Years ago, a very dear friend shared a poem she’d written for her sister. “It reminds me of you,” she said, commenting on my tendency to be tenacious, to seldom give up and to keep growing, even in the midst of trauma and turmoil.

Her poem lead to the title of my book, “The Dandelion Spirit.” — It’s the true life fairytale of falling into love with a man I thought was Prince Charming only to awaken on the road to hell, dancing with the Prince of Darkness. By the end of that journey, I had given up on me, given up on my life and even given up on my life with my daughters. It took a big miracle (it included a blue and white police car) and then many, many every day miracles for me to grow out of that darkness to live the life of my dreams today. This beautiful life where I am totally in love with me, myself and I and everyone in my world. And btw, being in love with me, myself and I means loving that woman who got so lost on the road to hell, she deserted her daughters and wanted to end her own life every day.

But, back to dandelions…

I love dandelions. I think they get a bad rap.

Accused of being weeds. Torn out of the gound by their roots. Poisoned. Mowed over. Cemented over. And still, they grow. Up through the cracks. In wild places. In backyards. No matter what we do to them, dandelions persevere. Because, for the dandelion, there is only one thing to do. To fly free with the wind and plant themselves wherever they land.

Like Love.

No matter how hard we try to deny its presence, or ignore its call for us to let down our guard, step out from behind our walls, Love perseveres. In the darkness. In the light. At the edges of our sorrow, and in the depths of our grief, Love is always there, as radiant as sunshine hiding behind grey clouds.

And though we may yell and scream at it for stealing away the ones we love or for piercing our hearts in what feels like all the wrong places, Love never screams back. It simply keeps on flowing and calling us to fly free of the hurts and pains of life’s journey so that we can dance in the sunlight of our own radiance and be our own unique expression of Love.

May we all be like the dandelion and fly free on the wind’s of Love to dance on moonbeams and sunstreaks streaming in through the open windows of our heart.

Namaste.

One of the challenges/opportunities of the 30 Day Art Project is to create a piece within a specified timeframe. Now, I must clarify — the timeframe is arbitrary. But it is important.

I have a tendency to ‘overthink’ (ok it’s more than a ‘tendency’ it’s an affinity/habit). Overthinking in creative practice can lead to over-working a piece, burying its true message under layers and layers of ‘stuff’. It’s also highly possible overthinking in life can lead to over-everythinging which results in burying our hearts beneath all the stuff we layer on in the misguided belief ‘the stuff’ will protect us from getting hurt, feeling sad, knowing grief.

In this piece, I kept to the timeframe of 30 minutes.

It was hard.

I wanted to go back into the piece. To add, delete, change, rework it. But, at 30 minutes, I had to step away. To accept it was done.

And that’s where the real challenge presented itself. I didn’t want to share it. It’s not my best work. It’s not quite right. It’s not…. blah. blah. blah.

My critter/ego mind had a heyday with rationalizing why I should just scrap this piece entirely and start all over again. Or better yet, layer on top of it enough stuff so ‘the beautiful mess’ was hidden so that only what I wanted people to see would be revealed.

My inner voice of wise counsel whispered her wisdom lovingly into my heart, “It’s not about the quality of the piece,” she murmured. “It’s about committing to the process. About learning the art of letting go of ‘perfection’ to delve into the spirtual nature of your creation.”

I was surprised by her comment about ‘the spiritual nature of your creation.” How does creating in a timeframe open me up to that? I wondered. (Or perhaps it was the critter/ego mind expressing its skeptical nature.)

Which is when the truth opened itself up in the light of awareness.

Being present to the canvas (and life) is not a perfect process. It’s not even all that predictable a one. Being present to and with everything is about presence. My presence. Your presence. It’s about our willingness to be real, unadorned, unfiltered, actually present without all the accoutrements of life and our beliefs of who we are cluttering our minds with stories of how we ‘should’ be and how our lives should unfold.

And, it’s about honouring the presence of others, seeing the holy and sacred in one another and celebrating the goodness at the heart of our human essence.

In our presence, the holy nature of our divine essence is revealed through our vulnerability. Vulnerable, we are seen. We are known. We are beloved. In our vulnerability, we live in the joy of being beautifully, perfectly human, in all our holy imperfections, all our humanness, all our beautiful mess.

And that’s where we find ourselves falling into the arms of Love, always.

And that’s where Love catches us, always.

Namaste

I love creating backgrounds and then words to put with the background. What I’ve been noticing, however, is that I am treating my art as ‘precious’. I am worried that to actually paint/write the words onto the image might somehow destroy the image. So I hesitate.

Art-making, like life, is precious. It cannot be experienced or lived fully by being treated like it is ‘precious’. By hesitating at the edge of the field and holding back from stepping completely into the game of life.

Life must be lived in the center of its action, its messy, its hard places and rocky shores, its beautiful landscapes and stunning views that invite you to let go and fly free.

To experience life (and art-making) fully, you gotta take risks, get into the fray and duke it out with your anxieties, fears, hesitations, doubts and face, full-on, your desire to treat it as ‘precious’ when what it really is… is LIFE itself.

Namaste.