Art is Life. WWAM!

Art is life. And Dorothy Randall Gray is WWAM. And so…..

Dorothy Randall Gray AND Amejo Amyot  together are WWAM  WWAM!!

In my joyful and fun 70th year on this planet Earth, I have been intimately united with my own parallel universe! It was great from the start. My extended family joined around me for a surprise breakfast/brunch buffet with brothers and sisters and cousins awaiting me after I’d celebrated the Sunday liturgy and Mass with my daughters, sons-in-law and wondrous three grandchildren. We had brought the gifts to the altar and I prayed in thanksgiving for the sixty-nine years granted me and opened my heart and arms to the possibilities that lay within each day of this new year.

I get two new years in two days, as my birthday falls on January 2nd, just as the partiers are reviving from their New Year’s Eve excesses.

Rejoice! This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad!

So, in a parallel universe, time is not linear I have found, and it is now heading into the autumn month of September. I have just returned from a precious trip to Charlotte North Carolina where I trained with Catherine Anderson for SoulCollage Facilitator. Totally inspiring and over one hundred fifty photos from that weekend. My year also included an invitation from a best friend forever to join her on an all-paid first class trip through the European Alps and five countries along the way. This all speaks of parallel universe to me.

But the words, memories and images on my mind  tonight are from my mystic, magical, meditative and magnificent experience I had attending the May weekend of Women Writers and Artists Matrix in Saratoga Springs New York.

What happened there? Magnificent, MUSE-i-cal women in community, minute by minute artistic expression and learning. Quiet, honorable time and chant in the early morning quiet. Waves of prayer carried out into the ethers by the sound of the drum beat above and around us and within our heart. Lunch time sisterhood sharing that drew in even the chef who prepared special dishes for us and hung out at our group table because he didn’t particularly want to be anywhere else at the moment.

Painted poems, paper book specialities, movement, dance and exclamation! “Seeds” respected and collected that have given rise to new prose and poetry by this time because they came home in journal pages with us. The campus of Skidmore College, with IWWG (International Women Writers Guild) roots for many of us, welcomed us as we strolled throughout the Quad area and by the old dorms and buildings. I revisited the grounds I put my newly created prayer sticks many years ago from Amejo’s meditation group. Old friendships renewed, new friendships gained. That’s what happened there.

This, indeed, is my parallel universe and I’ve known it for a long time. It keeps inviting me in. I cannot stay back. When I committed to both the WWAM weekend and the SoulCollage training, I did not know where or how the funds would come. It was my calling to say yes. The funds manifested and everything worked out for me to have an abundant experience on the least possible amount of dollars I could spend.

I even got author and WWAM workshop presenter, Suzi Banks Baum, for a room mate at the Inn of Saratoga. Plus, she offered to pick me up at the airport, which saved a $50 fare, while Amejo drove me back to the airport on Monday morning.

Suzi

Suzi taught many techniques for one type of folding book, and had examples of oh so many other types. In her work, she values the mission and honor of motherhood. It is a precious work.

Suzi invited us into our own gardens to see what we would see and hear there. My garden had a beautiful brass gazebo entrance.

And in my garden, I found the very same sunflower girl awaiting me that I had on my 2013 Intention Mandala on my wall back home. Now how could that happen?

Magical? Mysterious? Mystical? Definitely Magnificent.

My Year of Joy and Fun beating on my mandala and in my heart at WWAM.

And just WHO did we think we were, Dorothy asked us and warned us there were to be no timid responses.

And we did our best…..not to disappoint.

 

I told her, “I am God in a pod”, but I don’t have a “selfie” photo of me saying it.

This artist led me into a most lovely movement exercise and a painted poem creation that left me surprised and amazed. She also gave me the wondrous experience of Wabi Sabi that is a treasure in my daily living. Nothing I read on paper could have matched the gem of her inviting it into my life as a spiritual, practical wisdom practice.

She spoke of the importance of space in art and in life. I will remember that. Also she encouraged laughter. Always.

Dear Amejo, she holds a torch of womanhood in her hands, of woman’s connection to the essential, and is the treasure holder of the transference of women’s wisdom held sacred within our hearts and passed on to others. She is a Shaman among us. A Blessing as she walks the Earth.  Namaste.

Sisters, one and all.

Writers, artists, friends….who have withstood much, loved much, lived fruitfully.

Given an assignment by Dorothy,   “How many ways……”

My camera didn’t focus correctly on this. Her life went out of focus with a serious, severe stroke. All weekend, she revealed the hard realities of her soon to be full recovery, starting from well before the “start line.” Her opening sentence in her book is,  “The first time I died……” I am buying the book when it comes out.

My question posed in my Garden book.

I suppose I got like this because once upon a time……..(like fairy tales begin)

I met Dorothy and Amejo

and then……

I just became

like this.

