Reflections & Resolutions

Life moves so fast we almost miss it in our own self created whirlwind. This is a brand new year full of so much promise and so much hope, for so many people. Sometimes something happens in a moment and I am caused to stop and truly reflect on all that the experience means.

I answered a phone call this past week, it was a business call and the caller was also someone I count as a friend. She had information that needed to be relayed and information she needed from me. We handled the matter of the call in all pleasantness, and then I wished her a good week (this one up coming) and she stated back to me in words that were so simple yet they were full of so much upbeat emotion. "This is going to be a wonderful week!"

I realize now that she was thinking outside of our moment's box. She was feeling and thinking across an unselfish, and broader plane than my colloquial comment had been. She was thinking with connection and all of the silver threads that come with our connections. She was reflecting a global consciousness, a gift to me in one brief moment in time.

Having that experience with her has caused me to reflect and wonder, how many of those moments have I missed in the past. Those brief ellipses of time where there is true meaning being cast forth from the universe. Meaning that is there to cause me to stop learn and listen, if only I would pause long enough to take it in.

It is always happening for all of us experiences and events sometimes brief, sometimes extended in time. But always gifts from the universe telling us that nothing is just about us. A call to say "stop, feel connected" to something bigger than the moment and bigger than ourselves.

I am not usually one for resolutions at the start of a New Year, but I vow to try to be more aware of the essences of each and every moment.

Mother Universe

I This Much Is True...

I have not been over here to post in a while. Reasons don't seem to be important, but the truth of the matter is that life and living to life's fullest seem to have been taking up much of my time. I am not complaining on that matter, for it seems that life and my reflections on living in the moment have been teaching me much.

Some of my most favorite quotes come from Thich Nhat Hanh. It is he who said "there is no enlightenment outside of daily life." I have been richly blessed in that category.

When I had first started the musings here, I had truly thought that there would not be a central theme, hence the title "Musings...". My passions led me to much discussions around the scarves that I love so much. More recently my wanderings have led me back to the real reasons I fell in love with them in the first place. That is for their artistic value, both the statements being made by the artist who create them, and the art one creates upon oneself when one wears them. For me those two characteristics seem to me intertwined, and it becomes difficult to separate the two. Hence they have become somewhat of a part of my own identity.

A paper I did in a college class on the relationship between collection and identity comes to mind, for it was in the research of the paper that I found that what we collect and how we collect says much about our inner being. I think for a long time I got lost in that world and only recently was able to reconnect to the roots which were the foundation for my collection. That being my true love of what I see as art.

This much I know is true, the entire universe is art. An infinite canvas which not only awaits our discovery, but is there ever changing from moment to moment. We are hurried creatures, so focused on trivial, meaningless tasks, that we often miss the glory all around us calling out to be seen. The age old idiom, "stop and smell the roses" should be a rule for living rather than a colloquial saying.

There are so many the world over who for one reason or the other (ie. war, oppression, hardship, poverty ) can not recognize beauty around them. I count myself as blessed and fortunate to have been given the opportunity to drink it in, and appreciate the created splendor all around me, and perhaps in some small way preserve and share it as I go.

It is all art, and art is all there is around me.

Looking In On An Old Friend

Rose Araignée Boudoir

A Chorus Of Life

Through Water's Veil

Tree Skin

A Gathering Of Drops

Hollywood

On High

On A Hill Far Away

Ancient Sisters

A Fairy Ring

Fireworks Are Where You Find Them

Zen

Rainy Berries

Mouth Of Truth

Quiet Reflection

Raindrops On Roses

Phoebe

Musings On Thanksgiving & How Hermes Scarf Madison Ave. By Kermit Oliver Relates to My Thankful Musings

Many people in America will celebrate a special holiday this week. Our children in school have been learning all about the "pilgrims" who came to this great land, and stopped for a moment in time to be grateful, and to share and show their gratitude with the Native American people who now permitted them sanctuary on these shores.

Looking back over this past year on my personal life, and the lives of people across this vast land I realize that for many thinking of things to be grateful for may prove very difficult this up coming Thursday. But I am reminded of words my mother continued to speak almost daily during her last year as she lost her battle with cancer.

I would be driving her to her chemo therapy appointments and she would suddenly turn to me as we looked out and enjoyed the changing leaves of fall on the trees planted on the parkway we took the medical center. She would turn and say "You know DeNice, we are very blessed...", and I would always stop and think for a moment how strong she was to be going through what she was enduring, and to still see each new day as a day filled with blessings of some sort if we but opened our eyes.

All over the world finances are in turmoil, people who saved lifetimes are now watching stock markets tumble to the ground. People who worked for most of their lives for major companies are now either without a job, or worried that the doors will close tomorrow. People who realized the dream of home ownership are now watching those dreams fade away to dust. People with children are worrying how will they continue to to keep them clothed, fed and housed. And many will ask themselves "Thankful, what can I possibly be thankful for???"

In 1620, a group of people left the only home they had ever known, aboard a ship to travel over 3000 miles to a land they had never seen. Their trip was perilous, the sea was beset by storms. They did not turn back. When they landed, on these shores it was the middle of winter. Many were already very weak from their hazardous 2 month voyage. The local Native people shared their knowledge with people who today would be called "illegal aliens". They helped them to survive, to flourish, and to establish the beginnings of what would the first of many colonies to come. Colonies which would develop into the land that I call home today.

This great land has gone thorough many changes since those days, some for the better, and some we as citizens have lived to regret and to learn from the mistakes made all along the way. But we are blessed, we are blessed that those early pilgrims did not turn back, we are blessed that they felt led by faith to make the journey, we are blessed that they were befriended by a people whom they could not even communicate with, we are blessed that those living here first allowed them to live amongst them.

And today we are blessed, because we still have leaders who have asked to lead, who will not give up, we are blessed because others in history traveled to this land also to make it what it is today. We are blessed because today technology, connects us to others far far away and makes the world seem smaller. It is for all of this and much much more I will be grateful this Thanksgiving, I will be grateful for all of those who came before so that I could live so blessed.

Kermit Oliver's Madison Ave. to me speaks to the rich bounty of this great land, the flowers, the animals, the people, those here now, and those from the past. The title when standing alone, may speak of material things, but Oliver's painting makes us realize what is truly valuable. He contrasts true wealth, with what is perceived wealth or bounty. He leaves it up to us to decide.

I hope you enjoy the video exploration, and I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving

The song is a Native American piece called "Mahk Jchi (Heartbeat Drum Song)"
Written by Pura Fe, Soni, Jen. Saponi translation by Lawrence Dunmore. Performed by Ulali: Pura Fe, Soni, Jen. Album: Music for the Native Americans

Saponi translation:

Mahk jchi tahm buooi yahmpi gidi

Mahk jchi taum buooi kan spewa ebi

Mahmpi wah hoka yee monk

Tahond tani kiyee tiyee Gee we-me eetiyee

Nanka yaht yamoonieah wajitse

The words translate to English as:

A hundred years have passed Yet I hear the distant beat of my father's drums.

I hear his drums throughout the land.

His beat I feel within my heart.

The drum shall beat so my heart shall beat.

And I shall live a hundred thousand years.