Burning Question
Author: bsefran
A Gun-Free Salute, for Remembrance Day.
Why airmen in particular? I made this one a few years ago, because of an incident in my wartime childhood which has always stayed with me, and because of old family connections to the airforce. I have never understood why we celebrate so many peace-related events, or greet royalty for instance, by shooting a weapon!
Of course I wear a red poppy in remembrance of ALL the fallen – in WWII and all other wars.
But I ALSO wear a WHITE poppy, and for those of you who don’t know about it… here is some info about it:
The fallen forces of the countries who are fighting are not the only fallen! Many, many, more deaths are civilians. If you wear a white poppy, it is best to wear a red one as well. White ones upset some people!
There are many websites about it; the site below explains the reasons to wear a white poppy. Unfortunately, that site is not clickable from here, but you can Google White Poppies or Peace Poppies.
A Dance to Warm November
The Wind amongst the Leaves
A Celtic Blessing: Deep Peace to You
This is a Celtic blessing which I love. Here is one of several versions of it:
Try saying it out loud, even to yourself, and see if it doesn’t make you feel peaceful!
For Ynot
Rumi Quote
This quote from one of Rumi’s most-loved poems can be interpreted in many different ways.
Here is one interpretation which I like:
“Fundamentally for me this is a lyrical invitation to discover your true calling (“the beauty we love”) and express that authentically in the world (“be what we do”)….The extension of the invitation is to embrace the permission to release the “should” and follow the golden thread of what truly makes you feel alive. (Julia McCutcheon)”
This was a card which I made long ago for a friend who was taking a huge step in his life to follow his heart. It is made from a rubbing over real plants. The fern is my favourite plant and a very ancient one. Ferns were found in fossils 360 million years ago, but most around today did not appear until 145 million years ago!
Fall Whirlwind
This is a Fall whirlwind, just a little local one, catching up all the fallen leaves.
But “whirlwinds” can happen at any time, unexpected happenings, things you never imagined would happen can suddenly shake up your life. It’s not always easy, among the debris, to search for the gifts such shake-ups may bring. But it is possible!
Autumn Garden
The Tree in a Holy Fog
THE TREE IN A HOLY FOG. What does that mean? Why a holy fog? To you, it can mean whatever you would like it to mean ! I’ll tell you how it came about and some of its meanings to me. This tree is is one of my series, The Tree as Spiritual Symbol, and it has been the most popular one! “The Tree”, in most cases, represents the individual person in their particular world but also sometimes our society in general.
I made this one after a workshop in which people were invited to draw themselves as a tree, in a setting in which they felt they were right now . The results were as interesting as the people themselves! Later, I kept on drawing more versions of my own tree.
Why a holy fog? There are different kinds of fog.
This fog is not a fog which we are able, or not able, to see physically with our eyes.
It stands for not knowing and also the uncertainty in which we always live, but even more acutely so these days.
“Uncertainty” is mostly used about something specific, when we really want to know something exactly and we can’t. Something which we think should be calculable, like how long this pandemic will last, how long will I live etc? It’s a state of limited knowledge where it is impossible to exactly describe the existing state, a future outcome, or more than one possible outcome. In science, uncertainty is a useful concept!
“Not Knowing”, is a Zen phrase. According to Suzuki Roshi, “Not-knowing does not mean you don’t know. It doesn’t require us to forget everything we have known or to suspend all interpretations of a situation. Not-knowing means not being limited by what we know, holding what we know lightly so that we are ready for it to be different. Maybe things are this way. But maybe they are not.”
We cannot really ever know Infinite Reality, whether we think of that in religious, or scientific terms, or both, because we ourselves are NOT Infinite. But still we have to act.
In these Covid times, many of us, in our isolation and overwhelmed with decisions to make, find ourselves, off and on, in a our own small local fog of needing to just tune out from the situation, by music, TV, the web, media, reading . . .whatever! And that is good . . . for limited periods. No one can exist in stress forever and these things reduce stress. But we cannot let ourselves be paralyzed by the pandemic.
In this picture, you may notice that the fog immediately around the Tree is lighter than further off. I didn’t design it that way; it just happened! Perhaps that shows that it is possible to keep a circle of “light” around you, even in stormy times. In a real fog, we do see what is immediately around us, even if we can’t see very far!
The fog is a holy one, because, as William Blake, Thomas Merton and others have said, “Everything that lives is holy”. The word “holy” has roots in ancient words meaning “whole, entire, complete, uninjured” and “sacred”, and we are part of a Whole beyond our imagination.
I invite you, too, to take out your pencils, and draw yourself as a tree, in this pandemic, or in any of your situations! Just for yourself. Lots of trees, if you like. It can be fun, even healing. A tree is easy to draw: it just has a trunk, some branches, and, most importantly ROOTS, even tho, as in this picture, the roots are not always visible above ground. But they are there!
Stay rooted!