Set a direction rather than a goal.
It can be disheartening to not reach a goal. We can get 99% of the way there and still miss it. Does that make you a failure?
But if you set a direction, even if you don't get a long way, you can celebrate each step you make. It's the difference between a lifestyle change and a diet.
What are you going to concentrate on?
What will you put your energy into and toward?
Will you expand your horizons or hone in on one thing?
Things to be considered...
With Christmas fast approaching I'm only finding a few minutes each day to work in my journal, but that doesn't mean that I'm not 'arting' in some way or another. These canvases now have their edges painted black and are just about ready for exhibiting, so I thought I'd show you another batch of five.
In this Christmas season of peace and goodwill, may the storms of life pass through quickly and as quietly as possible.
Branches - wide or high?
When a plant grows, it can put it's strength into growing up or growing out. There are people who grow 'tall' by being really good at one particular thing. They tower over others in that area, but they don't necessarily have a wide canopy.
Other people grow wide. They spread out, producing many branches. They may not be as tall as the other plants, but they have a large canopy. They try their hand at lots of different things and can bring those things together in new projects. Height may come, but it takes longer.
Neither is 'right' or preferable. They are just different ways of approaching life.
Just keep going.
Whenever I find myself stuck in art - when I find myself continually doing the same things and boring myself with my pages - I just keep going. It's funny that I've made a breakthrough on canvas, but my journal is boring. Maybe it's that I'm a bit busier in this season. Maybe I just need to do a few exercises to remind myself of techniques I've forgotten about. Maybe I should pull out a different palette.
There is a way forward if I keep going.
Those times that seem the most quiet can be the ones where the most is happening internally. The quiet life of everyday obedience has a lot going for it, even if it doesn't look very exciting from the outside. The depth of personal growth it can provide is often under-rated.
Our underlying motives... and how they can affect our actions.
When we get hurt by something, when there is an injustice, we can set up rules or hoops for people to jump through so that it doesn't happen again. Often we don't even know we are doing it.
It can be the same when we go through an unexpected situation such as the storm that we have just endured in Adelaide. Now people are going out to buy all those things that they wish they had had before the storm. It is unlikely that we will go through the same thing again for decades, but it makes us feel better.
So when someone acts in a way that feels odd, maybe there is an underlying bit of history that we are unaware of.
The time of waiting. Advent: the arrival.
I find that the liturgical calendar brings me to times of waiting twice a year - both times leading up to the major festivals. These times make me ponder about how we live through a season of waiting. Are we impatient? Expectant? Hopeful? Peaceful? Or all of the above?
Sometimes these times in the waiting room are forced upon us as we wait for test results, deliveries, approvals. These times of waiting give us time to think, reflect, and grow. Or maybe to whinge, stamp our feet, and be irritable.
How we wait can say a lot about us.
So here are some of the canvases I've been working on - Storms of Life. You can see that there are elements that turn up in all of them, even though the palettes are very different. I think I'm more or less done with them now, apart from painting the edges black and varnishing.
Now I just need to find somewhere to exhibit...
Do you bend or break with the wind?
Our current severe weather has me thinking about how we react differently to the storms in our life. Why were some plants left whole and others were torn apart even though they were both in the path of the wind? Why do some people come through difficult times stronger and others are beaten down by it all?
Some trees were completely torn apart, others lost a branch or two, and some were badly shaken but lost only a few leaves and twigs. The same can be said for people. Some are more resilient, whether by nature or by deliberate cultivation. We cannot prepare for every eventuality, but we can grow our resilience deliberately to better withstand the storms of life.
I haven't posted for a week because of this:
My painting series is going to be called 'Storms of Life' but this was a real-life storm. A mini tornado, in fact. It raged through Adelaide on Saturday November 12th, and our suburb was one of the worst hit. For fifteen minutes there was horizontal rain, the wind roared, and trees were flying. The power went out and we didn't get ours back again until Thursday afternoon, hence the lack of blogging.
We were lucky in that the branch that fell from our tree fell between our house and next door's garage, only taking the guttering off the side of the house. This is a small piece of tree compared with some of the ones we saw that had been broken off and flung around. That piece of wood in the bottom right of the picture is actually impaled in the ground. The branch that fell on the roof didn't go through so we are incredibly thankful.
We took a walk around the neighbourhood, as did many others, just an hour later and the emergency services had already chopped up and removed several large trees from where they had fallen across the road and broken down power-lines. I couldn't believe the size of some of the trees that had been ripped up - these were well-established trees with trunks over half a metre in diameter. The really odd thing was that nothing moved on our patio, and friends have lots of potted plants that weren't touched either. They said they saw two funnels going down their road and there is a tree that was broken by twisting because you can see the way it has splintered.
