A Pink Oasis

“Photographer, Cherry Blossom Festival” Phone Photo, DS

A Pink Oasis

The Barbie movie did not cross my mind while I was exploring the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival. That thought came the next day. While at the festival, I was mostly in the moment. In the Uber ride back home, as we passed the beauty of the mountains and the opaque windows of the DTES, it came to me that the Cherry Blossom Festival could be a symbol for Canada; a pink oasis of peace in the midst of a world social upheaval of the post-Covid years.

As I went to bed that night, I relived all that I had experienced during the day. Picnic blankets like a huge quilt squared the lawn. Strollers and dogs dotted the muddy green. False Creek sailboats luxuriated on the edge. Sushi pre-ordered, and homemade lunches brought back forgotten traditions. Selfies taken, hanging notes under trees and craft tents were fun to look at. Music brought life to winter bones. Daffodils were like sun until itself came out.

I was out, away from my desk, in nature. My shoe had sunk into dog feces just before I descended the ramp to the Granville Island Aquabus ferry. The smell was embarrassing, when I realized it was me. People did not quite look. 

Later a Vancouver-sized seagull swooped down behind my head and violently tipped the Easter egg ice cream out of my hand onto the seaside deck, splat. In shock, I kept looking up behind me to see where it had come from. The innocent sky now seemed fraught.

I continued my pilgrimage of sites symbolizing my years of art school on the Island. I reminisced about avid student contemporary art history discussions. And how one woman and I went overboard in our comments one day (apologies later). Dundarave Printmakers had a display of onyx-like pieces in the window. A longing for the ones I had created and donated hit me. I considered becoming a member and continuing my etching practice there. 

Ahead my gaze went to the Lafarge silos; “Giants,” painted in 2014 by twin brothers (Os Gemeos) from Brazil. Further on, the windows of the former Emily Carr U studio spaces, classrooms and library were blank. The call of buying beautiful art supplies at Opus overcome, I went on to the Federation Gallery and saw what others were painting, hoping for a spark of problem-solving in my current painting challenge. I crossed the four corners, past the green and white, Prof. Landon Mackenzie-painted awning, to the lobby of the Granville Island Hotel. 

We had spent the first night of our honeymoon there. As we looked at the sailing boats with our champagne brunch the next morning, we planned all that we would do with our two boys; now happy step-brothers. In memory, now, I ate sliders with Pilsner on the patio, then called Uber to meet me in front of the fire-pit water feature. I took a photo of the ancient yellow crane (now public art) way above.

In the middle of the night I received a news alert about a shooting. It had occurred just a few blocks from where I had spent the day. This superimposed image of violence on my pink peace dream, disrupted the night while I tried to reconcile them.

The Cherry Blossom Festival has grown from its quiet beginnings in 2005 by the Vancouver Board of Trade. In the 1930’s Japan had donated 500 trees to Vancouver in honour of Japanese WWI veterans. I had often felt that more people ought to know about the pink beauty and history of friendship. 

There are more venues now since  the festival’s inception. A marketing firm must have taken it up from its more folk tradition-like beginnings. Locals were joined by tourists and then more locals to enjoy the beauty of pink.

Petal pink sparkle heels in plastic with elastic straps to teeter around the living room in, what did it mean to me to wear these shoes as a shy platinum blonde girl? From time to time, I see them in my mind over the decades. Were they a symbol of hope, of the beauty of being grown up, mature at last and free to be me?

Pink had always seemed to me to mirror frivolity and innocent fun, something extraneous; an add-on to bless the day with a moment of joy, if you had the time.

Now I see that pink is what life is made of down deep; a joy that cannot be quenched, a love that has died and risen to spread seeds, a companionship that is always with us, even to the end of the age.

Later in the evening news I saw the shootings in Vancouver that afternoon within the hour I was there. Coffee shop windows had bullet holes. People in the street scattered and would not tell their stories on camera for fear of gang-related revenge.

Like a trauma, (or as a trauma) I keep thinking about the events happening so near and what I was doing at the time. I was chatting about the beauty of the pink trees with the Uber driver. I recommended that he bring his wife to see them. How could I be so innocent, so naïve, so looking through rose coloured glasses about the city I drove across Canada to move to? 

