More than a year gone since the last words placed here and time shaped by other speeds driving my way. Outside the confines of routine and survival, much has been incubated within in regards to heart-fires, but need now to resurface the voice, and keep it kindled and flamed. And so I will try to place words down to mark passage for this movement, this transition, this healing pulling towards new horizons.
Much reason to give thanks amidst minimizing of space and other worldly constraints--a healing herniated disk, Aaron's creative struggles pushing into clarity of step, the longing of my creative paintbrush (backseat now to the daily motions of work) but stepping out in bursts of form, children growing happy & quick--all amidst a world crying out in brokenness...
Give us Lord our daily bread.
I have contemplated now since leaving Mill Pond the divine appointment in time of all things, and the necessity to embrace our own inability to comprehend the bigger orchestrations behind it all. I am firmly adhering to the notion that now is a time of preparation, of pared down simplicitiy in order to recognize signs of direction. To try, to learn, to take the high road in all daily struggles, no matter how painful or incomprehensible. Acceptance? And most especially recognizing that within the nakedness, the stripping of things in the present moment, there is discovery of Franciscian liberty and freedom that I would not have been ready for otherwise. Strange how in the minimal, the simplicity laid bare on the threshold of our door that The Dream can surface stronger than ever, binding all together, reminding that the multitude of hopes planted deep in the bones will not be extricated easily. Laying bare pushes all the elements to the surface--hopefully to examine and understand with grace sloughing off the eyes of self that bind and can confuse and hinder the a-ha (love that a-ha!). Peace. If only more of those clarity moments. To ride it like a balanced kayak skimming the surface and floating on the wake of rushing white rapids...carry it through, carry it through, carry it through.
And so now, in one of those moments, hope is what I ride on, and a subtle, surfacing understanding that visions have their own way of coming into being--oft not the way that our limited gaze and scope could ever expect. I want to embrace my unknowing. It is our human priviledge to operate joyfully under the grace of the moment, and yet to recognize the signs of the path to walk on in the journey. And to not to fall asleep, but push on and on into prayer, into the eye of the storm, into the still point that buoys us all.
The fiddleheads are preparing to rise in the wet earth blanketing these hills. Laughter of the children echo and resound too making this day whole. This winter was very long (too long), and finally, finally we can step out of its tarried shell into newness and regeneration. Push aside the dead leaves and see the multitude of greening rising, rising, rising.
Today my brushes will be dusted.
...St. Francis will position himself, the crown of thorns surrounding the Mandylion of Christ will come into focus and Moses will move from pooled color in darker shades slowly into light.
Here, now, always, simple gratitude.
