Live generously

This page already had the gelli-print on it when I came to it in my journal. I kept looking at the trees and thinking about the way the branches spread outwards and upwards. I was also keeping in mind my word for the year - flourish.

To flourish, I need to live generously, spreading outwards and upwards, letting God prune me as He will to increase my fruitfulness in the right areas. He will shape me, but I need to grow and plant seeds, otherwise there is nothing to prune and nothing to harvest.

Distilled

'We do not necessarily improve with age: for better or worse we become more like ourselves.'
Peter Hall

Hmm. If I am distilled as I age, what is being deepened and made more concentrated in me? I can hope for grace, mercy, humility, love, but if I'm not showing them now… It's like drying an apple and expecting it to taste like an apricot.

Pruning

No-one likes to be pruned, but it happens. One of the things that I realised on my recent retreat was that only fruitful branches are pruned. Those that are unfruitful are cut out all together.

So now I can rejoice in the pruning, knowing that it means I am already fruitful in that area, and that I am being prepared to bear more fruit.

Threads

I'm never quite sure what to do when I reach a black page in my junque journals. Should I cover up most of the background with colour, or go minimal?

I had some black washi tape, so I started with that. I liked the white so went with it, tracing round the edge of a linked rings mask in two opposing corners. I didn't feel like adding colour to the rings, so doodled in them instead.

When I was finished with the doodling, it looked as if the two areas of pattern were reaching out to each other, so I linked them with a few lines.

My imagination kicked in, and I thought about the lines being stitches - if the thread was drawn tight, it would pull the two patterns together. If we want to draw together in community, we need to look for the things that will draw us together, the sameness rather than the differences. After all, we are all more alike than different.

Authenticity

While I was working out what to do in Kim's journal, (see the previous 2 posts) I cut out a bunch of heads from a fashion spread. In the end I didn't use them, but they were sitting on my workbench. I wasn't sure where this page was going, but the heads were begging to be used, so on to the page they went.

They set me thinking about how society can pressure us in so many ways to fit into a mould, to become clones of each other, to act in certain ways and like certain things. But if you want to flourish, you need to be happy in your own skin, to just be yourself and not allow others to force you into a shape that isn't authentic for you.

Why be a cookie-cutter person when you can be your own unique self?

Feeling a little abstracted...

Just a quick post today. Another spread for Kim's journal on monochromatic faces. This is a rare one for me as I don't usually use photos of myself. But this is posterized in Photoshop and then changed to black and white to fit with the monochromatic scheme.

Circle Journal

This week I have been working in Kim's journal for the circle journal/round robin. Kim's theme is 'Monochromatic faces in the crowd.' See here for Claudia's take on it.

As you can see, I chose purple for my single colour and then laid down a background with acrylic paint, stencils, and bits of collaged book pages that you might just be able to see peeking through. The theme made me think about crowds of faceless people with one standing out. I wanted to create a strong, determined face using a stamp for the eyes and Copics for the outlining and shading.

Then I thought about the other way to stand out in a crowd - just be yourself - which reminded me of the Judy Garland quote. And the page was done. I just want to do something on the reverse, and then the journal will wing its way to Shel in Arizona for her take on the theme.

A canvas

In the spirit of pushing myself further, and after reading Dina Wakley's Art Journal Courage, I splashed out on to a canvas. I approached it like a journal page, complete with words. I have to admit, it took a lot longer than my average journal page. Somehow I felt that I needed to be more careful. I covered a lot of things up that I didn't like.

But finally, I am pleased with it :)

When the wind blows...

On a recent retreat, we went for a short contemplative walk around the wetlands, only about ten minutes. As we walked, there was a gentle breeze. I noticed that the grasses and reeds were moving a lot in the wind, whereas the trees were hardly moving at all.

So, do I bend with the wind, or resist it?

And there was a rustling noise coming from the grasses, too, but other plants were quiet.

So, do I make a lot of noise when the wind blows, or do I bear it in relative silence?

When the wind blows - whether it is bringing change, suffering, hardship - how do I react to it?

Attracting what?

Having thought about pollinators in my last post, my husband threw a question at me that made me think further along those lines.

Flowers are there to attract birds or insects to pollinate them and so cause the plant to bear fruit. So what sort of flowers are we bearing? What sort of people are we attracting?

Brightly coloured flowers generally attract birds. Scented flowers generally attract insects.

But sometimes the things that are attracted just eat the fruit or even the flowers, without helping the plant to produce seeds for the next generation.

So, what sort of people do you attract? Do you have people in your life who continually push you to grow and bear fruit? Or do you keep attracting those possum people? You know the ones I mean - they always eat the fruit with no regard to the future productivity in your life. They steal your joy and your peace.

How can you attract the right sort of people?