Great Round – Stage 1: Resting in Darkness

100 mandalas Great Round year-long exploration

Pat Sloan's January Mystery BOM

As seen on Pat's blog quilt-along, http://blog.patsloan.com/2016-my-secret-garden/

Sciatica pain
running up and down my leg,
too much shoveling!

Out the studio window

Monday

Piles and piles of snow,
shoveling and shoveling,
almost, to the ground.

After the storm

White, white, and more white,
whirling, drifting, and blowing,
piling higher still.

Awaiting

Red sky this morning,
oh no, now blizzard warnings,
here comes nor'easter.

Girls just want to have fun'n

Life Book 2016 - Week 4 - Fearless Art with Annie Hamman

Monday morning

So warm in my bed
Minus one windchill outside
back to cozy bed.

To shed fearfulness
of revealing your writing
simply write haiku

Byron's poems

Kinetics; keep calm 

the snake's skin

shed solemnly

now frozen,

it rests

------------

instead of

knowing,

revel in darkness

define

true divination

-------------

lost something

that's good,

found something

that's much better

laugh now

it's okay

----------------

flurries blister

bones creaking

fire warms heart, soul

you've now found

true warmth

One of mine

Mid-winter surprise
the backyard grew emerald
after foggy night.

The heart of winter,
Westward waxing crescent moon,
Orion swings East

Mid-January,
burrowing deeply into
the now of being.

Week #2 Nature Art: Wood

Sent off today for 100 Mandalas video

As I sit and breathe,
I revel in the joy of
being able to.

Curtains of blackbirds,
with a great whirring of wings,
rise above the house.

Obscuring darkness,
is just morning mistiness
on a winter's day.

Blessings for Artists at the Start of the Day

May morning be astir with
the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the
eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some
unintended glimpse
That cut right through the
surface to a source.
May this be a morning of
innocent beginning,
When the gift within you
slips clear
Of the sticky web of the
personal
With its hurt and its
hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners,
A morning when you become
a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend
from silence,
May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,
To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,
Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved.
Until the veil of the unknown
yields
And something original
begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your
heart
In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to
A different shape.
May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the
light
To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.
♣ John O’Donohue in To Bless The Space Between Us

For Light

For Light

Light cannot see inside things.

That is what the dark is for:

Minding the interior,

Nurturing the draw of growth

Through places where death

In its own way turns into life.

In the glare of neon times,

Let our eyes not be worn

By surfaces that shine

With hunger made attractive.

That our thoughts may be true light,

Finding their way into words

Which have the weight of shadow

To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust

In minds claimed by empty light,

Where one-sided certainties

Are driven by false desire.

When we look into the heart,

May our eyes have the kindness

And reverence of candlelight.

That the searching of our minds

Be equal to the oblique

Crevices and corners where

The mystery continues to dwell,

Glimmering in fugitive light.

When we are confined inside 

The dark house of suffering

That moonlight might find a window.

When we become false and lost

That the severe noon-light 

Would cast our shadow clear.

When we love, that dawn-light

Would lighten our feet

Upon the waters.

As we grow old, that twilight

Would illuminate treasure

In the fields of memory.

And when we come to search for God,

Let us first be robed in night,

Put on the mind of morning

To feel the rush of light

Spread slowly inside

The color and stillness 

Of a found world.

- John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us:

A Book of Blessings

8 degrees

The threshold crackles,
the door handle burns with cold,
sky a smoky gold.

A new year, a new day

Dropping the ginger
into the metal bowl with
a clang - I woke up.

Bennacht

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
“A New Year Blessing”
Benedictus (To Bless The Space Between Us) John O'Donohue

And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me 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 ~
(From To Bless the Space Between Us)