tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20424135030174637952024-03-18T13:30:33.974-07:00threads of the spiderwomanMyth, Magic, Masks Inspired by the Great WeaverLauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.comBlogger1389125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-20849738326674008702024-03-06T10:49:00.003-07:002024-03-07T09:04:49.228-07:00The Tucson Sculpture Festival March 16 and 17, 2024<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbWPCFfwNokM6syVwRabYED3JIK_l6kCY2sgxgbxsE12Jeb8ShR5mvV1t1V7_VZ3NmSCZMIc0eA-bsd5sTtm6NzoyAxcib8MeWcgjqhLnGLkWvHMrWznmPAH3uuSD2i0bU5uc221ZKS8OnwOoradgMJUDTWLjv06oNcIdcdXK1av13nSQYwgzckL5cGiU/s1980/Raine%20Lauren%20OUR%20LADY%20OF%20THE%20SHARDS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1787" data-original-width="1980" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbWPCFfwNokM6syVwRabYED3JIK_l6kCY2sgxgbxsE12Jeb8ShR5mvV1t1V7_VZ3NmSCZMIc0eA-bsd5sTtm6NzoyAxcib8MeWcgjqhLnGLkWvHMrWznmPAH3uuSD2i0bU5uc221ZKS8OnwOoradgMJUDTWLjv06oNcIdcdXK1av13nSQYwgzckL5cGiU/w400-h361/Raine%20Lauren%20OUR%20LADY%20OF%20THE%20SHARDS.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">I will be there! This year in addition to clay sculpture I decided to bring some masks which also can be presented as sculptures in their own rights.......... Masks are also wearable, and thus endlessly open for collaboration and story! </span></div><p><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPV-iCsskcyljjl39Y2jkTN4JJohsQyF0v1zARLhD1ENKJBn-OfKrIMvORSVCSzkarqvyCabf8LpG6p6anB-hCyiMLejmz6vdUzi9G-bspRuP99u3NukUEfgTuL3mIhHlYDF8zfG6BHmOFz0oZpJsZYwqM4hHqXo_DkgLQkHhxIJZvjgjngyfgAwsfI8w/s2958/IMG_20240303_103635.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2958" data-original-width="2074" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPV-iCsskcyljjl39Y2jkTN4JJohsQyF0v1zARLhD1ENKJBn-OfKrIMvORSVCSzkarqvyCabf8LpG6p6anB-hCyiMLejmz6vdUzi9G-bspRuP99u3NukUEfgTuL3mIhHlYDF8zfG6BHmOFz0oZpJsZYwqM4hHqXo_DkgLQkHhxIJZvjgjngyfgAwsfI8w/w280-h400/IMG_20240303_103635.jpg" width="280" /></a></p><p><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>A Mask for the Shattering of Old Paradigms</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG5qCpFMyt7YGe4KkyK8gJxoGOJreObnLqcjfrVtuSY32E1936i875wm1Pib29Gs4C2hhDjOy9LbDPQDilr935E1y5LusLSedFO-PjybZKn5mbjaHVnmfwnyqbOeq8Zp_Hx0m_Q4L9bHCCkQFIrPOA9nAUJw6CNYUpYF4bKnnsfkrWkXF92jWRk7GKo64/s4828/greenman%201.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4828" data-original-width="4422" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG5qCpFMyt7YGe4KkyK8gJxoGOJreObnLqcjfrVtuSY32E1936i875wm1Pib29Gs4C2hhDjOy9LbDPQDilr935E1y5LusLSedFO-PjybZKn5mbjaHVnmfwnyqbOeq8Zp_Hx0m_Q4L9bHCCkQFIrPOA9nAUJw6CNYUpYF4bKnnsfkrWkXF92jWRk7GKo64/s320/greenman%201.jpg" width="293" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Green Man</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOEJc1hJFFa9KKbdfwwSvXYc8Yd4wwxz86F3daHwVqvNePC_Q4cgH-O8Apq_MpmYDi3gE8dHXOnTl1nQq7eWkA9XfQjj3MZ0w8zjZjsiOZIC_kIAnsLqP7PC5qDENPf5bWkWXsLcsU0uIqKcFX4ABiH0BtVYbElIrFOm24h5g-TWfnQz9ejXtCInQ9kmc/s6250/bfly%20woman%203.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="6250" data-original-width="4248" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOEJc1hJFFa9KKbdfwwSvXYc8Yd4wwxz86F3daHwVqvNePC_Q4cgH-O8Apq_MpmYDi3gE8dHXOnTl1nQq7eWkA9XfQjj3MZ0w8zjZjsiOZIC_kIAnsLqP7PC5qDENPf5bWkWXsLcsU0uIqKcFX4ABiH0BtVYbElIrFOm24h5g-TWfnQz9ejXtCInQ9kmc/s320/bfly%20woman%203.jpg" width="217" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Butterfly Woman</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjemHiFkNXXyfUs-hHp0nv39ABV9tPkndrh5vcBaBiSPT308dwHWFC_f5rLTPhcrFu1J9b3QlUBYBiDdMbisr9_AD-2OhS539Jx8cvv-oGVc1EcAa7VWbY_7ryoawoOgr7WrZJBgTrPJo8vUGAzGml2CcOHR7tBsS57lsQUdlhtPM0hTKQN2gYjkFPF61A/s4552/bfly%20woman%201.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4552" data-original-width="4350" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjemHiFkNXXyfUs-hHp0nv39ABV9tPkndrh5vcBaBiSPT308dwHWFC_f5rLTPhcrFu1J9b3QlUBYBiDdMbisr9_AD-2OhS539Jx8cvv-oGVc1EcAa7VWbY_7ryoawoOgr7WrZJBgTrPJo8vUGAzGml2CcOHR7tBsS57lsQUdlhtPM0hTKQN2gYjkFPF61A/s320/bfly%20woman%201.jpg" width="306" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Monarch</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAk_ZJa0oq-8EuNytUz0e079YeypyfhHg3huduhMW4kkSixAkNax8H2O8C35mIuyJ-rRFWS_lS2s_62IK7XQt6HjoyXtBRCG2rM7ROHwtkbkwJnhZecEfNYVdcBoY3kCHJrNuQtWwqHmsDxoLzhK8Rg7H94baw7e5KYp5vTchG_y1yJPJD3udtYezGs9Q/s2331/IMG_20240210_143407.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2331" data-original-width="2243" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAk_ZJa0oq-8EuNytUz0e079YeypyfhHg3huduhMW4kkSixAkNax8H2O8C35mIuyJ-rRFWS_lS2s_62IK7XQt6HjoyXtBRCG2rM7ROHwtkbkwJnhZecEfNYVdcBoY3kCHJrNuQtWwqHmsDxoLzhK8Rg7H94baw7e5KYp5vTchG_y1yJPJD3udtYezGs9Q/s320/IMG_20240210_143407.jpg" width="308" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Persephone</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuuC7uo2BIY3wKvG-tx6DgDEhjBNgn2MbphbWzSncXilSO0NEHvgSq9epm4zvQUj3FwDBzjXzueSg_WKwrYG_zjwm7_xgcboqZK7FRqw6A_NyyIybXW835Ifm96tzH7idJqn8oooh9y1LCm9qeNE8KoFXED3TxpLr8HIkoLeuXAqmSgA5eGQhMZaCC6Ic/s688/2024-Festival-600dpi-Emailer-DAY.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuuC7uo2BIY3wKvG-tx6DgDEhjBNgn2MbphbWzSncXilSO0NEHvgSq9epm4zvQUj3FwDBzjXzueSg_WKwrYG_zjwm7_xgcboqZK7FRqw6A_NyyIybXW835Ifm96tzH7idJqn8oooh9y1LCm9qeNE8KoFXED3TxpLr8HIkoLeuXAqmSgA5eGQhMZaCC6Ic/w558-h640/2024-Festival-600dpi-Emailer-DAY.jpg" width="558" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-21779722777362949262024-02-13T06:45:00.005-07:002024-02-13T06:45:49.806-07:00Persephone - A New Bas Relief <p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbHFJKJcii1mRXVEajBE5qU92LKN9F3qCFv9XoODuuklY-GlFn-8Xo6cQ19e8L30z_iwRVZygWnTP1075UjGRGlmUB8DsZoO60O9dUl6KZzoIzYJDcLYQlHzSINssD_9u0r0bcD_5I7zgPGRZoiHUYZ39nJANIuATUxWTjyFJ4819YwFH6vVlwVPiqOVg/s2380/IMG_20240210_143350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2380" data-original-width="1953" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbHFJKJcii1mRXVEajBE5qU92LKN9F3qCFv9XoODuuklY-GlFn-8Xo6cQ19e8L30z_iwRVZygWnTP1075UjGRGlmUB8DsZoO60O9dUl6KZzoIzYJDcLYQlHzSINssD_9u0r0bcD_5I7zgPGRZoiHUYZ39nJANIuATUxWTjyFJ4819YwFH6vVlwVPiqOVg/w329-h400/IMG_20240210_143350.jpg" width="329" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Persephone is so much about the Turning of the Year, the Goddess of Equinoxes, the Balance point at which the regeneration of spring begins, and the diminishment and going in to the Dark of winter begins as well. I think that's where this sculpture arose from, feeling the incipient life beneath the Earth, the stirring of spring.<br /><br /></p>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-34919730386415992102024-02-01T15:50:00.000-07:002024-02-01T15:50:12.311-07:00Life Between Life: the Work of Michael Newton<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo45D5L1a_767qxZXUXoi_bGgw1ps-3RYqrnVqiJLGYUiybza02C8c2NTzcZ30hGJku1JUgE_TGYJJxrwSsefV4Ac9WkVhXOUItik6c9t_thkje9Req10FST4tsnY5J9Y856VBUiY5oOk/s1600/16.+anima+animus.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1062" data-original-width="1366" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo45D5L1a_767qxZXUXoi_bGgw1ps-3RYqrnVqiJLGYUiybza02C8c2NTzcZ30hGJku1JUgE_TGYJJxrwSsefV4Ac9WkVhXOUItik6c9t_thkje9Req10FST4tsnY5J9Y856VBUiY5oOk/s400/16.+anima+animus.jpg" width="400" /></a></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Recently I've been re-reading<i style="text-decoration-line: underline;"> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Souls-Studies-Between-Lives/dp/1567184855">"Journey of Souls</a></i>" by Michael Newton Ph.D. The book has been around since the 90's, and there are several other books Dr. Newton wrote about his many years of research as well. Dr. Newton began as a hypnotherapist, and as he recounts, stumbled on a patient who "re-membered", from a transpersonal state, being in the spirit realm, between lives on earth. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">He, and his colleagues worked with hundreds of people to explore the subject of life between life and to help people understand the "soul purposes" of incarnation. Although Dr. Newton passed away in 2016, his work is carried on by the <u><a href="https://www.newtoninstitute.org/">Michael Newton Institute</a></u>, which trains practitioners in between life therapy.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></div><div><div style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">I have found his books enormously comforting as well as fascinating. Over and over his subjects recount leaving their bodies at death to return "home" to their Soul Groups - groups of souls that chose the lives they will incarnate in, together, over and over. It is as if a "soul group" is a kind of collective Soul, encompassing the individualities of its members, and ever growing and learning together. For those who are afraid of death, or are suffering the loss of a loved one, I urge you to read this book. I also offer two interviews with Michael Newton that I found on UTube. </div></div><div style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br /></div><div><a href="https://youtu.be/Vk5bSG78pbQ" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">https://youtu.be/Vk5bSG78pbQ</a></div>
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<br />Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-83275005015201162122024-01-30T06:32:00.007-07:002024-01-30T06:42:32.347-07:00Memoirs 2: Lithographs and Other from the 80's <p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB_W0DaAbmd_q4eJ83kR2n9-DRYWfQujJ-guHeDUsPuKhshyW5U_f84TO3HNgVuQakPdu7VZq77vCRCpwcLCY_ZoXOqGDEwsRIp5LZ-9YfiQjkIbJsRqwzN-ZEzW5UYq6mHsqUSzqzDXk3T3CBXCduqTMFHVqEnq1504x3f4FthStWNioqC-p8-DiuC54/s3593/Axis%20Mundi.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3593" data-original-width="2272" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB_W0DaAbmd_q4eJ83kR2n9-DRYWfQujJ-guHeDUsPuKhshyW5U_f84TO3HNgVuQakPdu7VZq77vCRCpwcLCY_ZoXOqGDEwsRIp5LZ-9YfiQjkIbJsRqwzN-ZEzW5UYq6mHsqUSzqzDXk3T3CBXCduqTMFHVqEnq1504x3f4FthStWNioqC-p8-DiuC54/w253-h400/Axis%20Mundi.jpg" width="253" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Gaia" (1985)</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I wanted to finish sharing these "forgotten" Lithogrgaphs from the 80's. This was the height of New Age. Extraordinary people like Carolyn Myss Energy Healing, Gloria
Orenstein with Ecofeminism, Psychologists such as Stephen Levine and Jack
Kornfield bringing Vipassana meditation and Theravada Buddhism into
contemporary psychology, Starhawk, <a href="http://machanightmare.com/herself/">M. Macha Nightmare</a>, and their colleagues creating the Pagan
religious path for Goddess spirituality and a return to Nature, Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman bringing
Shamanism into the modern world, Joseph Campbell inspiring everyone with
the Power of Myth, Shirley Maclain and Crystals................ so much, such a glorious international opening of spiritual re-discovery and re-invention. Yes there were excesses, as always will happen, but I am always annoyed at the mindless censorship and cynicism with which people now scoff at "New Age", not realizing how many important ideas practices and institutions arose from the era of openness and re-discovery<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></span></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuN6aZWLYdcp8oOicq3gF9Le8mjyCzbNWE-feABJ0-0JIEZ8IuqMN81Z7UQj9dbm-HZ4u28p7tEQq4y20sGSEopWxRdhw38kj75j2en9orUUDYHMPsiz8GsmwK6-1kMebp2FV8hl5g6YPZO0K0n36nhyphenhyphenjkk_0NjzNGjegZWPdQrNwA0TtelP8HxhmlEuc/s1398/Day%20of%20Radience.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1398" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuN6aZWLYdcp8oOicq3gF9Le8mjyCzbNWE-feABJ0-0JIEZ8IuqMN81Z7UQj9dbm-HZ4u28p7tEQq4y20sGSEopWxRdhw38kj75j2en9orUUDYHMPsiz8GsmwK6-1kMebp2FV8hl5g6YPZO0K0n36nhyphenhyphenjkk_0NjzNGjegZWPdQrNwA0TtelP8HxhmlEuc/w400-h293/Day%20of%20Radience.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Day of Radience" (1985)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />I love this piece, which spontaneously gave a photo in my studio of the artist <a href="https://catherinenash.com/">Catherine Nash</a> a "halo". She is a powerful artist whose work is highly spiritual: I was not surprised then, nor am I now.<div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSYF6vgPUxUElCiY0gwnAn7HfnDivd3CCiOqQHl5PCk4UigX4QqrqD8sBHcRFpXCuWKitBWpsh37yPTr5LttK7jKtiGzs0BoM9vFlV4zbAhEupNbkHDpGkvzJivmGCdMP7twSl44T5KLOrM74xdY-OL1loSw98mYWxb2MqaXE2LI84aXOqgWUPY3MQx10/s751/house%20of%20doors.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="751" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSYF6vgPUxUElCiY0gwnAn7HfnDivd3CCiOqQHl5PCk4UigX4QqrqD8sBHcRFpXCuWKitBWpsh37yPTr5LttK7jKtiGzs0BoM9vFlV4zbAhEupNbkHDpGkvzJivmGCdMP7twSl44T5KLOrM74xdY-OL1loSw98mYWxb2MqaXE2LI84aXOqgWUPY3MQx10/w400-h258/house%20of%20doors.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"A House of Doors" (1987)</td></tr></tbody></table><i><br /></i></div><div><i><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhm2tDbNQvYMJYWyHMfbC2dWZl5wbaVvoirsQErBumkRus9Ie_al2rK5mgQaD9uASpxX2bjrZaMcvY7EyLns0Qx4FRiENcTecqe7xWAG00Ytcq3FpWrLHlPsrJ6JMPSDX8CQbrOMWgj9I72XT6gO8UN53kuDWV7Tbpbf1La9z7eHm50auJl72ACVQocdeM" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="264" data-original-width="320" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhm2tDbNQvYMJYWyHMfbC2dWZl5wbaVvoirsQErBumkRus9Ie_al2rK5mgQaD9uASpxX2bjrZaMcvY7EyLns0Qx4FRiENcTecqe7xWAG00Ytcq3FpWrLHlPsrJ6JMPSDX8CQbrOMWgj9I72XT6gO8UN53kuDWV7Tbpbf1La9z7eHm50auJl72ACVQocdeM=w400-h330" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"A House of Doors IV" (1988)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiZ221cb1Qo9suHpMddBrT-eBX22jbfv2jXugUj__3P_zBWAxZb4XTYJCyuK-55tAmhNaCqNoS82gKnnRWsYnuAbUL0ucc8t_lqdKu79p4waIyT42NnwTDLux2uA6PfhQUOwccHlm8o1X01ERTlGlGOdABLdX2dlnLRYbJQs35fkDVltsg6ihymd14upPc" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="246" data-original-width="320" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiZ221cb1Qo9suHpMddBrT-eBX22jbfv2jXugUj__3P_zBWAxZb4XTYJCyuK-55tAmhNaCqNoS82gKnnRWsYnuAbUL0ucc8t_lqdKu79p4waIyT42NnwTDLux2uA6PfhQUOwccHlm8o1X01ERTlGlGOdABLdX2dlnLRYbJQs35fkDVltsg6ihymd14upPc" width="312" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Daemon Lover" (1987)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /></i></div><div><i><b>A HOUSE OF DOORS</b> </i>was the theme for my MFA show in 1987, and I produced a number of paintings and also a <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-972033003/a-house-of-doors-1987">Spoken Word poem</a> (in collaboration with <a href="https://catherinenash.com/">Catherine Nash)</a> inspired by the amazing works of Laurie Anderson. I am thinking I will make the next post about that particular show. <br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigV1xOoZzZasC6nXvAteeKGusR32CbaRNFUt-U4OqiAP9s-5rsO3tJ3Hfy33DKYHa90G3w9_9wGKOWOS3EAcnIF4uA8eAaA2-EbgqovtUWUpU68ZEArI-lC_xg3v-iC56S4hKoAl4XVFafJ7l-aDwlLlxUp7b8mvawcyH2cvVzJqZcP8iE8A-xNV5_pcc/s1268/Skin%20shedder.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1268" data-original-width="1068" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigV1xOoZzZasC6nXvAteeKGusR32CbaRNFUt-U4OqiAP9s-5rsO3tJ3Hfy33DKYHa90G3w9_9wGKOWOS3EAcnIF4uA8eAaA2-EbgqovtUWUpU68ZEArI-lC_xg3v-iC56S4hKoAl4XVFafJ7l-aDwlLlxUp7b8mvawcyH2cvVzJqZcP8iE8A-xNV5_pcc/w338-h400/Skin%20shedder.jpg" width="338" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Skin Shedder" (1986)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div>By 1985 I had discovered the evolving Pagan community and ritual practice, and also began to learn about the Goddess. I was inspired reading Starhawk and The Spiral Dance deeply. When I began to learn about the many, many manifestations of the Divine Feminine throughout the world, it felt like a vast sustenance and truth was entering me, to fill up the emptiness I had often felt in my lack of religion. Here was, as <a href="https://aeon.co/videos/a-mindbending-trip-that-summons-the-forgotten-women-of-surrealism">Gloria Orenstein </a>, one of the founders of EcoFeminism, wrote in her book <b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Reflowering-Goddess-Gloria-Feman-Orenstein/dp/0080351786">THE REFLOWERING OF THE GODDESS</a></b> the return of the Great Mother to a world desperately in need of Her. Here was the need for a new Iconography that I, as an artist, could entirely respond to and devote myself to. </div><div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxJfh5IM0NlR1TTfqbP_dcvYVZ9reDoLQTHslBR8ddlIdWk7m17vN3TR_eagqjZaR2ZF0HE_-X6cW73NV6HhCYSidRWKnaPw7TYgB_Du1icPA1rnf-6k1PJeGx_ye_vQGbD8T7llqbGZlD9tTLRBudM3QKEjvsPhnAhQZJA5q3sHdR0MAH1_Vr4ggdN3U/s1380/Summer%20Solstice.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1380" data-original-width="1062" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxJfh5IM0NlR1TTfqbP_dcvYVZ9reDoLQTHslBR8ddlIdWk7m17vN3TR_eagqjZaR2ZF0HE_-X6cW73NV6HhCYSidRWKnaPw7TYgB_Du1icPA1rnf-6k1PJeGx_ye_vQGbD8T7llqbGZlD9tTLRBudM3QKEjvsPhnAhQZJA5q3sHdR0MAH1_Vr4ggdN3U/w308-h400/Summer%20Solstice.jpg" width="308" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Summer Solstice" (1987_</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXkvwcGCIWfYePHt1Xqrmv3IlYrDp5SNQwLDKsQtdpryRnMjIDJdGsVRouguNA_40h74K1XIsSGgtZDcAiILsuzzKiA6QWdcsLOeaubxKfLRhicUli5qu998JF_Y3hIY1KdIEpnzM1ijXZBTlcV8zIF1o6OXOjcXy-ZcrY3_EB8JbjdCD6ePv9u38Oq48/s1095/winter%20solstice%20print.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1095" data-original-width="690" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXkvwcGCIWfYePHt1Xqrmv3IlYrDp5SNQwLDKsQtdpryRnMjIDJdGsVRouguNA_40h74K1XIsSGgtZDcAiILsuzzKiA6QWdcsLOeaubxKfLRhicUli5qu998JF_Y3hIY1KdIEpnzM1ijXZBTlcV8zIF1o6OXOjcXy-ZcrY3_EB8JbjdCD6ePv9u38Oq48/w253-h400/winter%20solstice%20print.jpg" width="253" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Winter Solstice" (1987)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1815" data-original-width="2681" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwGuQgTSOwtznNZM6ri8UurNUlRZZ5H0Z3NnWziNGl8cjUipnnI05pn68XnMLqqLmr-TK_uVxe0Ry5FHd3XGpPbmFTJnfDKqbC2t85L5foVNa0bLFzJtUJriqLAy-7Cge9ISDpinMcZtWHK5Gq8OOsYam7s-8_n2bRwcvoC_BIcNYSKaRXQEm6pbguMzM/w400-h271/herne%20black%20and%20white.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Herne" 1988)</td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: center;"> </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"></div></div></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXNUjyeGkzAwSMPSQQ_YJX22-qIOF3-3kpM1hSC54c_Yh1WZXNiZ_5eYl5WqybEHwbQ_IRpsKAgIqTF6fOOKCiKA6p6xauKhsCCxQBFmdHHK_AIi4ffxyJCqQo9mWN5OKbhUHKUZ9SLQ5UUWhq0wJcCU0k9iQYLLXhTfN6LXfq9jorguCC_Adqoezcii0/s734/SKIN%20SHEDDER.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="687" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXNUjyeGkzAwSMPSQQ_YJX22-qIOF3-3kpM1hSC54c_Yh1WZXNiZ_5eYl5WqybEHwbQ_IRpsKAgIqTF6fOOKCiKA6p6xauKhsCCxQBFmdHHK_AIi4ffxyJCqQo9mWN5OKbhUHKUZ9SLQ5UUWhq0wJcCU0k9iQYLLXhTfN6LXfq9jorguCC_Adqoezcii0/s320/SKIN%20SHEDDER.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Skin Shedder Mandala" (1987)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-27349924264465153922024-01-18T07:45:00.001-07:002024-01-18T07:47:57.037-07:00The Woman at the Roots<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIn1LIziNNt85iMakxMBfGNdraCKew0nx12lEJlUGiZil92GsCM8cQubedFFxuk4xJ1uPZ4B4CImJAfH44a6bCUbh4mJtF-sZ4W6dKxK_CTw1e3CyQGRxSZdV0xmr-xkwW59EF_1BsaEZeB4oHpvmcnCtefqqkVh_-vXEWH0joi_adUcwJ6qeRRJNhzpw/s3562/20231229_080350.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3562" data-original-width="1706" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIn1LIziNNt85iMakxMBfGNdraCKew0nx12lEJlUGiZil92GsCM8cQubedFFxuk4xJ1uPZ4B4CImJAfH44a6bCUbh4mJtF-sZ4W6dKxK_CTw1e3CyQGRxSZdV0xmr-xkwW59EF_1BsaEZeB4oHpvmcnCtefqqkVh_-vXEWH0joi_adUcwJ6qeRRJNhzpw/w306-h640/20231229_080350.jpg" width="306" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>First came this strange painting, which I finished just before the New Year. For years now I've been making sculptures that are "rooted", now I attempt to paint them, not so easy for me. I think this calm face among the rooted earth is winter born, dormant and waiting. Waiting for what? That will be revealed in time, for now, resting, dreaming, sustaining. </div><div>But the Painting desired a poem, and I found the poem I needed (below) by <a href="https://sharonblackie.net/">Sharon Blackie</a>, author of one of my favorite books, <a href="https://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/9781912836017">IF WOMEN ROSE ROOTED</a>. It's perfect for the advent of a New Year, my own, and as a collective Blessing as well. I excerpt from her poem <u><a href="https://www.facebook.com/sharonblackiemythmakings/posts/this-poem-which-appeared-in-if-women-rose-rooted-is-the-only-poem-ive-ever-finis/1630241773776858/">Peregrina:</a></u></div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Only lend me a loom and I will</span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">take up the threads of this unravelled life.</span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I will weave a braid from three strands of seaweed</span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I will wind it three times around my finger</span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I will dig my salt-encrusted hands into the soil</span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">and wed myself to the thirsty</span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">brown roots of a new beginning. </span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-91620304558916444412024-01-17T08:01:00.005-07:002024-01-17T08:10:25.891-07:00Memoirs 1: Lithographs from 1985<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2iKizQ_k9rnVOrrDWx9E_yV37lNMmwwmAbSJbdTQ73dx7FyO03_AB6oGgrwWTFrX-wsTvNWcm3TVB9k-cxEbZGlnsqo32vruEk153sDsJwRArQCeU7yV5ZERwG6_K2PJESL5-FFKL1tBe435bFS3a3kAqQX_w_Wn5HAZXJDfEzYxAf-RstE3kPfBR0mI/s1124/for%20my%20father%20&%20time.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="1124" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2iKizQ_k9rnVOrrDWx9E_yV37lNMmwwmAbSJbdTQ73dx7FyO03_AB6oGgrwWTFrX-wsTvNWcm3TVB9k-cxEbZGlnsqo32vruEk153sDsJwRArQCeU7yV5ZERwG6_K2PJESL5-FFKL1tBe435bFS3a3kAqQX_w_Wn5HAZXJDfEzYxAf-RstE3kPfBR0mI/w640-h232/for%20my%20father%20&%20time.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>For my Father, and Time</i> (1985)</td></tr></tbody></table><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i> "Who has twisted us around like this, so that no matter what we do, we are in the posture of someone going away? Just as, upon the farthest hill, which shows him his whole valley one last time, he turns, stops, lingers--, so we live here, forever taking leave."</i></span></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: small; font-weight: inherit; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Eighth Elegy", Duino Elegies (translated by Stephen Mitchell)</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>I have been thinking lately that this Blog is beginning to form itself into a kind of "scrapbook of memoir". Sometimes I have thought that I've basically said everything I have to say, and now it's more about looking back, as well as finding ways to say it again. In our world that relentlessly seeks "the new" I give up, I stop along the road, take a drink of water, and look back more and more these days.</p><p> Perhaps because I have had a few encounters with mortality this year, including open heart surgery in July and now preparing for removal of a tumor (<i>which I am assured is not life threatening</i>).......perhaps because of that I look back on the road and notice old beauties. So, having stated that, I think this new year will see this Blog often becoming Memoir. And I give myself permission to repeat myself!</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdbOMKyzHu6d_YeUQyT1Vj4sdZiITnMKSoYNFaeQI87QSoENS9tXOOgLIoVZGxGAR7BCfhFaHXyXZdK01VQtcIyqpnbx0wD55ARMK1Zhk_Urn4HlwQz_-1Kj9GJSmXJbGgUb1Xv6zXgYIyXugxyp_upnr-wGi4_2uHCUckfj625LHH04BzlWSz0OK9b2Q/s1048/Ancestral.