Medicine Art

Making art has been healing for me; I've used it throughout my life to explore my grief and my hopes. But I've felt disconnected from inspiration for quite a long while now.

Lately I've been wondering how I can use my art skills (and teaching art skills) to help heal the rift in our human connection to the Earth. I've opened myself to that possibility for the last month, and finally have just a glimmer of insight. This month I'm practicing all the ways I can think of to connect to my muse, and see a path forward for me and art.

Agenda:

1. Read "Healing with the Arts"

2. Weekly lesson

3. Guided meditation

4. Make a medicine art plan

1. Read "Healing with the Arts":

I'm reading "Healing with the Arts" by Michael Samuels and Mary R. Lane. This is a "12-week program to heal yourself and your community." The basic assumption is that everyone is an artist and everyone is a healer and that using art frees your healer to heal.

I'm on the fourth chapter: Finding Out What Needs to be Healed. This week I'm asked to look at my story of darkness, pain, and suffering, and transform it into a creative healing journey. The book is framed for all kinds of healing, and my hope is to, first, heal my own relationship with the earth, then teach others how to heal our community connection to the earth.

ᛞ Dæg or Dagaz - Day or Dawn;
 symbolic of awakening, awareness,
balance, or transcendence. 

But it's rather more complex than that, if I'm honest. I want to heal my feeling of ancestral remorse; a deep sense of guilt for what my ancestors have done to the earth and to people of color because they believed they were chosen by God; because of their massive egos. Trying to convince myself that it "wasn't my fault" has not been effective.

I'm asked to remember that, "this is not about fixing." I'm supposed to listen to my story, be neutral, and make a loving connection. "What is your gift that you can see when you go to your essence to heal? ... This process is about creating a connectedness to yourself. ... In this process, your creativity develops your own ability to understand and share your experience with the world. ... Your creativity can open up channels that put you in right relationship with the universal divine source of creativity."

2. Weekly lesson:

This week I'm instructed to: 

• Write in my journal, identify my own healing needs, and how it's affecting my life.
• Connect my hurting self to my healing self, with a Golden Thread meditation. 
• Draw images of what needs healing.
• Define my Medicine Art project

3. Guided meditation: 

I am instructed to go to my sacred art place again, which is a spot in my front Sanctuary Garden, slow my breathing, sit in silence; then ask a higher power to come to me. Here's my prayer:

I call on the Creator of all life to be with me, and bless me. And I ask Nature to guide me, give me images, and insight, as I seek to heal myself, my community, and the Earth.  

Next, the authors have written a guided meditation to follow, Connect Your Hurting Self to Your Healing Self. I decided re-write it and tape it, and the audio files are here:

When I did this meditation, it was my shoulders and back that came to mind as the part of me that hurt: I felt bowed over by the weight of my sadness and sense of responsibility. I pictured myself under a huge dark cloud. Now I also have the image of the golden thread.

4. Make a medicine art plan:

The authors suggest that I begin to hone in on a project that will be my Medicine Art, something I will enjoy doing, that will heal myself, or my community, or the Earth; something I will do now. 

It needs to be something I'm passionate about (working with children perhaps?); something I'm drawn to (using materials from nature? using fabric?); something that connects to who I want to be (a painter, a writer, a quilter).

I'm instructed to start by slowing down, noticing beauty, letting go of worry, being present in the moment. Consider everything I could do that is creative. If I could do anything I wanted to what would it be?

Journal about what it is I want to heal, and keep re-writing it until I get a sense of the connections and compelling themes. "What makes you buzz and vibrate when you read your answers?" Create an intention to heal a specific aspect of my life. And also write down practical concerns about my project: Make a plan that has a timeframe, and a list of materials. 

Then collect the materials. Commit to a work schedule. Once I have a hint of an idea, just begin - "creativity unplugs the wellspring. ... When you just start, anything can happen".