Held by the Earth
This collection of works has emerged from a deepening relationship and reverence for the earth and for our human bodies (which are made of that same earth). We are held, we hold. Woven through it are themes of tending- to the cycles and seasons of life, to our own beings, to that which is difficult to hold. Attuning to the tides and the cycles of the moon brings a rhythm to our own bodies, a belonging, a seasonality, that holds and tends. A poem I wrote years ago now, still speaks to this work:
The earth is alive,
a matrix of belonging,
breathing us in, out.
From our belonging we breathe.
May these images offer nourishment to your own being and reverence for your earthen body.
Excerpts from David Whyte’s poem, Coleman’s Bed, have lived with me through the making of these images and I share part of it here:
Coleman’s Bed
Make a nesting now, a place to which
the birds can come, think of Kevin's
prayerful palm holding the blackbird's egg
and be the one, looking out from this place
who warms interior forms into light.
Feel the way the cliff at your back
gives shelter to your outward view
and then bring in from those horizons
all discordant elements that seek a home.
Be taught now, among the trees and rocks,
how the discarded is woven into shelter,
learn the way things hidden and unspoken
slowly proclaim their voice in the world.
Find that far inward symmetry
to all outward appearances, apprentice
yourself to yourself, begin to welcome back
all you sent away, be a new annunciation,
make yourself a door through which
to be hospitable, even to the stranger in you.