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="1048" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdbOMKyzHu6d_YeUQyT1Vj4sdZiITnMKSoYNFaeQI87QSoENS9tXOOgLIoVZGxGAR7BCfhFaHXyXZdK01VQtcIyqpnbx0wD55ARMK1Zhk_Urn4HlwQz_-1Kj9GJSmXJbGgUb1Xv6zXgYIyXugxyp_upnr-wGi4_2uHCUckfj625LHH04BzlWSz0OK9b2Q/w400-h289/Ancestral.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Songs the Rain Sings </i>(1985)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>I was looking through a "lost" collection of lithographs I worked on in graduate school in the 80's. They were all made the hard way on litho stones (<i>and it's mindboggling to think that that is how newspapers once were produced</i>). I used old photographs mostly. The photographs were from a box of family photos I inherited, or sometimes old photos from "the Warehouse" artist studios where I lived in Berkeley in the 70's. Some of those old photos became magical windows for me, icons that "time travelled" into fantastical worlds. Like, for example, the small lithograph above, which is from a 1920 snapshot of my mother. </p><p>I often used images of my mother as a child at the beach. I didn't know it at the time, but I think they revealed the mystery of time for me. The recuring child that my mother was is ever the Observer. And of course, there was The Beach............Perhaps that child-and-mother represented to me that part of ourselves that lives and <i>sees outside of time, outside of the dramas of our lives, outside of the polarties - </i>the creative, innocent Soul before the great oceanic Oneness we came from, and eventually return to.</p><p>Not all the photos I played with were old family photos: among my finds were photos of friends posing as models (at that time people always it seemed had to be painted in the nude). I think of that time and place, a young artist in Berkeley in the early 70's, as the "Halcyon Years". </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjggfTeKVf3t4_2qQL1_Ab6nPaaaRHJ_KgLGbk12P5jT-lbIuRlopxrHZ6BdHoT7kOGpLUM4bHjr3iF_34ogEQXXFcEb7Cm7vRZCGJ-20zRSEcASCS1aDLmxkXZWwgXt3LXFt0o_SdMw8OaduTYZhh0nhe8iqLrMocfA3eb_EiZS_A61oFk0SGPk7AJ98Y/s888/train.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="888" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjggfTeKVf3t4_2qQL1_Ab6nPaaaRHJ_KgLGbk12P5jT-lbIuRlopxrHZ6BdHoT7kOGpLUM4bHjr3iF_34ogEQXXFcEb7Cm7vRZCGJ-20zRSEcASCS1aDLmxkXZWwgXt3LXFt0o_SdMw8OaduTYZhh0nhe8iqLrMocfA3eb_EiZS_A61oFk0SGPk7AJ98Y/w315-h400/train.jpg" width="315" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"All Aboard!"</i> (1985)</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>"Sybils" is a strange image. One of the definitions of "Sibyll" is: <span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-style: italic;">"a woman in ancient times who speaks </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-style: italic;"> the </span><span class="AraNOb" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-style: italic; text-decoration-line: underline;">oracles</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-style: italic;"> and </span><span class="AraNOb" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-style: italic; text-decoration-line: underline;">prophecies</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124;"><i> of a god." </i>Thus, <i>a </i></span></span> Sibyll would live, at least in part, outside of time, hence the bones. And yet the pregnant Sibyll...........perhaps I was thinking of life ever renewing itself, the circle. And of course, there is my mother, on the Beach, observing.<div><br /><div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggs04WPzsIfexFt7gVndDvGoS5mZF1wxxAyU9Ul-qU8rtBlWy_VxCl9G3hso1BfRjt10TaLgG8cAH8nZSLQIW_awVmoo0VgrwqvVDnaMtL2u_iiiPdIpdRahdyHTv2CMWjcZ25ZSeqyMzji5bVxjTIpdwZ_K_V_n7bAQ2s_vX7EmOHgJAceL0zlES8iec/s1367/Sybils.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1367" data-original-width="1038" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggs04WPzsIfexFt7gVndDvGoS5mZF1wxxAyU9Ul-qU8rtBlWy_VxCl9G3hso1BfRjt10TaLgG8cAH8nZSLQIW_awVmoo0VgrwqvVDnaMtL2u_iiiPdIpdRahdyHTv2CMWjcZ25ZSeqyMzji5bVxjTIpdwZ_K_V_n7bAQ2s_vX7EmOHgJAceL0zlES8iec/w304-h400/Sybils.jpg" width="304" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Sybils" (1985)<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>A photo I found of my grandmother Helen, who died before I was born. I don't think she had a happy life, being buffeted by a controlling and even cruel mother, and an unhappy marriage. Although my grandfather was a well meaning man, he was domineering and no doubt emotionally explosive. My mother married the same kind of man. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here I envisioned this unknown grandmother, who I only knew from old photos, as an observer, watching me across the generations as I rest with my cat, Pumpkin, somehow aware of her presence. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1033" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUFNkro6gAQRScGIAcIwJlw9f6D2UwSCMV6bIzz_ynM56FPKEtgEuxFZNmfqsuo7SRgVkGn6RZuTj6w3-zWSqHyxRiHOCFI2vMMEFyZCnJ8BTVVC0MmJm81PxlYojm2PeKvCAW9-a0pqUyNuDeE0mhQ7PF1LGOfgz_17LzLX84fA68Ecf_JbtJVrD86D4/w400-h310/ancestral%20visitation.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<i>Ancestral Visitations" </i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><br />Here is the Observer again, and this time she ventures into the world of myth and archetype, a place I love to go. We all know the sad fate of Icarus, who flew with his wax wings too close to the sun, causing them to melt and he fell to his death. But what if he had a sister, a sister who did not make his mistake, and flew joyfully wherever she wanted to go, escaping gleefully her captors? Like most of the accomplishments of women throughout his-story, she has been erased. But here I, and the Observer, bear witness to her exhuberance as she flies far and wide. Perhaps she went to Crete, or even Egypt, where she finally landed, had a lovely nap and lunch, made some friends, got a job, met a guy she married, and lived to a ripe old age. Why not?</div><div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm6ArvsmdnAeyTQPsX9fu8S5oMVPvsZT-_jnayPDyq4pRkNOpeTap82eLNhJefOEvpOpAjiOAl99SIc69V8aB8qwnYXBxQdOG49EGNTVWNtwVPIjfWHDykx9s0YShn3oH6ZgkkrpPigjNAFx7L49nybse5y_sxaH1bp_K_6ZS0I9b87N5XTO78en-Tslw/s1610/Icarus%20had%20a%20sister.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1610" data-original-width="870" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm6ArvsmdnAeyTQPsX9fu8S5oMVPvsZT-_jnayPDyq4pRkNOpeTap82eLNhJefOEvpOpAjiOAl99SIc69V8aB8qwnYXBxQdOG49EGNTVWNtwVPIjfWHDykx9s0YShn3oH6ZgkkrpPigjNAFx7L49nybse5y_sxaH1bp_K_6ZS0I9b87N5XTO78en-Tslw/w346-h640/Icarus%20had%20a%20sister.jpg" width="346" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Icarus Had a Sister" (1985)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Here below is one of my favorites from the series, Leda and the Swan. I guess this is about as close to erotic art as I ever got. Yes, Leda was seduced by a God. But she also brought to that encounter her passion to fly, and thus loved this numinous, winged creature, flying with him for those few hours. I am sure, in their pleasure, he took her to some beautiful visionary heights.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsR3cFY9HhtIOsNuiHg-BnUbp0KfukIaH9KiNfYpjI513RTpECVSjfnGkPeUJ6s5zmuUbwK-qVlQPRw7fSACmW0hgTolSOD6rUumjnBz0oz_ATYsA-BHjhTzgXSqpefaLDBSJBv7-Yc3FifFeMBz3e5B8K3R8ZxpqEpEcetlw3ZjXKLjtexka9vo6hsU/s2858/Leda%20and%20the%20Swan.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2858" data-original-width="2226" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsR3cFY9HhtIOsNuiHg-BnUbp0KfukIaH9KiNfYpjI513RTpECVSjfnGkPeUJ6s5zmuUbwK-qVlQPRw7fSACmW0hgTolSOD6rUumjnBz0oz_ATYsA-BHjhTzgXSqpefaLDBSJBv7-Yc3FifFeMBz3e5B8K3R8ZxpqEpEcetlw3ZjXKLjtexka9vo6hsU/w311-h400/Leda%20and%20the%20Swan.jpg" width="311" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Leda and the Swan" (1985)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />I think I'll stop here, and bring the other Lithos into another post. I am glad to share them here, they have been chirping for exposure in my closet for many years, some of my "lost children". I still love them.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-43648415936446880582024-01-16T12:03:00.008-07:002024-01-17T15:37:48.130-07:00"Crossing Over"<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1300" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUaXgn1wKtZOYCDUfgUbrgvMED3MpBE9UKqJdBrVJywGbyfyAN8_1Zd-MikYUHAW4IFJNhYuoWoAj7J3IH05TYkgZmE6HUmxQXeljI8DtLPezs65IWsvUpbEl2bh-y2hMJbza6ihiEjHACCNcWk8gUB1J9Y_3eRRA6m3xfQN4fwBpXLQu9cKysA1zpkSc/w400-h266/11652005-stained-glass-church-window-depicting-the-virgin-mary.jpg" width="400" /></div><br />I found this short video excerpt (below) from the 2 season television show <a href="https://youtu.be/cNHDFf1YLlc?si=zIsr2PIne53T0Sek">DEAD LIKE ME</a> (which I found wonderfully clever, funny, and often poignantly true) while searching for the music of <a href="https://youtu.be/aYcxqX6hgyg?si=7xt4N1DkZmNaLakr">Metisse</a>. I had, just the day before, been discussing mediumship, some of my conversations with mediums at Lily Dale that I met, and the paranormal experiences I and others have had. Some of the mediums I have met say that there are spirits that are "earth bound", and don't or can't "cross over". My friend, who is a highly intuitive counselor, asked "how do mediums help people to cross over?" A question I also wonder about.<p></p><p>Then synchronistically this excerpt turned up in my search. "Daisy", in the film, is a "Grim Reaper", one whose job it is to help recently dead souls accept their death, and cross over. Reapers, however, cannot cross over. In the story Stan, who was gay, has just died and wants to go to a Church, which Daisy agrees to take him to. He has a lifetime of hurt and anger at God for being different. And he receives an answer that shatters the windows of his spirit, freeing him. It rings true for me somehow, and I don't mean that in any religious context. The music, words, and acting, are a kind of "sacred poem" to me. Beautiful.............</p><p><a href="https://youtu.be/E0NjcpfzAUY?si=DibwVnUKN2uC19kT">https://youtu.be/E0NjcpfzAUY?si=DibwVnUKN2uC19kT</a></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E0NjcpfzAUY?si=2QeKGuhGZAjm8wRs" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-64643843146040359762023-12-26T22:30:00.001-07:002023-12-26T22:30:28.021-07:00Beannacht ("Blessing") for the New Year<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5FbUjNMmmWafIp-oHNcSHjbkQg4vE3OboTbS2HLAGwlzmMFqlT7-Gz_ubsUxiDLYG2Ggwoqn3uEXvlfDsB05SfYCFzNYmcSNJgL_wfs9m2fJJieRXD9ykOs4OHDybzTjvJgIJZG-T7u1qm6GAR_KGZ25gTLZP46jpDpV_1sGXOF6FlcJY4IGJoGdrQwE/s1499/413888819_10161558779533336_2108130288504263935_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1499" data-original-width="843" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5FbUjNMmmWafIp-oHNcSHjbkQg4vE3OboTbS2HLAGwlzmMFqlT7-Gz_ubsUxiDLYG2Ggwoqn3uEXvlfDsB05SfYCFzNYmcSNJgL_wfs9m2fJJieRXD9ykOs4OHDybzTjvJgIJZG-T7u1qm6GAR_KGZ25gTLZP46jpDpV_1sGXOF6FlcJY4IGJoGdrQwE/w360-h640/413888819_10161558779533336_2108130288504263935_n.jpg" width="360" /></a></div><br /><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p> On the day when</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>the weight deadens</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>on your shoulders</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>and you stumble,</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>may the clay dance</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>to balance you.</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><br /></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>And when your eyes</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>freeze behind</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>the grey window</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>and the ghost of loss</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>gets in to you,</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>may a flock of colours,</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>indigo, red, green,</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>and azure blue</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>come to awaken in you</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>a meadow of delight.</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><br /></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>When the canvas frays</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>in the currach of thought</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>and a stain of ocean</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>blackens beneath you,</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>may there come across the waters</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>a path of yellow moonlight</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>to bring you safely home.</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><br /></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>May the nourishment of the Earth be yours,</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>May the clarity of light be yours,</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>may the fluency of the ocean be yours,</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>may the protection of the ancestors be yours.</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><br /></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>And so may a slow</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>wind work these words</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>of love around you,</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>an invisible cloak</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>to mind your life.</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><br /></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>~ John O'Donohue </p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-57864419839089774822023-12-25T05:46:00.002-07:002023-12-25T05:46:20.859-07:00Midwinter Reflections: Light in the Dark<p> · <img border="0" data-original-height="2259" data-original-width="2656" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Bfel1J0dMBR7eu169SsEplJzs3ldBB5j-EpTbTCW-0Irq2RR2PY2qYvKc3fbOjMS1mIGgymhDmvLsNN71bY27ze3AcByzKZNfAxDey25sVvYLpO6mu0X4DaaXNiKYFzooynZFmCjpIM60KK8r8_rJBe0eZ5hBe9ntrakrx_KjiwU5sCa-FWUyBqC8R4/w400-h340/Goddess%20of%20the%20Turning%20Year.JPG" width="400" /><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Midwinter Reflections: Light in the Dark</span></p><p>by M. Macha NightMare, aka Aline O’Brien</p><p>In our modern world, we tend to take light for granted. We’re used to living constantly amidst all manner of human-made lights. We seldom reflect on the fact that for most of human history our only sources of light came from the sky and from fire. We easily forget that there was a time when torches were a new invention, oil lamps were valued possessions, and chandlers toiled so people could see in the night by candlelight.</p><p>Of necessity our ancestors lived their lives finely attuned to Nature’s cycles – of light and dark, then later the cycles of sowing and reaping. They knew that their lives depended upon the Sun, so they created rituals to ensure its annual return. Today many homeless people remain acutely aware of the changes in sunlight throughout the seasons. They also bed down at nightfall as our ancestors did.</p><p>In fact, marking the return of the light was so important to them that at least 5,000 years ago some of our Western European ancestors built megaliths such as Brugh na Bóinne in Ireland and Maes Howe in Scotland. Brugh na Boinne, or Newgrange, is a mound near the Boinne River (named for Boann, a cow goddess) comprised of a passage leading to inner chambers carved with spiral designs. The builders constructed the mound so that the light of the rising Sun on Midwinter morning shines a shaft of sunlight deep inside to illuminate the innermost chambers. </p><p>Some ancestors decorated their dwellings with evergreens; they cut a tree and decorated its branches with twinkling little candles. This tree represented the World Tree that unites the Underworld, the Middle World, and the Upper World, and it never dies.</p><p>I think humans are hard-wired to gather around fires, especially during the long nights of Winter. Other ancestors gathered round a Yule log -- Yule is a Scandinavian word usually taken to mean “wheel” -- to keep warm through the cold longest night of the year as they sat together, while bards and elders told stories, musicians played and people sang and danced, ate and drank.</p><p>We Pagans, at least the majority of us, view the Winter Solstice as the night when our Great Mother labors to bring forth the reborn Sun God. We see in images of Mary and the baby Jesus something ancient and primal, an icon that speaks to us.</p><p>When we perform these acts – when we sing the carols, trim our trees, light candles – we reenact the things our ancestors did, we reconnect with them, and we honor our heritage. Celebrating Midwinter together allows us to reaffirm the continuance of life.</p><p>I wish all a joyous Solstice, warmed by the loving hearts of friends and family and a toasty fire.</p><p>© 2010 M. Macha NightMare, aka Aline O’Brien</p>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-86827808109447177912023-12-17T19:42:00.006-07:002023-12-17T19:45:34.936-07:00The Winter Solstice: Return of the Light<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2BiJYrEFg42bpX6dCmJzZkklo6h8fv9cxWDPPVP8rNTewT9p1yXIjr8h-sGuO7iwhwXmn9q_8zxogdGYt67HZRUHovLEFllLc9gAObKCKb9dsHSd78i-SLuSDxz9GaXVYd2wzdiN7kikGx5ctXFNvtpNAUtxEtAp86BnTrvWyI_ZXBFcYwnjjduQFli0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="506" data-original-width="640" height="506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2BiJYrEFg42bpX6dCmJzZkklo6h8fv9cxWDPPVP8rNTewT9p1yXIjr8h-sGuO7iwhwXmn9q_8zxogdGYt67HZRUHovLEFllLc9gAObKCKb9dsHSd78i-SLuSDxz9GaXVYd2wzdiN7kikGx5ctXFNvtpNAUtxEtAp86BnTrvWyI_ZXBFcYwnjjduQFli0=w640-h506" width="640" /></a></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: center;"><i>Saint Lucia Swedish Celebration </i></span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The longest night, the sweet and Blessed Dark, and the Rebirth of the Sun. Perhaps the oldest of all human holy days, and source of many different sacred celebrations. In Sweden it is celebrated with St. Lucia's Day. "Lucia" derives from the Latin word for "Light", and one such story concerns the arrival of a Christian martyr named Lucia who appeared in white, with a crown of light around her head, to give succor to the hungry and suffering. <span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.2px;">Different stories and traditions surround St. Lucia in different countries, but all focus on central themes of service and light. </span><span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.2px;">Lucia symbolizes the coming end of the long winter nights and the return of light to the darkened world.</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEdzCUxwY_YbJ40gk1oinH8PBO2tBpk9nIHvjKINwfGE04Focycq6s-C6CfejU4VBpM_sPYxL7pHFXhaEwjGOvsxxP3CiOf7QkQMy0vEKxaR7ofZoydUKA1SClcWR2ZQsiyWzkhrLcixI/s1600/stlucia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="327" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEdzCUxwY_YbJ40gk1oinH8PBO2tBpk9nIHvjKINwfGE04Focycq6s-C6CfejU4VBpM_sPYxL7pHFXhaEwjGOvsxxP3CiOf7QkQMy0vEKxaR7ofZoydUKA1SClcWR2ZQsiyWzkhrLcixI/s320/stlucia.jpg" width="314" /></a></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">As the dark is holy, the generative place of rest, so is the Light holy. On this, the longest and darkest night, we light our candles and our bonfires as ancestors have done for uncounted centuries, around the world and in many languages, before us. We bring light to darkness, light to each other, and we honor the Blessing of the Return of the Sun. And I also reflect on the healing and creative powers of what poet David Whyte called "<i>sweet darkness"</i>, the times of silence and incubation that are wedded to the times of illumination.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For myself, I ask what Light I might hope to ignite within myself. What light can I offer that might illuminate not only my path, but perhaps assist the pathways of other Beings of the Earth as well? </div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>"To go in the dark with a light</i></span></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>is to know the light. </i></span></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>To know the dark, go dark.</i></span></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> Go without sight, and find</i></span></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> that the dark, too, blooms and sings,</i></span></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."</i></span></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wendell Berry</span></i></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><div align="left"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEZESjmyrYPi1VpDY4fQtjaF_N2MjQJr7IQvEBWsYCGM1rZ6nCnLQMyRfgH-fRjtkVi08TqSAIydEnICBfKx_0C6F7KNBFSY6jW5ckwAyo4xvZ3UZPGkujmlgGf8u_KynC-R18zUK8GRWe/s1600/4963.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><b><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEZESjmyrYPi1VpDY4fQtjaF_N2MjQJr7IQvEBWsYCGM1rZ6nCnLQMyRfgH-fRjtkVi08TqSAIydEnICBfKx_0C6F7KNBFSY6jW5ckwAyo4xvZ3UZPGkujmlgGf8u_KynC-R18zUK8GRWe/w266-h400/4963.JPG" width="266" /></b></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><i style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><br /><br /></b></span></i></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div align="center"><br /></div><div align="center"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitISzn4WY7JLYzTwkcYiqJmkuh3lqr4TWvS-sGPnieCDkEsGaUXGotsgU_d3msGAqEyEuV-eH8yq9T7M2dyWwPzR7r715pTdjX9mvAUFBLZkzvPEbcEpG7585DkpFOnq4YGV47MUM5Fweb/s1600/4916.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitISzn4WY7JLYzTwkcYiqJmkuh3lqr4TWvS-sGPnieCDkEsGaUXGotsgU_d3msGAqEyEuV-eH8yq9T7M2dyWwPzR7r715pTdjX9mvAUFBLZkzvPEbcEpG7585DkpFOnq4YGV47MUM5Fweb/w400-h266/4916.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Winter Solstice, Willits Community (2012)<br /> Photos courtesy JJ Idarius and Ann Waters</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div align="center"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C9f6zxo6X0s?si=StaWsaCaPls7wFqY&start=46" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div></blockquote></blockquote><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote></blockquote>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-14476744861906270802023-12-14T05:56:00.005-07:002023-12-14T05:56:52.754-07:00Blue Stars<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKmWd1zLELbSPMFtFMnQxmJdCSEJU2z7cQb1MqDZzMTn5q3UFZDdl17FkItcdLpZNepO21U9lV7xTVEF2ixv20qySht9OwbnUk00-R4v2sb8gPlXup-dK11tdSdw3A8JM8DY4j2YIciP-D5IZYQsW0OhGRIGorl485Z3JLPrNdIr3qbcVeikk_sjVwagY/s640/blue%20stars%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="441" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKmWd1zLELbSPMFtFMnQxmJdCSEJU2z7cQb1MqDZzMTn5q3UFZDdl17FkItcdLpZNepO21U9lV7xTVEF2ixv20qySht9OwbnUk00-R4v2sb8gPlXup-dK11tdSdw3A8JM8DY4j2YIciP-D5IZYQsW0OhGRIGorl485Z3JLPrNdIr3qbcVeikk_sjVwagY/w442-h640/blue%20stars%202.jpg" width="442" /></a><br /><br />A poem I wrote a long time ago for someone, and never shared with anyone. He died very recently. Remembering him, I think it is time to share the poem. Beyond even what we call love, there is a place where we meet, perhaps, where we go Home.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 18pt;">Blue Stars</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">"Who wants to understand the poem
must go to the Land of Poetry"<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">......
