Save the NEA and the NEH

Much of what has "made America great" is our culture of arts and scholarship.  The NEA supports everything from the Metropolitan Ballet to film festivals, craft faires, arts in the school programs, arts for veterans, exhibitions, museums, NPR, as well as new artists in all disciplines.  The budget for he NEA and NEH is just about nothing when compared to the national budget.  Ending the arts funding is dismantling American culture, as well as silencing and censoring dissent.  We should not be trying to "justify the arts" any more than we should be trying to justify protecting the trees, or the water, or the air, or caring for the young, or the aged.  

What we should stop doing is justifying what is happening to America under the Trump regime.

TAKE ACTION HERE TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT

A community orchestra performance, a new work from an emerging playwright, art therapy for a returning veteran, local ­library classes in Braille, free standardized-test preparation, and Bert and Ernie. Thousands of such programs could be gutted under President Trump’s proposed budget. The budget plan, which calls for the elimination of four independent cultural agencies — the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — also would radically reshape the nation’s cultural infrastructure. Although the budgets of the four organizations slated for elimination are negligible as a percentage of the larger federal budget, they play a vital role in a cultural economy built on a system of federal stimulus. Federal dollars are used to leverage state, local and private funding that supports a complex network of arts organizations, educational entities, museums, libraries and public broadcasting affiliates.

If the arts have impacted your life and you want to see these essential programs continue to flourish and preserve our cultural heritage, enhance our education system and help us build better communities, go to the Americans for the Arts Action Center and send a customizable message to your elected representatives in Congress.  Actively recruit your friends and family to do the same. Generously, share information on social media, using the national hashtags – #SAVEtheNEA, #ArtsVote, AND tag your Congressional members.  SAVE THE ARTS TODAY!

But beyond the numbers, we know the arts matter for a wholly human reason--they illuminate, they console, they articulate. In short, they help us to explore and express the wonderfully messy business of being human.   Art defines us through our thoughts, perceptions, creativity, and other qualities that make us human. At SAACA, you have taught us that the arts are not political, but essential to our humanity and our future.  Through your support of our community events and programming, you have proved this very thought to be true for over 20 years here in our community. Because of you, we know that a strong nation requires creativity, imagination, collaboration, risk-taking and resilience. These skills, taught through artistic practice, are the core drivers of innovation. The arts are directly connected to the long-term strength of America’s economy, education and and at the State level in Arizona, sustainable growth.   IF YOU BELIEVE THIS TO BE TRUE, THEN WE ASK YOU TO JOIN US AND MAKE OUR VOICE HEARD. This blueprint must be considered by the Congress who ultimately makes the decisions about the funding levels of federal programs, including outright elimination. The budget process is very long and very political, and there will be many opportunities to influence how members of Congress vote on this issue. Fortunately, federal support for our arts and cultural agencies has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past, and if members of Congress don’t understand the broad and deep support these agencies have among citizens like ourselves – they are about to find out. As part of the Arts advocacy campaign in Arizona, we are asking you to go to the Americans for the Arts Action Center and send a customizable message to your elected representatives in Congress. Actively recruit your friends and family to do the same. Generously, share information on social media, using the national hashtags –  #SAVEtheNEA, #ArtsVote, AND tag your Congressional members.

SOUTHERN ARIZONA ARTS & CULTURAL ALLIANCE

Learn more about our Mission and Vision for the Arts in Arizona HERE.  Donate, Volunteer, Attend an Arts & Cultural Event today!

The Waters of the World Revisited

"We welcome you to Avalon

Thank you for bringing the Waters of your lands.

Together we'll make a great medicine of love."

I'm pulling away for a while from politics to try to recover my balance, and looking back to do that. In  2011 I went on Pilgrimage to Glastonbury, and also presented at the Goddess Conference there.  The ritual process at the Conference, the raising of energy they did, and the profound power of the Sacred Place that is Avalon.........I shall always cherish.   An important ritual for all times and places, reciprocity with the waters and land and the group.   I wanted to touch those waters again.

August, 2011, Glastonbury, U.K.

The Goddess Conference here at Glastonbury ended yesterday with some beautiful rituals, and I find myself feeling at a loss to write it all, but I'll try.  Having done week long ritual cycles in the past, as well as leading a few around the work of the mask, I've experienced the kind of "group mind" or entrainment that happens when one works together in sacred space and "mythic mind".  That sounds pretty lame and academic - forgive me.