Again I am struck by how life can change in an instant. One cannot prepare, but one can be in prayer; a practice of daily prayer. Like Anne Lamott we can say, help, wow, thanks.

I don’t know why the news of the shooting was a jolt of trauma for me. I guess it was added to the news last month of the sentencing of a man for a stabbing at the mall near me, or the run-in I had with a man shouting in my face on a street nearby.

When I moved here from a quiet suburban neighbourhood, I was at first frozen for a few hours by the difference of present danger in an urban environment. I saw an old woman trailing a grocery carrier along the sidewalk and asked myself this question, does this woman have more courage than me? Fathers escorting children to the school in the next block, do they have more courage than I do? The answer was, no, I have great courage, at times.

Apple blossom time in New Brunswick was the next layer of processing my weekend of beauty and danger. You were born at apple blossom time; I could see the trees from the hospital window, my mother had relayed with eyes bright.

Perhaps apple blossoms are more Canadian. They bloom later. Their beauty is nuanced, ivory, baby-cheeks pink, deep coral, green. Their petals do not line the sidewalks and do not blow down the streets pinking wherever they gather and cover, making one think of a foretaste of heaven. Rather they are most seen in apple orchards with ladders, in green stubbly fields, like ancient blessings blowing heart prayers of ancestors.

We too are like trees planted to bring beauty, to offer shade, to feed passersby with our red and green fruit. Our roots are deep touching down into wells bringing water to healing leaves for the nations. We are the new Barbie, a harbinger of peace to a world of violence, and a new Ken working to pollinate together the seeds of beautiful pink change, a canopy of green stretching to the city and beyond. A silent witness of seedlings germinate, sprout, dialogue as watered and fed; living emblems of friendship with all people and other creatures of an earth at peace, holy ground.

Meandering Through the Writings of Others as a Practice of Lament: The Light We Carry

“Altar Painting and Hearth” DS

Hear are today’s explorations:

Obama, Michelle. The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. 2022.