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Weary ideas rise and fall <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">the mind retreats at last into blessed exhaustion<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I taste that blood-red honey wine<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I entered a lucid dream,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">and found a lucid life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Through an open window, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Night reveals a black, far horizon<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">a landscape layered with memories<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">made of memories<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I hear the blue stars singing<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"Wait for me, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wait
for me"<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I wish I could tell you<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">what I have seen<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">in the homelands.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">in that country,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">we are of each other at last......<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">You take my hand, we walk together<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">in that green and splendid meadow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I offer you a glass; you raise your cup to mine.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Lips touch, a butterfly rises between us<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">and flies into the morning<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">from the other side of forever.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Through an open window,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I hear the blue stars singing.......<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I write this in a small, dark room,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">a cluttered here, a mute now<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">wishing I could be young again,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">wishing I could feel something other than foolish.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I will always remember you between, always between<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">regret and joy, hello and goodbye<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">delight and sorrow, truth and lies<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">that bright, endarkened landscape<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I saw you in.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">(2002)</span></p>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-56242309203371129032023-12-03T08:01:00.003-07:002023-12-04T11:35:55.354-07:00Hello Darkness: Why We Need the Dark<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6J7kFkE_AYYfxgQyH-EAXmH7Ij5_FrFBmNdVhoL1NkExt1qDxWrdBwhpVpSnkkNPAUDdfQBJnCqvkdthwzmzm_hFfHvODWMRMlTd87avqJorphpT3vsCR-6PCnFNg48QnhU-JY9UkhgP4/s1600/Winter-sunset_KD-web.jpeg" style="font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1203" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6J7kFkE_AYYfxgQyH-EAXmH7Ij5_FrFBmNdVhoL1NkExt1qDxWrdBwhpVpSnkkNPAUDdfQBJnCqvkdthwzmzm_hFfHvODWMRMlTd87avqJorphpT3vsCR-6PCnFNg48QnhU-JY9UkhgP4/s640/Winter-sunset_KD-web.jpeg" width="640" /></a></p><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><i>"We’ve rolled back the night so far that soon we will come full circle and reach the dawn of the following day. And where will that leave us? In a world with no God and no wolf either — only unrelenting commerce and consumption, information and media ... and light. We need a rest from ourselves that only a night like the winter solstice can give us."</i></span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The Winter Solstice approaches again, and I find myself longing each day for rest, solitude, reflection, the incubatory quietude of this time. The Dark is gestative, and emotional states arise in myself and others that disturb, revealing what has been buried in the daily frenzy of life. Yet if listened to, if given a voice in the dark, they can provide needed insight and healing. I believe the cycle of the season calls for it. Not so very long ago, we had Ancestors who, like all mammals, lived within the cycles of the seasons. After the last Harvest, the days grew shorter, and the world colder, and the hard work of the summer and fall ceased. This was a time of dormancy, of going within, of rest and sleep, of being enveloped by the Dark as the Winter Solstice approached. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We don't have that relationship with the Dark, or with the Cycles of our world, that our ancestors had very much these days. Yet I believe it is still there within each of us, still felt, perhaps felt as a loss or a hollow place inside. I pay attention these days to my own fear of "stopping", my own preoccupation with busy-ness as the Night approaches and <b>wishes to be heard</b>. I am giving myself time to listen now. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don't feel it's necessary to always come up with something new, to "re-invent the wheel" when it's been said well before. I'm like that with books too: I can read a book over and over, entering again each time into it with pleasure and new insight. So in that spirit, I offer here again a </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">post from last year, which includes an article I love by </span><a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/book/247632/waking-up-to-the-dark-by-clark-strand" style="font-family: georgia;">Clark Strand</a>. </span> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="728" height="429" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9vgzxRzvo7z1XJ2Vix2UFDrJdV4wqrVJBxUnFfCcrppDnSCJt93xNP79-5y3AFrIInqFI7JXlhI_DweDPzNlJz0rJK-wNkwInPt-U21RPicjvIAGRVar2Cg0hs5Kr9FAOUkswaCzFz-I/w640-h429/white-and-black-houses-in-cliff-wallpaper-preview.jpg" width="640" /><span style="text-align: left;">_____________________________________________________________________________</span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I remember a winter night many years ago, when I lived in the country in upstate N.Y.. I shared a house with a second story living room that had a big picture window, A mid-winter snowstorm had left us stranded in a shimmering blanket of snow. One could look out on that field of white, illuminated by the dark sky, the moon, and an occasional star, into a vast, dark silence. For a while the lights went out, but we had no shortage of candles, and somehow that makes the memory even sweeter for me. The intensity of the dark and the silence of the snow that long ago December was not frightening, but intimate, a landscape for sleep, for the incubation of dreams, a darkness ripe with dormant life. A place where we could lie together in the warmth of our bed, becoming aware of the occasional sound of snowfall, or an animal moving outside. <br /><br />I remember recently seeing a time lapse film of cities - vast networks of light, sky scrapers and traffic rushing along freeways like blood coursing along arteries, and I was struck by how much it looked like some kind of organism frenetically pulsing and extruding itself and consuming everything around it. The truth is, it had a terrible beauty - the shimmering, glittering urban triumph of humanity over nature, over the darkness. Or is it truly "triumph"? How is it possible we have so forgotten that we are not the conquerors of nature, but part of nature? Have we failed to see, in our blinding pursuit of speed and of "illumination" that we are also animals, participating in the cycles and seasons of the life of Gaia, needing rest, incubation, renewal, and the sweet silence of the dark.</span></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8zq4tKiVX37ghoLfTcB23Mm8ITerGgDNOd9CR0LqnQUz2FoZNmhIkwxAMJISRVt8fgLiiKk5F1cWculXlvEj3QeJrIx_PLUUXDbTCsxlUhdz42q61OwT61j-b2zCNjmTVJ6hUzpLoWQ/s275/download.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8zq4tKiVX37ghoLfTcB23Mm8ITerGgDNOd9CR0LqnQUz2FoZNmhIkwxAMJISRVt8fgLiiKk5F1cWculXlvEj3QeJrIx_PLUUXDbTCsxlUhdz42q61OwT61j-b2zCNjmTVJ6hUzpLoWQ/w400-h266/download.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Newgrange at the Winter Solstice</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In the years since, I have so often thought of those winter nights. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I take the liberty of reprinting here a wonderful article by <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/book/247632/waking-up-to-the-dark-by-clark-strand">Clark Strand</a>, whose book is well worth reading. </span><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">He has had such nights too, of that I'm sure. </span></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.randomhouse.com/cover/9780812997729?&height=281&maxwidth=190" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><img alt="9780812997729" border="0" class="flat_cover printcoverimage" height="400" src="https://images.randomhouse.com/cover/9780812997729?&height=281&maxwidth=190" width="272" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/opinion/why-we-need-the-winter-solstice.html?_r=2&referrer">Bring On the Dark: Why We Need the Winter Solstice</a></span></u></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br />By CLARK STRAND<br />December 19, 2014<br /><br />WOODSTOCK, N.Y. — WHEN the people of this small mountain town got their first dose of electrical lighting in late 1924, they were appalled. “Old people swore that reading or living by so fierce a light was impossible,” wrote the local historian Alf Evers. That much light invited comparisons. It was an advertisement for the new, the rich and the beautiful — a verdict against the old, the ordinary and the poor. As Christmas approached, a protest was staged on the village green to decry the evils of modern light.<br /><br />Woodstock has always been a small place with a big mouth where cultural issues are concerned. But in this case the protest didn’t amount to much. Here as elsewhere in early 20th-century America, the reluctance to embrace brighter nights was a brief and halfhearted affair.<br /><br />Tomorrow is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. But few of us will turn off the lights long enough to notice. There’s no getting away from the light. There are fluorescent lights and halogen lights, stadium lights, streetlights, stoplights, headlights and billboard lights. There are night lights to stand sentinel in hallways, and the lit screens of cellphones to feed our addiction to information, even in the middle of the night. No wonder we have trouble sleeping. <b>The lights are always on.</b><br /><br />In the modern world, petroleum may drive our engines but our consciousness is driven by light. And what it drives us to is excess, in every imaginable form.<br /><br />Beginning in the late 19th century, the availability of cheap, effective lighting extended the range of waking human consciousness, effectively adding more hours onto the day — for work, for entertainment, for discovery, for consumption; for every activity except sleep, that nightly act of renunciation. Darkness was the only power that has ever put the human agenda on hold.<br /><br />In centuries past, the hours of darkness were a time when no productive work could be done. Which is to say, at night the human impulse to remake the world in our own image — <b>so that it served us, so that we could almost believe the world and its resources existed for us alone</b> — was suspended. The night was the natural corrective to that most persistent of all illusions: that human progress is the reason for the world.<br /><br />Advances in science, industry, medicine and nearly every other area of human enterprise resulted from the influx of light. The only casualty was darkness, a thing of seemingly little value. But that was only because we had forgotten what darkness was for. In times past people took to their beds at nightfall, but not merely to sleep. <i>They touched one another, told stories and, with so much night to work with, woke in the middle of it to a darkness so luxurious it teased visions from the mind and divine visitations that helped to guide their course through life. </i>Now that deeper darkness has turned against us. The hour of the wolf we call it — that predatory insomnia that makes billions for big pharma. It was once the hour of God.<br /><br />There is, of course, no need to fear the dark, much less prevail over it. Not that we could. Look up in the sky on a starry night, if you can still find one, and you will see that there is a lot of darkness in the universe. There is so much of it, in fact, that it simply has to be the foundation of all that is. The stars are an anomaly in the face of it, the planets an accident. Is it evil or indifferent? I don’t think so. Our lives begin in the womb and end in the tomb. It’s dark on either side.<br /><br />We’ve rolled back the night so far that soon we will come full circle and reach the dawn of the following day. And where will that leave us? In a world with no God and no wolf either — only unrelenting commerce and consumption, information and media ... and light. We need a rest from ourselves that only a night like the winter solstice can give us. And the earth, too, needs that rest. The only thing I can hope for is that, if we won’t come to our senses and search for the darkness, on nights like these, the darkness will come looking for us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqEWLROh3FxPOAn3jbOF_v4Yzkx15tbQmw9b-ZV7Zg4Trpjz_8yiBiasLK6rqC2WgWrRA_TFCbTeifycf0gIkiE0eS4wtG99c21Jw3efHgco_0wBsNADKHAkXbXrTCrph8yPMc4NxqIRai28Gr3AVR9slMoRz-It9wAnhdH3-gPMbAsmtfU6oyfOUaKkk/s2000/133465385_5126630197362058_3322075135368571351_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqEWLROh3FxPOAn3jbOF_v4Yzkx15tbQmw9b-ZV7Zg4Trpjz_8yiBiasLK6rqC2WgWrRA_TFCbTeifycf0gIkiE0eS4wtG99c21Jw3efHgco_0wBsNADKHAkXbXrTCrph8yPMc4NxqIRai28Gr3AVR9slMoRz-It9wAnhdH3-gPMbAsmtfU6oyfOUaKkk/w400-h300/133465385_5126630197362058_3322075135368571351_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">You, darkness, that I come from</span></span><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: x-large; text-align: left;"> </span></div></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">I love you more than all the fires</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">that fence in the world,</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">and then no one outside learns of you.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">But the darkness pulls in everything –</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">shapes and fires, animals and myself,</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">how easily it gathers them! –</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">powers and people –</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">and it is possible </span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">a great presence is moving near me.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">I have faith in nights.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Playball; font-size: large;">Rainer Maria Rilke</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-48717033562699215292023-11-24T17:55:00.007-07:002023-11-24T17:55:48.012-07:00For Thanksgiving Day<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"> <img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrGgBy8q_TBjpAznw7S8a2zJ0AiZq4IO5tAfWJ9EPmevu4N_IIg9sc35Zb7Gc1-Wqe1o56O51dqDTFyCgxt4Ak4zYaca9iglU9u4QtvIPCc9d4iATP8oj25D5RRnALbqTy9SzsqeyM6i4a/s1600/offering+with+hands.jpg" width="378" /></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #660000;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"You think this is just another day in your life, but its not just another day. It's the one day in your life that is given to you. Its given to you, it's a gift, the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.......</span></i></span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #660000;"><i>Look at the faces of the people you meet. Each face has a unique story, a story that you could never fully fathom. And not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors is there. And in this present moment, in this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here......"</i></span></span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #660000;">Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast</span></i></div></blockquote><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Remembering the importance I feel about November 1st and Samhaim, the last Harvest Festival of old, I see that I've failed to remember that November is also the <b>month of Thanksgiving</b>, at least, in the United States. And our tragic national story of pilgrims being greeted by generous, but ultimately doomed, Native Americans with corn and wild turkeys aside, and things like "black Friday" sales events entirely perverting the point.........still, there is a perfect cyclical and spiritual rightness to this ending of November being about thankfulness. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How can we talk about the closing of the year and the final harvest festivals, going "into the dark" as the Planet turns as well as honoring our ancestors ~ without, finally, arriving at GRATITUDE?</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was looking for the perfect "Thanksgiving Day" card, and found this perfect video, a brief TED talk by </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Louie Schwartzberg</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> followed by the artist's video about Gratitude, which includes his </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">stunning time-lapse photography accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk Brother D</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">avid Steindl-Rast. I wanted to share this as my offering for Thanksgiving day.</span><br /><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Learn more about Louie Schwartzberg and Moving Art at <a href="http://www.movingart.com./">www.movingart.com.</a></i></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><a href="http://youtu.be/gXDMoiEkyuQ">http://youtu.be/gXDMoiEkyuQ</a></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gXDMoiEkyuQ?si=SBiFuHYXgJb16TVn" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-57063236135613929672023-11-09T06:44:00.206-07:002023-11-20T21:36:14.153-07:00The Dismissal of Beauty in Art<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18pt;">(and
Contemporary Life)</span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2O3VaGHr1uePZ8RriKxXSImBOQund6XtPIjCyoIt9CdRLfJv1Tg1lqFQFui68Q05He_MnmBGTE4Tl6E829PK7JtFxsU6_pV8JL2AmaOv1SelPxzxDLfvCJukdbbbBrNOo8EN3xoD-HsJ9vbYYfADX9c-G3GTe99onRBBCgph37S6Q8j0TZLzD6FmgrWw/s2042/Star%2011.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2042" data-original-width="1450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2O3VaGHr1uePZ8RriKxXSImBOQund6XtPIjCyoIt9CdRLfJv1Tg1lqFQFui68Q05He_MnmBGTE4Tl6E829PK7JtFxsU6_pV8JL2AmaOv1SelPxzxDLfvCJukdbbbBrNOo8EN3xoD-HsJ9vbYYfADX9c-G3GTe99onRBBCgph37S6Q8j0TZLzD6FmgrWw/w284-h400/Star%2011.jpg" width="284" /></a></div><p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">“Grace” Lauren Raine (1994)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">“The trouble is that we
have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering
happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of
the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of
pain.” </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><a name="_Hlk151186944"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Ursula
Le Guin “<u>The Ones Who Walk Away From
Omelas</u></span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">”
1</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">One of the things I, and many artists, do is look for possible residencies or shows
to enter, for which I apply and usually pay a hefty application fee as well. A
while back, I ran into a "call to artists" at a prestigious art
center in which, as part of their
application process, they posed a question for artists applying to answer as a consideration of entry.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Here's the question:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"> “This artist-in-residence will address whether
the concept of beauty gets lost in the issues-based or medium-focused practice
of contemporary art. Does beauty still
have a place in creative expression? Is the contemporary definition of
beauty different from classical beauty? <b>Is beauty relevant? Who cares</b>?”</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Huh? "Is beauty relevant? Who
cares?" That woke me up. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">In Tom Wolfe's famous critique of contemporary art of the 70's <u>The
Painted Word</u> he argued that art was <b>become literature</b>,
more a media creation of art critics than the artists themselves, who were (and
still are) generally floundering about at the edges of society seeking any kind
of identity, even one invented for them by critics. In his introduction, Wolfe
wrote that he began his book by settling into a Sunday morning with the New York times like sinking into a familiar
warm bath. Then he encountered a paragraph in the Arts section that shocked him
awake - as he put it, a "satori
flash". <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Such was my reaction to this question. Who even produces
such a question? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Does beauty still have a
place in creative expression?” <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Let’s have that one again:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"> “<i>Does
beauty still have a place in creative expression</i>”: by extension, since it is the opposite of
"beauty", the questioner appears to assume that <i>“ugly</i>” <b>does</b> have an obvious
place in creative expression that it is not necessary to question. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">And there it was again for me: the same aesthetic block that inspired me to run into the
woods and around the country after finishing graduate school in pursuit
of a book of interviews with spiritually engaged artists (such as Alex Grey,
Rachel Rosenthal, and others) in order to articulate the spiritual and visionary
underpinning of art for myself and for others.*
The same <i>art speak</i> that still causes me to avoid magazines like <u>Art
In America</u> as if I could catch the
measles. But this time I decided to face my fear head on. If we are now
questioning the meaning, value, or even existence of “beauty” , I need to know
what that means. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“They argue that what
audiences deserve from any sensitive visionary is an assault on the senses that
will degrade, humiliate, and finally
awaken the supreme aesthetic experience offered to the Western world through
art - namely guilt. But guilt is exactly the out we must not cop to if we are
to survive."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 1in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Pierre Delattre, <u>Beauty
and the Aesthetics of Survival</u> 2</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="954" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEipyFB3enzHA1lviAA6HesjanbBSr1scy1buPY6d7d5X4BH3PsS5_C3K0gtUuKnO-eIpIgeLH4JXRY6dmnj81v-Yd1NmMyF_I1tSqW8ZkJ9Ksrde9FOSlFEBxn2XjxhC4ba-diidEIyfrLO-M4boZyykb8xOF-n61IDZlL8BRUWTGRvrRkqtPQAGLzlQxA=w400-h300" width="400" /></div><p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shape alt="Water lily pads and willows in a pond
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Claude Monet, "Water
Lilies"<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><v:shape alt="A close-up of a white flower
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</w:wrap></v:imagedata></v:shape><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">What then
is Beauty? Thomas Aquinas saw beauty as
having three properties: integrity,
proportion, and last, "<i>the clarity and radiance of being</i>." <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">The clarity and radiance of the life force, of
nature, and of the human spirit participating within that brilliance. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEicYhplJesq15KV6Gv-kMyxluTYDfqZ-u4-PKullaFR4aWz5E_5CkO4G18IszQKf5QmLDoGeYqi9qIvovDCOH8CGYTquVF6ET_9dM9UlR9f44gGpitqmZPhXxYoi-mEh3kMUadESbo08Xo6lzvuCG7nPD_YCQReduWaGTZntoryd1kOPB_yA5JlexCeiy0" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEicYhplJesq15KV6Gv-kMyxluTYDfqZ-u4-PKullaFR4aWz5E_5CkO4G18IszQKf5QmLDoGeYqi9qIvovDCOH8CGYTquVF6ET_9dM9UlR9f44gGpitqmZPhXxYoi-mEh3kMUadESbo08Xo6lzvuCG7nPD_YCQReduWaGTZntoryd1kOPB_yA5JlexCeiy0=w240-h320" width="240" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">That which inspires us to preserve and protect those
moments so that we can re-member them, retain them within our lives and psyches.
