“Turn me into song…”
How do you refresh your relationship with what is sacred?
The ancient idea of having a gatekeeper, a guardian for a sacred place, returns at a time when most gates have become porous to continuous interruptions — we are all “on call.” But without the stability of a gatekeeper that protects the threshold as barrier, the lightning-fast change that we are all a part of overruns its bounds, and transformation becomes a superficial commodity.
The kind of work that emerges when everyone agrees to protecting uninterrupted time is unpredictable, powerful, and often a breakthrough for the maker. This is what keeps me teaching — the delight that comes from doing work that you don’t already know how to do, from doing things that may be “ugly” or surprising or unexpected by taking the risk to be unavailable to anyone except the muse, by dipping into the Unknown.
What follows are some examples from the students in my recent class in San Francisco, a magnificent group. The work speaks for itself.
"Come, let's stand by the window..." — Danusha Laméris
Each morning after meditation when I head down to my studio, there is a process of re-orientation. I used to think that after I had been painting this long I would walk into my studio and know what to do. This hasn’t happened yet. So I begin with my opening ritual — a way of re-orienting a mind in chaos. I take a glass from the altar and fill it with clear water. I light incense and ring a bell. Above the altar I have pictures of my guides, friends and family. I express my gratitude. An old greeting card is also posted on the wall, with a child’s drawing of a train climbing up a hill with the caption yes you can, yes you can, yes you can.