1000 words

*** To all those who use their light to make sure others feel seen. *** The cane helped my dad get himself up the stairs to our apartment or down a city block. *** That cane symbolized nothing. It was just a tool . . . *** If the indignities of his disability dimmed his spirit, he rarely showed it. *** Giving voice to all this felt a bit risky . . . *** I got up the next morning and took Becoming on the road. *** What I do know is that these times left us wobbly and unsettled. *** Have I felt angry? Yes, I have. *** What I can offer is a glimpse inside my personal toolbox. *** What we share as humans on this earth is the impulse to strive for better, always and no matter what. *** after pandemic *** How do we adapt? *** The smallest of tools can help us sort through the largest of feelings. *** I mail-ordered myself some knitting needles without quite realizing what I needed them for. *** Sasha and Malia continued their schoolwork online. Barack was busy writing his memoirs . . .  I launched a video series in which I read storybooks out loud for kids. *** I was in a low place before I finally got around to picking up the two beginner-sized knitting needles. *** There was my beautiful country. There was the kindness and grace of people helping out their neighbours . . . There were crowds marching in the streets, determined not to let another Black person’s death go unnoticed. *** After stalling on my convention speech I finally knew what I wanted to say. *** It’s okay to pace yourself, get a little rest, and speak of your struggles out loud. *** It’s these small rearrangements that help us untangle the bigger knots. *** What does it mean to be comfortably afraid. *** Saying no would be a relief, I told myself. *** But that’s exactly why my mom made me do it. *** Each leap I’ve taken has only made the next leap easier. *** One of us bites; the other hurts . . .  And that’s what I want to talk about here – the possibility of starting kind. *** Children show us how instinctive the need for gladness is all the time. *** Nearly everyone on earth experiences . . . that prickling awareness that you’re somehow not suited to your environment, that you’re being viewed as a trespasser. *** They never seemed to sweat, these women . . . *** I understood none of this at the time. *** My group of friends made me feel less alone . . . I still had to step out of my at-home circle and into the force filed of the broader culture. *** It made him noticeable, visible in all the right ways. *** It was ease despite struggle. *** We are a young country dominated by old narratives. *** I am not someone who takes friendships lightly. *** My days became a surreal mishmash of the mundane and the extraordinary, the practical and the historic. We needed a pencil box for Sasha, a ball gown for me. *** My real friends know what I look like without make-up on  . . . *** We must continue to practice the art of opening ourselves and connecting with others. *** The best way to be a friend to someone . . . to appreciate each person for what they bring, receiving them simply as themselves. *** When and if my kids do choose someone, finally, to be with for life, I want them to do it from a place of strength, truly knowing who they are and what they need. *** Unlike in my family, Barack’s family hugged each other a lot. *** This is where certainty begins . . . you step out into the balmy Honolulu night with a vault of stars overhead, hit suddenly by the realization that you have made it your home. *** My mother is now eighty-five. She operates with a quiet mirthful grace. Glamor and gravitas mean nothing to her. *** If Grandma was going to talk to the media, Grandma was going to speak her truth, and get it over with. *** As long as you are still breathing, you’ll be wondering if there’s something more you can do. *** My mom showed me how to set my wake-up time and how to turn the alarm off when it buzzed. *** From the day she birthed each of her children, my mother was striving toward a singular goal, and that was to render herself more or less obsolete in our lives. *** It must have been during these hours that my mother arrived at the idea, even unconsciously, that her own kids someday, would not just be allowed but encouraged to speak. *** Our parents saw us each as different and treated us that way. *** How do we build places where gladness lives – for ourselves and others, and most especially our children – and to which we will always want to return? *** A month before a new president was sworn in, my mother happily packed her bags. *** If you know me, than you will also know the exceptionally talented and even-keeled people who have been on my team over the years. *** You leave home knowing that you’re holding a tray stacked high with the hopes and sacrifices of others. *** There was a choice to be made between fear and faith . . . *** I held Barack’s hand and walked onto the inaugural platform, trying to inhabit the boldness that seemed to be called for. *** She’d converted what seemed like a vulnerability into a unique asset, something potent and useful. *** Our differences are treasures and they’re also tools. They are useful, valid, worthy, and important to share. *** When you do the work, you own the skills. *** 

Meandering Through the Writings of Others as a Lament Practice: Lambsquarters

“Wildflower Meadow” Phone Photo, DS

Here are today’s meanderings:

McLean, Barbara. Lambsquarters: Scenes from a Hand-made Life. 2002.