Beauty thus can be understood to mean so many experiences that arise from the
"radiance of Being" - grace,
serenity, empathy, color,
symmetry, tenderness, the imaginative synapse that can occur between lines of a
poem, joining the poet and reader in a dimension of the imagination. <br />The awe of
a storm clad sky advancing across the prairie, the bell-like call of a morning
lark, the profound pathos of an exhausted mother's face at childbirth, the
wonder of a night-blooming Cereus opening at dusk, the brilliant play of color
captured by a John Singer Sargeant
painting, or the moving symbolic imagery of a Frieda Kahlo.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJIAug3A8iditLDai73kF1idPsJ3FM7h_FZGW0mzrNmdkRZsArRhcOrJJVz14tX22uv5np3p_Thkun_a5Qkaasjiw1-8VSRM0Bu60I6PVvVksXUEWMbPilCLfgfoiAGpqyoGnVsUd6BHllEhPESD1QS8C5p7Xo75-2KXpkhEK2WG3dMSyEdYfZ3kqgci0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="598" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJIAug3A8iditLDai73kF1idPsJ3FM7h_FZGW0mzrNmdkRZsArRhcOrJJVz14tX22uv5np3p_Thkun_a5Qkaasjiw1-8VSRM0Bu60I6PVvVksXUEWMbPilCLfgfoiAGpqyoGnVsUd6BHllEhPESD1QS8C5p7Xo75-2KXpkhEK2WG3dMSyEdYfZ3kqgci0=w355-h400" width="355" /></a></div><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shape alt="A painting of two girls in a garden
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">“<i>Carnation, Lily, Lily,
Rose</i>” 1885 by John Singer Sargent</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">If not beauty, what then is "relevant"
to "creative expression"? If we eliminate beauty from creativity,
what lens, what window in the world, are
we left with that is not
"beautiful" but is more important, has more depth, is more meaningful?
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Among them:
expressions of injustice and loss. Personal angst. Politics. Lots of
politics. Guilt that leads to despair usually called "realism". Art
that occurs by accident, made without intention, for which a narrative is later
created. “Narratives” that are so incomprehensible or obscure as to be
contemptuous of the viewer. Cries of pain (but never ecstasy because that is either
stupid, science fictional, or doesn’t really exist at all.) Art that grieves and rages and shocks. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Lots of shock. In an aesthetic that sometimes
seems to be as absorbed with “shock” as an
adolescent rebellion complex, being shocking seems to be de rigor for a
sophisticated nervous system. Shock chic. Shock fashion. Recycled shock.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I am not saying that these aspects of creativity
are not aesthetically and intellectually valid or should be censored. But I am
noticing that there is a prejudice to beauty, to balance, to what might even be
called spirituality, in the modern fine art
world that is almost an anti-aesthetic. And
an aesthetic that emphasizes qualities
that are in opposition to "beauty" leaves the viewer with what? A
vision that is often nihilistic,
shocking, contemptuous, incomprehensible.........and so on. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">In 1987, when I finished my MFA, the word
"beautiful" or, worse, "illustrative" was a dirty word in the academic art world. I think it still
may be. Students were encouraged to achieve bodies of work that held
"depth". But what was depth? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I remember one student who entered the MFA program
a talented realist painter. By the time she had her MFA show, her work
was “refined” to large white and black canvases, blank except for a few
gestural marks and an occasional word, discretely buried in the field of the
canvas such that it could not actually be read, just suggested. It could indeed
be said that her new work left a whole lot more to the imagination. Indeed, the
viewer was virtually invited to give it any kind of meaning he or she desired.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Another student spent her time in the morgue
drawing corpses, some in the process of dissection. And another finished the
program with huge wall pieces that were composed of the bones and dried skins
of dead animals (horses in particular) that she found in the desert. These
corpses of animals, transferred to a canvas or presentation board and hung on
the wall were powerful sculptural “artifacts” about death and the harshness of
the desert. But for all the literary rationale, I confess, they were still gruesome
to look at. And although I still cringe
at my “political incorrectness” in saying so, I believe these choices of subject matter by young people beginning
their careers as artists reflects an aesthetic they were highly encouraged to
pursue.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I am not
saying that these works were not valuable because they were hard to look at, were
disturbing, or hard to fathom without their written narratives. In fact, as Thomas Wolfe pointed
out in <u>The Painted Word</u>, 3 much
art now is very dependent upon narrative to be comprehensible at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.3pt;">“In other words, Tom Wolfe exposes the
absurdity of the modern art world where a large canvas painted white with one
tiny dot of black paint on display in a Modern Art museum requires a placard
with several paragraphs of long explanation of art theory in order for museum
visitors to understand it. And most visitors won’t understand it anyway since
they do not have art degrees in modern art theory! Wolfe in particular targets
the pomposity of art critics who have built this intellectual house of cards. Needless to say, the Modern Art world did not
receive this book well.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.3pt;">Carl Olson,<u> The Artful Painter</u>
4</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I remember my own "ah ha" experience I had during a painting critique. Up for
discussion was the work of two students, both equally competent painters. This
was the height of New Age, and one body of work was about ecstatic visions the
artist was having, visions of flying, being infused with light, heart imagery
and dreams. The other body of work was
painted in dark colors, and contained disturbing sexual imagery - vagina dentata, and a tree with bloody dismembered penises. Virtually
all the class, and particularly the teacher, found the later work
"powerful". And virtually all
the class, as well as the teacher, found the former body of work to be "illustration" and rather "sci-fi".
(In the fine art world, to call a
painting "illustration" is
perhaps one of the most dismissive of insults.)
Since I loved the first artists paintings, I wanted to know why no one
else seemed to think they could be taken seriously. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Was it the colors, style, technique? No, and no. Finally,
it turned out that it was the content that could not be taken seriously. In
other words, we could believe in the
truth of pain, and psychological and erotic dismemberment, but ecstasy belonged
to fantasy. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">That set me to wondering about many things, and ultimately
set me on a course to discover other, perhaps earlier, perhaps differently
defined, purposes of art. Art for community, art for function, art for healing,
art for transformation, art from visionary experience, shamanic art, art
inspired by nature…………different paradigms.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcEOA_ff8oMexs5BQ-rsuNNU-O4CKRq0G7bKiA4LH0lQzzJ0aESWoSbsaWvnQkUnI4ZZLUo9a0GCPXcWx0S3uI1N4ngX8RKp9ndZxmQs-5EOK1aeWwVrf3YTRoAOLqIq-TbZRGpbyGE08DtK9qYYbLojZRXeSp6zhv2bXSHiqenQJguyfIhlaOWGiTWIg/s485/seeingin1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="485" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcEOA_ff8oMexs5BQ-rsuNNU-O4CKRq0G7bKiA4LH0lQzzJ0aESWoSbsaWvnQkUnI4ZZLUo9a0GCPXcWx0S3uI1N4ngX8RKp9ndZxmQs-5EOK1aeWwVrf3YTRoAOLqIq-TbZRGpbyGE08DtK9qYYbLojZRXeSp6zhv2bXSHiqenQJguyfIhlaOWGiTWIg/s320/seeingin1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Hands" by Lorraine Capparell (1985)</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">It was my privilege, in the late 1980's, to share
conversations about art, spirituality, and cultural transformation with some
extraordinary artists, travelling across the country to meet many of them. The
collection of interviews came to be called <u>“Seeing in a Sacred Manner</u>”5.
I realize now I was trying to understand
my own reasons for making art as well as I pursued my project – in the end, it
was my personal “vision quest.’ <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">But that's another story.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ultimately, Beauty has different meanings in
different cultures and contexts. The spiritual context of “beauty” is vivid among
the Navajo native Americans of the Southwest. Below is a translation of “Beauty”
found in a traditional Navajo (Dine`) prayer
that speaks of their understanding of how to "walk" in the world. The Navajo
celebrate balance within the turning
directions, the continual motion and
transformation of life. From the "<i>house of Dawn</i>" to the "<i>house
of Twilight</i>" they seek to realize beauty all around and within, and their
understanding of "beauty" means all that is good, beneficial,
worthy of gratitude.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">"In the house made of
dawn<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">in the house made of
evening twilight,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">in beauty may I walk<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">with beauty above me,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">with beauty below me,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">with beauty beside me <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I walk with beauty all
around me<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">With beauty it is
finished."</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">.......Navajo (Din`e)</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2w9nFviCOzAAM5NFtXU4e__y69xz_uGq9yUg5pHhxXvuVl4ldKUDdQz-saTWeJEvpc65IwjaY3Gi7q9vFc1mpkfcdrCfYUq_Sxv6mE4iKWs6RvUNHIq0iFw9xpAvSso4R1RMfGB5qDjNNYo1sw7UQcWhPrQZaK1sDb5KhgrXzJcxkhTPSaltgT4vfHUc/s220/fa083_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="220" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2w9nFviCOzAAM5NFtXU4e__y69xz_uGq9yUg5pHhxXvuVl4ldKUDdQz-saTWeJEvpc65IwjaY3Gi7q9vFc1mpkfcdrCfYUq_Sxv6mE4iKWs6RvUNHIq0iFw9xpAvSso4R1RMfGB5qDjNNYo1sw7UQcWhPrQZaK1sDb5KhgrXzJcxkhTPSaltgT4vfHUc/w320-h316/fa083_01.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shape alt="A close-up of a painting
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Image: ©2000 Frank Martin "<i>The
Whirling Log/Tsil-ol-ni" </i>A story used in Navajo healing ceremonies 6</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><b><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">REFERENCES:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">1 <b>Le Guin,</b> Ursula K., “<u>The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas</u></span>
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">,
1974 </span><u><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/92625">https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/92625</a>,
</span></u><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">1974 won
the Hugo Award for Best Short Story 1974<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">2</span> <b><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Delattre</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">, Pierre, <u>Episodes</u>,
1993, Greywolf Press, Taos, New Mexico <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/526103.Episodes">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/526103.Episodes</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">3 <b>Wolfe</b>, Thomas, <u>The Painted Word</u>, 1975, Farrer, Straus, and Giroux.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">See: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Painted_Word">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Painted_Word</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">4 <b>Olson</b>, Carl, <u>The Artful Painter</u>, Blog,
Article 4/28/2023 https://theartfulpainter.com/blog/tom-wolfe-skewers-modern-art-in-his-book-the-painted-word<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">5 <b>Raine</b>, Lauren, “Seeing in a Sacred Manner: Interviews with Transformative Artists, 1988 -1992.
Some of these interviews may be viewed at:
<a href="https://www.laurenraine.com/seeing-in-a-sacred-manner.html">https://www.laurenraine.com/seeing-in-a-sacred-manner.html</a>) <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">6 <b>Sand paintings</b> created and performed in ceremony by
Navajo Medicine People help restore <i>hózhó</i>, an idea related to such
concepts as "beauty," "blessing," "holy," and
"balanced." But this middle ground is difficult to maintain and may
vanish because of witchcraft or the violation of a taboo. "Don't throw a
rock from a mountain," adults admonish children. "The Holy People put
it there and might be angry." Only those willing to risk losing <i>hózhó</i>
ignore this sort of advice.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">A Navajo plagued by the
loss of hózhó visits a Singer, or traditional healer to restore the cosmic
balance. The Singer has served an apprenticeship to a knowledgeable elder and
obtained the power to prescribe the proper sandpainting ceremony for curing a
patient's ills. Each of the five hundred different sand paintings catalogued by
anthropologists—perhaps half of those in the tribal repertoire—belongs to a
"Way" received from the Holy People.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.collectorsguide.com/fa/fa083.shtml">https://www.collectorsguide.com/fa/fa083.shtml</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Thanks to Dr Ron McCoy,
Emporia State University<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Photo courtesy of <u>Penfield
Gallery of Indian Arts</u><o:p></o:p></span></p><p>
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Originally appeared in <u>The
Collector’s Guide to Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque -Volume 14</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Last, I take the liberty of copying here an article by the British Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, because his words so eloquently speak out about this phenomenon. For any reading this article who may agree with me in one way or another, enjoy his articulate take on things.</i></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3fcgZjUYRWgV5ZFtYolccgIo1LKtWVwzWnDyyj4QryigZm1uCrDJzykguV7KHt8JRae2Mol-uN5f2nFem2-9W47H1ayeCW1qq767TPgUZwFdtvMKlx6AXEB7t1BWAheefoaFAmkfkWrTxxvbk02Ah-0IYTB6o6J3yPN4nOGXNCBV2rWyQh9N52qzjSLs/s1140/The-Slave-Ship-1840.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="1140" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3fcgZjUYRWgV5ZFtYolccgIo1LKtWVwzWnDyyj4QryigZm1uCrDJzykguV7KHt8JRae2Mol-uN5f2nFem2-9W47H1ayeCW1qq767TPgUZwFdtvMKlx6AXEB7t1BWAheefoaFAmkfkWrTxxvbk02Ah-0IYTB6o6J3yPN4nOGXNCBV2rWyQh9N52qzjSLs/w640-h184/The-Slave-Ship-1840.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span> </span>Painting by William Turner<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Beauty and Desecration</span></p><p><i>We must rescue art from the modern intoxication with ugliness.</i></p><p>by Roger Scruton</p><p><a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/beauty-and-desecration">https://www.city-journal.org/article/beauty-and-desecration</a></p><i>
At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer</i><b>.</b> And if you had asked what the point of that was, you would have learned that beauty is a value, as important in its way as truth and goodness, and indeed hardly distinguishable from them. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form. And no Romantic painter, musician, or writer would have denied that beauty was the final purpose of his art. <div><span style="font-family: "Le Monde Livre", serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Le Monde Livre", serif;"><span> </span>At some time during the aftermath of modernism, beauty ceased to receive those tributes. Art increasingly aimed to disturb, subvert, or transgress moral certainties, and it was not beauty but originality—however achieved and at whatever moral cost—that won the prizes. Indeed, there arose a widespread suspicion of beauty as next in line to kitsch—something too sweet and inoffensive for the serious modern artist to pursue. In a seminal essay—“Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” published in Partisan Review in 1939—critic Clement Greenberg starkly contrasted the avant-garde of his day with the figurative painting that competed with it, dismissing the latter (not just Norman Rockwell, but greats like Edward Hopper) as derivative without lasting significance. The avant-garde, for Greenberg, promoted the disturbing and the provocative over the soothing and the decorative, and that was why we should admire it. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><br /></span><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>The value of abstract art, Greenberg claimed, lay not in beauty but in expression. This emphasis on expression was a legacy of the Romantic movement; but now it was joined by the conviction that the artist is outside bourgeois society, defined in opposition to it, so that artistic self-expression is at the same time a transgression of ordinary moral norms. We find this posture overtly adopted in the art of Austria and Germany between the wars—for example, in the paintings and drawings of Georg Grosz, in Alban Berg’s opera Lulu (a loving portrait of a woman whose only discernible goal is moral chaos), and in the seedy novels of Heinrich Mann. And the cult of transgression is a leading theme of the postwar literature of France—from the writings of Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, and Jean-Paul Sartre to the bleak emptiness of the nouveau roman.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Of course, there were great artists who tried to rescue beauty from the perceived disruption of modern society—as T. S. Eliot tried to recompose, in Four Quartets, the fragments he had grieved over in The Waste Land. And there were others, particularly in America, who refused to see the sordid and the transgressive as the truth of the modern world. For artists like Hopper, Samuel Barber, and Wallace Stevens, ostentatious transgression was mere sentimentality, a cheap way to stimulate an audience, and a betrayal of the sacred task of art, which is to magnify life as it is and to reveal its beauty—as Stevens reveals the beauty of “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” and Barber that of Knoxville: Summer of 1915. But somehow those great life-affirmers lost their position at the forefront of modern culture. So far as the critics and the wider culture were concerned, the pursuit of beauty was at the margins of the artistic enterprise. <b>Qualities like disruptiveness and immorality, which previously signified aesthetic failure, became marks of success</b>; while the pursuit of beauty became a retreat from the real task of artistic creation. This process has been so normalized as to become a critical orthodoxy, prompting the philosopher Arthur Danto to argue recently that beauty is both deceptive as a goal and in some way <b>antipathetic to the mission of modern art</b>. Art has acquired another status and another social role.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>The great proof of this change is in the productions of opera, which give the denizens of postmodern culture an unparalleled opportunity to take revenge on the art of the past and to hide its beauty behind an obscene and sordid mask. We all assume that this will happen with Wagner, who “asked for it” by believing too strongly in the redemptive role of art. But it now regularly happens to the innocent purveyors of beauty, just as soon as a postmodernist producer gets his hands on one of their works.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>An example that particularly struck me was a 2004 production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Komische Oper Berlin (see “The Abduction of Opera,” Summer 2007). Die Entführung tells the story of Konstanze—shipwrecked, separated from her fiancé Belmonte, and taken to serve in the harem of the Pasha Selim. After various intrigues, Belmonte rescues her, helped by the clemency of the Pasha—who, respecting Konstanze’s chastity and the couple’s faithful love, declines to take her by force. This implausible plot permits Mozart to express his Enlightenment conviction that charity is a universal virtue, as real in the Muslim empire of the Turks as in the Christian empire of the enlightened Joseph II. Even if Mozart’s innocent vision is without much historical basis, his belief in the reality of disinterested love is everywhere expressed and endorsed by the music. Die Entführung advances a moral idea, and its melodies share the beauty of that idea and persuasively present it to the listener.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>In his production of Die Entführung, the Catalan stage director Calixto Bieito set the opera in a Berlin brothel, with Selim as pimp and Konstanze one of the prostitutes. Even during the most tender music, copulating couples littered the stage, and every opportunity for violence, with or without a sexual climax, was taken. At one point, a prostitute is gratuitously tortured, and her nipples bloodily and realistically severed before she is killed. The words and the music speak of love and compassion, but their message is drowned out by the scenes of desecration, murder, and narcissistic sex.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>That is an example of something familiar in every aspect of our contemporary culture. It is not merely that artists, directors, musicians, and others connected with the arts are in flight from beauty. Wherever beauty lies in wait for us, there arises a desire to preempt its appeal, to smother it with scenes of destruction. <b>Hence the many works of contemporary art that rely on shocks administered to our failing faith in human nature—such as the crucifix pickled in urine by Andres Serrano. Hence the scenes of cannibalism, dismemberment, and meaningless pain with which contemporary cinema abounds, with directors like Quentin Tarantino having little else in their emotional repertories. </b>Hence the invasion of pop music by rap, whose words and rhythms speak of unremitting violence, and which rejects melody, harmony, and every other device that might make a bridge to the old world of song. And hence the music video, which has become an art form in itself and is often devoted to concentrating into the time span of a pop song some startling new account of moral chaos.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Those phenomena record a <b>habit of desecration in which life is not celebrated by art but targeted by it.</b> Artists can now make their reputations by constructing an original frame in which to display the human face and throw dung at it. What do we make of this, and how do we find our way back to the thing so many people long for, which is the vision of beauty? It may sound a little sentimental to speak of a “vision of beauty.” But what I mean is not some saccharine, Christmas-card image of human life but rather the elementary ways in which ideals and decencies enter our ordinary world and make themselves known, as love and charity make themselves known in Mozart’s music. There is a great hunger for beauty in our world, a hunger that our popular art fails to recognize and our serious art often defies.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>I used the word “desecration” to describe the attitude conveyed by Bieito’s production of Die Entführung and by Serrano’s lame efforts at meaning something. What exactly does this word imply? It is connected, etymologically and semantically, with sacrilege, and therefore with the ideas of sanctity and the sacred. To desecrate is to spoil what might otherwise be set apart in the sphere of sacred things. We can desecrate a church, a graveyard, a tomb; and also a holy image, a holy book, or a holy ceremony. We can desecrate a corpse, a cherished image, even a living human being—insofar as these things contain (as they do) a portent of some original sanctity. The fear of desecration is a vital element in all religions. Indeed, that is what the word religio originally meant: a cult or ceremony designed to protect some sacred place from sacrilege.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>In the eighteenth century, when organized religion and ceremonial kingship were losing their authority, when the democratic spirit was questioning inherited institutions, and when the idea was abroad that it was not God but man who made laws for the human world, the idea of the sacred suffered an eclipse. To the thinkers of the Enlightenment, it seemed little more than a superstition to believe that artifacts, buildings, places, and ceremonies could possess a sacred character, when all these things were the products of human design. The idea that the divine reveals itself in our world, and seeks our worship, seemed both implausible in itself and incompatible with science.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>At the same time, philosophers like Shaftesbury, Burke, Adam Smith, and Kant recognized that we do not look on the world only with the eyes of science. Another attitude exists—one not of scientific inquiry but of disinterested contemplation—that we direct toward our world in search of its meaning. When we take this attitude, we set our interests aside; we are no longer occupied with the goals and projects that propel us through time; we are no longer engaged in explaining things or enhancing our power. We are letting the world present itself and taking comfort in its presentation. This is the origin of the experience of beauty. There may be no way of accounting for that experience as part of our ordinary search for power and knowledge. It may be impossible to assimilate it to the day-to-day uses of our faculties. But it is an experience that self-evidently exists and is of the greatest value to those who receive it.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>When does this experience occur, and what does it mean? Here is an example: suppose you are walking home in the rain, your thoughts occupied with your work. The streets and the houses pass by unnoticed; the people, too, pass you by; nothing invades your thinking save your interests and anxieties. Then suddenly the sun emerges from the clouds, and a ray of sunlight alights on an old stone wall beside the road and trembles there. You glance up at the sky where the clouds are parting, and a bird bursts into song in a garden behind the wall. Your heart fills with joy, and your selfish thoughts are scattered. The world stands before you, and you are content simply to look at it and let it be.