONSHIP WHEREVER I GO AND MAY I ALWAYS KNOW MYSELF TO BE PART OF THIS GREATER MYSTERY OF LIFE, A CHILD IN YOUR ARMS.

Julie, Solstice week 2011