This week; the concept of Gratitude and Gifts begin to mirror themselves in my daily experience.
1. My friend Adrienne Campbell, an inspired eco-activist and writer who also lives here in Lewes, introduced me to The 'Work That Reconnects' of Joanna Macey, a Buddhist and 'Deep Ecologist' who works with groups of people to process on an inner level what is happening in the current ecological crisis (which she calls 'The Great Turning'). There is so much inspiring stuff in her work, but one thing pertinent to me was her talking of ‘Gratitude as a Revolutionary Act’. She speaks of gratitude as a ‘stance of the soul’, a ‘primal movement of all traditions', not dependent on external circumstances and therefore immediately useable as a way of transcending the present moment. I have used this tool recently to get me through the darkest moments of my post-natal recovery and I know that it will inform the work that will be developed from one of these project seeds. There is a lot more, but I wanted to introduce her, am going to order her book.
Macey says ‘what people most need to hear is inside them’, which is an obvious and relevant statement, very elegantly put. I think it’s also the dynamic behind the processed I have taken people through in the Loom and Mother to Mother and I want to sustain this approach.
2. A great artist friend, Willow Winston, who I have collaborated with on films/ the Loom and who mentored me on the installation, showed me her new piece of Book art, a really extraordinary book in the form of a Hand, inspired by and exploring personal experiences of Giving and Receiving. I will post photos at some stage if she will let me, but just to say that it resonated with me on a deep level, as it is a theme, which keeps offering itself up, and this was a gift in itself. It also underlined my need to start making again, using my hands as part of this research process… and Willow reminded me that ‘we don’t need to understand to create, but create to understand’. She suggested short sharp sketchbook work daily, to allow my subconscious as well as my conscious intellectual mind to express itself on this journey. It was a real relief to start this, and ‘be open to a narrative that will emerge’ rather than try and construct one. And it provides a quiet moment of reconnection amid the currently intense experiences of being with my two young children.
More tomorow, it's time for a night feed for Moses soon.