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Maybe such experiences are rarer now than they were in the eighteenth century, when the poets and philosophers lighted upon them as a new avenue to religion. The haste and disorder of modern life, the alienating forms of modern architecture, the noise and spoliation of modern industry—these things have made the pure encounter with beauty a rarer, more fragile, and more unpredictable thing for us. Still, we all know what it is to find ourselves suddenly transported, by the things we see, from the ordinary world of our appetites to the illuminated sphere of contemplation. It happens often during childhood, though it is seldom interpreted then. It happens during adolescence, when it lends itself to our erotic longings. And it happens in a subdued way in adult life, secretly shaping our life projects, holding out to us an image of harmony that we pursue through holidays, through home-building, and through our private dreams.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Here is another example: it is a special occasion, when the family unites for a ceremonial dinner. You set the table with a clean embroidered cloth, arranging plates, glasses, bread in a basket, and some carafes of water and wine. You do this lovingly, delighting in the appearance, striving for an effect of cleanliness, simplicity, symmetry, and warmth. The table has become a symbol of homecoming, of the extended arms of the universal mother, inviting her children in. And all this abundance of meaning and good cheer is somehow contained in the appearance of the table. This, too, is an experience of beauty, one that we encounter, in some version or other, every day. We are needy creatures, and our greatest need is for home—the place where we are, where we find protection and love. We achieve this home through representations of our own belonging, not alone but in conjunction with others. All our attempts to make our surroundings look right—through decorating, arranging, creating—are attempts to extend a welcome to ourselves and to those whom we love.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>This second example suggests that our human need for beauty is not simply a redundant addition to the list of human appetites. It is not something that we could lack and still be fulfilled as people. It is a need arising from our metaphysical condition as free individuals, seeking our place in an objective world. We can wander through this world, alienated, resentful, full of suspicion and distrust. Or we can find our home here, coming to rest in harmony with others and with ourselves. The experience of beauty guides us along this second path: it tells us that we are at home in the world, that the world is already ordered in our perceptions as a place fit for the lives of beings like us.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Look at any picture by one of the great landscape painters—Poussin, Guardi, Turner, Corot, Cézanne—and you will see that idea of beauty celebrated and fixed in images. The art of landscape painting, as it arose in the seventeenth century and endured into our time, is devoted to moralizing nature and showing the place of human freedom in the scheme of things. It is not that landscape painters turn a blind eye to suffering, or to the vastness and threateningness of the universe of which we occupy so small a corner. Far from it. Landscape painters show us death and decay in the very heart of things: the light on their hills is a fading light; the stucco walls of Guardi’s houses are patched and crumbling. But their images point to the joy that lies incipient in decay and to the eternal implied in the transient. They are images of home.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Not surprisingly, the idea of beauty has puzzled philosophers. The experience of beauty is so vivid, so immediate, so personal, that it seems hardly to belong to the natural order as science observes it. Yet beauty shines on us from ordinary things. Is it a feature of the world, or a figment of the imagination? Is it telling us something real and true that requires just this experience to be recognized? Or is it merely a heightened moment of sensation, of no significance beyond the delight of the person who experiences it? These questions are of great urgency for us, since we live at a time when beauty is in eclipse: a dark shadow of mockery and alienation has crept across the once-shining surface of our world, like the shadow of the Earth across the moon. Where we look for beauty, we too often find darkness and desecration.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrK25lCzoSH2-KLDZEl6XRF_dV-T_LxNqpfmoL-qtmPTRIv-HHZm_JxSzreNlhN4l_tW8MT_rZVA67r2zs0zwU1S3NlPf9PadGeHPi98ExsT8cr8dZz5F30PkVIYUtCI1-PlMWI7Yvp9Xiu8oJpDBwsrEKsBfg0EUYsKdYhAYSeHTT_huAp2aAfTrG-qg/s426/19_2-rs2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="297" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrK25lCzoSH2-KLDZEl6XRF_dV-T_LxNqpfmoL-qtmPTRIv-HHZm_JxSzreNlhN4l_tW8MT_rZVA67r2zs0zwU1S3NlPf9PadGeHPi98ExsT8cr8dZz5F30PkVIYUtCI1-PlMWI7Yvp9Xiu8oJpDBwsrEKsBfg0EUYsKdYhAYSeHTT_huAp2aAfTrG-qg/w279-h400/19_2-rs2.jpg" width="279" /></a></span></span></div><p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Modern artists like Otton Dix too often wallow in the base and the loveless.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>The current habit of desecrating beauty suggests that people are as aware as they ever were of the presence of sacred things. Desecration is a kind of defense against the sacred, an attempt to destroy its claims. In the presence of sacred things, our lives are judged, and to escape that judgment, we destroy the thing that seems to accuse us.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Christians have inherited from Saint Augustine and from Plato the vision of this transient world as an icon of another and changeless order. They understand the sacred as a revelation in the here and now of the eternal sense of our being. But the experience of the sacred is not confined to Christians. It is, according to many philosophers and anthropologists, a human universal. For the most part, transitory purposes organize our lives: the day-to-day concerns of economic reasoning, the small-scale pursuit of power and comfort, the need for leisure and pleasure. Little of this is memorable or moving to us. Every now and then, however, we are jolted out of our complacency and feel ourselves to be in the presence of something vastly more significant than our present interests and desires. We sense the reality of something precious and mysterious, which reaches out to us with a claim that is, in some way, not of this world. This happens in the presence of death, especially the death of someone loved. We look with awe on the human body from which the life has fled. This is no longer a person but the “mortal remains” of a person. And this thought fills us with a sense of the uncanny. We are reluctant to touch the dead body; we see it as, in some way, not properly a part of our world, almost a visitor from some other sphere.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>This experience, a paradigm of our encounter with the sacred, demands from us a kind of ceremonial recognition. The dead body is the object of rituals and acts of purification, designed not just to send its former occupant happily into the hereafter—for these practices are engaged in even by those who have no belief in the hereafter—but in order to overcome the eeriness, the supernatural quality, of the dead human form. The body is being reclaimed for this world by the rituals that acknowledge that it also stands apart from it. The rituals, to put it another way, consecrate the body, and so purify it of its miasma. By the same token, the body can be desecrated—and this is surely one of the primary acts of desecration, one to which people have been given from time immemorial, as when Achilles dragged Hector’s body in triumph around the walls of Troy.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>The presence of a transcendental claim startles us out of our day-to-day preoccupations on other occasions, too. In particular, there is the experience of falling in love. This, too, is a human universal, and it is an experience of the strangest kind. The face and body of the beloved are imbued with the intensest life. But in one crucial respect, they are like the body of someone dead: they seem not to belong in the empirical world. The beloved looks on the lover as Beatrice looked on Dante, from a point outside the flow of temporal things. The beloved object demands that we cherish it, that we approach it with almost ritualistic reverence. And there radiates from those eyes and limbs and words a kind of fullness of spirit that makes everything anew.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Poets have expended thousands of words on this experience, which no words seem entirely to capture. It has fueled the sense of the sacred down the ages, reminding people as diverse as Plato and Calvino, Virgil and Baudelaire, that sexual desire is not the simple appetite that we witness in animals but the raw material of a longing that has no easy or worldly satisfaction, demanding of us nothing less than a change of life.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>Many of the uglinesses cultivated in our world today refer back to the two experiences that I have singled out. The body in the throes of death; the body in the throes of sex—these things easily fascinate us. They fascinate us by desecrating the human form, by showing the human body as a mere object among objects, the human spirit as eclipsed and ineffectual, and the human being as overcome by external forces, rather than as a free subject bound by the moral law. And it is on these things that the art of our time seems to concentrate, offering us not only sexual pornography but a pornography of violence that reduces the human being to a lump of suffering flesh made pitiful, helpless, and disgusting.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>All of us have a desire to flee from the demands of responsible existence, in which we treat one another as worthy of reverence and respect. All of us are tempted by the idea of flesh and by the desire to remake the human being as pure flesh—an automaton, obedient to mechanical desires. To yield to this temptation, however, we must first remove the chief obstacle to it: the consecrated nature of the human form. We must sully the experiences—such as death and sex—that otherwise call us away from temptations, toward the higher life of sacrifice. This willful desecration is also a denial of love—an attempt to remake the world as though love were no longer a part of it. And that, surely, is the most important characteristic of the postmodern culture: it is a loveless culture, determined to portray the human world as unlovable. The modern stage director who ransacks the works of Mozart is trying to tear the love from the heart of them, so as to confirm his own vision of the world as a place where only pleasure and pain are real.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>That suggests a simple remedy, which is to resist temptation. Instead of desecrating the human form, we should learn again to revere it. For there is absolutely nothing to gain from the insults hurled at beauty by those—like Calixto Bieito—who cannot bear to look it in the face. Yes, we can neutralize the high ideals of Mozart by pushing his music into the background so that it becomes the mere accompaniment to an inhuman carnival of sex and death. But what do we learn from this? What do we gain, in terms of emotional, spiritual, intellectual, or moral development? Nothing, save anxiety. We should take a lesson from this kind of desecration: in attempting to show us that our human ideals are worthless, it shows itself to be worthless. And when something shows itself to be worthless, it is time to throw it away.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>It is therefore plain that the culture of transgression achieves nothing save the loss that it revels in: the loss of beauty as a value and a goal. But why is beauty a value? It is an ancient view that truth, goodness, and beauty cannot, in the end, conflict. Maybe the degeneration of beauty into kitsch comes precisely from the postmodern loss of truthfulness, and with it the loss of moral direction. That is the message of such early modernists as Eliot, Barber, and Stevens, and it is a message that we need to listen to.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>To mount a full riposte to the habit of desecration, we need to rediscover the affirmation and the truth to life without which artistic beauty cannot be realized. This is no easy task. If we look at the true apostles of beauty in our time—I think of composers like Henri Dutilleux and Olivier Messiaen, of poets like Derek Walcott and Charles Tomlinson, of prose writers like Italo Calvino and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—we are immediately struck by the immense hard work, the studious isolation, and the attention to detail that characterizes their craft. In art, beauty has to be won, but the work becomes harder as the sheer noise of desecration—amplified now by the Internet—drowns out the quiet voices murmuring in the heart of things.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>One response is to look for beauty in its other and more everyday forms—the beauty of settled streets and cheerful faces, of natural objects and genial landscapes. It is possible to throw dirt on these things, too, and it is the mark of a second-rate artist to take such a path to our attention—the via negativa of desecration. But it is also possible to return to ordinary things in the spirit of Wallace Stevens and Samuel Barber—to show that we are at home with them and that they magnify and vindicate our life. Such is the overgrown path that the early modernists once cleared for us—the via positiva of beauty. </span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="font-family: Le Monde Livre, serif;"><span><span> </span>There is no reason yet to think that we must abandon it.</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "GT America", sans-serif;">Roger Scruton, a philosopher, was the author of many books, including </i><u style="font-family: "GT America", sans-serif;">Beauty</u><span face=""GT America", sans-serif">.</span></p></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-16696024298861227352023-11-05T20:12:00.004-07:002023-11-05T20:13:37.330-07:00Samhain Celebration<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr3MewLJcO3mn6eyHODfF46I02nr_QG-aWSYB7hm0T_sJ9F7Jr-nAMneanfITu20ZO_lnsYSsJDskrQOhXlXr4eGjsgOhfpLKqVCN6PY2jEb4xLfpY2gCxDLrYdSrLHmDicHnWO2O1FEOykdlhP4hyphenhyphenpBH7zCzGys50JvlHtm7uhIb4pGw0YNIg1wAHmgw/s4160/20231022_085652.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr3MewLJcO3mn6eyHODfF46I02nr_QG-aWSYB7hm0T_sJ9F7Jr-nAMneanfITu20ZO_lnsYSsJDskrQOhXlXr4eGjsgOhfpLKqVCN6PY2jEb4xLfpY2gCxDLrYdSrLHmDicHnWO2O1FEOykdlhP4hyphenhyphenpBH7zCzGys50JvlHtm7uhIb4pGw0YNIg1wAHmgw/w640-h480/20231022_085652.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ntLufYJ-vdkhD7j7ROKt5rgYCC2QekCLOTQazmawqe0tqE08w7U3qP9O2WmCI2BUGJbUJQxqOCTx7ig8e75XPy_gNnhrp2f8UVbr0fQQ0j65aQNBdCKL29M0xOlaGZjYzFAjyiVj02x0OmvZvFR7vAXQwQlxoyH4JV6Xw8YX3KsqN1qmVYMsSpcWCT4/s2048/399125234_10233561401923746_1939965708801141531_n.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ntLufYJ-vdkhD7j7ROKt5rgYCC2QekCLOTQazmawqe0tqE08w7U3qP9O2WmCI2BUGJbUJQxqOCTx7ig8e75XPy_gNnhrp2f8UVbr0fQQ0j65aQNBdCKL29M0xOlaGZjYzFAjyiVj02x0OmvZvFR7vAXQwQlxoyH4JV6Xw8YX3KsqN1qmVYMsSpcWCT4/w400-h300/399125234_10233561401923746_1939965708801141531_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="text-align: left;">And here it is again, the Approach of Samhain, also celebrated here in Tucson as Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. As always, I make up the <b>Beloved Dead Altar</b> . I make up invites to the Feast of Samhain and make a great big lemon cake, which gets frozen, along with enough vegetarian chili to feed an army. I try to figure out where to get a turkey to bake. I ask people to bring different things and hope that we don't end up with 20 casseroles. I play "The Parting Glass" (the theme song) to get myself in the mood. I buy a lot of candles.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="9248" data-original-width="6936" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsFQ-CNbjuatstLb51dKaPlxwGxrzED0fu0g915cs5EJsCFVV8KjjQ2Rj0hpm3hh8xklpVvR6nS2FlFKD1kkwfGxysYZgnAkVu3otRXKsfj6ub2711JKQn9FsSYra6MSYDKjRkpSHeNlg_oHjxAqUXJ4K_Sk8V_tZPnfmQLDroCKTHXGhHppBHsOojh-Q/w480-h640/20221102_185301.jpg" width="480" /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUlc3EIeHzXkbU5SZCCm-k2GYfdZX7AeAkJuAtcVtZjE5chXUekKMzRXR70clDbRkQe1erO7YDFlDBNFt1DYE6vHA5TylsH-E6RvFZk5D879_0liCOpfdVvBfxMB4B98xV7Hr-ANcBJx2S36EOmAXWldQJcb4DygP3vp32s6VcmUjeT2Au4snEbSlB0M4/s9248/20221102_185258%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="9248" data-original-width="6936" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUlc3EIeHzXkbU5SZCCm-k2GYfdZX7AeAkJuAtcVtZjE5chXUekKMzRXR70clDbRkQe1erO7YDFlDBNFt1DYE6vHA5TylsH-E6RvFZk5D879_0liCOpfdVvBfxMB4B98xV7Hr-ANcBJx2S36EOmAXWldQJcb4DygP3vp32s6VcmUjeT2Au4snEbSlB0M4/w480-h640/20221102_185258%20(1).jpg" width="480" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">Mostly, though, I remember those on the list, the list that gets longer every year. So many now that I am in my 70's, so many memories, so many ghosts. People, animals, places. How strange, to be old enough that places as well can be gone........... and I think beyond that as well, thinking about the <a href="https://www.laurenraine.com/a-shrine-for-the-lost-the-6th-extinction.html">Shrine for the Lost: The Sixth Extinction</a> I made last year, how painful that was to see those long, long lists of recently extinct and vanishing species. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There is such a poignant, numinous, bitter/sweet quality to October, to the <i>Going Into the Dark time</i> of Samhain. Everyone feels it I like to think, for all that the sanctity of this time has been so sadly commercialized and trivialized with Halloween and "trick or treat". </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1322" data-original-width="1956" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgzaVRycebwGx6LjcUTXtnbdrbjU886xXeoyEbI8a4lXfCB1zwNT1s7Euyk3-dyTWKvEBKfB0tIsipkr6qumU-f42tJoNWVbtVt0QtRg2ou-gb4qLhSbmhGBfRUkgu04FFuIuOmdtVCh7QYvGs6TQ3vz06DPakOqNlfX4Qf3T3BDDa2rNM2mk9_rzPCbE4" width="320" /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I always include pomogranates along with the pumpkins on my altar, to remember that this is also <a href="https://threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com/2022/11/persephones-feast-day-samhain-poem.html">Persephone's Feast Day</a>, when that liminal Goddess returns to the Underworld, no longer the Queen of Spring but rather now the Queen of the Dead, the place of endings that become again beginnings. The important underground realm that comes with the sacred night of Hallowed Eve, the realm where life goes into the Womb of the Earth to rest, to regenerate, to heal and sleep, to await new life in the spring.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFs-Vv8XHlRhX7mMtwRY9wXp6EMVxFAFCsVql92AY7fCfUxpi9lYv5JewMkE40ADQzC-YJU95PdQwqjOnbJ9Vv5Tz9UQuVNK2IxxYojhpzBKztw8cnsfCxllPNMmCF_kFYtKcoXGNuFjT1NKsJb5f4BObBfuscOr1M7rlm9XDergilRn3x8pWb-MuQNg/s3123/invite%20blank%202023.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2050" data-original-width="3123" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFs-Vv8XHlRhX7mMtwRY9wXp6EMVxFAFCsVql92AY7fCfUxpi9lYv5JewMkE40ADQzC-YJU95PdQwqjOnbJ9Vv5Tz9UQuVNK2IxxYojhpzBKztw8cnsfCxllPNMmCF_kFYtKcoXGNuFjT1NKsJb5f4BObBfuscOr1M7rlm9XDergilRn3x8pWb-MuQNg/w640-h420/invite%20blank%202023.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><p></p>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-57381323522447968682023-10-28T16:49:00.006-07:002023-10-28T17:34:30.384-07:00Rilke, and "the Church Somewhere In The East"<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><img border="0" data-original-height="918" data-original-width="1500" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipQsdSjXxp-Fe7k1V8F0wGEIvneqAlygbVeMkLO5Z-tolVUEdjL3TuTFIu99GdFotC_yhFQrup9SoBJeVtdwVRAtL6sbhXtwtlEUtj-C1Zc0em8taOXhZuT-woySWFsNIGVaT9m6a75wd2FbcRdfKezZi-Cqf8KpB-AT1fACfOKv6SndTbEtPri7nKIio/w640-h392/highway-to-the-stars-mark-andrew-thomas.jpg" style="text-align: center;" width="640" /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sometimes a man stands up during supper </span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">because of a church </span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">that stands somewhere in the East. </span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And his children say blessings on him </span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">as if he were dead. </span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And another man, </span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">who remains inside his own house, </span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">so that his children</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">have to go far out into the world</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">toward that same church</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">which he forgot.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <i>Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)</i></span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sometime in the 1980's, someone gave me a collection of Rilke translated by Robert Bly, and I have carried it with me for all these years. I find Bly is still my favorite translator of the German mystical poet. In graduate school I did a performance with synthesizer based on this beautiful poem, and a series I called "<i>Landscapes from Rilke</i>". </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yesterday the poem popped into my head. I had been thinking, while driving around on seemingly endless errands, that I have become too resigned, I have perhaps traded too much "mature realism" for the spiritual quest that used to animate my art and life. In my previous post I have been thinking about Pilgrimage, which can be a metaphor a well as a physical movement. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rilke's poem is about the call that can come to seek a deeper life. To become a "source - eror". Not all people are called, but for some of those who do hear the sound of distant bells, the "c<i>hurch that lies somewhere in the east"</i> may be a monastery, for others, a studio, or an orphanage, or a university, a ticket to a distant land, or a trail that leads into the silent cathedral of a canyon or a forest. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sometimes the seemingly unmarked trail to that church can feel like delusion, or great loss........there are not always "road signs" or certainties along the way. Usually there are not, and always the unexpected occurs when we enter that liminal zone of Pilgrimage. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What I love about this poem is the profound connectivity Rilke implies. The man or woman who "keeps on walking" is one who heeds the call of that spiritual calling because he feels he no longer has any other choice. He realizes that nothing else will matter if he remains. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He is willing to abandon the life he has been leading, but not himself. Such was the legendary beginning of Siddartha's quest to become the Buddha, leaving behind his responsibilities as a prince, father and husband, the quest that led to the birth of Buddhism. Was it wrong to leave behind those responsibilities and the loved ones who depended upon him? Yes. Was it right to leave those responsibilities and the loved ones who depended upon him to pursue what became the birth of Buddhism? Yes. Morality is layered, and sometimes the answer in both cases is yes, and yes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The one who remains in Rilke's poem, "<i>in the dishes and the glasses</i>", who does not leave when called, is neither right or wrong. He has chosen to remain, to find meaning in the love and duties of family and social responsibility. His labors (and domestic pleasures) have resulted in the lives and sustenance of his children. But his choice to not take the spiritual journey to that "<i>church somewhere in the east</i>" at some point in his life, to forget, to close the door, leaves a residue that ghosts within the house of his life. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thus, his children, or perhaps his grand children, are left with a hidden destiny, which is to fulfill the quest that he did not.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JNIGDMAVMb2Q2texINQsPQaxIdSMQGbxHREe3VpqMBGXjs6gYIRsD8P0HRM0WrqzE-aUq7ksTTJ_RjrP071292OE7A5eis6a1WQyPKH8q-YUiKnlYGhJ2XbfUnoYtnPiRAaqRGmrg0WDzun9FVLRPqh4a0Zln0q4R-KmZIF0QsqAyiX2EWwE3qDDCmM/s800/5655080638_bbb9f91e6e_b.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="800" height="570" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JNIGDMAVMb2Q2texINQsPQaxIdSMQGbxHREe3VpqMBGXjs6gYIRsD8P0HRM0WrqzE-aUq7ksTTJ_RjrP071292OE7A5eis6a1WQyPKH8q-YUiKnlYGhJ2XbfUnoYtnPiRAaqRGmrg0WDzun9FVLRPqh4a0Zln0q4R-KmZIF0QsqAyiX2EWwE3qDDCmM/w640-h570/5655080638_bbb9f91e6e_b.jpg" width="640" /></a></p><p><br /></p>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-87072866680950964032023-10-26T06:32:00.021-07:002023-11-12T20:03:48.529-07:00"At the River" in Late October: Estes, Jung, and Pilgrimage<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG75Xg0sTsPSjrpIzTjyc9NAFtRwjbF4U08R9v8X4lSo2yW-74oGiN9Wjp2_Dww2T9lzKKR50jvC1f052K_nMtCctylRg3UE4Ow104_KWILglaD-L2cn5MEiqgWcuSi0ssomtiSyq89ekZQV4b_eK13AMOTj7w8qiorStJ2dD_YbXue8XPCmoLPkyYlLk/s513/river.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="449" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG75Xg0sTsPSjrpIzTjyc9NAFtRwjbF4U08R9v8X4lSo2yW-74oGiN9Wjp2_Dww2T9lzKKR50jvC1f052K_nMtCctylRg3UE4Ow104_KWILglaD-L2cn5MEiqgWcuSi0ssomtiSyq89ekZQV4b_eK13AMOTj7w8qiorStJ2dD_YbXue8XPCmoLPkyYlLk/w280-h320/river.jpg" width="280" /></a></div> <p></p><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-1630413477996982058" itemprop="description articleBody" style="line-height: 1.5; position: relative; width: 818.545px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.524px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDs-Lcuj243G3ek3WIymMNcgF1x25PF-ZJYBsBOufDhh93UMAA0oCy_owlB9XlKeqBKAFxqtuPxGk6JWps0pNeoEqJoDmPxGNVvYWv5CcouancqvwEh8o7gD-d8AiS_OGuqT9Wi6r_b5s/s1600/Green-River-Light-.jpg" style="clear: right; color: #cc3300; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDs-Lcuj243G3ek3WIymMNcgF1x25PF-ZJYBsBOufDhh93UMAA0oCy_owlB9XlKeqBKAFxqtuPxGk6JWps0pNeoEqJoDmPxGNVvYWv5CcouancqvwEh8o7gD-d8AiS_OGuqT9Wi6r_b5s/s400/Green-River-Light-.