An illicit photo

Okay, time for True Confessions: we were specifically asked NOT to take photos during this morning's Eucharist, but I didn't listen. This is a photograph of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, delivering a truly inspiring sermon on the importance of setting aside individual agendas for the common good (almost as impressive as his speech last night, which you can (and should) read about here) to the Episcopal General Convention in Anaheim.

And he is standing in front of the absolutely GORGEOUS reredos created by Mel Ahlborn, the president of ECVA, for use at Convention. Her Ubuntu Reredos consists of 5 separate multimedia shows (each one will show twice over the 10-day course of Convention) developed to portray the work of several artists (yes, I am one of them); each show is displayed on three giant screens which sit at the front of the hall in which we hold our daily Eucharist, and they all look like huge stained glass windows; they are breathtakingly beautiful.

Back to that rebellious spirit that chose to take this photo -- in my own defense, I will say that my camera does NOT use a flash, and does NOT beep when it shoots, focuses, opens or closes, so it was as unintrusive as I could possibly make it -- unlike the hundreds of cameras that were flashing as he walked into the ECW Triennial hall this morning to deliver a brief meditation on the importance of church women through the ages in delivering the best of what the church has to offer.

I had not encountered Rowan Williams before; my last experience was with Archbishop Carey, who preceded him. I will say without any reservation that I was very impressed: he spoke well and beautifully, without mincing words, about some very hard things, and I found him honest, inspiring, and very theologically grounded. He also had one of the most beautiful speaking voices I have ever heard, so all in all it was wonderful to be here and to have a chance to hear and meet him; one of those rare times when I found myself honestly proud to be a member of the Anglican Communion, and a reminder of why it is I continue to return to this troubled church of ours even when I sometimes want to throw up my hands in disgust at all the divisiveness.

Ah well, back into the fray. Thanks for listening!

A gift to share

Well, here I am at the Episcopal General Convention in Anaheim, embarking on my new volunteer role in the Episcopal Church (more on that later).

Because I arrived so late last night, I stayed at this sort of sketchy hotel (there are signs everywhere saying "this is a smoking establishment; smoking has proven hazardous to your health" or something like that) but it was a wonderful opportunity to connect with my new "boss" -- and of course we've discovered we've much more in common than we might have initially assumed. Isn't that always the way?

The theme of this convention is Ubuntu -- which is also the theme of the exhibit I have been curating for ECVA in honor of Convention -- and it seems to me that this is exactly what it's about: that ANY time we take the time to get to know someone -- no matter how different they may initially appear to be -- we will learn we have things in common. We are, after all, all members of the human family, and much of what we do and say and think about and worry about is stuff we have in common with the other members of the human family. The more we act on that assumption, the closer we will be to achieving peace: not just inner peace, but international peace.

So I'm thinking that the stated challenge of that Ubuntu exhibit -- to create a work of art which both conveys a sense of our connectedness with the human family and serves as a call to act on behalf of that family -- could well be a reasonable lifelong challenge for artists everywhere in every nation and denomination. Because, in a way, that is a big piece of what art is about. The artist, in his or her art, is saying, "This is what the world looks like to me," and those who choose to look at or buy that work are in essence saying, "Wow. Something in what you are seeing resonates in me, too."

I like to say that that "something" which is conveyed by the artist and then resonates in the viewer is that "portal to the sacred," Eckhart Tolle talks about. So in essence art -- at its best -- would always be an invitation to a deeper understanding of our commonality, and the way the presence of the divine vibrates through that commonality. But then, maybe that's too philosophical... but that's what's on my mind this morning.

So why the empty pool? Well, it was the view next to the elevator at the sketchy hotel. And it seemed rather poignant: all that elaborate setup -- the curvy pool, the chairs, the palm trees -- and yet no one was there to enjoy it, just me photographing it. It made me think of meditation -- that Divine table that is set for us, the one we're so often too busy to take advantage of. So lovely, so thoughtful, designed with us in mind, offering rest, relaxation, rejuvenation... and yet we persist in doing something else. For me, going out with my camera has a lot of that same refreshing feeling, and yet it's often hard to find -- or make -- the time to do it. But if God moves through our art, shouldn't we be consciously making more time and space for that to happen?

So I invite you, today, to stop rushing; to sit by the reflection pool that is meditation and allow the creative spirit to flow through you and out onto a page, or into fabric or clay or paint or a camera -- whatever medium allows you to express yourself -- and share that invitation by sharing your art with someone. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so; I think it's both the greatest gift we are given and the greatest gift we get to share.

When extravagance isn't the answer

Last night, while cleaning out my daughters' fish tanks, I was listening to NPR, and they broadcast an extraordinary program which was just so illuminating that I found myself thinking it ought to be required listening for every graduating high school student. The program, created by Kate Ellis and Ellen Guettler, was called "A Better Life: Creating the American Dream," and you can listen to it or read a full transcript of it here.

The statement of the program's premise is this:

The American dream has roots in the nation's loftiest ideals - the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So when did it also come to mean a house, a car and a college education?

