Rebecca Sower

words for your wednesday, february 11

Today, words from Anne Morrow Lindbergh...

"Only with winter-patience can we bring
The deep desired, long-awaited spring."

 I am learning the art of not wishing winter away, resolving to embrace even these last trailings of it before the much-loved spring.  The bare starkness of it can be beautiful if you're looking through the right eyes.

   

And I begin to find comfort in winter, and just enough of an inner stirring to spend time reflecting and writing and sketching art ideas.  Which is good.  We should stop what we're doing creatively now and then, long enough to take a breath and see how we can push ourselves a little further, set more lofty art goals.  What else can I learn and do and try?  This creative life is sometimes exhausting that way, but rejuvenating and healthy for us.

So make new friends with winter and take advantage of the stay-indoors time to bring new life to your creativity.  There are rare and awakening surprises there.

creatively content

"True contentment is a real, even an active, virtue---not only affirmative but creative. It is the power of getting out of any situation all there is in it."  (G.K. Chesterton)

ideas so near

Well I won't win the blogger of the year award at this rate will I? :)  Of course you already know that when I must neglect something, first on my list is the computer.  Not you my dear readers, just the sitting in front of the screen.

Oh but I haven't been idle.  Just the opposite in fact.  I've been in my studio doing quite a lot of things, filling my creative well as they say.

I do not count myself an artist.  Certainly not an artist the way Georgia O'Keeffe is an artist.  But I can be inspired by her, or maybe prompted is a better word for it.  As I was when I read this quote by her . . .

"I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught."

Wow what that must be like.  To have ideas all your own.  So original that you don't even know you are original.  I cannot say that I even fully relate to what she is saying.  Her artistic realm is so far above my own.  But I can tuck these words of hers somewhere inside and recall them now and then.  Just to remind me that it's okay to create in a way that others do not expect of you.  To scrape everything off the table and pull from within and what is speaking there, you know?

happy idling time

"So you see, imagination needs moodling--long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering."

So says Brenda Ueland, author, writer and teacher (and word-maker-upper?) of days gone by. :)

Hope your weekend has some happy idling time.  Thanks for letting me take so much time away.

a dying art

Is listening a dying art form?  Seems we're all (myself included) scrambling to be heard, to give our opinion, to talk and talk and talk some more.  I mean really, sometimes I find I am saying to myself "why don't you just shut up?"...well yeah, that happens a lot.  So many voices everywhere...too many.  And if everyone is talking, who is listening?

Fred Rogers, I loved that man, had some wise words indeed.  Wise enough for me to sit up and listen...

"The purpose of life is to listen - to yourself, to your neighbor, to your world and to God and, when the time comes, to respond in as helpful a way as you can find... from within and without."

And he's right, you know?  How can I help my neighbor if I have never even listened to what he is saying?

Lesson to self:  stop talking and start listening...and right here at home is the best place to start.

to see takes time

 

"In a way,

no one sees a flower really,

it is so small

we haven't time,

and to see

takes time."

{georgia o'keefe}

 

Thank you for letting me share another shot of some old roses growing in my yard.  Let's all take the time to see.  It's important.

"Handmade from Home" begins tomorrow.  Come back for a visit.

everything which is yes

Put down that laundry, that needle and thread, those dirty dishes. 

Because...

"I thank God for this most amazing day;

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;

and for everything which is natural,

which is infinite,

which is yes."

{ee cummings}

C'mon dear friends, let's go outside!

from sitting long

I'm trying not to dwell too long on why these quotes about patience keep falling into my lap, this one by Beth Moore...

"Patience to wait

does not come

from suffering long from what we lack

but

from sitting long in what we have."

One of those things we do have on hand, I'll just bet, is a sweet friend who's hung about and loved us for who we are, even when we weren't the least bit lovable.

I made this necklace last week from old bits and pieces I have stashed here and there, all the while thinking about the value of close friends...something I haven't taken the time to cherish as the treasures they are.  Need to work on that, most definitely.

Would love to give this necklace to you, one of my reader friends.  If you'd like, just leave me one comment before noon on Friday.  I'll choose at random and get in touch with you.

Dear friends, I am grateful for the relationships I have made here in cyberland; I know on the other end of this cold, hard machine is a warm, tender heart.

Happy Tuesday to you!

something good

"This is the beginning of a new day.

You have been given this day to use as you will.

You can waste it or use it for good.

What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.

When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever;

in it's place is something that you have left behind . . .

let it be something good."

{author unknown, but I wish it was me}

the key

{ you suppose you are the trouble...

          but you are the cure.

you suppose that you are the lock on the door...

          but you are the key that opens it.

it's too bad that you want to be someone else...

you don't see your own face, your own beauty.

          yet, no face is more beautiful than yours.}

                                                                                                                                                           RUMI