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="300" /></span></a></div><h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul, and memories, and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. "</span></i></h3><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-style: italic;"><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/River-Runs-Through-Norman-Maclean/dp/0226500608">Norman MacLean, "</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/River-Runs-Through-Norman-Maclean/dp/0226500608">A River Runs Through It</a>"</span></span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A quote that stays with me, from the beautiful book by Norman MacLean that became an equally beautiful movie in the 90's. I often think of it, increasingly with age, and perhaps especially, as Samhain and the Veils thin away. What an exquisite and elegant metaphor for the depthless and unfathomable River we have our brief dwellings in.</span></span></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-1630413477996982058" itemprop="description articleBody" style="line-height: 1.5; position: relative; width: 818.545px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-1630413477996982058" itemprop="description articleBody" style="line-height: 1.5; position: relative; width: 818.545px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Perhaps he speaks of what storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estes </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: bold;">*</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> called </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Rio Abajo Rio, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">the "river beneath the river of the world"</span>.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-1630413477996982058" itemprop="description articleBody" style="line-height: 1.5; position: relative; width: 818.545px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">That stays with me as well, and arises especially when I feel the dryness of my life overtaking me. She speaks of the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">River of Story</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">, its universal waters flowing beneath the surfaces of all things. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In her book </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Women Who Run With the Wolves</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> *** she writes,</span><br /></span><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">"Each woman has potential access to <i>Rio Abajo Rio</i>, this river beneath the river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayer making, singing, drumming, active imagination, or any activity which requires an intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude, and by practice of any of the arts. And even with these well-crafted practices, much of what occurs in this ineffable world remains forever mysterious to us, for it breaks physical laws and rational laws as we know them."*</span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT4a3VK4kJ3ZKeQUwmf9_h_VDLI4odoCK-zvju82zrlaOTJOQLElyxGopTBvNH_2K3T8i0RNxjxjeIEvggLkJ458x9DNyzd_zc_biLbBrQZEmcDT6upm9F75GS53YwME4AYaaA9sL2dgc/s1600/river_reflections.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT4a3VK4kJ3ZKeQUwmf9_h_VDLI4odoCK-zvju82zrlaOTJOQLElyxGopTBvNH_2K3T8i0RNxjxjeIEvggLkJ458x9DNyzd_zc_biLbBrQZEmcDT6upm9F75GS53YwME4AYaaA9sL2dgc/s320/river_reflections.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Whether tapping, if only briefly, the wellsprings of El Rio in grief, creativity, meditation, or through the sudden psychic upwelling that can happen when the so-called ego cracks and splinters, I think it is ultimately a blessing, an opportunity given, when the waters are revealed, for they re-member the greater life. I didn't say that was always easy, or comfortable. </span></span></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-1630413477996982058" itemprop="description articleBody" style="line-height: 1.5; position: relative; width: 818.545px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-1630413477996982058" itemprop="description articleBody" style="line-height: 1.5; position: relative; width: 818.545px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> And sometimes </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">the river of story has a voice that sounds like a roar, sometimes it sounds like a whisper. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Estes, who is a Jungian psychologist, believes that to simply experience this "great river of being" is not enough: one must also instinctively participate in some way, find some way to open a pathway, a well spring, for others to follow. She writes:</span><br /></span><blockquote style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">"...[W]hat Jung called 'the moral obligation' to live out and to express what one has learned in the descent or ascent to the wild Self. This moral obligation he speaks of means to live what we perceive, be it found in the psychic Elysian fields, the isles of the dead, the bone deserts of the psyche, the face of the mountain, the rock of the sea, the lush underworld - anyplace where La Que Sabe breathes upon us, changing us. Our work is to show we have been breathed upon - to show it, give it out, sing it out, to live out in the topside world what we have received through our sudden knowings, from body, from dreams and journeys of all sorts."</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Beautiful. Here's something I myself wrote about that quote, some 12 years ago:</span></p></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="post-body entry-content" itemprop="description articleBody" style="line-height: 1.5; position: relative; text-align: left; width: 818.545px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: medium;">"I respectfully submit that this is so for any creative person, this work of the SEER, residing within each of us. The River beneath the River of the World."</span></span></div></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: medium;">True. Reading that, at this time when I am questioning everything and especially myself, it pleases me that I wrote that. It shows me a bit of who I was then. And also, things change, we change, the rivers of the world move us along. Sometimes it's time to retire, to just be. I think this is a hard time for Seers, as virtual reality seems to be replacing them. It's a hard time to know what is real any more. Recently a young, educated woman told me that gender, and indeed everything, is just "narrative". That left me speechless. And I realized that t<i>his isn't my world any more</i>. I don't know where my world went, but it is apparently gone. I need to explore that more in the next post. <span> </span></span></p><div class="post-body entry-content" itemprop="description articleBody" style="line-height: 1.5; position: relative; width: 818.545px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><div>There is a scene from the 2021 award winning movie NOMADLAND where the heroine, Fern, having become a nomad, meets a fellow traveler living in an old motorhome. The elderly woman tells the newly nomadic heroine about a place she visited where she saw the swallows return, thousands of them. She confides that she has stage 4 cancer, and she's not willing to spend her final years in clinics and chemo labs. Shortly after that she drives off, lightening her load with a "give away" of items from her motorhome. Later in the movie Fern receives a text from her: a video of swallows flying over a river. </div><div> </div><div>That little story, those swallows flying over a fast running river, that stuck with me, it (appropriately for the season, again) haunts me. <i>A river runs through it</i>. And the swallows are the hearts desire. </div><div><br /></div><div>I wish, like the aged often used to do in India, I wish sometimes I could divest myself of all the very real responsibilities and meaningless work-for-money I still wake each morning to do. Like the woman in the old motorhome, I wish I could just lighten the load, give it away, and go. On Pilgrimage. Maybe, like her quest to see the swallows again, the road itself might tell me where my Pilgrimage will lead me. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>"Rio Abajo Rio"</i>, the River Beneath the River of the World calls to me these days, and I need to jump into its waters. As we approach Samhain, the sweet Dark calls as well. Pilgrimage, the intention to travel within the liminality of Pilgrimage, is actually what I think the aged are called to do. I would give myself the advice I would give a friend, who made the shocking comment to me recently that "<i>This isn't my world any more"</i>. That comment haunts me most of all. It won't leave me.</div><div><br /></div><div>The advice I would give her, and myself, as we both realize this isn't our world anymore, is to go. On Pilgrimage. Go to the Ganges. Climb slowly the Sacred Mountain of Kilamajaro, or Babaquiviri. Go to where the Swallows return. Walk the Camino to Compostella, where souls are composted, or travel on, to Finisterre, to Lands End, where the Ocean waits. Or some where else as yet unknown, maybe, the Pilgrimage is more within than without. . <i>Just let it be the Pilgrimage.</i></div><div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /></div></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 1px 1px 5px; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 8px; position: relative; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiBzZka95pY1Ib7EnFJUY6juC8XZ5eSR1aV56T3flC0FHiAiF29j4excwvWMTeP6SQ6oGE7em2zD-o6hbFZS5UosmJ8y2rLwbVl0hmkCuRyi6rm4E8iha_0vians_dZkRMjTwIdqnpMeQ/s1600/the+hidden+sea+Large+Web+view.jpg" style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiBzZka95pY1Ib7EnFJUY6juC8XZ5eSR1aV56T3flC0FHiAiF29j4excwvWMTeP6SQ6oGE7em2zD-o6hbFZS5UosmJ8y2rLwbVl0hmkCuRyi6rm4E8iha_0vians_dZkRMjTwIdqnpMeQ/s400/the+hidden+sea+Large+Web+view.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="217" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="background-color: white;">"The Hidden Sea" (2010)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><br /></span><div style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal;">* (p.30, below)</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;">** <span style="font-weight: normal;">(p.96, below)</span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">*** Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype</span><br />Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Hardcover, 560 pages, Random House Publishing Group, 1992</span></span></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-19565849888694933612023-09-21T10:28:00.007-07:002023-09-21T10:29:31.200-07:00Mabon Blessings!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="920" data-original-width="1536" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0kCK9S_GYYoRC7mHdSxZqTaPxxKK68MqFaW62Z85fnMo05-IB7YlVtalTHFJXOScsjoaf-1F-_kncZdwM2rOgJe3-oiEWwSro95XggKdhfkXm-qHC9dgFHCHEGRKANbYhwrrLKrpaJVrnIVyEAtbP2P8p2Ja3he6fz2kQqnpUAmD9Pp_u2_trHO2zPZs/w400-h240/harvest-table-blessed-mabon-1536x920.png" width="400" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 1.4em;"><div style="color: #444444; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 14px;"></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span><b>I am a lover of the steady Earth<br />and of Her waters<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Let the light be brilliant" </span>She says,<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></b></span></span></span><br /><span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span><b><span style="font-style: italic;">"for those who will cherish color."</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></b></span></span></span><span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-style: italic;">From "Verses at Powis" by </span><a href="http://www.pigswhiskermusic.co.uk/" style="font-style: italic;">Robin Williamson</a></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span id="search" style="visibility: visible;"><cite></cite></span></span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mabon is traditionally the 2nd Harvest Festival of three (Lammas in August, and Samhain in October being the other two) and falls on the day of the autumnal Equinox. A</span></span><span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> time to give thanks for the bounty of the harvest, to give thanks and celebrate all that nourishes us. The Day of Balance, a time to consider what we have harvested this year, to give thanks for all of that harvest, the bright Blessings and the dark Blessings from which we learned wisdom, patience, or compassion. On</span></span> this auspicious day of Balance, when day and night are the same duration, may we experience the grace of Balance within our lives, and in the greater life of our common humanity. </span></span></span></div><div style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5w3HeSjPol7rzIb1XbiO7m8MU5qvL7Jz8krbTHe_vrIwUu-jLTfMwldre3XtwE6RK-W68BbOb3dTbw_ANRgMTKxzrHJNIihAO3QkfqJRnI0jPR4alXGIZnKicVEA9kTxNQMvTH0CxD_p/s1600/015.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5w3HeSjPol7rzIb1XbiO7m8MU5qvL7Jz8krbTHe_vrIwUu-jLTfMwldre3XtwE6RK-W68BbOb3dTbw_ANRgMTKxzrHJNIihAO3QkfqJRnI0jPR4alXGIZnKicVEA9kTxNQMvTH0CxD_p/w640-h381/015.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><i>Apple trees in Avalon, the "Isle of Apples" (the Chalice Well garden) 2011</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When I lived in the country in New York, I remember a Mabon with hot cider and new apples, and honey mead that was opened for the occasion. </span></span></span></div><div style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I also remember an Equinox when I lived in New York City in the late 80's, and was invited to be part of a performance organized at a small theatre in the East Village. She asked me to do some kind of ritual for the occasion. I couldn't think of anything, and felt quite intimidated with the prospect of creating a ritual for an audience of New York sophisticates. </span></span></span></div><div style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I was visiting a friend upstate at the time, and I happened to be standing near an apple tree by the road. I can still see the green grass under the tree, and a brilliant circle of ripe, freshly fallen red apples, lying in the grass around the tree. I picked up all the good ones, and took them back to the City with me. </span></span><br /><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9f2xCqcdayjLYWsx-Q2t438OjQqj_ghNLKrnwY79HhILkcmJ77ZxgJWc78eyTuNClJZwNLimdgU_-iW1_ccX4U4MSuTO0qQJCoiX9RAqsfBbyGcc80peAZ6bk3immm0Eta399v6xvGLqL/s1600/tor+2+022.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9f2xCqcdayjLYWsx-Q2t438OjQqj_ghNLKrnwY79HhILkcmJ77ZxgJWc78eyTuNClJZwNLimdgU_-iW1_ccX4U4MSuTO0qQJCoiX9RAqsfBbyGcc80peAZ6bk3immm0Eta399v6xvGLqL/s200/tor+2+022.JPG" width="150" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When I gave my short performance, I took out that basket of apples, and said something to the effect that "This is Gaia, ever generous, ever giving us what we need." And then I invited those present to come and take the apples. I was amazed to see that the audience took every one of them and ate them right there!</span></span><br /><br /><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As I sit writing, the sun rises over the Catalina mountains that surround Tucson, where I live now. Many years and miles away from that theatre in Manhattan. I look up to orange, magenta, violet, mauve, and a continually changing pale, cerulean sky, the canvas for this magnificent painting the sky makes, created anew twice daily. I'm grateful indeed for this moment of Beauty, and grateful for the stories of my life. Especially, today, those that are about Mabons. </span></span><br /><br /><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This is one of my favorite songs, Robin Williamson's love song to Mother Earth. Seems a good time to share it again............ </span></span></span></div></div><p><a href="https://youtu.be/yK5IWgsdqCg?si=SrIbBPp728FMXERs" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">https://youtu.be/yK5IWgsdqCg?si=SrIbBPp728FMXERs</a></p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yK5IWgsdqCg?si=bfPO3_9F4KMOu7uT" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-15488302612148307362023-09-13T13:44:00.003-07:002023-09-13T13:44:21.786-07:00Asherah - a New Sculpture<p>Another in my "Our Lady of the Shards" series of ceramic mosaics. Thanks to Lauren Losue for the cast of her beautiful hands! </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLANrYWw-pzkYW6HXV7E74RquspPXgjTf-UXemUmHO8cXLeDhYZREDzjBqKKXDoC-NTRtHcqyE_73bgI7qw7RpYgdeZhfo1R_BD-l4xAuLsBHR89A44DVSp13GuK4mOG01978_3a0OPKAMclQzy8YrmrA47WFj_ge6uQRv0U_7MGabtGgoZcKVPmf8u64/s2782/Asherah%201.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2782" data-original-width="2391" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLANrYWw-pzkYW6HXV7E74RquspPXgjTf-UXemUmHO8cXLeDhYZREDzjBqKKXDoC-NTRtHcqyE_73bgI7qw7RpYgdeZhfo1R_BD-l4xAuLsBHR89A44DVSp13GuK4mOG01978_3a0OPKAMclQzy8YrmrA47WFj_ge6uQRv0U_7MGabtGgoZcKVPmf8u64/w550-h640/Asherah%201.JPG" width="550" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-7502989371255101132023-09-10T18:28:00.006-07:002023-09-11T20:02:57.116-07:00Litany of the Real by Patricia Ballentine <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMXw8bcNniF67WCDYB-wSnl2qboLyH-d__VBV1HIv4N6zIAtBZfg4G8MuHH7P3Wvq5hjxd8pbJnu-MMOthgF_0xPfqx3XkHzK4lmBLR7gXvSACAnEw7VgQsJ-9BVyOdDRnhrlWp9A4wPsaM0PGGZItyT2QC4gyGPPHaM67sIOZKs_xq6-y9RzMs9LGp5I/s2997/IMG_3523%20(2).JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1312" data-original-width="2997" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMXw8bcNniF67WCDYB-wSnl2qboLyH-d__VBV1HIv4N6zIAtBZfg4G8MuHH7P3Wvq5hjxd8pbJnu-MMOthgF_0xPfqx3XkHzK4lmBLR7gXvSACAnEw7VgQsJ-9BVyOdDRnhrlWp9A4wPsaM0PGGZItyT2QC4gyGPPHaM67sIOZKs_xq6-y9RzMs9LGp5I/w400-h175/IMG_3523%20(2).JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><i>I wanted to share this beautiful <b>Meditation/Praise Video by my friend Patricia</b>. And a few of her words from her Blog as well. The questions she poses are important questions as the worldmind increasingly seems submerged in cyberspace, internet fantasy, cellphone addiction, AI, and a touchless pace that scrolls our lives by with very little contact with what really matters. </i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDqT8_ASoG3-npjYt-jwNUhqJp576U_4prbingcs1JwBtUwZ6u9UJ2Q9jVvjDNwlBAw9IbKet9I1ooF2gl_6vN9RbDFvd50gMwWDS8twFAPajmgbYA00J8GN4gjnNjZMN41-4jXpkBxfoAIoHg1-SsMMiBZm3UKWDqEoYMWJ2KURWgGgdIs59Vqhrqebo/s1125/pexels-photo-2364633.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1125" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDqT8_ASoG3-npjYt-jwNUhqJp576U_4prbingcs1JwBtUwZ6u9UJ2Q9jVvjDNwlBAw9IbKet9I1ooF2gl_6vN9RbDFvd50gMwWDS8twFAPajmgbYA00J8GN4gjnNjZMN41-4jXpkBxfoAIoHg1-SsMMiBZm3UKWDqEoYMWJ2KURWgGgdIs59Vqhrqebo/w220-h146/pexels-photo-2364633.webp" width="220" /></a><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href=" https://www.patriciaballentine.com/post/litany-of-the-real"> https://www.patriciaballentine.com/post/litany-of-the-real</a></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><b>How do we retain the capacity to recognize what is real? </b></i></p><p style="text-align: left;">As an artist, I have first-hand experience regarding the evolution of creative tools over the last 20 or 30 years. I have experienced the challenging conversations when being told that any art I created on the computer wasn't real art. In some ways, my ability to incorporate some technology into the creative process makes me uniquely qualified to recognize and speak to the difference between artists who utilize technology as an aspect of their creative work and people who are using AI (artificial intelligence) to tell a computer program to make something they will then describe and promote as art. </p><p style="text-align: left;">There is an increasingly problematic trend toward being satisfied with what is on the surface and not caring about a deeper connection to, and understanding of, the human essence that goes into the act of creating. And although it should be obvious that this goes far beyond what is described as art, apparently it is not. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><i><b>At what cost have we surrendered to what is easy and entertaining? </b></i></p><p style="text-align: left;">We are becoming technologically advanced beyond our capacity to see the inherent dangers on the path ahead. The technology is not the danger. In some cases it is our desire for a simpler existence without the willingness to release the grip of materialism. In some cases it is the result of the weight of pressures in our daily lives that leave us with little energy or imagination to seek something beyond what is simply in front of us. And, in some cases it is the result of diminished caring for the hands, hearts, and minds of others.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i><b>Through our aspirations of greatness and power have we begun to lose that which makes us human?</b></i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Technology and scientific advancements are vital in ways that cannot be measured. But to move beyond the potential for good and look to what serves the greater good requires our individual and collective capacity and willingness to see and understand what is all around us. It isn't just about AI and artists. And it isn't just about fake news and politics. It is about seeing, caring about, and holding onto what is real for ourselves and for others.</p><p style="text-align: left;">And so, in these many days and weeks the questions churned in my mind and heart. They stirred my imagination and fueled my belief that we can each play a part in holding onto the beauty and power of what is real...and what must not be lost. </p><p style="text-align: center;">This is my offering released at the August full moon. </p><p style="text-align: center;">The Litany of the Real.</p><p style="text-align: center;">It is my personal next first step toward making Sacred what is real.</p><div class="nLG8d5" data-hook="post-description" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 25px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><article class="blog-post-page-font" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; line-height: normal;"><div class="post-content__body" style="--ricos-action-color-fallback-tuple: 225, 58, 68; --ricos-action-color-fallback: #e13a44; --ricos-action-color-tuple: 225, 58, 68; --ricos-action-color: #e13a44; --ricos-background-color-tuple: 255, 255, 255; 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background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-custom-p-background-color,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="color: #303030; font-family: georgia, palatino, book antiqua, palatino linotype, serif;"><a href="https://youtu.be/jEuJKK7BDMU">https://youtu.be/jEuJKK7BDMU</a></span></span></span><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jEuJKK7BDMU?si=nzEvfjUmR_qSSHEn" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></article></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-6852042919785727742023-08-28T17:22:00.008-07:002023-08-28T17:32:54.829-07:00The Five Dakinis<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUyqQOYgqbTcgrG8EnsW-xJnTN8MOJYJXToUPh390HdPLr134Ph35Rthb8wQE-YcS_OyJztoq6_EfRfA_GbAfWliSe0PU8S9z1z1MeB9d_apLIirTdHRzacMyXoXxRG6h03O80J8aYBRwQ/s1600/Dakinis.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUyqQOYgqbTcgrG8EnsW-xJnTN8MOJYJXToUPh390HdPLr134Ph35Rthb8wQE-YcS_OyJztoq6_EfRfA_GbAfWliSe0PU8S9z1z1MeB9d_apLIirTdHRzacMyXoXxRG6h03O80J8aYBRwQ/s640/Dakinis.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Masks for The Five Wisdom Dakinis (2016)<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: medium;">The Dakinis are the most important elements of the enlightened feminine in Tibetan Buddhism. They are the luminous, subtle, spiritual energy, the key, the gatekeeper, the guardian of the unconditioned state. When you want to accomplish something, you always invoke the presence of the Dakinis.”</span></i></b></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">— <i>Lama Tsultrim Allione</i></span></b></span></blockquote></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">I made this Collection of Masks for a sacred dancer back in 2014, and they came to mind today, so I felt like sharing this post again. <b>Mekare*** </b>is a the Tantric dancer and teacher who has worked extensively with Prema Dasara and her beautiful <i><b>21 Praises of Tara dance ritual</b></i>. This collection I made for Mekare represent the <b>Fierce Aspects of the Dakinis</b>, which she felt it was important for women to call upon in our world. Here is something she wrote about the Dakinis: </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></span><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">"The <b>Dakini</b> is a primordial female wisdom energy found particularly in Tibetan Buddhism. </span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="background: white;">They are called <i>"Skydancers"</i> for they are completely free, able to travel between worlds and dimensions, free of the entanglements of the mind, and intimate with impermanence. They dance in limitless luminous space. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="background: white;">Embodiments of the Dakini are said to do their practices in graveyards, adorned with skulls and bone ornaments representing their intimacy with impermanence and their freedom from all fear. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="background: white;">They are ferocious and wise, primal and magical. Fierce allies and agents of change. Their compassion is immense.</span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white;">They can be<i> tricksters</i> of the most sublime order, terrifying and demanding of truth, and also the most kind of guides, playful and nurturing. </span><span style="background: white;">They break through barriers, invoke strength and power, guide us across the thresholds of awareness and change. </span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="background: white;">Depictions of the Dakini show her with a crown of skulls, in a wreath of flame, teeth bared in ferocious display like a tiger - eyes piercing and somewhat terrifying but with a rare beauty. The beauty of understainding, compassion, and hilarity shines forth. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="background: white;">In <i><b>Tibetan Buddhist Tantra</b></i> there are <b><i>5 Wisdom Dakinis</i></b>, each having a specific gift of mind transformation - the transformation or transmutation of the poisons of the mind into wisdom."...............<i>Mekare</i></span></span></span></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">I immediately related to the Dakinis being associated with the Five Elemental forces. My sense is that they are like the Devas, primal beings, builders and creators. Their concerns and origin are not necessarily human. In this sense, they are elemental beings, associated with the 5 Directions. Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Center or Aether. </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Perhaps, like Kali dancing with Her skull necklace, the skulls and bones that adorn them represent a ferocious hilarity at the fears that beset us, and the reality of impermanence. Mekare went on to say:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">"Dakini is a source of refuge. Besides taking refuge in the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha), we also take refuge in the Three Roots (Guru, Yidam and Dakini): Guru as the root of blessings because he or she will guide us to attain enlightenment; Yidam as the root of accomplishment because through the skilful method of practicing on an Yidam or tutelary deity, one will realise the nature of his or her own mind; Dakini as the root of all enlightened activities since Dakini represents primordial wisdom.</span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Dakini is associated with spaciousness, therefore has the ability to give birth to limitless prospects of enlightened activities: pacifying, enriching, magnetising and destroying. Dakini also embodies the union of emptiness and wisdom. There is nothing more than this. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Dakini has the ability to move freely in space which is beyond thoughts and beyond fabrications. This is the state of awareness which is under control, stable and yet free. Everyone has the ability and the potentials to realise the Wisdom Dakini principles or nature within oneself."</span></span></blockquote></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi530vxaIlEPVFnARhKoYI00KZed9uIFwGOyaNGtJXkwu3I-xAxVY3AC9gzEbn_4WkSKvje1rDfHTiRrSJcpMmnHSjit7NmPChGShIuEkxrk7BShVfH6XwZdQdF6E-DoCRbMVQsNk4iW3mA/s1600/green+dakini.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi530vxaIlEPVFnARhKoYI00KZed9uIFwGOyaNGtJXkwu3I-xAxVY3AC9gzEbn_4WkSKvje1rDfHTiRrSJcpMmnHSjit7NmPChGShIuEkxrk7BShVfH6XwZdQdF6E-DoCRbMVQsNk4iW3mA/s400/green+dakini.JPG" width="306" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></u></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><u><b>The Green Karma Dakini, Element of Air</b></u></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><u><br style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; text-align: start;" /></u><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The transmutation of overwork, struggle, and competition </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">into </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">all-accomplishing wisdom and enlightened activity.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Associated with Karma Dakini: Fulfillment. Aware choice. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Grace. Ease. The Tao. The Martial Artist aware in every direction. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> Compassionate and capable action in the world.</span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4acW2HYsCE90_TZGMdg_F10gU6i8OpowwiEYPkYEWt5cmm6Ll0ZECyMlgfBKKvskfBtyoQ8UXJJbEYMak9EV0NYDyJPASRXnrxdsZXgCRmM9XiqaBSBkgxIsgbH8lLf1qWfkl6YYq75iq/s1600/red+dakini.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4acW2HYsCE90_TZGMdg_F10gU6i8OpowwiEYPkYEWt5cmm6Ll0ZECyMlgfBKKvskfBtyoQ8UXJJbEYMak9EV0NYDyJPASRXnrxdsZXgCRmM9XiqaBSBkgxIsgbH8lLf1qWfkl6YYq75iq/s400/red+dakini.JPG" width="336" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><u><b>The Red Padma Dakini, Element of Fire</b></u></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><u><br style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: start;" /></u><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The transmutation of desire, lust, and grasping into discerning awareness.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Associated with <i>Padma Dakini</i>: Compassion. Radiance. Magnetism </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">in order </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">to bring benefit. Warmth. Comfort. Delight. Joy.</span></span></div><div style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9BATGXMFxEYEczswqvjSrYmd3yPtUV7Q-_MXy54jPEOnPpvGzxS7kGpd0CWNhTOlV-Xu_w3Ytk7Xp3DxPus2vwyZBr0Sy_xmjlBryoRCXUvnOq584qdAHd-8gjVKe1RKbGWquzUL80caz/s1600/yellow+dakini.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9BATGXMFxEYEczswqvjSrYmd3yPtUV7Q-_MXy54jPEOnPpvGzxS7kGpd0CWNhTOlV-Xu_w3Ytk7Xp3DxPus2vwyZBr0Sy_xmjlBryoRCXUvnOq584qdAHd-8gjVKe1RKbGWquzUL80caz/s400/yellow+dakini.JPG" width="317" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><u><b>The Gold Ratna Dakini, Element of Earth</b></u></span></div><div style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><u><br style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: start;" /></u><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The transmutation of arrogance and greed into equanimity and generosity.</span><br /><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Associated with Ratna Dakini: Abundance. Stability.</span><br /><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The richness inherent in every moment and everything. </span><br /><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Golden. Generosity. Enrichment.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwiriSrcxU_tx0qirXAB6pvcv_9BOVVBGVn22g-xKqp1WdICae_FC0l5hI1pdrSHwBHHBFq78cGEGocBa96kj9uDz-yOyVFAhQHvuu0dbGv6PZK-SBXKaZME4iOQcY_Ul15umc33GPJ1NZ/s1600/unnamed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwiriSrcxU_tx0qirXAB6pvcv_9BOVVBGVn22g-xKqp1WdICae_FC0l5hI1pdrSHwBHHBFq78cGEGocBa96kj9uDz-yOyVFAhQHvuu0dbGv6PZK-SBXKaZME4iOQcY_Ul15umc33GPJ1NZ/s400/unnamed.jpg" width="332" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><u><b>The Blue Vajra Dakini, Element of Water</b></u></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><u><br style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: start;" /></u><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The transmutation of confusion and anger into mirror-like wisdom.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Associated with<i> Vajra Dakini:</i> Clarity. Precision. Intelligence. Intuition. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Reflection. Clear seeing wisdom.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjU52Q7zauAdxTss7X3R1qsnstI4sd-Tz2-fi4N31eF0MTO10sEotEBSF_mjrf7LuFpugbIsXvDMpmra-hdDV6xCgIGmKCLdIHzGA-WOdTK4lkgpYs9WJLonF97wCscGvMaELkl2ihmc3T/s1600/white+dakini+mask.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjU52Q7zauAdxTss7X3R1qsnstI4sd-Tz2-fi4N31eF0MTO10sEotEBSF_mjrf7LuFpugbIsXvDMpmra-hdDV6xCgIGmKCLdIHzGA-WOdTK4lkgpYs9WJLonF97wCscGvMaELkl2ihmc3T/s400/white+dakini+mask.jpg" width="371" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><u><br style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;" /></u><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><u><b>The White Buddha Dakini, Element of Space</b></u></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><u><br /></u></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> The transmutation of despair, depression, apathy, </span></span><br /><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">and disconnect into illuminated spacious mind. </span></span><br /><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Associated with Buddha Dakini: Calm. Peace. Spacious. Soothing.</span></span><br /><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> Realization </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"> of connection and the web of all. </span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">The restful state of enlightened mind.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ06PzxbCL79byLNCMorNEsamvRdCe2vmSf1BEUxCO-A2MYvB7iaineAYX2CmbbOdOpiZLJGqWHKqaf-X7W3wh0Pq_n69xNG-EU5aTchKUqwXOVcXlPGBHi7cI-v1gGsZ4f6LBBuA2N5An/s1600/10447663_447716432076518_438412134854086348_n.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ06PzxbCL79byLNCMorNEsamvRdCe2vmSf1BEUxCO-A2MYvB7iaineAYX2CmbbOdOpiZLJGqWHKqaf-X7W3wh0Pq_n69xNG-EU5aTchKUqwXOVcXlPGBHi7cI-v1gGsZ4f6LBBuA2N5An/s400/10447663_447716432076518_438412134854086348_n.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 19.32px;"><b>Dakinis</b> by Penny Slinger</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 19.32px; text-align: start;" /><a href="http://journeyingtothegoddess.wordpress.com/">http://journeyingtothegoddess.wordpress.com</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span>***</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6oBuOTC_KWMRcMh92HiEH81DdGsuMLLVajMk8YV2CzCS0vJolBPLD9XsYRKcraf4SEqIjShZLNvqZoo7WzzhRL_tw6DdDvjQ71OSI3Djg2EQBn_DCSmmzDGvNcsB7Ez-fdoa-j6DetacM6y3ftrQAYfIIAV3PAJaw-DAI4ALjkb72A-alkWR2gcZswYA/s3538/20230828_172434.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3538" data-original-width="1924" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6oBuOTC_KWMRcMh92HiEH81DdGsuMLLVajMk8YV2CzCS0vJolBPLD9XsYRKcraf4SEqIjShZLNvqZoo7WzzhRL_tw6DdDvjQ71OSI3Djg2EQBn_DCSmmzDGvNcsB7Ez-fdoa-j6DetacM6y3ftrQAYfIIAV3PAJaw-DAI4ALjkb72A-alkWR2gcZswYA/s320/20230828_172434.jpg" width="174" /></a></div><div style="line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span face=""droid sans" , "lucida grande" , "tahoma" , sans-serif" style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-right: 1.5em;"><span style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-right: 1.5em;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://worldviewz.ning.com/profile/AgaveMahhavaBeling">MEKARE</a></span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> is a Sacred Dancer, Artist, Storyteller, Shamanic Bodywork Therapist, and Visionary Creatrix who is passionate about embodiment, evolution, sacred dance, and healing. She has traveled extensively, studying with indigenous healers and dancing ecstatically around the world, including performing for His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the Mandala Dance of the 21 Praises of Tara with <a href="https://taradhatu.org/introducing-prema-dasara-2/">Prema Dasara</a>.</span></span></span></span></span></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"></div></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-16416736069916796322023-08-15T09:15:00.006-07:002023-08-19T07:03:14.756-07:00Asherah Rising<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnO-PSH_sAvhYyV9LaItmVBzD0LCuuR3TIr_qukDZCTUT0h9uZDTnaMeKqwX7iXctLFTbkvS3x7xH3MSR6Wqk6lufZmpyz9DyyiTneIFSWrgasqh84Yl3M3ynwIOtTe8VEMvZk3k7QGpso/s1600/treeoflife_asherah.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="387" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnO-PSH_sAvhYyV9LaItmVBzD0LCuuR3TIr_qukDZCTUT0h9uZDTnaMeKqwX7iXctLFTbkvS3x7xH3MSR6Wqk6lufZmpyz9DyyiTneIFSWrgasqh84Yl3M3ynwIOtTe8VEMvZk3k7QGpso/s640/treeoflife_asherah.jpg" width="520" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>A relief from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) showing an Asherah Tree with male figures holding anointing oils. </i> </span></div></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">For many years I've made "tree of life" images. I'm not sure where I got the image from originally, but the Tree, and images of women with roots and branches, have been an inner iconography for as long as I can remember. In early lithographs I made often a woman within the Tree, or the Tree was a backdrop to everything else in the painting (not unlike the Web motif I also became fascinated by in my later <a href="https://www.laurenraine.com/spider-woman.html"><b>"Spider Woman"</b></a> Project). In my 1993 <b>"Lovers"</b> card from my <a href="http://rainbowbridgetarot.blogspot.com/"><b>Rainbow Bridge Oracle</b></a>, or the 1986 lithograph below I called <b>"Axis Mundi"</b>. The "Tree" is ubiquitious for me, and it's taken me a while to notice that.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdmIdwJg7LIngDZX-df4yXDIBiej8m5TnUOWVf_dhc9LqVkwuZYMXUfiyOZwvwTcl7yYbt2mPjwnmMyULNHuj9QJdicqSE4XpmF8MGygnxvwMKj5rElF7EHAbJeU0MBH6GkXARl_J40skhtpV7bBMtgnXBK0yrtar32qfTmS2EnHbQdFwt0uFAMMd0B3o/s3310/axismundi2.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3310" data-original-width="2172" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdmIdwJg7LIngDZX-df4yXDIBiej8m5TnUOWVf_dhc9LqVkwuZYMXUfiyOZwvwTcl7yYbt2mPjwnmMyULNHuj9QJdicqSE4XpmF8MGygnxvwMKj5rElF7EHAbJeU0MBH6GkXARl_J40skhtpV7bBMtgnXBK0yrtar32qfTmS2EnHbQdFwt0uFAMMd0B3o/s320/axismundi2.jpg" width="210" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: left;">The large painting I called <b>"Gaia"</b> (1986) for my MFA program (<i>it was 9 feet long</i>) showed the Goddess as a Trinity, and the barren Tree behind them. I only was able to show that painting once, and it was destroyed eventually. Large paintings don't last very long I'm afraid, especially when they come off the frame. That painting is still important to me, especially the confrontational gaze of the Trinity: I wanted them to confront the viewer with the loss, destruction and disrespect our civilization has wrought on the Tree of Life.</div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;">Which was also Asherah, the Great Mother. The Great Mother who was banished from the Bible and banished from what became the religious underpinnings of western civilization as the Patriarchs of Jerusalem <b><a href="https://threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com/2023/06/erasure-of-feminine-by-dr-anne-baring.html">erased the Feminine</a></b> to create the first <b>monotheistic religion</b> (<i>that we know of</i>). Yawah became the sole God, male and "a jealous God who would have no other". The Goddesses, along with sundry other regional Gods, became "the great abomination" to those who were the "Chosen" of Yaweh. Later this concept evolved into Christianity and Islam. And the Goddess continued to be written out of religion, although She kept making Her appearance here and there. It is not easy to completely eliminate the divinity of half the human race, although the his-story of Western religion demonstrates a long and continuing effort, sometimes by negation, as in turning Asherah into "abomination", or sometimes by mythological co-option. It is interesting, for example, that the ancient and ubiquitous Trinity, the 3-part Goddess such as Persephone/Demeter/Hecate, which represented the cycles of nature as embodied withing the Great Mother, was later absorbed into Christianity as the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In fact, this Trinity may be very ancient indeed, and may also even preceed the Hindu Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva Trinity (<i>Creator/Sustainer/Destroyer)</i>.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;">A whole lot of co-option and re-mything goes on as religions evolve! Especially, it seems, if theologians are determined to get rid of the Goddess all together.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRUhRc7gklV76r3_Jmu8GIIxeoQOufh_23nPxM9REWjz2nuelOmNkfzYAWPFIV85F7ydgwoxGRGlz-kkc6etssXjID8-ubO84udnjvPvpDVNUCuiCgMsc2H1U9hbLyIBt6smBywjUBlFWtc-fQMlZCfwXe_lg23FDW13dvdJi54VUZ8B6DclvcEorMx90/s1655/backdrop.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1182" data-original-width="1655" height="458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRUhRc7gklV76r3_Jmu8GIIxeoQOufh_23nPxM9REWjz2nuelOmNkfzYAWPFIV85F7ydgwoxGRGlz-kkc6etssXjID8-ubO84udnjvPvpDVNUCuiCgMsc2H1U9hbLyIBt6smBywjUBlFWtc-fQMlZCfwXe_lg23FDW13dvdJi54VUZ8B6DclvcEorMx90/w640-h458/backdrop.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="text-align: center;">As I began to explore clay sculpture and leather sculpture later in life, I found myself fascinated with torsos that became the Goddess, emerging from the trees, sustaining, the Mother within the Tree, breasts and belly. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN5Sa2bxG6NW4kHU__lk0kuRdiVfSvFfLnufF0BXEzVtEtAxQ95StQybnem8NZxzaNU8ewsBmiFntpqZ0W4Z8SWgAIqyRmaWCwnTSZuMSVw-5WwBKrQEZ6aTQlCvoeaggK9_8oIIvThMMpDAkf5-L3jluj-Ji-PY6N5C56-6toUl8IfFX95puJW4CzpiA/s3003/Mother%20Tree%20II.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2687" data-original-width="3003" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN5Sa2bxG6NW4kHU__lk0kuRdiVfSvFfLnufF0BXEzVtEtAxQ95StQybnem8NZxzaNU8ewsBmiFntpqZ0W4Z8SWgAIqyRmaWCwnTSZuMSVw-5WwBKrQEZ6aTQlCvoeaggK9_8oIIvThMMpDAkf5-L3jluj-Ji-PY6N5C56-6toUl8IfFX95puJW4CzpiA/s320/Mother%20Tree%20II.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;">So, the Mother who was a Tree called to me, as I believe She has called to many. As the great evolutionary Crisis of our time - ecological destruction and the possibilities of nuclear war - have arrived, so must the Great Mother arise from the depths of humanity's collective unconscious and it's layered Mythos. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;">Her time has come, and She is speaking, loud and clear. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">It was a few years back that I finally learned about </span><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah_pole">Asherah</a>,</b><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">the ancient Canaanite and early Hebrew Goddess associated with pre-monotheistic Judaism. She likely has much earlier origins as well. As Asherah was often represented as a tree, the ubiquitous "</span><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><i>Asherah poles</i></b><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">" (ashirim) associated with Her worship in early (pre-monotheistic) tribal Judaism were possibly made of wood, and possibly they were taken from sacred trees dedicated to Asherah, as there is Biblical mention of groves. These (presumably wooden) icons may have been household icons dedicated to Asherah, and were believed to invoke prosperity and fertility. Asherah is sometimes referred to as the "wife of Yahweh", whose name became something that could not be uttered, only represented as "the Lord". </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">The Asherah poles, and eventually the name of Asherah itself, were banned from worship as Judaism became monotheistic and established the sole deity as male. </i></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Interestingly, with the early advent of Gnostic Christianity, Asherah is perhaps re-born in the form of Sophia, the feminine face of deity, often called the "mother" and sometimes also called the "wife" of Yaweh. The emblem for Sophia was often a dove. </span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">I never would have associated the </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Tree of Life</i><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"> archetype, which has been a part of my artistic and spiritual vocabulary for more years than I remember, with Asherah had I not had a kind of visionary experience during a healing session in the early Fall of 2017 with an </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">alternative healer. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtm7JwoFsQ_AcjN9FojP73vRJ1RD-UCqCo5xpMMWhaNU3FqMkn01RuVB0PFNZcbhX68FojsPDYAHsPtKWxtiXsxShFajuTcgzzXIxw7mCHvDD-JwBiMRUNV_LjdWyssyUmYwgwMeuDwcU/s1600/42953dfa594e9100a74b721ecd6dccf2.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1024" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtm7JwoFsQ_AcjN9FojP73vRJ1RD-UCqCo5xpMMWhaNU3FqMkn01RuVB0PFNZcbhX68FojsPDYAHsPtKWxtiXsxShFajuTcgzzXIxw7mCHvDD-JwBiMRUNV_LjdWyssyUmYwgwMeuDwcU/s200/42953dfa594e9100a74b721ecd6dccf2.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Not unlike Reiki practitioners she worked with me for over an hour, helping me to enter into an altered state of consciousness. As I closed my eyes, the session began with a vivid inner appearance of a </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">white dove. </i><span>But it was not a literal kind of bird, it was more like a sacred emblem or symbol, what one might see in a church. I immediately thought of the "</span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Dove of Sophia</i><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">", which is of course associated with Peace to this day. </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">And Sophia, like Asherah, was eventually removed from monotheistic theology.</span></div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The healer, after the session was over, told me that she saw a Goddess form present during the healing. The healer, who was not much familiar with Goddess archetypes, said that the name she got was "<i>Ashara"</i>. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">She also mentioned that somehow trees or wood were associated. </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I couldn't think of what that meant at the time, not until I later looked it up on the Internet. And then (<i>of course!</i>) I discovered the Hebrew Goddess "<i>Asherah</i>". </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">At that time, I felt this had to do with my passage into old age. </span><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><i>Rites of passage</i></b><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">, in my experience, are never easy or comfortable, cozy or predictable. They are thresholds. I like to think I was given a Blessing as I entered into the last part of my life. </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">I reflect as well that at that time I was working to heal and release old wounds, familial wounds that were arising for examination. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">It occurs to me now as then that it is not possible to talk of healing the wounds that are "personal" without seeing that they are also interwoven with what is universal. Familial abuse is about social abuse as well as including the long reach of ancestors, going back, and going forward. Roots. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium;">And beyond that....... the Tree of Life, the roots beneath, the leaves above. All things woven. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Visions, like dreams, have multiple layers of meaning, and like dreams, exist outside of time. In my experience Spirit communicates in visionary, symbolic, mythic ways. As always, I am grateful to be graced at any time in my life with these Visitations of the transcendant and ineffable.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><span style="font-size: medium; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://www.davidhostetler.com/artist/full-biography/"><img border="0" data-original-height="953" data-original-width="620" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_8jGsPYZd4YwJ6QJKrldK-QY5cqQgjO4wXj-aQ3eJszz6Apra_FUsgYAW-5lmtmS84lCH78ARuRojWf1fgAXOE_b8EcBXD0wteov0Bt-zkpUeK2UPZCXTA0ieEVcIiFXqb_8wnxhLcsQz/w260-h400/3034cada9ac3520c5a62b3498a09f238--goddesses-religion.jpg" width="260" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.davidhostetler.com/artist/full-biography/">"Asherah"</a> by David Hostetler</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></span></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Asherah poles (</b><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">from Wikipedia</i><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">)</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">An "Asherah pole" is a sacred tree or pole that stood near Canaanite religious locations to honor the Ugaritic mother-goddess Asherah, consort of El. The relation of the literary references to an asherah and archaeological finds of Judaean pillar-figurines has engendered a literature of debate. The asherim were objects related to the worship of the fertility goddess Asherah, the consort of either Ba'al or, as inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom attest, Yahweh, and thus objects of contention among competing cults. In translations that render the Hebrew<i><b> asherim</b></i> into English as "<i>Asherah poles,"</i> the insertion of "pole" begs the question by setting up unwarranted expectations for such a wooden object: "<i>we are never told exactly what it was"</i>, observes John Day.[4] </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwcgaQoLMu_zVURqBWocY7yO87IsoPL4vxP0s2mbnsGuAHi1H_s_NqStalxHsp_tWTqfWdpx6tX-IFM5SLRMojHNH9NsIwzRNe1tvwdrxnKhOuARFRtKzy1PuHSw3l3MMUF6JyzYlzzcCNEeWvfPEuiYUZYtAXS0K_-YifcstUWghHpjSIPbSFAgGlMRE/s1600/detail-Asherah-ivory-box-Minat-al-Bayda-Ras.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1382" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwcgaQoLMu_zVURqBWocY7yO87IsoPL4vxP0s2mbnsGuAHi1H_s_NqStalxHsp_tWTqfWdpx6tX-IFM5SLRMojHNH9NsIwzRNe1tvwdrxnKhOuARFRtKzy1PuHSw3l3MMUF6JyzYlzzcCNEeWvfPEuiYUZYtAXS0K_-YifcstUWghHpjSIPbSFAgGlMRE/s320/detail-Asherah-ivory-box-Minat-al-Bayda-Ras.webp" width="276" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Asherah</b>, detail from an ivory box from Mīna al-Bayḍā near Ras Shamra<br /> (Ugarit), Syria, c. 1300 BCE; in the Louvre, Paris</span></i></td><td class="tr-caption"></td><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: medium;">.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Though there was certainly a movement against goddess-worship at the Jerusalem Temple in the time of King Josiah, (2 Chronicles 34:3) it did not long survive his reign, as the following four kings "did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (2 Kings 23:32, 37; 24:9, 19)]. Further exhortations came from Jeremiah. The traditional interpretation of the Biblical text is that the Israelites imported pagan elements such as the Asherah poles from the surrounding Canaanites. In light of archeological finds, however, modern scholars now theorize that the Israelite folk religion was Canaanite in its inception and always polytheistic, and it was the prophets and priests who denounced the Asherah poles who were the innovators and creators of monotheism, which came to have an exclusive male god.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Asherim</b> are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, the Books of Kings, the second Book of Chronicles, and the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah. The term often appears as merely <b>אשרה, (Asherah)</b> referred to as "<b>groves</b>" in the King James Version, which follows the Septuagint rendering as ἄλσος, pl. ἄλση, and the Vulgate lucus, and "poles" in the New Revised Standard Version; no word that may be translated as "poles" appears in the text. Scholars have indicated, however, that the plural use of the term (<i>English "Asherahs", translating Hebrew Asherim or Asherot</i>) provides ample evidence that reference is being made to <i>objects of worship</i> rather than a transcendent figure, objects that represented a Goddess identified with the form of a tree. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The Hebrew Bible suggests that the poles were made of wood. In the sixth chapter of the Book of Judges, God is recorded as instructing the Israelite judge Gideon to cut down an Asherah pole that was next to an altar to Baal. The wood was to be used for a burnt offering.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Deuteronomy 16:21 states that YHWH (rendered as "the Lord") hated Asherim rendered as poles: "Do not set up any [wooden] Asherah [pole] beside the altar you build to the Lord your God" <i>or as living trees:</i> "You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God which you shall make". That Asherahs were not always living trees is shown in 1 Kings 14:23: "their asherim, beside every luxuriant tree" - they may have been other objects meant to represent the Goddess in addition to the trees.