Growth

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Bits of energy dissipate and coalesce, eternally, reshaping our world.

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Where does matter come from?  How does it organize itself into ever greater complexity?

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What guides the subtle patterns of its becoming?

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Gardeners ponder these mysteries as we watch seeds become plants become flowers and fruits.

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We ponder the wonder of it all as we eat the fruit and save its seeds for the coming seasons.

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In winter, we ponder these mysteries anew as the sky crumbles into snowflakes.

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We watch the formation of icy stalagmites and fragile ice crystals.

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Moisture, drawn from the air, materializes before us in the most intricate patterns.

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We watch reality crystallize around us. 

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Sometimes slowly, sometimes in a single breath; energy moves from form to form in its endless dance of life.

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Porcelain bowl by Denis Orton, is filled with paperwhites stirring into growth and wild moss from the garden.

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Woodland Gnome 2017

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Water has a memory and carries within it

our thoughts and prayers.

As you yourself are water,

no matter where you are,

your prayers will be carried to the rest of the world.

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Dr. Masaru Emoto

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Beauty Where You Find It

A friend and I were talking about art recently.

 

She and I both love art works in all of their forms.  We love fabric, needlework, sculpture, glass, music, poetry, paintings, mosaics…

The list goes on and on.

We happened to be looking at some old Norman Rockwell paintings, depicting life many decades ago.  The pictures brought back happy memories of our childhood homes, parents and grandparents. 

We were noticing the many small ways that life has changed, including taste in “art.”  These old, realistic paintings went out of fashion, yet we still enjoy them.  They show a more graceful age, a way of life that seems to have passed out of this world-

There is something good and comforting about living with beautiful things around you.  We both have artists in our families and among our friends.  Our homes are full of beautiful things given to us by loved ones and beautiful things we’ve made ourselves.

And yet, beauty is where you find it. 

At best, we only attempt to capture the grace and beauty of nature when we put brush to paper, hand to clay, thread to cloth. 

We went looking for beauty yesterday morning in places one might least expect to find it on a wintery morning.  I searched in a ditch by the road, along the edges of marshes and creeks, among the dried remains of marsh grasses.

And here is what we  found:  beautifully formed ice crystals, perfectly configured where freezing air and Earth met water.

Like Tibetan sand paintings, these ice  mosaics last only a moment.  They melted back into the water from which they came by afternoon.

Priceless, fleeting works of art.

Like all of nature. 

We are invited to participate in its beauty, wherever we can find it.

All Photos by Woodland Gnome 2014

“When someone seeks,” said Siddhartha, “then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”

― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha