A Time to Be, A Time to Act

I was blessed last week to be living the dream: a week of solitude at a house by the sea. It’s place for writers and artists to use as a retreat, if we are lucky enough to win a coveted spot. My front deck this week looks out over the Salish Sea to the mainland mountains. Each day as I sip my morning coffee, I  listen to the raven in the tall Douglas fir squawking up a storm of commentary on the comings and goings on the water. 

My last blog was titled “A Time to Do” and I will be sharing more about what I’ve been doing a bit further on. But I have decided that this week is not for doing, it is for being. It’s popular these days to talk about “resetting your life” and it’s true that I am in a time of transition, moving from one direction to another. I’m here to listen, think, dream, read, learn, and be “re-created.”

The last few months, I’ve been dipping in and out of the book 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The theme of the book is this: the average lifespan of a human being is about 4000 weeks. How will you spend those weeks? Time is not a commodity you can buy and keep in a box, taking out another bit when you need it.

“We live mentally in the future, waiting for when we’ll finally get around to what really matters,” he writes. “But nobody in the history of humanity has ever been able to achieve work-life balance.  We feel pressured to live by a set of ideas about how to use our limited time, and we will always fall short."

The bottom line is this: we have to make choices. We will never do everything we thought we wanted to do. And, as Mary Oliver writes in her beloved poem, The Summer Day: "What is it that you want to do with your one wild and precious life?" I’ve asked myself this question often, and depending on where I’m at in my life, the answers change: be a good mom; become a writer; be an artist. And now...?

I’ve already surpassed the magic number of 4000: I’m into my 4019th week on planet earth. The sands of time are trickling down the tube. How am I doing? Am I making the best use of the time I have left? 

And after writing that last blog in February, with prayer and reflection, this is what I concluded in my journal:
 

“The universe is a grand experiment in Love, created by the source of Love, and I believe that Love wins in the end. How can we help Love win in the end? We are puny folk, tiny dots on a tiny blue dot in the universe. And most of us are the weakest of the puny folk; we have no power or pull to change
the big decisions that direct the happenings in nations, businesses, communications. Can what we do really help the cause of Love, Compassion, Kindness – those God-breathed abstracts that in the end will be the powers that save the world? I must have faith that, YES, what we puny folk do matters.”

And so I began again to try and work out these messages in art.

I finished the piece I started, "Dark Clouds on the Horizon", shown in the previous blog. Now my grandchildren are walking toward those dark clouds. This is a very hard reality. But praise be, there is light beyond the darkness. 

 

And then I began a new project to address the trauma that we all feel when we listen to the news of climate change, wars, starvation, violence, divisions, erosion of democracy around the world. Its working title is Alphabet of Trauma Care: 26 pieces of fibre art that some day, hopefully, will hang together in a show. 

Words matter. These days we are assaulted by harsh words every day, words that fill us with dread and anxiety that can paralyze us. It is a form of trauma. So in my work now, I will try to create art that brings a message of healing for those of us struggling with the trauma of our times. Each piece will focus on a positive word of encouragement to counter the flood of negative messages we are getting. I will find and use words that cover every letter of the alphabet.  

 A is for ACT, for instance, because Action is the antidote to despair, says activist Joan Baez.

 

The gardener, when she sees weeds growing in her garden, gets out the shovel and digs.

Creating art will be my Action, my antidote to despair. Mostly, these words will be inspired by quotes, poems, or essays by better writers than I am, and those words will be applied to the back side of the work.

And though we can't do everything, we can do something. Thus, B is for Bloom Where You Are Planted. These chicory and queen anne's lace flowers decorate a stony roadside.

We are not helpless pawns on the chessboard of history. What we do, say, think, write, dance, and sing matters. How we touch each other, hold each other, work with each other, those actions matter. 

This project has helped to bring healing to me. I am not so naive as to think that my little pieces of art will change the world, or inspire grand acts of healing in viewers. but perhaps they will touch one, and one is all that matters. And I have found the one thing, right now, that I can do with my wild and precious life. And in future blogs, perhaps I’ll share more with you.