As they walked through this amazingly perceptive overview of the history of the American dream I was particularly struck, not just by President Gerald Ford's efforts to curb inflation and consumption (I definitely did NOT remember that), but by a quotation from President Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" Speech, delivered thirty years ago this month on July 15, 1979. In the speech, which was intended to address the energy crisis (remember those long lines at the gas stations?) Carter said, "In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning." How curious it is, I thought, that we've been struggling with this issue for so long.

And then, this morning, in Elizabeth Lesser's book, The Seeker's Guide, I read these words about Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and its astonishing promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

"The great strengths of America can be traced to this revolutionary promise. But the weakened soul of the nation can also be traced to the promise. John Adams warned of the dangers of the promise when he wrote, "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." The drafters of the Declaration of Independence were well aware of the risks they were taking when they signed off on such a radical promise. Thomas Jefferson took the greatest risk when he substituted the words "the pursuit of happiness" for the original word, "property," in the trinity of inalienable rights. and while he pointed out that "happiness is attainable only by diligent cultivation of civic virtue," he was unclear on how, or even if, that civic virtue could be legislated...the promise set in motion the ongoing dialogue between the old value system of Puritan restraint and civic duty and the new hankering for self-expression and individual advancement."

Lesser goes on to explain that "in retrospect we can see that our founding fathers opened a Pandora's box by molding a govenment around individual freedom and happiness. Even as the American Constitution was being crafted,debate raged around the possibility of its lofty ideals being distorted by self-serving individuals. The correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in their later years is full of concerns of what could happen in America if its citizens took advantage of the sacred promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

"AT THE SAME TIME," she writes, "Americans were in the process of shifting their definition of happiness from the procurement of rights to the acquisition of things. Industry, mobility, and communication technology all contributed to the rise of consumerism as an American passion. To have more was to be happy."

So there we have it: the struggles we face today, the challenges we have as a country in learning to balance a commitment to the common good with our individual striving and needs -- the urge to acquire and consume -- are a natural outgrowth of the founding premise of our country. Does that excuse or justify our extraordinary materialism and acquisitiveness; our ridiculous and ever-more extravagant "needs"? And, more importantly, does this emphasis on individuality necessarily preclude spirituality?

I think we can all agree that allowing the materialism to flourish unchecked by spirituality is a serious problem. But isn't it also true that those founding principles are giving birth to a uniquely American spirituality? Lesser goes on to address that very thing:

"We are witnessing the birth of a wisdom tradition that is uniquely American. Within traditional organized religions, as well as in the hybrid creations of our times, the stamp of American thinking is plain. We see the American spirit in the proliferation of nonaffiliated Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Islamic churches, and also in the profound changes within sanctioned denominations. This spirit values independence from religious hierarchy. It crosses religious and social boundaries, telling the tale of a diverse people, gathered in close proximity, and absorbing each other's ways of worshiping, ritualizing, and mythologizing the great mysteries of life... It respects both a mistrust of heavy-handed authority and the willing surrender to a higher power."

What intrigues me about all of this is that I hear echoes of something I learned in a workshop a few years back and which continues to crop up in my readings and thought: our greatest weaknesses always have the potential to become our greatest strengths -- in fact a quotation to that effect surfaced in a conversation with a neighbor just the other day. It’s from Brother Tolbert McCarroll’s Notes from the Song of Life, and I've put it in this blog before:

“You are like a blade of a knife. When you were born your edge was sharp. But it did not stay sharp. With use it will dull and need to be resharpened. So at birth you were also given a whetstone. Your natural weakness is your whetstone. Through it you sharpen your edge. Without it you would remain dull."

What if that tricky phrase, the pursuit of happiness, were our own corporate whetstone as a nation? And if that's true, wouldn't it be wise to begin to question what exactly makes us happy? Now, at a time when so many people are realizing that things -- addictions, whether to stuff, or drugs, alcohol, sex, food, or other things we can over-accumulate or overuse -- actually DON'T make us happy, isn't it possible that we could, as a nation, begin to work toward realizing that the happiness of others feeds our souls; that connection with the divine feeds our souls; that a sense of purpose feeds our souls; that it is THOSE things which will ultimately make us truly happy?

Well, heck; a girl can dream, can't she?

Flitting about...

We are just back from a whirlwind trip to the San Juan Islands to visit briefly with one of our daughters on her day off; this lovely dragonfly was on the roof of our favorite pottery/garden shop on Orcas, Crow Valley Pottery.

I will be flitting here, there, and everywhere over the next week or two, so this is a warning that the blog will be intermittent for a bit as I bounce from flower to flower sipping the nectars of experience this summer. (How's that for tying an image to a post?!) I do plan to take my computer with me, but I am learning that without time for reflection the posts have less of a meditative quality, so I will endeavor NOT to just indulge my urge to write but rather to share when I feel moved -- and centered -- enough to do so.

I hope you are having a lovely summer, and I look forward to sharing more thoughts and images with you as I go flitting about...

