The World Offers Itself

"This turning deeply towards what you love, saves you."  Rumi

Wild Geese

"You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting  

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things."

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver 

published by Atlantic Monthly Press

© Mary Oliver

Intention - Affirmation Cards...

Intention- noun:  a thing intended; an aim or plan : she was full of good intentions • the action or fact of intending :  have (a course of action) as one's purpose or objecin\

• ( one's intentions) a person's designs,  plan that (something) function in a particular way :

2 Medicine the healing process of a wound. 

3design or destine (someone or something) for a particular purpose or end :

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French entencion, from Latin intentio(n-) ‘stretching, purpose,’ from intendere (see intend ).

While I was visiting in Mt. Shasta, I brought with me supplies to create more intention cards. 
I shared the process with my friends and once they started they couldn't stop making them. 
 Judy was up all night for 2 nights in a row, it was as if a storm of creativity broke free in her after being bottled up for years.  


So I am including some of the cards made by both my friends, Vicki and Judy as well as  some created by me, and a few  other's created in another seasonal women's art group.  


I love witnessing how this simple process allows one to be free and say what needs to be expressed in a visual way.


Perhaps it is the small format, or the freedom of collage that allows one's inner guidance to come through.


                                             Each card is both beautiful and evocative.





  This is just a sampling of the images that emerged.  I love this process and keep adding to my stack of cards as well.  With all the best intentions...!!!

Playing in the Studio..

I facilitate a women's art support group twice a month at my studio....it's called the Medicine Art Group.  Art making is a medicine when we open to its ability to transform and soothe our souls.  

We have been working on intention setting since the begin of the new year, using art as a way to visualize our intentions.  This past week we moved into creating Affirmation Cards as a way to support our intentions for the New Year and as reminders to hold positive thoughts.   It was so much fun, I plan to keep making them myself, perhaps a whole deck of them.  Here are the ones I created on Friday.

I am facilitating an Encaustic Weekend at my studio, next Sat. and Sunday, so this past weekend I have been having so much fun getting prepared for it.

I have been cleaning wax off of brushes, rearranging,  making encaustic medium and altogether having a great time, priming the pump so to speak. It seems like part of my creative process is to periodically, organize, revision, clean and renew my enviornment.  

 I am excited by the possibility of doing more encaustic classes, and am begining to see myself moving more and more into my artist life, now that I am no longer teaching at the JC.  I am beginning to revision the layoff as a positive...an opportunity to really live my dream and make a financial success from it.   

My affirmation cards, tie into this, by opening to abundance coming to me as I grow my dreams, out of the simple pleasures that fill my soul....all the while allowing for Great  Mystery to provide the details.

I will post photos from the Encaustic workshop next week, so stay tuned.