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I Will Trust to Love

Shattered Mirrors

By Susan Heffron Hajec, inspired from
Mimi Foyle,’s Shattered Mirrors

I will turn to meet my destiny,
reflected in shattered mirrors.
The world breaks
My effort is needed.

I am a humble artist
with prayerful hands
I nourish new life.

In dark corners,
unmolded clay in my hand
in broken places
molding my earthly clod
to reflect what is neglected.

I will trust to love.

Hello Napkinwriter readers. Well just a few moments ago, my blog was shattered…..I typed “glog”. That’s what I feel like now. I had expressed in the first “blank” issue of this, how many ways this workshop experience at WWAM from artist/writer Kittie Bintz had excited me.  Now, I am left looking in a seeminly empty draft land to come up with my version.

Recently on MeetUp, I joined a WordPress group and missed the first meeting. This is one of the first things I want to find out how to avoid or at least be a good enough sleuth to recover it.

This experience was about creating an altar to our muse. Kittie, a soon to be retiring public school art teacher, was a vivacious guiding presence, as we mixed water color, tea lights, collage images,words  and shattered glass to our creations.

The word “retired” didn’t really fit Kittie, so I suggested she was “re-FIRING” instead, and that word stuck, as I heard it repeated among the more than 50 attendees of WWAM Weekend at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs New York.

What a weekend retreat it was. But then again, we creative’s don’t really retreat from life, rather we continue to re-TREAT the world with continuing inspirations, images, ceremony and words.

The inspiration for my creation came from Mimi Foyle’s poem, Shattered Mirrors, which I share here.   I live in the truth that it is indeed prayerful hands and honoring the Mystery that has healed me from my own wounded and light-deprived places in life.

I am in deep gratitude for the great gift of life I enjoy.

Shattered Mirrors
Mimi Foyle

i will turn to meet my destiny,
reflected in shattered mirrors.
heart broken open,
i will pick up the pieces
no matter how sharp
to reflect
what is neglected
in dark corners.
wounded, light-deprived,
with prayerful hands i’ll
recycle devastation to
nourish new life
art, like gardening
is an act of faith and healing,
shining for the world.
as Mystery’s greater
than the sum of all suffering,

I will trust to Love.

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O Great Mystery and Prayer Sticks

“Oh Great Mystery
Sun, Moon, Earth, Sky and Sea
You are within me
And all around me.”

This is a beautiful chant we sang at the early morning meditation group at the International Women’s Writing Guild Skidmore Summer Conference when I attended and taught workshops there in the 1990’s.

The meditation was led by Amejo Amyot, a holy, raucous, humorous and good-willed woman writer and artist. During the time I attended there, Ameyo began creating wondrous full-bodied women goddesses. She said they came from within and demanded to be created and put on Earth.

Amejo

Amejo lived from her Essential Self — the Self that Barbara Marx Hubbard talks about that is the driving force of the Universal Human. The week-long  IWWG  Summer Conference was alive with the Spirit of many Essential Selves showing up or in the process of emerging.

I am eternally grateful for being in their presence. They came as teachers, guides, lively spirits and friends and you remained touched by your experience there throughout the year until you returned the following year.

“Woman, I Am
Spirit, I Am
I Am the Infinite within my soul.
I have no beginning
and I have no end.
Oh, this I Am.”

This was another chant we sang in the meditation class and spontaneously broke out in across the campus grounds throughout the week.

One of the things we did, mid-week in the meditation group, was to create a prayer stick from the materials Ameyo brought into class. First we took an early morning walk in the woods outside the building. It was a cool, crisp and dewey late summer temperature in the north-east location of Saratoga Springs, New York that accompanied us on our walk.  Most of the time there was either a dim sliver moon hanging yet in the sky or, if we were lucky, a full luminous shadowing full circle, sliding from view until the following evening.

My first prayer stick was just a bit of a twiggy branch, but I brought it inside with me and adorned with with blue, red, and yellow slim ribbons and not much else. I wasn’t real confident in the creation of such a stick yet, but in following years, I looked forward to it.

We put our prayer intentions on our sticks and then brought them outside on a grassy square, placing them in a circle for the rest of the week. It was impossible not to glance at them as we passed by on the way to classes or the cafeteria, featuring not only food, but the multiple conversations of motivated women filled with the energies of creation, laughter and purpose.

My twiggy prayer stick had a very deep intention on it. The intention for grandchildren. My younger daughter had suffered the pains of the loss of her first child, due to miscarriage and was struggling to conceive again.

I took my prayer stick home with me at the end of the conference. I believe I had three ribbons ends trailing off my stick. I have had that prayer stick in my creativity room ever since.

My daughter conceived within the year with my first granddaughter Devon, now age 17. Her brother arrived four years later. And my first daughter, after several miscarriages, gave birth to spirit-of-light & laughter, Amy Frances.

Hummmm — three ribbons, three grandchildren. Oh, Great Mystery!

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