A Pause For Beauty:
An artist’s journal.
Below, the Art Journal posts for the month of November, 2023.
October posts can be found here.
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
- John Burroughs
Also reflections on living simply from Thomas Moore (Care Of The Soul), Keith Jarrett (improvisational jazz pianist) and Thoreau.
http://www.herondance.org/rewards-simple-life
Visit here for October posts.
A reflection on authenticity, on living outside the box, versus living in the box, in the norm. And Sterling Hayden's thought on wanderers who don't fit in:
http://www.herondance.org/magic-box
Visit here for October posts.
A great work, and life, is based on a connection with the creator’s inner world. It grows out of still and musing meditation. It draws from the pre-verbal, the half-understood, the subconscious. There is a wisdom inside each of us that often cannot be put into words but, with practice, can be used to guide and shape our lives and our work. It is that which is holy inside us.
To read the entire journal entry, and a reflection by Dag Hammarskjöld:
http://www.herondance.org/beauty-within
Visit here for October posts.
Did you ever
stand and shiver
just from lookin’at a river?
- Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
Perspectives from ancient Taoist hermit monks on the nature of water and of life, as well as my own from a 2012 reflection.
http://www.herondance.org/the-current-under
For a while, A Pause For Beauty will move to an every second day schedule, and Creativity As A Way Of Life to the off days. Descriptions of each, as well as signups, on the Heron Dance homepage.Visit here for October posts.
An exploration of the question:
What does your current relationship to beauty tell you about how you are living, where you are in your life? Also John Burroughs on beauty.
http://www.herondance.org/birches-2-beautyVisit here for October posts.
Reflections from a few days spent back in the North Carolina woods in a small simple cabin by the Yatkin River with a retired pastor.
http://www.herondance.org/questions-not-answersVisit here for October posts.
Random reflections on sources of power -- the power to do creative work, to climb the world’s highest mountains, to serve others in situations of hopelessness. Most of all, I want to know about the power to manifest a vision.
http://www.herondance.org/sources-of-powerVisit here for October posts.
Three days into a one week trip a few years ago, during late fall, at the end of a long portage in Algonquin Provincial Park, I saw an older man sitting at the edge of the water. As I took the canoe off my shoulders and laid it down, he half turned and smiled a brief, almost embarrassed smile. I walked down, washed my face in the cold water and sat about ten feet from him.
He was eighty-two years old. Sitting by the lake, and later sharing a campsite, he told me a little of his story. This was his last time on this portage — his favorite he said — and his last Algonquin trip. He had been coming here since his teens. Now even getting in and out of a canoe was difficult. He noticed that I had a solo canoe and asked me if I was paddling alone. He tried to come up every year, always alone, and usually now in late fall when the park was empty and the leaves a kaleidoscope of color. And almost no bugs.
For more of this reflection on measuring one's success in life:
http://www.herondance.org/measuring-successVisit here for October posts.
What we are to our inward system, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life.
Thus, it is that I have now undertaken, in my eighty-third year, to tell my personal myth. I can only make direct statements, only “tell stories.” Whether or not the stories are “true” is not the problem. The only question is whether I tell my fable, my truth.
- Carl Jung, from the Prologue to "Memories, Dreams, Reflections".
For more reflections on the inner myth guiding our lives without us realizing it:
http://www.herondance.org/inner-mythVisit here for October posts.
There have been at least two men who passed through my life and offered friendship, but whom I failed to connect with in any kind of deep way despite my respect and regard for them. In both cases, I blame myself for not putting more effort into the potential friendship. Tom Jay was one. He was a man of deep integrity, of creative vision. A man who loved wild salmon. He was highly critical of himself, and I guess I felt I would fail to live up to the standards he set for himself or his friends. Poor excuse.
For more of my journal entry on friendship missed:
http://www.herondance.org/friendship-missedVisit here for October posts.
We don’t see pictures in famous galleries. But the other day, after a sleet storm that had coated the world with a sheath of ice, I saw a pine grosbeak in a little poplar tree. The setting sun slanted through a gap in the black wall of the forest, and held bird and tree in a celestial spotlight. Every twig turned to diamond encrusted-gold, and the red of the bird’s breast glowed like a huge ruby as he fluffed his feathers in the wind. I could hardly believe it. I could only stand still and stare. And then I repeated to myself again something that I once learned in the hope that it would safeguard me from ever becoming hardened to beauty and wonder. I found it long ago, when I had to study Emerson:
"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how men would believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the City of God which has been shown!"
- Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods
For more of Louise Dickinson Rich's reflection on the Emerson quote:
www.herondance.org/we-took-to-the-woodsVisit here for October posts.
An exploration of the mysterious mathematical relationships which create the opportunity for life to exist. For instance if the relationship of electrical forces to gravity was slightly different, no creatures could grow larger than insects, and planets would not exist long enough to make biological evolution possible.
For reflections from Huckleberry Finn, Sir Martin Rees, author of "Just Six Numbers" and Wittgenstein on the mysterious harmony and symmetry of the universe visit:
www.herondance.org/six-numbersVisit here for October posts.
All my life I have refused to be for or against parties, for or against nations, for or against people. I never seek novelty or the eccentric; I do not go from land to land to contrast civilizations. I seek only, wherever I go, for the symbols of greatness, and as I have already said, they may be found in the eyes of a child, in the movement of a gladiator, in the heart of a gypsy, in twilight in Ireland or in moonrise over the deserts.
- Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
Also my reflections on greatness including people I've interviewed -- mountain climber Charlie Porter, Maine homesteader Bill Coperthwaite, and Hazrat Inayat Khan on the universe's lights of different grades.
www.herondance.org/greatness-symbolsVisit here for October posts.
"The work I am doing right now ‑‑ if I wasn't operating in the universal dance, I couldn't do it. Because I don't know how to do it. . . A remarkable power came to me when I stopped striving to be 'good enough' and let go into the dance, and stopped trying to figure everything out and understand everything. That freedom to dance in the chaos has become an incredible gift to my life.
- Nancy "Rill" Bell, Vermont bear habitat protection activist. Heron Dance interview.
Also James Baldwin on dancing lessons from the divine.
www.herondance.org/divine-dancingVisit here for October posts.