100 Days for Mandalas – Starts August 12th – Moon & Sunflowers
July 31st, 2013
100 Days for Mandalas – Session Three – Starts August 12th, 2013. This is an announcement and invitation to join in a couple of weeks. So much creativity and depth has been shared in the previous two sessions of 100 Days for Mandalas. Please join in. I feel l like these eggs waiting to hatch until the next session. (More on this mandala below.)
100 Days for Mandalas is a summer camp creativity retreat where people can express their deep inner yearnings through mandalas, words and art journaling. The intention is to create a sacred space for creativity in whatever way works for each person, whether that is creating 100+ mandalas, one mandala or only viewing the works of others. This will be the third session. Here is a link to the first 100 Days invitation that explains it all.
As I wait for the 100 Days for Mandalas session, I have been finding mandalas are helping my journey with a book group assignment, poems and my garden. My book group is reading Saved by a Poem by Kim Rosen. Part of what this book is about is memorizing by heart, and embodying a poem that you can recite. The poem that is slowly becoming part of me is The Practice by E Klinger. I looooove this poem. It reminds me of how to live my life.
The mandalas and words help me embody the poem. I created mandalas with some of the words and an image that completes the experience for me. These two mandala art journal pages use words from the poem I am learning.
Perhaps my favorite lines of this poem are: “disregard detours, a trip around the world when instead you prefer full moons rising in your backyard.”
A few days ago I picked up a Mary Oliver book of poems and next to it was another treat by E Klinger. It was a small book she created of the many moon names for each month.
When I opened the Mary Oliver book, the poem that my fingers landed on was the poem Worm Moon. I then created a mandala with a few lines that inspired me: ” In March the earth remembers its own name … the moon and the earth are eloping … and probably everything is possible.”
Shortly before I created this mandala I received in the mail some new wooden stamps – this one of an owl – that are hand carved in India. This owl was perfect for this mandala and the Mary Oliver’s words. The owl seems so wise and knows.
The flowers also know. Sunflowers are blooming now all over my gardens. I throw sunflower bird seed into the garden in the winter and spring before anything new grows. The sunflowers as if by magic grow. Once they bloom, as if by magic the gold finches appear. The spiral of the seeds in their fibonancci sequence are actually a mathematical formula for infinity. (I can explain if you really want to know.) I used another new wooden stamp for the spiral and flower and sunflower mandala above. Some mornings I photograph the beauty of these flowers as they share their mandala wisdom with me.
PS – Here is a link to read an article I wrote that was published in the July 2013 issue of The Healthy Planet called Sunflowers and Sunflower Houses.