Scary. Amazing. Glad it wasn't worse.
I'll be back properly next week.
I'm fine, you're fine... but are you really? Make it about the percentage.
A while ago a friend of ours came up with the idea of answering the question, 'How are you?' with a percentage. It happened after he spent the evening with a friend and the next day that friend took his own life. The previous day he'd been 'fine'.
But obviously he wasn't.
By answering the question with a percentage instead of the polite 'fine' answer, we can be honest and spark the conversation if we're not feeling over 50%. Plus the more we do this, those we speak to may take on the habit as well.
There are times when words get in the way.
I really love this page. I find the colours, shapes, and placement pleasing. I couldn't even tell you why, but it makes my heart happy. I sat with it for a while before putting words on it, and then they are words that talk about not using words.
Sometimes we just have to sit with someone. Just being there when things are hard can be enough. There is no need for us to provide an answer, a solution, good advice, or platitudes. Presence is often the best gift we can give.
The set of canvases I've been working on... I stacked them to one side and waited. I thought they might be finished, but then last week I felt that they weren't done yet. Yes, I liked how most of them looked, but they didn't feel like a series. There were elements of each that I liked, but they weren't cohesive and they didn't have a describable theme.
So I took a brayer to one of them and covered up lots of lovely marks. Suddenly it felt exciting. I dragged out others and covered up various parts of them. Some of the same types of marks started to turn up. They were starting to feel like they fit together.
Here is one of the reworked canvases. I'm calling my series 'The Storms of Life'. The clouds kept turning up, and the lightning marks, and circles (of course!)
The canvases started out with lots of my favourite marks and bright colour. These were then obscured by the clouds. When the storms come in, they obscure things for a time, but you have to remember that you are still you, you are not the storm and the storm is not you. You are still complete (symbolised by the circles), and the clouds will move on.
Personally, this is about menopause for me, but it holds for any storm of life - a bad diagnosis, grief, loss of employment, anything that knocks us back a bit.
When you're always looking forward you have to be deliberate about appreciating today.
Many walks of life require us to constantly plan ahead. As a clergy wife I know we are constantly looking at the next big festival season. It's almost November and we've been planning for Christmas for a little while now. As soon as Christmas is over we'll be thinking of Easter.
When we constantly look ahead it can be difficult to appreciate the season we're in. We have to be deliberate about it. We have to make room to slow down and just be where and when we are. Otherwise life passes us by
Flowers might fade, but it's then that they produce fruit.
As I head into the autumn of my life I realise that youth might fade, but it is in the later years that we really start to see the fruit of life. There is more to look back on and learn from. Ideally there should be a better character because we have had the rough edges smoothed off (though that isn't the case with everyone, of course).
The flowers look lovely and smell great as well, but the fruit nourishes us and contains the seed for further growth. And the thing is, you have to go through the flower stage to reach the fruit, even if something produces fruit quickly. There is no shortcut, so don't feel sad as you move into autumn - it is a new season with new joys.
Entangled - although the rules may be relaxing, we are still responsible for how we impact on others.
The half-circles on the left that are joined with shall lines and the squiggles on this page made me think about how we are linked. Here in South Australia we no longer have to isolate if we test positive for Covid-19. As a naturally cautious person who spends time with elderly people regularly, I am still wearing a mask in shops and crowded outdoor areas. The responsibility to keep others around me as safe as possible weighs heavily on me. My actions do not happen in a vacuum - they are entangled in the lives of others.
The time between planting the seed and harvesting the fruit differs depending on what you plant.
There are some things where you see a quick harvest, like planting cress seeds. Other things take a lot longer before you can reap the rewards, like pineapples, that take three years to yield fruit. The same can be said of those things that we plant in our own lives, whether that is patience, weight loss, increasing fitness, learning a new language, building resilience or whatever it is that you want to grow the fruit of. And those things take different amounts of time in different people as well. The trick is to keep your expectations at a reasonable level for the goal you're aiming for.
That fading feeling.
I drew the face on this page and then just kept wanting to cover it up. It made me think about how it feels being a woman in your 50s - invisible to a lot of people. I take comfort from the way that what is covering the face is colourful, not black and grey. I still feel vibrant inside (most days 😊) and I think that is what comes out on the page.
So no matter your age, keep making your colourful mark as the world needs it.