PhD in literature

761 words

*** unusual dedication *** setting, backstory, general and specific, foreshadowing, character *** She locates her farm, and gives a hawk’s view of the land; how they came by the land. *** metaphor of a painting of Corrigan or Maud Lewis *** description of the town itself *** At the time I didn’t know we would need it: community. *** humour, crossing her fingers at her wedding vows *** music metaphor *** description of house, of overgrown garden *** personification of the house *** sense of excitement building *** what may have been done in those spaces *** metaphor, a brick tent with outbuildings *** almost derelict *** impermanence of previous owners *** I saw no rot that day. *** turning point *** From the first moment it became clear. Together, Thomas and I would become stewards and careful guardians of a property that dreams are made on. *** reader filled with hope and enticed by beauty *** The real estate agent claimed it was a good road to buy on; a school bus road. The snow plough opens it early each day in the winter. *** We grew up together. We healed each other. *** Neighbours arrived . . . they sent their son to lure us over. *** With their welcome came their warning, the first of many. *** The work took its toll, though I was young and strong. *** to learn my farmhouse board by board, wall by wall, window by window, until I could venture out beyond its doors and begin to work the land around it. *** I learned from books or neighbours; nudges . . . *** The raspberries twisted through their own sire mess. *** high culture, low culture *** A gentle man, cultured, Mr. Harrow wore khaki pants . . . *** I remember the first year’s lambing. I was a nervous midwife. *** In the early years I was meticulous. *** research: biology *** It took some years to name the farm. *** the bi-colours of monkshood and the vining sweet pea *** The land here was destined for sheep. Lambsquarters named itself. *** cultural research: mothers *** He was a painter and a writer and he appreciated children. *** I harvested dye plants in the meadow . . . *** Babies had never been part of the plan – at least not our babies. *** I was not a holder of babies. *** Not long after I was pregnant. *** The daffodils bloomed for themselves that spring, for there was no depression. *** A sick sheep will shear itself. *** research: sheep shearing *** Like gifts, the sheep are decked out in seductive packages, the contents known only when the wrapping is off, like Muslim women out of the chador. *** preserved herbal vinegars, pickles, relishes *** We were still newcomers (as we always will be) and kept to ourselves. *** Until my baby was born, all in a flash, his father lovingly guided him out in the rush. *** What feet walked here before we came? *** research: mythology *** But baby chicks are hard to resist. *** Spring’s growth of hay is packed tightly in the barn. *** Sometimes the view is breathtaking. *** There are bluebirds outside my window. *** research: history of the land *** Architects call what can be seen beyond our borders, ‘borrowed landscapes’ . . . *** The children now, bigger now than I am, still climb to their favourite spots, while Thomas and I lie back with our hats on our faces. *** The general store is actually called the Alderney Mall. *** research: Mennonites *** There was a time when he piped them wearing the tartan . . . played … ‘Flowers of the Forest’ a lament. *** I guess I’m prepared to spend time by myself though I do crave the community of friends. *** Always have your won bank account. *** There are hard choices on farms these days. *** The next time I looked there were three blue eggs. *** research: original settlers *** corduroy roads *** Lobelias begin – the first red cardinalis, then later, the blue siphilitica – and spotted jewel weed spreads tender stems under the cedars. *** I planted as many daffodils as I could around the apple trees in the front orchard. *** Herons fly from pond to pond. *** Don’t hang your laundry out on starling days. *** summer smells of sweet hay and honeysuckle . . . *** Crows fly in curves. *** I think about endings. *** A single flower . . . ***

…

Meandering Through the Writings of Others as Lament Practice: My Heart Soars

“Low Tide, Ambleside”

Phone Photo, DS

Here are the explorations today:

George, Chief Dan. My Heart Soars. 1989

699 words

My mother had a kindness that embraces all of life. She knew her place well and was comfortable in giving all she had. *** This is the tradition of native women. *** Young people are the pioneers of new ways. *** Words to a grandchild: perhaps there will be a day you will want to sit by my side asking for counsel . . .  *** In the midst of a land without silence you have to make a place for yourself. *** The sky hangs low and paints new colors on the earth. *** Use the heritage of silence to observe others . . .  *** It is compassion that will make you strong. *** Touch a child. They are my people. *** The faces of the past are like leaves that settle to the ground . . . They will make the ground rich and thick so that new fruit will come forth every summer. *** I was born into a culture that lived in communal houses . . .  people learned to live with one another, learned to serve one another, learned to respect the rights of one another. *** My white brother does many things well for he is more clever than my people but I wonder if he knows how to love well. *** Everyone likes to give as well as receive. No one likes only to receive all the time. We have taken much from your culture . . .  I wish you had taken something from our culture . . .  for there were some beautiful and good things in it. *** Many shores I have sailed to in my canoe, often against strong winds. *** Choose the tree well my brother if it is to carry you to distant shores. *** When a man does what needs to be done, he does not know the meaning of time. *** A man who cannot give thanks for the food he eats, walks without the blessings of nature. *** There are many who look, but only some who see. *** We have diminished in numbers and paid for our past with sorrow and pain. *** When a thought forms it needs much time to grow. *** It is harder to find somebody who will listen, but everybody reads. Therefore we must write about our ways, our beliefs, our customs, our morals, how we ‘look’ at things and why, how we lived, and how we live now. To do this we need the old and the young. The young and the old are closest to life. They love every minute dearly. *** If the old will remember, the very young will listen. ***  Keep a few embers from the fire that used to burn in your village. Someday go back so all can gather again and rekindle the flame for a new life in a changed world. *** I have known you when your forests were mine. ***  I walked tall  and proud knowing the resourcefulness of these my people., feeling the blessing of the Supreme Spirit. *** Today, harmony still lives in nature, though we have less wilderness, less variety of creatures, and fewer people. *** Know the cougars’ dens in the hills . . . *** The wild beauty of the coastline and the taste of the sea fog remains hidden behind the windows of passing cars. *** Take care or soon our ears will strain in vain to hear the great song. *** A man who lives and dies in the woods knows the secret life of trees. *** The heart never know the color of the skin. *** Already signs of new life are arising among my people after our bad winter has passed. We have discarded our broken arrows, and our empty quivers, for we know what served us well in the past can never serve us again. *** A wild rose whispers sweetness to the squirrel, a child loves everybody first . . .  *** I am chief . . . It is only with tongue and speech that I can fight my people’s war. *** Oh, Great Chief! Give me back the courage of the olden chiefs.