Imagine gathering the first day in groups of people who come from different parts of the world - in my case, from the "west".   We have all brought water from our homes, and speaking of this, we pour our water into a vessel, which later will become added to a vessel for all participants. As an opening ceremony, each group approaches the Priestesses of Avalon in a barge, "rowing" to share our waters to the magic isle.  This water will be joined with rituals at the "holy wells of Avalon", the Chalice Well and the White Spring.  Later small vials of this charged, healing, universal "water of the well, water of the world" are given to each of us to carry back, and we will all make a procession with our banners through the streets of Glastonbury to the river (which once was a great lake, the legendary home of the Lady of the Lake) to pour some of this water into the flowing waters.

Quite a wonderful sight, to see so many blue clad, singing women and men gathered waist high in the stream, with our vessels of water, and a woven mermaid!  Then a sharing of fruit, to remind all that the Goddess gives to us the fruits of the Earth, always, to share, and to receive.

The closing ceremony included a "give away" where all present exchanged gifts.  And I leave with my heart open, and my vials of water to share with other waters, and to remember.

You know, I honestly feel rather speechless - moved, changed by this experience, the ceremony, the people, the place.   The work is about the Goddess, and it is collective, and a field opens that is also deeply personal and transformative.  A "mystery".  One sees with mythic eyes, with archetypal vision, and waking life becomes a revelation.  For example,  at the river yesterday, I picked a branch of elderberries, finding them beautiful, and wanting to add them to the "fruits" being shared, but decided it wasn't a good idea.  I wasn't even sure they were edible.  Some seeing me with them in my hand told me that they were very magical, connected to the Crone and the Goddesses of the underworld.  That's why they were called "elderberry".  She also said they made medicine from them, and Elderberry wine.

I carried those darkly beautiful berries all the way back, thinking as I returned (wet) from the river, and pouring our waters into the worlds waters thus, about my soon to be 62nd birthday.  I'll be eligible for early retirement now.  I'm entering old age, and I don't know what it means - it's this cycle of my life now.  Sometimes, to be honest, I feel very sad and lonely in the midst of it all.  Elderberries, bearing elderberries from the river...............  Crone medicine.

When I got to the cafe at the Assembly Hall, gathering for the closing rituals, the cook was saying to someone "Oh, someone left a nice bottle of elderberry wine here last night.  Potent stuff.  "(!) 

I was amazed. since I was standing there with the same berries in my hand - so I asked her if I could try it!

And so I sat, waiting for the "gifting ceremony", with a nice glass of (like she said, potent stuff!) elderberry wine in my hand, feeling awed, and as if, on top if it all, I had some very magical "medicine" that had just been gifted to me, even before the "gifting ceremony" had begun.  Elderberry wine.  Healing tonic....... gifts of the crone goddess, potency.

It works that way. The huge generosity of world, and when people come together in love and ritual.........when we forgive, love, and join the waters.........

At the closing ceremony, after the procession to the River Brue,  white veils were drawn as the Priestesses/Facilitators withdrew behind the stage.  The "mists of Avalon" closing on the Mystery..........and we left for our various  homelands, bearing our vials of  "holy-wholly" water.

From the Well of the Lady, the Well of becoming...........the joined Waters of the World.

Speechless.

At the closing of the Conference, the "Waters of the World" were taken to the river, in procession, and given to the river to bear them, with the blessings of all those gathered,  to join the waters of the land and ocean.  

More on Stars

Photo by Wally Pacholka

Recently I shared some poems of mine about Stars, and I was delighted when Roscoe, a writer friend, shared back some of his own reflections, which he kindly allowed me to share in the Blog. 

NIGHT RIDER

by Roscoe Mutz

            I do not consider myself a particularly religious person in the traditional sense; I abide church services and rarely find the sacred in holy buildings, but when the sun goes down and the sky is clear I feel the spirit move within me; an ancient impulse to worship returns and my pulse rises.  As I bike through Tucson at night, my thoughts on the sacred echo those of Emerson:

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. 

            Clipping in both the LED headlamp and flashing red strobe tail light and rolling up my right pant leg constitute the ritual preparation of the elements for my two-wheeled eucharist.  The clearly cratered moon with its twinkling celestial counterparts are an ever changing and astonishing natural stained glass memorial of the dynamism of the eternal.  Orion guards and guides my spiritual journey.  The pungent aromas of wood smoke a suggestion of incense.  In the silence, a prayer.  The wind whipping by my ears is the whisper of angels, or, perhaps, the voices of my ancestors that reside within me.  The hum and buzz of the wheels send soothing energy to loosen my knotted inner self, a sensation similar to how a meditative ohm or belting out the chorus of a familiar hymn can reverberate down into my body, soothing the gnarled visceral being hardened by the rigors and stresses of weekday living.  And with a little faith, releasing the handlebars to come up out of my bow and spread my hands wide, truly giving our envoys of beauty a reason for such admonishing smiles.

Synchronicities.............