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">However, the record indicates that the Jewish people often departed from this ideal. For example, King Manasseh placed an Asherah pole in the Holy Temple (2 Kings 21:7). King Josiah's reforms in the late 7th century BC included the destruction of many Asherah poles (2 Kings 23:14). Exodus 34:13 states: "Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherim [Asherah poles]." </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Some biblical archaeologists have suggested that until the 6th century BC the Israelite peoples had <b>household shrines, or at least figurines, of Asherah, which are strikingly common in the archaeological remains.</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Raphael Patai identified the pillar figurines with Asherah in his book (<i>forward by Merlin Stone</i>) <a href="https://maypoleofwisdom.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/hebrewgoddesspatai.pdf">The Hebrew Goddess</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: medium; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah_pole" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; text-align: left;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah_pole</a></span></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: center;"></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsoSJriUba-oUobXK25NWGv-Zq43lkJEy3oTWXk2BE8EtK_P8KQeFFGl0Lhqljm9HZjmVTXuNKeMqYIlfUBSR7TCIRVVbJqcCRpBFVoAy0xPAAFMVrz6OpcUyCzJKKV3y6hpJRdPMgxkxFpUrO3iivxqdKPu5jmh9fKGRhw5zD_LVpXoW4L2gwLzcNUME" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsoSJriUba-oUobXK25NWGv-Zq43lkJEy3oTWXk2BE8EtK_P8KQeFFGl0Lhqljm9HZjmVTXuNKeMqYIlfUBSR7TCIRVVbJqcCRpBFVoAy0xPAAFMVrz6OpcUyCzJKKV3y6hpJRdPMgxkxFpUrO3iivxqdKPu5jmh9fKGRhw5zD_LVpXoW4L2gwLzcNUME=w267-h400" width="267" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-37997025609093858932023-08-14T14:11:00.005-07:002023-08-14T14:15:45.119-07:00"At the Roots".....................<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJtStZ6CPdWmeKYWbu1yCE1IdjX_WysSkAv22zlFIaiENKGd1mMggV2Hn29mhqlPG8CbNZExnKdhXno9RXiPxsDKxbrZ1ItjW5ADo2E0uCtr-HiCJEVe1UDa5aW33LZ_9-U63DixKuudDV1vNrqHbS7G7vmJ_fIUzSWdsOcba8vFLMXNBlVT7Hq_Doko/s1564/IMG_4574.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1206" data-original-width="1564" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJtStZ6CPdWmeKYWbu1yCE1IdjX_WysSkAv22zlFIaiENKGd1mMggV2Hn29mhqlPG8CbNZExnKdhXno9RXiPxsDKxbrZ1ItjW5ADo2E0uCtr-HiCJEVe1UDa5aW33LZ_9-U63DixKuudDV1vNrqHbS7G7vmJ_fIUzSWdsOcba8vFLMXNBlVT7Hq_Doko/w400-h309/IMG_4574.JPG" width="400" /></a></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>Well, as I return to painting trying to find my way into the complexities of paint and color, strange Personae seem to be emerging. Who is this old woman, with her backdrop of Roots, roots that want to emerge and entwine with her white hair into the foreground? I'm not sure who she is, but I think I like her, and I am sure she has a story of some kind. I guess I've always been one who tries to read the stories that are in faces, whether I paint them, or make masks, or watch others use the masks to animate the stories to be found within them.</p><p>"Women at the Roots" - I reflect on an article I wrote a while back inspired by Sharon Blackies remarkable book '<a href="https://threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com/2020/04/when-world-was-mother-land-women-and.html"><b>If Women Rose Rooted"</b></a>, which I discovered when I visited Glastonbury back in 2018. </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"This is the core of our task: to remake the world in the image of those ancient stories. To respect and revere ourselves, and so bring about a world in which women are respected and revered, recognized once again as holding the life-giving power of the Earth itself. </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As always, the stories show us the way. The old stories, the ones which tell us that women are the land, the Body of the Earth Mother. The old stories, the ones in which the Earth is sacred."</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sharon Blackie </span></i></p></blockquote><p>ps: Here's a varient in which I made her eyes a field of stars. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKQxePoQ5hXwQ2WJseeB2FLAoAxjd_6D5y4LQ4cNZp_LIcevzcVQcS-nFfxNBWiTKWKavP9VxIGLkSH9tZ0HDrsM9-D3eCLaPcrq2kSVtsyyamWxKrVKz-dWXk56Xh21qlAXhdA-0PFSmrKcErf9GzjmQ6F0234qBAmQq5BdWYdYEuMPHNFt9k-W4sGHM/s1630/roo%20crone%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1245" data-original-width="1630" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKQxePoQ5hXwQ2WJseeB2FLAoAxjd_6D5y4LQ4cNZp_LIcevzcVQcS-nFfxNBWiTKWKavP9VxIGLkSH9tZ0HDrsM9-D3eCLaPcrq2kSVtsyyamWxKrVKz-dWXk56Xh21qlAXhdA-0PFSmrKcErf9GzjmQ6F0234qBAmQq5BdWYdYEuMPHNFt9k-W4sGHM/w400-h305/roo%20crone%202.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p></p>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-34225034309241040682023-07-16T08:15:00.009-07:002023-07-16T08:22:24.178-07:00Real Green Men: Regenerators of Life<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpPSO6xR392QwOWbQLA9ZTpMSUDyaHMKmsXS_d9vj5e9QJF3l_nw9V1BEv8BcGNCIddV7KEltXAlVfQSln1q7ecftsDSAK_HlWqM2k6DnoFt3uYECzdgx5qylVAHV4Nz_aJW-Bd7Hh2U3Lfyc-Dvx0DCuPYgRt-j8ujGTyQ5C9dVkFuIN5FDHMIMCbePM/s1728/green%20man%20mask.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1723" data-original-width="1728" height="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpPSO6xR392QwOWbQLA9ZTpMSUDyaHMKmsXS_d9vj5e9QJF3l_nw9V1BEv8BcGNCIddV7KEltXAlVfQSln1q7ecftsDSAK_HlWqM2k6DnoFt3uYECzdgx5qylVAHV4Nz_aJW-Bd7Hh2U3Lfyc-Dvx0DCuPYgRt-j8ujGTyQ5C9dVkFuIN5FDHMIMCbePM/w400-h399/green%20man%20mask.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />I felt, as terrible heat waves and floods arise this summer, like re-posting this so very hopeful article about "Real Green Men" (and women). <p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Green Man is an almost universal archetype of the renewal of life in the spring, and it is, of course, beloved by contemporary neo-Pagans as well, symbolizing</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><b style="font-family: georgia;">manhood as re-newer and re-generator</b><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">instead of as "warrior", which so often becomes authoritarian destroyer in patriarchal "alpha male" culture (</span><i style="font-family: georgia;">and this includes "dominating" nature, instead of working with nature.) </i><span style="font-family: georgia;">New (or very old) archetypes and models for men, as for women, and new myths for all , are so important now. The Goddess is rising, and so is </span><i style="font-family: georgia; font-weight: bold;">The Green Man</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">, by whatever name. Truly, as women rise and change, so must, and do, men. Men who are generators of life, and regenerators. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I went looking for "<u>living Green Men</u>". And boy (excuse the pun) did I find them! What I learned gave me extraordinary hope, and a vision of the power of the Green Man (and Green Women as well) to bring rebirth to the land and to the future, if we, as a global humanity, can only listen to what these <b>contemporary Green Men</b> have dedicated their lives to.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Below is a wonderful documentary that I ran across almost by accident, about a man in India who single handedly, and with extraordinary dedication, planted a thriving forest, beginning his work in 1979. His story began my search for other "Forest Men". To watch and listen is to be not only inspired, but to feel hope. Because I believe that this is what the future civilization will have to look like, these technologies of love, sustainability, Earth based science and spirituality, along with new and old ways for human beings to cooperate and get along with each other. We really have no choice as a common humanity - we must change, or die. I believe, instead of vast space stations and digital robots and endless wars, the future will have to look more like a forest, or a garden, if there is to be a future civilization at all. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Watching John Liu's documentary about the incredible restoration of an ancient landscape in China was extraordinarily hopeful. Or the stsory of Jadave Payeng and his family, bring a devastated island back to life. And more..........the</span><span> message <span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>Jadav Payeng , </b>and<b> John Liu, </b>and<b> Brad Lancaster (</b>and the <b>Others</b> I have, through the grace of UTube, been able to share here) carries is that renewal can happen in very simple ways, ways dedicated to helping the intelligence of Nature to do what nature does. Assisting, like planting trees, or allowing environmental diversity to be protected enough to return. <i>These regenerated forests and deserts truly offer us hope.</i></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I am reminded of a book by Alan Weisman called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us">THE WORLD WITHOUT US</a>, in which the author researched areas around the world that had become abandoned or off limits to people, like the neutral or demilitarized zone between North and South Korea - and the extraordinary renewal that took place in such environments.</span></span><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> There was also a 2008 television documentary called "</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us" style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Life After People"</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> that explored the same theme.</span><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; font-family: georgia; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I will let these people speak instead. <b>They are true Green Men. </b></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjtL4auauQmJU75qzXQ-42mS_dhSwT1PHBIVoWRYtTphzlqCY7Xj9tax2smyy8OrihyWyvn3Al7xT2E1ITsPVOG4p5P9zZtGfMvJiUQWyqtT7qjehdPiZMh_tLcKTPh0sY337o3efFsdA/s600/green.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="540" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjtL4auauQmJU75qzXQ-42mS_dhSwT1PHBIVoWRYtTphzlqCY7Xj9tax2smyy8OrihyWyvn3Al7xT2E1ITsPVOG4p5P9zZtGfMvJiUQWyqtT7qjehdPiZMh_tLcKTPh0sY337o3efFsdA/w180-h200/green.jpg" width="180" /></a></div><b style="color: #030303; font-family: georgia; font-size: large; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><u>Jadav Payeng</u></b><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; font-family: georgia; font-size: large; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, </span><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Majuli Island, India</span><p></p><p><a href="https://youtu.be/HkZDSqyE1do"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> https://youtu.be/HkZDSqyE1do</span></a></p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HkZDSqyE1do" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></p><div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u><b>Hugh Wilson</b></u>, Hinewai Nature Reserve, New Zealand</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><div><a href="https://youtu.be/3VZSJKbzyMc">https://youtu.be/3VZSJKbzyMc</a></div><div><br /></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3VZSJKbzyMc" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u><b>David Bamberger</b></u>, Selah Preserve, Texas</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><a href="https://youtu.be/ZSPkcpGmflE">https://youtu.be/ZSPkcpGmflE</a></div><div><br /></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZSPkcpGmflE" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><u><b>David Milarch</b></u>, Redwood Forests of California and Oregon</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><a href="https://youtu.be/wW9w6eCQQkU">https://youtu.be/wW9w6eCQQkU</a></div><div><br /></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wW9w6eCQQkU" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><h1 class="title style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-color, var(--yt-spec-text-primary)); font-size: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-font-size, var(--yt-navbar-title-font-size, inherit)); line-height: var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem); margin: 0px; max-height: calc(2 * var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem)); overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-shadow: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-text-shadow, none); transform: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-transform, none);"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" force-default-style="" style="word-break: break-word;"><span><u>John D. Liu*,</u> </span></yt-formatted-string><span style="font-weight: normal;">Re-greening the desert</span></span></h1></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><a href="https://youtu.be/IDgDWbQtlKI">https://youtu.be/IDgDWbQtlKI</a></div><div><br /></div><div><div>* <yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" force-default-style="" style="font-family: georgia; word-break: break-word;">(for a <b>documentary by John D. Liu</b>, see also</yt-formatted-string></div><div><yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" force-default-style="" style="font-family: georgia; word-break: break-word;"> <a href="https://youtu.be/bLdNhZ6kAzo">"Hope in a Changing Climate"</a> </yt-formatted-string><yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" force-default-style="" style="font-family: georgia; word-break: break-word;"> (</yt-formatted-string><a href="https://youtu.be/bLdNhZ6kAzo" style="font-family: georgia;">https://youtu.be/bLdNhZ6kAzo</a><span style="font-family: georgia;">)</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><h1 class="title style-scope ytd-video-primary-info-renderer" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-color, var(--yt-spec-text-primary)); font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-font-size, var(--yt-navbar-title-font-size, inherit)); line-height: var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem); margin: 0px; max-height: calc(2 * var(--yt-navbar-title-line-height, 2.4rem)); overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-shadow: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-text-shadow, none); transform: var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-transform, none);"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IDgDWbQtlKI" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></h1></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bLdNhZ6kAzo" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="font-size: medium;">And, of course, Tucson's own</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><u>Brad Lancaster</u></b>: Water Harvesting in Arizona</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://youtu.be/KcAMXm9zITg">https://youtu.be/KcAMXm9zITg</a></span></div><div><br /></div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KcAMXm9zITg" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2042413503017463795.post-52837857914226806682023-07-13T07:16:00.005-07:002023-07-13T07:16:36.401-07:00O Taste and See<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgflNtWkLItLw9mv0u0O5utyGeeg4GjWGyNMuUhl6Gs8VqoamwwYywmVKoYv3J4YD7T7FFdBzzi48czmdYDzemzQvXMkRVFSXZM16JQ8z-90ZgfRwhG1IU3IIalNGOn-yhAWUm4ZmWRyT0Tcy5kPtL5SbP04B9e9xVpQq4OUwsw6-VY7LG53A1aO3DM79s/s1300/20160518_093958_Burst01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="1300" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgflNtWkLItLw9mv0u0O5utyGeeg4GjWGyNMuUhl6Gs8VqoamwwYywmVKoYv3J4YD7T7FFdBzzi48czmdYDzemzQvXMkRVFSXZM16JQ8z-90ZgfRwhG1IU3IIalNGOn-yhAWUm4ZmWRyT0Tcy5kPtL5SbP04B9e9xVpQq4OUwsw6-VY7LG53A1aO3DM79s/w640-h360/20160518_093958_Burst01.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><b style="color: #141823; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: medium;">O Taste and See</span></b></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">by Denise Levertov</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;"><br /></span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;"><br /></span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">The world is not with us enough</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;"><br /></span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">O taste and see</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #141823;" /></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">the subway Bible poster said,</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">meaning The Lord, meaning</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">if anything all that lives</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">to the imagination’s tongue,</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #141823;" /></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">grief, mercy, language,</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">tangerine, weather, to</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">breathe them, bite,</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">savor, chew, swallow, transform</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #141823;" /></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">into our flesh our</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">deaths, crossing the street, </span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">plum, quince,</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">living in the orchard </span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">and being</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #141823;" /></span></div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">hungry, and plucking</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #141823;">the fruit.</span></span></div></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR8zbfhhZFIhAtF7XvdzZycULpoOtRQu55G3SUSVGeLpSTkVteg6ryJSgoBH40I8hVuDr8AprDxiX-3qTXrzIFazhX_43OpF8dEVupl_Pg4Wu-Y6WNDwOFPglcgQsCd6OtCxdnD7fLvNj1MRb6QL0UN8Nwyj7EtoA0HiHVg-yKr35T-flY_r8T1DdwEpY/s2880/IMG_3221.JPG" style="clear: right; font-family: georgia; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2880" data-original-width="2160" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR8zbfhhZFIhAtF7XvdzZycULpoOtRQu55G3SUSVGeLpSTkVteg6ryJSgoBH40I8hVuDr8AprDxiX-3qTXrzIFazhX_43OpF8dEVupl_Pg4Wu-Y6WNDwOFPglcgQsCd6OtCxdnD7fLvNj1MRb6QL0UN8Nwyj7EtoA0HiHVg-yKr35T-flY_r8T1DdwEpY/s320/IMG_3221.JPG" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Night Blooming Cereus</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;">We go about the circles of our daily lives, the chores, the small dramas, the contentments and irritations, occasionally looking up to notice the colors of a brilliant sunset, or a dedicated parade of summer ants bearing purple petals to who knows where, or the delicious, sugared dark taste of the morning coffee, or the familiar cat, radiating pure love as she purrs in one's lap. Occasionally we notice, sigh, perhaps say to ourselves "Nice". Or "Wow". Then back to the lists, the rising and falling of domestic or economic life.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;">Why does it often take an encounter with one's mortality to awake to the incredible, rich, gorgeous artistry of Life, all around us? I suppose the answer to that is obvious. But then....... there it is, and all one can do is stand, with mouth open, noticing, recognizing, "tasting and seeing". </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibkZIIrebrB84xZlUIsKkFsvOrt4JivpFvATa5NqKaBQoAt3N4GA_DEFJWcjyhP0V7SriXbU5ZrLwp-ZttDloCUHOfhHljewbYvFahJno-Jp_wrEE-3n5zArx7u1rgo_rrL4Lz8U5GseybnMClxCWuJD_uk_OOXIRzkNCXrqjTDgIok9fhVkhoX4BYRB0/s320/IMG_1721.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="240" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lemons from my lemon tree</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;">Just a week ago I spent three days in the ER at a local hospital to emerge with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure and an aneurism. Now I wait another week to have open heart surgery. An interim, a "liminal zone" of time in which I am awake. All of this, all of this I've loved, and built, and collected, the garden I love, the paintings I've done or imagine are yet to be done, the plans, the disappointments, the squabbles and the friendships, the cup I particularly like to drink tea out of, the sun coming through a yellow bottle I always notice...........it all could be over pretty soon now. Or not, but my perception of my "time" will not be the same, ever again. What does one do with that kind of awakening. Not a poetic or metaphysical abstraction, but carnal, immanent, solid? Well, gratitude helps. And,...........</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;"><b><i> O Taste and See</i></b></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;">What a feast! What if we daily understood (<i>meaning, to "live under "a truth</i>) that it's <b>such </b>a Privilege to be here? To experience and be a part of this amazing world with all of its polarities and struggles, among vast mysterious communities of other Beings evolving in their own unique ways all around us? And each moment with its own unique Beauty that blooms and dies and seeds, so fast, so precious, so amazing. Collateral beauty, ackward beauty, dark beauty that opens the heart and teaches the hard lessons too. Who is the Conductor, who the orchestra?</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #141823; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj368H1iYityLcigIA9hnmYiDKEHguOVQjKpOi3OwA2iEnYPc_o0aVlDvCNcZ7jpAyrMyS_XkAM-FmtOLCsMn1CdME6G3XyVcDWzUCUjn3XSdY8WWUKj6V1w__XA6ip-3Xf1b8cLsYSAyNMS-5g8EDLskUd_2bjTJWozVkCF6LdePVQz2DEnG1EoWlIpVk/s640/285789167_8280790015280542_5066111896570760545_n.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj368H1iYityLcigIA9hnmYiDKEHguOVQjKpOi3OwA2iEnYPc_o0aVlDvCNcZ7jpAyrMyS_XkAM-FmtOLCsMn1CdME6G3XyVcDWzUCUjn3XSdY8WWUKj6V1w__XA6ip-3Xf1b8cLsYSAyNMS-5g8EDLskUd_2bjTJWozVkCF6LdePVQz2DEnG1EoWlIpVk/s320/285789167_8280790015280542_5066111896570760545_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">For the past few years I've had the peculiar experience of having "life reviews" without the necessity of being dead. I think a lot of older people experience this. In other words, it's like long forgotten moments seem to arise from the well of my memory, often in ways that seem unrelated to whatever I am doing or even thinking about at the time.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I tend to feel those moments are part of the ineffable and timeless gestalt that I really am, and they are worth looking at for what they may have to teach me now as I try to get an overview of the threads that weave the tapestry of my long life. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Of course, so many of those memory moments aren't happy, or illuminated, many are sad or painful or embarrousing or traumatic or show me the ways I may have hurt someone, been very unconscious, hurt myself, wasted time or love or purpose. Those too are welcome now, they are wise teachers in the unfolding of this grand adventure that has been (and is still, it's not over yet!) Lauren Raine. I know, a strange post this, but I find myself in a state of awe. It's a funny thing, but I find it strange that it would take heart disease to open my heart so. May healing come to my heart, and may that vision that is with me now, remain. I think of a line from a poem I wrote a long time ago, so here I quote myself: </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">"</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">We
are given a vision so bountiful</span></i></div></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>we
can only gaze with eyes wide,</i></span></p></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>like
a child in summer's first garden.</i></span></p></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjWxhUThOhVhJ6WA1wbykCEmoY7KRCyqfVL1mGLSv2hhAk6rR3enwz1yp-WH0mT8g3_2-VTPVe_qrD60zQbIUWM5rz90yZgbES55V0soIVFWqzAHHKpbzqyaVOe_rZx1LQanJ3HenUDOGuYLgbvfTc41hPzQHHgFjSBAmDnYlBpgohnnTNWNh9xtV5mk4/s1300/30346972-Beautiful-flying-white-butterfly-the-Chocolate-Albatross-with-soft-shadow-underneath-Stock-Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1300" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjWxhUThOhVhJ6WA1wbykCEmoY7KRCyqfVL1mGLSv2hhAk6rR3enwz1yp-WH0mT8g3_2-VTPVe_qrD60zQbIUWM5rz90yZgbES55V0soIVFWqzAHHKpbzqyaVOe_rZx1LQanJ3HenUDOGuYLgbvfTc41hPzQHHgFjSBAmDnYlBpgohnnTNWNh9xtV5mk4/w269-h269/30346972-Beautiful-flying-white-butterfly-the-Chocolate-Albatross-with-soft-shadow-underneath-Stock-Photo.jpg" width="269" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Here is a poem by Rumi that also comes to mind today. </span></div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The Guest-House</b><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </b></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">This being human is a guest-house.</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">Every morning a new arrival.</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">A joy, a depression, a meanness,</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">some momentary awareness comes</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">as an unexpected visitor.</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Welcome and entertain them all!</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">who violently sweep your house</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">empty of its furniture,</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">still, treat each guest honorably.</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">He may be clearing you</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">out for some new delight.</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The dark thought, the shame, the malice,</span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">meet them at the door laughing,</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">and invite them in.</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">Be grateful for whoever comes,</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">because each has been sent</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia;">as a guide from beyond.</span></span></div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEKbBaSfyDTFJHI99bjzvqbNQfo-pG0SHUMwvh5mYUua0T7qXJvOAf3XBVN05_vc1nyKL-mfeQKoD7pZFbJDqHK8rqDSDaBCR9APJ9hfhduom3AWVK_s87EKozGcSnksfAY5qBpCwtBhU_HauhsSgSd6veCzfVUQ1gbll67Ko74YUutYwrxKHhFy0U3ko/s2352/night%20blooming%20cereus.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2149" data-original-width="2352" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEKbBaSfyDTFJHI99bjzvqbNQfo-pG0SHUMwvh5mYUua0T7qXJvOAf3XBVN05_vc1nyKL-mfeQKoD7pZFbJDqHK8rqDSDaBCR9APJ9hfhduom3AWVK_s87EKozGcSnksfAY5qBpCwtBhU_HauhsSgSd6veCzfVUQ1gbll67Ko74YUutYwrxKHhFy0U3ko/w252-h230/night%20blooming%20cereus.JPG" width="252" /></a></div><br /><p> </p><div><br /></div>Lauren Rainehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157367890138761677noreply@blogger.com2