Do not tell me what you believe.

Do not tell me about what you believe.
Show me what you’ve experienced
And if you can let go of what you thought you knew
Without beating up yourself or others.
Can you can untether your doctrines and creeds
And risk bloody knees and scraped knuckles
When you see the Light flickering between the trees
Across the distance?
Are you ready to
Strike out in the dim twilight,
Knowing that solid night lies ahead
Under a new moon?
Will you stay with the darkness long enough to emerge into the Light
And meet me there?
~~~jaylene whitehurst

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Perspective

 

I am spending Black Friday in my studio, keeping my creative account in the black.

It’s not Black Friday here. It’s Gold Orange Violet Blue Yellow Glittery Shimmery Friday in my space.
A painting is coming together.
It’s gone through the “why did I start this?” stage where I entertain the idea (on which I sometimes act) of painting over the whole thing and setting it aside for weeks or months. Occasionally for years.
It may not be finished. I am learning to stop before a sense of being done arrives.
Now I play with it.
This process of making art is a model for Life. It has the capacity to heal my life, to bring integration and wholeness to my bit of the living experience, when I allow it to do what it does and flow with it.
So here I am at this point with it and I get to play with my view of it. How do I turn the thing? Compositionally it ought to work from any position, being nonrepresentational. Yet, the feel of it shifts as I shift it on the easel. Same elements, but more satisfying to me when viewed from some perspectives than others.
It’s mine. I get to choose my perspective.
The details that are lost on a camera phone from across the room beg to be investigated. They silently say “Come closer. Stay with the tension. Stay with the sharp edges and the shimmer. Get to know me.”
Layer upon layer of color and texture. Time passes. More layers.
So I’ll live with it and I’ll play with it and I’ll tweak it.

We’ll hang out together, this painting and I.
Pretty much the same as my Life.

Jaylene
The Ragged Phoenix

All images and words are the property of Jaylene M. Whitehurst, The Ragged Phoenix.

Patience Now!!!

Good morning, Fellow Travellers,

My now experience of Patience: Allowing My Life changes to unfold at their own pace. Allowing others to be where they are.

This is not the version of “patience” I was taught growing up. Oh no no! The patience of my parents was a pushy, active sort of waiting, which confused me and seemed to require an inordinate amount of energy.

So of course, that’s exactly the kind of patience I practiced for most of my Life.  That’s the only pattern I had, til therapy, meditation, different friends, new readings, mindful artwork, entered my world.

Ms. Pushy Patience. That could have been my nickname.

Sigh…yet trying to make changes happen on my own schedule consistently backfired on me. Always backfired.  I’m judicious when it comes to saying anything always happened, but this is for sure an italicized boldfaced always.  I kept pushing though…maybe some of you dear folks have done that a few times too?

This works better and, if wisdom is using what works better,  this is wisdom to me today: Allowing others the freedom to change (or not) at their own pace, allowing visions to become real-ized when they are ripe, allowing ourselves to do what’s within our ability to do at the moment and be at home with that, even while we have visions beyond this minute….abiding in what is, holding possibility.

Truth be told, I can’t tell any difference between “patience” and “peace” and “bliss.”  There’s a dropping of shoulders and a sigh of gratitude that all feels the same: a coming home.

One more time. There’s a coming home to today. Letting be. No urgency.  I can be both right here, right now and, in a lovely un-forced way, be my own vision for what’s unfolding, too.

Sure, I still get scared — I know I’m scared when the pushiness comes back. And it does, believe me, sometimes with a vengeance! Ouch!!

Yet, in all that human-being-ness, I feel the warmth of coming home to My Life.

Today, may I stay out of my own pushy way and let My Life — and everyone else’s — unfold.

Amen.

~~~Jaylene