That's Where The Light Gets In

 

 

 

None of us, likely, can be mistaken for a saint.  We are real and human and are just waking this journey down here on earth.  If we were perfect, we’d be translated.  Our lives are too busy to run off to some celestial place on a high mountain and ring bells and wear sheets for robes.  But, there is one thing about those that can.  It seems they fill themselves with spiritual ways of being.  Amidst our cooking, cleaning, caring, sharing, being, doing, trying, failing, there are ways to try to add spiritual edification to our lives…even tiny bits.  I find my sacred space while doing art.  I am retired, my kids grown, my partner not demanding so I have great blocks of time to just be in that space.

Our halos might have slipped a little, (ok, mine is down around my ankles...) but, it is there and shines through the crusted coverings of life down here on hard earth. 

These last years of mine, it has been my ‘work’ to polish that thing and get it up where it belongs.  There is fire in the belly.  My halo might just be the reflected shine through that.  Yesterday, in a group zoom, the topic was about the crack being where the light gets in.  They spoke about the four quadrants of the heart:  The Clear heart; the strong heart; the open heart, the whole heart.  Each quadrant has a job to do in letting in the divine light, is my understanding.  I have to research it more, but it fit my soul.  All of us is wounded in many ways.  We either keep it open and bleeding or we have tried to heal it, or we have found ways to let it heal itself through our many ways of healing a wounded heart without too much disturbance.  There is something higher than us that takes care of the healing if we let it.

It is love and compassion for self through service to others that does a great deal of spiritual healing.  No sitting in four walls and chanting ever did the real thing.  It might let denial just cover the top with a scab and leave the festering wound there and waiting for a crack.  We are not just physical beings.  We are intellectual beings, we are feeling beings, and we are spiritual beings and we have nearly forgotten the last one.  We are spiritual Beings.  Sometimes I have to remember to act like it.

Sometimes we get confused about what is Divine in us.  We think it is something we cannot attain, when we think about it at all.  We think we need to keep all manmade religious laws and that is an almost ‘cannot do” kind of pressure to put on ourselves.  Yes, there are a few laws of the land that are absolutes, and the Golden rule is also a given, but some of the ‘wearawhiteshirtandgotochurchandpayyourtitheand….’ life is not where divinity is.  Divinity is within.  You were born with it.  Your very DNA goes back to a Divine Feminine.  As much as your DNA is your mother and father and those ancestors all the way back make you who you are today, so does this Divine Light within.  Bevause we are so far away from the simple nature-driven life, our halos have become more than a bit crusted.  It does not mean they are gone.  It just means they have picked up ‘crud’ from our ever-busying lives.  As I age, I begin to realize how much I need to get busy focusing on shining my light. I need to get my spiritual life polished up so it shines through and reflects the light of that that is The One.

Every morning, I check into the internet and share my blog.  I, then, work on the next day’s blog, so that I am, for a few hours placing myself in a positive frame of mind.  My art streams from the writing about whatever has been on my mind.  A few hours oif peace, of serenity, and of total immersion in a spiritual activity of creation.  Mornings are best for me because I am still a ‘go-go’ person at heart and once I get started, I go until I wear out of energy.  Energy is a priceless gift and I am grateful for having it when I needed it.  Now, it is a rare gift, indeed.  It is a way for me to enter that space and place of sacred communion with my own soul.  It is a place of my prayer and meditation.  It is recharging my spirit.

My church is out in nature.  I honor the elements and try to remember to be grateful when winter goes on and on and on.  I am blessed to live in the fruit basket of Western Canada and spring comes quickly and long before it comes on the other side of the Rockies.  I crave the first sprout of daffodils and love to check on them ever day.  I talk to them.  They speak to me in their own language and I understand courage and bravery and perseverance through them.  They lift my spirit.

There is a group I belong to, online, where, gatherings are always about sacred things and one feels sacred when in a gathering and even the language is sacred language.  I treasure that hour with them.  It edifies me.  It reminds me that we are all sacred, that I am.

My home is my altar.  I had stones and bones and other’s creations and my creations.  It is a museum and an art gallery, and a home.  I have few demands and have hours in the day to just be and just do.  It is my temple.  It is where I develop my gifts.  It is from here that I share them.

I am a sacred woman and I ask no favors.  I am sacred because it is part of my soul and it is for me to polish things up and get to the gleam again.

I know you can find your halo and know how to polish it up.

©Carol Desjarlais 2.12.22

 

The more I practice, the easier it is for me too get my style of a portrait.  Once you have those measurements, they seem to stick.  Because my first experience with an art class was a class on Modigliani,, that is what the msucles remembr.  My faces are long and typically the nose and the neck are long.  I cannot seem to break away fromt ht unless I really concentrate.  I have been doing faces since 2005.  I am a slow learner but my muscles grabbed that first memory really well.

I splurged a couple of years ago and go the Dr Martins inks. I absolutely lvoe them and they last a long long time. (yah, Michael's 30% off coupons.

If I am going to use wide swaths of ink on a canvas background, I use a soft end-bristle brush.

I try not to have a simple colored background.  Many times, while the medium is wet, I will print with paper toweling.

I choose ink for the background of the face so I would get a warm tone.

I love the eyedropper ends to the end.  I can draw and make marks easily with them.

Just getting some basic underpainting in.  When you hae a drawing underneath, it helps to know placement.  My drawings, underneath, are not detailed at all.  They just give me a basic shape.  The magic happens in the painting, for me.

Slowly, she reveals her face to me.  I get up and walk away, come back, do one little thing and go away again.  Sometimes the eye does not see what it shoould.  By walking away, I come back with a new perspective.

I, often use a brown water souable pen to outline so I donot get those darned harsh lines.  I draw then water it down with a tiny flat-edged brush, here.

There, she is softened up.

I wanted some shine to her halo area.  Dargonfly glazes are wonderful for this.

Most of my portraits are done like this.  If I am working in an art journal, I will leave some backgrounds free for an area of writing.