A breath of hope

The Fourth of July is a big deal on the little street where I live. We start the day with an all-Sandspit Pancake Breakfast (This year all the proceeds -- and we raised more than $1500! -- go to the American Cancer Society Relay for Life).

And then, at 1:00, we hold the annual Sandspit Fourth of July Parade, which begins at our end of the Spit with a 21 gun salute fired across the lagoon by our neighbor's cannon, and ends with all of us seated on a hillside at the park (at the other end of the street) singing patriotic songs.

I know. It's pretty funky -- and too corny and precious for words. But I love our little bit of Americana, and love that all of us -- even the ones who squabble -- can gather in harmony, if only for a day. It gives me hope.

Down among the wines and spirits

This morning, for the first time in two months, I was treated to a lovely long uninterrupted meditation period; it was pure heaven to sink into the quiet depths of being. As I was coming out I thought of several images that might represent the blissful peace of that time, but then another tune from that new Elvis Costello bluegrass album popped into my head: "Down among the wines and spirits."

It's a song about a man who has broken up with the woman in his life and is drowning his sorrows in liquor, so at first I didn't think anything of it. But then I realized that, in a way, meditation is like paying a visit to your personal wine cellar. So I decided to explore the ramifications of that thought: what would it tell me about this process? How is meditation like a visit to a wine cellar?

Well, it does begin with a decision: you need a taste of spirit, so you make a choice to go down to a place where you have found spirits in the past. And it does feel like you're going to a cool dark place deep within. You don't seem to live there, or even go there very often, so things are pretty dusty, with a few cobwebs to be brushed away.

What you find there is rich and deep and dark and clear and intoxicating. But you don't usually get the full benefit of it while you're down there; you bring it up with you into the light. It's meant to be shared with friends, to be swirled around a bit, sniffed and savored. Drinking it in can make you giddy and silly; even a bit childish -- and we all know it can be addictive. And if you sip at it carefully, the buzz you get can last quite a while!

I'm not much of a wine drinker, I have to confess -- red wine gives me headaches, and I can only drink about half a glass of white wine before I get really sleepy. And I don't have a wine cellar; I photographed this one in a castle in Verrazzano, Italy. But my visit to my own personal inner wine cellar this morning was... well, just delicious. And, like Elvis Costello, I guess I could say --

Suddenly he's calling out more, more, more
Speaks of invisible things he hardly credits
I'm twice the foolish man I was before
Down among the wines and spirits....

Sex, Politics, and Religion

My mother died back in January 1997, just six months after my daughters and I had moved to Shaw Island. My relationship with my mother had been pretty awkward for many years, so processing her death was difficult and I found myself spending many hours walking the beaches trying to sift through the storm of emotions.

It was around that time that I picked up a copy of Julia Cameron's classic, The Artist's Way, and was advised to take myself on an Art Date. Shaw is a very small island, only about 6 miles long with about 150 year round residents, a school, a library, a museum and a general store. Where was I supposed to find an Art Date?

Eventually I decided to buy myself a camera -- a little point and shoot -- and my art dates became a daily process of wandering around the island, taking pictures of whatever caught my eye. During that period I became fascinated by the patterns I found in driftwood and stone, and eventually I accumulated over a thousand photographs like the ones displayed here: closeup shots of the universal themes that emerged on close examination of natural formations.

It was when I took them in to be developed that the print shop guys (I had to go to Anacortes to get prints in those days, an hour and a half ferry ride from Shaw) began suggesting I show my work in galleries. Eventually I took a selection of driftwood and stone pictures to a gallery in Friday Harbor (one of the other islands in the San Juans) and they accepted them enthusiastically, thus initiating my career as a professional photographer.

But ultimately, of course, these pictures just opened the door into the gallery: these sorts of photographs rarely sold. It was always the more identifiable shots -- a beach with mountains in the distance, a sailboat silhouetted against a setting sun, light streaming onto a bench in the woods -- that people wanted to buy. And though I now, again, live only a short walk from a beach littered with driftwood, I confess I haven't photographed a piece of driftwood in years.

So I was taken completely by surprise a couple of years ago when I learned that the famous monk, Thomas Merton, had also spent a lot of time photographing stone and wood patterns like these -- you can find some of them online here. Eventually I managed to find two books of his photography, and though I can't say I loved all the work, I was certainly struck by the resemblance to some of my own pieces. So I guess that even though I wasn't meditating back in those days, there was a meditative quality to the work I was doing.

Now that the Unexpected Dog show is down (I brought home the unsold pieces yesterday) it's time for me to begin imagining what I might print up for the November Women Behind the Lens show at my gallery. It's a wonderful opportunity to explore the creative edges of my work, so I'm already beginning to test out new possibilities, ways of mixing art and language and photography. But part of me wonders if it might not also be time to resurrect some of those old driftwood photographs... oh, but wait: I'm not supposed to show anything having to do with sex, politics, or religion. Does that mean that these three would be unacceptable?

Hmm.