I've had a number of striking synchronicities lately, and wanted to put them into this journal.  Synchronicities, for me, are like touchstones along the path, made of the same stuff as vision and dreams, pointers, contacts.  Sometimes, like dreams, I try to see what they may mean.  Sometimes, I see synchros as being "within the dream", threads cast on the great net of Spider Woman reminding us of the web of being underneath the fabric of ordinary life.  

So what to make of these?  The first concerns my mother, who died on February 22, 2015.  On the 22nd I felt myself really missing her, and lit candles before her picture in remembrance.  A few days later Blogger notified me that a new comment had been posted on, of all things, the obituary post I made for her two years ago!  While it is obviously some kind of spam, it repeats the "22" motif.  Just a computer generated spam, or a little "hello"?  It made me smile, anyway.

Spam Synchro

Blogger has left a new comment on your post "Florence Greene 6/27/1917 ~~ 2/22/2015": 

At Take Free Bitcoin you may claim free bitcoins. Up to 22 satoshis every 5 minutes. 

Publish 
Delete 
Mark as spam 

The next has been going on for a while, and concerns "a gift of feathers".  For several months now I've been finding feathers all over the place.   On the doorstep, in the living room, in my studio..........even the cat brings them home.  I've amused myself by saying "it must mean angels are around."  So last week I had a visit with a colleague of mine, Patricia Ballentine, who is a priestess in Phoenix.  She brought with her Fr. Jorge, a Catholic priest who is part of a very progressive church in Tempe, Arizona.  It was a real pleasure to talk with Fr. Jorge, and we discussed masks and the use of sacred masks in many indigenous cultures.  He particularly liked my mask of the Virgin of Guadalupe.  And the conversation culminated with Fr. Jorge planning on commissioning me, in May, to create masks for  the Four Archangels!   am excited about this very much, and especially since I have recently been working on a painting dedicated to Michael!  

I also might add that about a month ago I received a call from a woman who wanted me to put some art in a show she was sponsoring.  I did, and just recently looked at her full name  - it is T.  Angeles!

Desert Stars

Photo by Wally Pacholka

"Who wants to understand the poem must go to the Land of Poetry"

...... Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

To Stars

With age, I've learned to watch my feet.
I've become cautious of falls,
the honest frailty of bones
and equally fragile, the choices
found at every crossroad.

Time makes us bend.
We learn the habit
of looking down.

I was blessedly no where
just some where between 
"here" and "there"
a truck stop off I-40
falling off the edge of the world
into a nameless desert town,

disappearing
into a sweet black halcyon midnight
After a summer rain

wet, shining asphalt
the smell of diesel, and chaparral

(below,  some where between

my feet and eternity)

reflected, you made your puddled,

gracious descent:

luminous Orion,

and faithful Sirius,

the dog star.

Antares, the scorpion's tail,

the Pleiades,
dancing in Indra's shining jewel net.

And the Big Dipper

offering,
offering forever

                    (2003)

I Stood Poised Upon the Edge of Town
and Heard the Blue Stars Singing

Weary ideas rise and fall

into blessed exhaustion,
the mind retreats

I taste the  blood-red honey wine

I entered a lucid dream,

and found a lucid life.

Through an open window, 

Night reveals a black, far horizon

a landscape layered 
with memories made of memories

I hear the blue stars singing

     "Wait for me,

       Wait for me"

I wish I could tell you

what I have seen

in the homelands.

Perhaps, 

in that country,

we are of each other at last......

You take my hand, we walk together

in that green and splendid meadow.

I offer you a glass,

you raise your cup to mine.

Lips touch

a butterfly rises between us,

flies into the morning

from the other side

of forever.

Through an open window,

I hear the blue  stars singing.......

While I write this in a small, dark room

a cluttered here, a  mute now

wishing I could be young again,

wishing I could feel

something other than foolish.

I will always remember you

between, 

always between

regret and joy

hello and goodbye

delight and sorrow

truth and lies

that bright

endarkened landscape

I saw you in.

(2002)

A Blessing by John O'Donohue

     

       A Blessing

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites us to new frontiers

To break the dead shell of yesterdays
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
                                   

 John O'Donohue

Art Exhibit at Raices Teller Gallery in Tucson

"GAIA VI"  (2013)

"CORAZON DE LA TIERRA"  (Heart of the Earth) will be opening this Saturday at 6:00 pm at Raices Teller gallery in downtown Tucson, and I'll be exhibiting several pieces in the show, including the above and below sculpturesw.  

The Show will be running from March 4 - 25, 2017.  

“We need to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with the natural world. From a spirituality of the divine as revealed in words to a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the visible world about us..” 

-- Thomas Berry

EARTH SHRINE (2009)