. . .

Meandering My Way Through the Writings of Others as a Practice of Lament: Hebrew Scriptures, Ecclesiastes to Songs of Solomon

“Warming by the Fire on a Cool Spring Day” Phone Photo DS

The idea of decommissioning a Bible comes back to me as I review my Bible reading habits after the pandemic. Some Bibles are yellow dog-eared small print paperbacks. As I go through them gathering meaning and practising worship and gratitude, I wonder which is the better way to let these old Bibles go? 

I think of shredding as a form of creating a holy fire that totally consumes the fuel. As I do a search on fuel I come across the term ‘Fire Triangle’. These are the three things that are needed for a fire to burn: oxygen, heat, fuel. So these symbolize my part as the offering of the Bible back to God, God’s part in receiving the shredding and the actual pages of the Bible themselves as the offering.

The other way, the one recommended for contemporary de-commissioning/de-consecrating of Bibles, would be to put them into the recycling. I ponder this. If I deconstruct the Bible into sheaves of pages and place them lovingly into the yellow re-cycling bag, the Bible is not totally destroyed. Someone may find these pages and perchance read snippets of Scripture and be saved. I think of how Saint Augustine heard the words, take up and read, initiating his salvation. In this way, the Bible continues its mission by the Spirit.

In the end, I decide to offer one Bible for being consumed by the shredder as an act of low key worship. The other Bible I place on the altar of the yellow recycling bag for possible continuation of the Great Commission. At the beginning of this quest, I did not consider it possible to get rid of a Bible. Over the years I had many in my collection. Some were too written on and fragile to give away. It did not seem right to put them in a bag with refuse or touch the machine which would be their destruction. 

I consider now, that it is the intention, the heart, that denotes either respect or is demeaning to an object. It is prayer, as a two-way conversation that gives the book meaning. As the book changes form, the conversation will continue. As well, I need more space for writing my comments between the lines of the verses in newer Bibles of different versions. God knows the history of my growth in comments in older Bibles, the corrections and the affirmations that were given to me there. I review them as I shred them to see how God spoke to me in the past. The speaking is always there. May the Spirit help with the listening. I find myself reading. Is this my new, temporary practice of reading the Bible? God speaks again as my eye goes to the underlined passages.

In theory, both methods are okay. In practice, I find today, that the shredding feels more meditative. I also accidentally come across these verses from Leviticus 22,  under the heading ‘Acceptable Sacrifices’ as I shred:

The Lord told Moses to tell Aaron and his sons and everyone else the rules for offering sacrifices. He said: The animals that are to be completely burned on the altar must have nothing wrong with them . . . whether the sacrifice is part of a promise or something you do voluntarily. . . When you offer a sacrifice to give thanks to me you must do it in a way that is acceptable.

In one way, the book is not important; it is the words of the book. Or actually it is the Person of the book; the Word of God who lives and speaks and acts on our behalf when we call, and sometimes before we call.

Here are my explorations:

Ecclesiastes to Songs of Solomon

The rivers run

Into the sea

But the sea is

Never full

The more my wisdom

The more my grief

To increase knowledge

Only increases distress

Anything I wanted

I took

I must leave my 

Hard work for others

There is a time

For everything

A time to heal

A time to destroy

A time to rebuild

A time to cry

Two can accomplish 

More than twice

As much as one

It is far better

Not to say you’ll

Do something

Than to say you will

And not do it

A good reputation

Is more valuable

Than the most

Expensive perfume

Because God does not

Punish sinners instantly

People feel it is safe to

Do wrong

Give generously

For your gifts will

Return to you later

How fragrant your cologne

How great your name

Follow the trail of my flock

To the shepherds’ tents

And there feed you sheep

And their lambs

How beautiful you are

My love

My lover is an apple tree

Rise up my love my fair one

And come away

For the winter is past

The rain is over

And gone

My beloved is mine and I

Am his

You have ravished my heart

My lovely one

My beloved tried to unlatch the door

And my heart was moved for him

My hands dripped with perfume

My fingers with lovely myrrh

As I pulled back the bolt

My beloved my friend

Your hair is your crown

The vines have budded

The blossoms have opened

The pomegranates are in flower

Seal me in your heart

With permanent betrothal.

Happy New Year!

“Raspberry and Hot Pink Hearts with Black, Grey Stripes” Mixed Media Fabric Art by DS

Here is an art scarf from me for keeping warm for 2023, Deborah.

A Pandemic Dialogue

“Patio” Phone Photo DS

When did conversations about family, about shopping, about travel become intellectual dialogue? In the pandemic, visits from friends have taken on a new urgency, a new poignancy. I am not usually one who debates political issues, although religious issues have come up for discussion in (extra)ordinary conversations of the past.

We talk about food and compliment each other spontaneously, inquire about shopping habits for taste and beauty, and express ourselves in smiles. Travels, having become more infrequent in the pandemic are shown more interest than before. Personality and health issues are quickly revealed here. Writer Parker Palmer says that the soul is shy. Are we more willing to risk being known in periods of uncertainty, when sadness becomes okay and masks fall away?

Days having been weeded of the usual social obligations, are luxuriated with time. “I did not wear my watch. Can you tell me the time? I do not want to outstay my welcome.” I go inside from our outdoor visit and look at the stove clock. The time has become Kairos over Chronos and two hours now have been filled with words from the soul. Did we eat lunch at this table? Like food our words have sustained us. Like manna they have nourished our wellbeing.

We talked philosophy, and religion, and the meaning of life. The banality of the past has disappeared. Our own commentary has enlivened us and the other. We validate, encourage, correct, regret, give, receive, debate and hope together. Such is the value of friendship.

Kingdom of God

“Chafer Beetles and Moss” DS

A sky-full of pink flowers came up on my inbox this week.  I sat mesmerized by the hijacked blue space above blackish tree trunks with picnickers below.  I noticed that the branches were not symmetrical, nor were they asymmetrical.  They grew in a misplaced tangle of branches.  The master gardeners at VanDusen could have stopped this mess.  Surely they could have pruned saplings into a pleasing pattern of limbs.

http://www.vcbf.ca/shop/petal-mats

I felt the same way when I first moved to B.C.  “Couldn’t some one clean up the dead tree trunks in the forest?” I thought. I came from a city of manicured lawns, of new plantings, of clean tidy suburbs.

Only gradually have I come to realize the great cost of having arborists prune every tree here.  Stanley Park would be like a hothouse for trees.  Was it not enough to see all of the chain saws after the blow-downs of the 2006 windstorm and re-plantings?  It is the wildness, immensity and density of the growth in the park that make its beauty.

https://globalnews.ca/news/3123909/watch-10-years-since-major-windstorm-hit-stanley-park/

“So could it be this way with humans too?” I ponder.  We look at the tangle of behaviours, that annoy and confuse us, especially our own, and wonder how a perfect God could love us.  An ad on TV pleads with us to “bring back our children’s ‘wildhoods.’”  What!

https://gorving.ca/bringbackwildhood/

I admit that wildness can be ugly as seen on the blackened wet sidewalks of the Downtown East Side of Vancouver.  Yet the sense of community there can be strong.  I think of the saying that God lets the tares grow with the wheat until a future time to burn them (Book of Matthew).  The question comes to me: “Do weeds have beauty, have necessity, have purpose?”

Out my front window I see a lawn that is the worst mess ever.  Lime-coloured winter moss has crept over it.  The gardener came with his rolling drum cutter and took regular round plugs of soil out of the earth “so that the lawn can breathe”, he said. The chafer beetle had already done that, but I guess the gardener needs his earnings.  The scene is an ugly mess that cannot be called a lawn.  “It would have to be replaced.  But it would just come back again,” I mused.  I don’t know: “Can I live with this collage of green and brown?”

