Following the Moon: The Strength of What Is

Make a Wish, Drozda, Acrylic/wood, 2001, 14x20"

Lines Written In The Days Of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been

witness to it: how the

world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to say,

knowing, as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?

I don’t say

it’s easy, but

what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed.

by Mary Oliver, from New York Times, Sunday, November 7, 2010

How grand that we have this niche of days to settle into as we wrap up the calendar year 2010. If you’ve kept a Gratitude Journal this year take some time and leaf through the pages to reacquaint yourself with the richness that you’ve woven this year in your Art/Life. Starting Friday morning through Monday, January 3 craft the intention for your Art/Life. Dream the dream for your coming calendar year and imagine the Sky Dance that lies ahead as you open to the possibility that awaits....read more... please feel free to come back here to comment if it's easier for you...and thank you so much for sharing the 'Art/Life' and 'Following the Moon' this year...



HAPPY 'ART/LIFE' NEW YEAR!!

Iona

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Life as Art

I love this time of year. It's winter and yet there is the dream of what will be as spring comes closer and days grow longer.

The geese are flying low over the lake and flapping wildly on the surface of the water vying for their territory.

With the voice of geese in my ear I bow in the direction of a supreme word dancer...Mary Oliver http://www.maryoliver.net/

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver published by Atlantic Monthly Press© Mary Oliver