Thursday, June 04, 2009

Freely wild


Southern Iowa sunset

"The creator goes off on one wild, specific tangent after another, or millions simultaneously, with an exuberance that would seem to be unwarranted, and with an abandoned energy sprung from an unfathomable font. What's going on here? The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork-for it doesn't, particularly, not even inside the goldfish bowl-but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, fringed tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, it's soil and sap and the creator loves pizzazz." Anne Dillard "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

that it all flows so freely wild...in a free, fringed tangle...freely given...do I live like that? Can I embrace the parts of my life that are a huge tangle? I work so hard to unravel it all...try to fit it into neat categories, but that is not the way He created. So, that gives me some internal freedom today-it's "OK" that on some days I create in paint, some days paper, some days an art journal page, some days nothing at all, some days watercolor or acrylic or ink or a relationship. And, some days, I just need to take the time to study the work of the master creator-to see the colors of an Iowa sunset free for the looking, to see the delicate wildflowers randomly blooming at the base of a black walnut tree, to study the endless expressions and emotions of the people in my life, to see, to live awake and present and freely wild.