Questions with solutions arise: “Would more plantings of colour this summer take the eye away from the chaos?  Could I sow wildflowers in the remaining grass?”  Perhaps my yard will become a mini Stanley Park with the wildness/wilderness barely controlled.  “Is this the way to handle family get-togethers too?” comes the thought.

Spring chafered lawns and canopies of pink flowers co-exist.  Can this be perfection – at least for now?

Restoration

 

“Skunk Tracks to the Studio” Phone Photo DS

I was like Martha today, concerns filled my mind (Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things… Book of Luke). Snow was piled deep on the stairs. I did not go out on this Sunday, as is my habit. I knitted, listened to a podcast from Loyola Press and had a long bath perfumed with Emozione.

I dressed in my white paint-soiled fleece and jeans although I would not venture over to the studio. Skunk paw prints tracked over the melting patio snow disappearing under the building. We had called a truce for now.

I prayed. I breathed. I wanted to work but was tired on this Sabbath day. Run-off gurgled in the drainpipes. I could see the wind blowing the tops of the fir trees.

As I thought about sitting in the sunny window in the moss green chair from Germany, I picked up a forgotten copy of “The House by the Sea”, May Sarton’s journal. This is her entry for January 19^th, 1976:

“It’s been a hard week, bitterly cold again. Yesterday was ten below zero, today, eight below, and even the brilliant sunshine feels cold as it shines off ice underfoot and across the frozen snow on the field. I do not feel very well, although the fever has gone. However, not being able to push very hard – even writing a letter a day has seemed an enormous effort – I enjoy this house, the space and light, the plant window full of flowers, cyclamen, begonias, the browallia I brought in from the garden still a marvelous deep purplish blue. The little orange tree is covered with round oranges, and, amazing to say, the lavender star-of-Bethlehem still falls in showers of little flowers. A final bowl of paper white narcissus takes my breath away with its intoxicating sweetness as I go past, for such perfume really does seem like a miracle with the frozen earth outdoors.”

I notice movement in my mood. I feel hopeful. I have been touched by beauty and have been refreshed. The Spirit keeps the Sabbath.

“He restores my inner person. He guides me in right paths for the sake of his own name.” Book of Psalms

Performance Art

“Resting in the Beauty” DS

Today, again, it comes to me that facilitating is a form of performance art. It was especially obvious to me last month as local teacher from Emily Carr University; Jeanne Krabbendam enlivened us at the Ferry Building Gallery with her banter. Her accent, so Dutch, alone brings a smile of delight to my eyes. Her inclusion in discussions welcomes participants’ eager responses to her useful material. We had a popcorn critique of two abstract paintings as follows:

The Elements of Art –

Shape

Size

Line

Direction

Texture

Colour

Value

And Principles of Design –

Balance

Harmony

Gradation

Alternation

Contrast

Dominance

Unity

The morning started well for me when we chatted at length as she walked by my chair.  As if I was her peer she shared with me her challenges of the recent art tours she led to her birth land. As a facilitator myself I identified with many aspects of group dynamics to be managed. As I listened with restrained awe to her readiness to offer painting and gallery visits from small boat tours again, I too knew the love of introducing people to the beauty and meaning of making and viewing art.

Her appearance exuded her taste. Short textured dark brown hair with a shock of mahogany above dark green spectacles – contrasting colours, and bright raspberry lipstick below darkened eyes kept the focus on what she was saying. On her tiny frame, a thin-striped black and white tunic topped black leggings and boots. Yet it was her happy playful eyes that attracted others to her pedagogy. She lives what she verbalizes. She lives an art life (as if you could distinguish to the two). Her life and her art flow seamlessly into one another. This is what attracts and keeps her followers: joie de vivre.

Although it is more blessed to give than to receive, there are exceptions. Although I could have led the group discussion myself, it was refreshing to receive a different style of leadership from someone whose platform and practice differs markedly from mine. I was not only receiving her take on how to view paintings but I absorbed and reflected her passion for teaching.

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

 Book of Psalms