Witness (verb): To have personal or direct cognizance of something important or amazing; to see or experience something oneself, and then to testify, make a statement based on that personal knowledge or belief.
In the Bible, “bearing witness,” is when someone sees something important or amazing, and then begins to share what they’ve seen. Quakers call it testimony - the public witness of an inward faith; the consequence of one’s relationship to God and the outworking of that relationship in one’s life. Friends have always believed that what was most important was how you live your faith in the world.
Today I will review my start-of-year intentions, and see if I need to make a change or a recommittal.
Agenda:
1. Review Witness intentions
2. Witness ideas for fall
3. Tiny steps for art as witness
4. Recharge my talisman
1. Review Witness intentions:
At the start of the year I said I want "to be a witness ... to my understanding and experience of unity with nature, to a simple life, to hope and resilience and love. And I want to be an inspirational witness. I want to grow as a witness, with all my abilities and talents."
And I would add I want to be a witness to cultural sensitivity.
Today I re-commit myself to this intention:
I intend to be an inspirational and creative witness to my family, friends and community - I want to witness to my understanding and experience of unity with nature, to a simple life, to cultural sensitivity, to hope and resilience and love, by speaking truth through my words and actions, with my writing, and my art, and with leading by example, in ways that inspires the passion I feel, because my main mission in life is to be a creative force for change.
2. Witness ideas for fall:
- Study and learn how to be inspirational with speaking and writing.
- Keep a Witness Journal, to record my intentions, motivations, and plans for action each day, and how to release the clenched fist of defensiveness.
- Create a new personal website for selling collages, and posting writings.
- Re-evaluate our Earthcare group, and set some witness goals: Update and print our earth care pamphlet; blog comment challenge; pollinator event.
- Plan some art and craftivism projects that might inspire the passion for change that I feel.
- Build a Witness spot in my front garden to share craftivism items. (My garden as testimony!)
- Create a unity arts booklet to print and share.
- Research new actions I can take to improve my buying habits and ecological being, and write about them.
- Review the habits of love that best motivate and support my role as a witness.
3.
Do the smallest thing:
Because artwork is one of my top ways to bear witness, and because it is also one of the hardest to follow through on, I use the "daily tiny step" approach.
Doing the smallest thing helps me to succeed - I make a list of small things I need to do for my current projects, print it, and assign one or two per day.
Some of my small tasks this week:
- Draw and paint more butterflies on my wall.
- Visualize the essence of "forest".
- Bark rubbing with grandsons.
- Collect more tree cones.
- Collect fortunes, images and papers for Forest collage (use bark rubbings?).
- Finish forest collage with grandsons.
- Sew frame pieces on a Small Forest appliqué.
- Write craftivism tag for forests
- Print and cut forest tags; prep string, and make some hanging cones to share.
- Study and plan a collage-gluing practice, and begin to glue Fortune for Forests.
4. Re-charge my talisman:
Because I chose witness for the earth, I decided to make a small earth-shaped talisman, and I decided I needed something I could wear around my neck and keep on through the night, for simplicity's sake, so I chose cloth and a stone.
I cut and sewed a circle, inserted a round stone, and sewed it closed - took me 30-minutes.
Today will re-charge the talisman with energy: Close my eyes and center myself with deep breaths ... feel my energy well up inside, and then allow it to flow through my hands into my talisman, until I feel it is full.
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