Dancers

Another painting for your appreciation, I hope. 

Dancers is lighter; easier on the heart than Cosmic Mother.

As I painted this I was enjoying the unexpected shapes we make when we dance without inhibition, or at least with our cloaks of inhibition slipped a little off one shoulder.

Dancers

Oil on Canvas

40" x 20"

I have done several kinds of exploratory and expressive dance training and synthesised these, and other learnings I have eagerly gathered, into FreeDancing  which I teach to groups and individuals. 

I always delight in the revelation of beautiful self which comes, cautiously or brazenly, through our bodies when our clever, busy minds dare pause.

First, we cling to the music, to the physical space, and get kind of groovy, kind of rhythmic, kind of sexy.

 

 Sometimes at this point we have that crazy list of thoughts: Do I like these people? Why did I pay money to feel awkward? Does my bum look big in this?

And, when we have quite finished our anxieties and preoccupations (just for today; we can always do more another time), a touch of magic sparks up our spines and all those other people don't seem so 'other', and nor do we. We begin to think that perhaps we are just fine as we are. Perhaps.

And with this sense of 'okay self' comes a new daring to reach for what we need but so rarely ask for.

We pull into our centres, from the skies, from the Earth, from each other, that missing... that missing thing which we could name if only we knew what it was called. 

And our call to the world to help us ease this... this lack, perhaps... is always, always, always answered. We just need to ask. So simple. 

And it feels... ah, yes, thank you... it feels like home.

 

And although this home is a place where we are safe to be scared and angry and full of grief for the thousand unhealed wounds we wear; although it is tough, sometimes, to stay here, when we are so used to the 'What will they think?' place; although it feels, with good reason, that we may not come out the same as we went in, there is a joy suffusing our bones and being; an ecstatic love of just being alive right now, which we can keep safe for when next the dark clouds roll over.

 

Maybe the greatest gift of this holy practise is that for every little hurt we can heal in ourselves, we have a little more energy, more love, more self, to offer out to the rest of the world. 

So as we dance and pray and heal and work wonders in our own lives, we are also sweating and crying and laughing and shouting for our friends of all kinds in all places. 

We are doing nothing more, nor less, than changing the world.

 

And that, my friends, is most definitely magic.

Cosmic Mother

OK. Brace yourselves. We're going into what may seem weird territory for some... But if you've started reading a post called 'Cosmic Mother', you're probably not scared easy.

So. Another painting by yours truly. And this one has a story, which I will tell a little tentatively because it has fronds reaching to the very core of my heart. 

Cosmic Mother

Oil on Canvas

16"x16"

I was on a course run by Eagle's Wing Centre for Contemporary Shamanism. 

Amongst other acts of crazy sanity, we buried ourselves alive. Yes. We dug our own graves and, like the free-thinking, independent warriors that we are, we followed instructions to get into them at sunset, lie down... and listen to the earth being shoveled over our wood and tarp roofs. The sound of soil hitting my roof in ever-quieter thuds and sprinkles may never leave me. I have rarely been so grateful to have recently peed. 

And then the strangest thing happened: I stopped feeling scared. In fact, I felt safer than usual; comforted, like a baby.

The Earth was holding me, I realised, not in her arms as she normally does when I walk her surface, but deeply in her womb. I felt a breadth of love I have only had sniffs of with people, even my very loving human mum.

And then... I knew. I had the most curious Russian-doll feeling that I was a baby in the womb of the Cosmic Mother and in my womb... Oh. So that's why the digging was so hard.

And the best feeling, of being able to express this booming love I was receiving, washed through me. I was a holy conduit calling into me the love of the universe and flowing it into the child I carried.   I was a mother.

All night I blissed and loved and dozed in this Russian-doll blessing. I spoke with my child; my boy. Not words; not mind; just a connection so I could sing my love into his tiny, tiny body and he could let me know how urgently he had wanted to contact me. Every time I recall his urgency I am so grateful to have had this unique experience. So grateful.

And at dawn, when others eagerly fled their graves, I was reluctant. I feared losing the love I'd felt. And, anyway, I didn't feel like breakfast. 

But, of course, the love stayed strong and is with me still.

My boy - he has a name, but I will hold that close to my chest for now - is not with me. When I was ten weeks pregnant he left. And I grieved like I had known him all my life.

And so I learned that the love of the Cosmic Mother is not pretty and easy and sweet in the way we often use the word. It is vast and powerful and sometimes terrifying. It is all truth and no mercy. And still I am grateful.

Perhaps, without the burial that night, I would have escaped the bereavement I experienced. But I would never have met my son. And what mother would choose to not know her child? Not this one.

The love I experienced that night now guides me, sometimes minute by minute, in the raising of my healthy, happy daughter.

I wish you all the luck to feel such love and the courage to withstand it.

Sole Trader

I've been officially self-employed for less than forty eight hours and I'm already earning :o). There's no actual money involved yet, but I do have twelve bottles of fine wine on their way to me, and all for writing a letter to a free magazine! Fantastic. Feels like the start of something good. 

And on the subject of fresh beginnings, I am loving my new hair. My lovely friend Rima (Check out her inspiring and heartening blog.) spent seven hours twining, backcombing and felting my hair into dreadlocks a week ago. I now look closer to how I feel - and I don't mean tangled! Initially they were amazingly fluffy; I looked like a tarantula, but they're literally coming together, despite the best efforts of my persistently silky hair.

Seriously spider-headed!

As I wax and weave my new locks, I'm creating a repository of creative energy and self-belief to carry me into the heart of this adventure. I know there could be rapids ahead, but for now I'm enjoying this float in the sunshine, admiring the trees in the breeze...