Tag Archives: art

For Juan

Posted on by Standard 3

Melt II: Photo by Noelle

Melt II: Photo by Noelle

Melt: Photo by Noelle

Melt: Photo by Noelle

Did you know that when you take a photograph you can be in no other moment than ‘Now’. I learned this from my friend Juan. Our conversation began in a very dark time of grief. I could not find a haven from my sorrow and anger and I certainly could not stop my mind racing in an endless search for answers. He suggested I take pictures with my cell phone as I hiked the foothills near the Rockies. That it would help settle my heart and mind, if only for a moment. I did not own a camera, had not taken a photo in more than twenty years and had, in fact, jettisoned most of my personal photos in the previous year. But I had no where else to go. My rage was so great I couldn’t engage in much of the art that had filled my spirit until then.

So I began to take photos of grass and summer flowers. Most of it not very good. He’d coach me and give me ideas and my work grew. Yesterday, as I looked at these two pictures on my iPad and saw the moment caught so perfectly in this “Now”, I thought of my friend. Stay in the now and you will heal, he said. And I did.

Those drops floating in mid air, Juan, are you.

Myth Makers

Posted on by Standard 4
Image re-posted from Art For Ever's Facebook page

Image re-posted from Art For Ever’s Facebook page

The Greeks told myths because it was easier than telling hard lessons to blind men. Stories capture our attention as whispers in a church. They break our boundaries and lull us into understanding because they speak in common images we see every day. They elevate the mundane to magic and in that transformation understanding is imparted to even the dullest of minds. We succumb because we make the mistake of believing a story isn’t real. Yet everything about a story, a myth, a metaphor is in a sense real. Because it’s not about the story, in the end. It’s about the information it delivers to the attentive ear. That little bit of knowing in tight corners is always real.

Translating life is a kind of storyteller’s trick, though it seems complicated. Death is a big ball of fire when looked at from a lover’s heart, but for the storyteller it is a page turning moment. The spot where the hero finds a boat and steps in for destinies unknown. Daydreamers are life’s minstrels. They spin a world we can understand when faced with endless events in our “real” world that make no sense at all.

Blessed are the myth makers. They breath a rich life into a chaotic world.

This is a work in progress from The Writer’s Church workshop, Boulder, CO. Hosted by Marj Hahne

A Life Your Own

Posted on by Standard 5
Image re-posted from For Ever Art Facebook page

Image re-posted from For Ever Art Facebook page

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

Steve Jobs

Limitless Heart

Posted on by Standard 2
Free Google Photos

Free Google Photos

There’s a point where we simply have to accept there is no limit to how much we can love. That this moment we are in now is always the beginning of our expanding heart. We are never at an end point. Everything you know and can experience is evolving. This Earth, the Universe, plankton in the sea – you. Nothing is stagnant and most certainly not your heart. We have to stop seeing ourselves as limited lovers. We use the moments where we fall short to love to confirm we have boundaries because we fear to step across the horizon. We don’t know who that version of us is, so we accept our frailties as sure signs that this is who we are. Yet those moments are just us cracking the chrysalis. We’re gnawing off the chain, splitting our emotional atom and losing our religion that says, “This is all that I am.”

It’s time we stepped up to the bar, laid down the money and said, “I’m in. I’m in with everything I’ve got. I’ll slay whatever dragons. Today and every day henceforth I am free to love more than I ever thought possible.”

Negative

Posted on by Standard Reply
Sunset: Photo negative taken by Noelle

Sunset: Photo negative taken by Noelle

The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, “Sometimes the best thing to ever happen to you is NOT getting what you thought you wanted.” Spiritual evolution comes when we begin to see that the negative events of our life are actually the good things. That these same things, places, events were providing us an opportunity to see the world and ourselves completely differently. That they are meant to strip away our illusions, mainly, about ourself. When you can see beauty and motion and grace in negatives….well…then you are really onto something.