Do not measure in terms of time: one year or ten years means nothing.
For the artist there is no counting or tallying up; just ripening
like the tree that does not force its sap and endures the storms
of spring without fearing that summer will not come. But it will come. 
It comes, however, only to the patient ones who stand there as if all
eternity lay before them– vast, still, untroubled. I learn this every day
of my life, I learn it from hardships I am grateful for: patience is all.

– Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

What do you do with the push against time? How do you ripen like the tree?

            In this short life that only lasts an hour how much                                               how little is within our power  

                     – Emily Dickinson

The 2017 classes and travel began in St Louis this month. William Stafford said of his students:

It is not my job to praise or blame, but in the end, to be envious of their work.

This is what happens, in the end, I get to be envious of what my students have done. I only have a few photos– and so this is merely a glimpse of the work done in three days. Here are some samples of work with the "Greek" alphabet I am developing– and exercises in mark making and abstract painting. All of the images below are from the books the students made and stitched in class. The materials we used are watercolor, sumi ink, china marker and graphite.

Variations of this "Greek" alphabet have been developing over ten years– and more recently because the St Meinrad library– where I spend time on retreat– has many wonderful old books. Dozens of the books and manuscripts were carried over the sea by ship from Europe more than a hundred years ago, and date from a much older time.

How do you deepen your art?

I see a work of art not as a thing in itself, but as a door that opens both ways: out into the world, and inward to your soul. The timeless contemplative practices of going deeper cultivate making as a discovery. This way of operating is participatory, rather than asserting your will. It is based on the assumption that the creative process is inherently sacred, an exchange with something larger than yourself. It is, in fact, a blissful opportunity to forget yourself, your lists, your self-image, your ability, your age, etc. Freshness, power and magnetism in your work comes from depth, not from cleverness. To paraphrase Gerald Manley Hopkins: 

  There lives the dearest freshness in deep down things

How can you know what is arising within you? Long before this constant parade of information, Leonardo da Vinci, in his Notebook, implored us to stop. He believed talent is not so much something one is born with, as something that can be cultivated. He gives us ways to increase our talent by describing a contemplative device, by giving us a way to pause, a method to access our imagination. He confirms that both imagination and talent are faculties that we can develop indirectly by simply paying attention.

Stories and poetry have truth that is timeless, a truth that doesn't change with cultural conditions or politics. To create, we must turn away from the external chaos, and pause and turn within ourselves. As makers, our task is to keep that voice alive, especially in these times of great confusion. Here is Rilke's advice to a young poet:

Think, dear (one), of the world you carry within you... be it remembrance of childhood or longing for your own future. Only be attentive to what is arising in you, and prize it above all that you perceive around you. What happens most deeply inside you is worthy of your whole love. Work with that and don't waste too much time and courage explaining it to other people.

The theme in my classes this year, inspired by my students, is Deepen Your Art Through Daily Practice. I am developing short exercises for lettering, painting and writing that are both active and contemplative. These classes are for anyone who has an interest in making and contemplation– allowing being to inform your doing. What is important is that it is not only your doing (what you make) that changes, but also what you bring to your doing. The awareness that you carry into to your work is an invisible, unmeasurable, dimensional shift. This is what is required for your work to become your own.

For these classes I have also developed a "Greek inspired alphabet" that can be easily taught to beginners or advanced students.

There is space left in the March 4-6 class in St Louis, as well as my classes this summer and fall in Germany (August) with Sabine Danielzig http://www.briefundsiegel.net/, Italy (September) and Ghost Ranch (October) with Barbara Griek http://www.lauriedoctor.com/new-events/ . 

In 2018 I will teach again in St Louis, St Meinrad, Taos, Sitka and Basalt, as well as Naropa University in Boulder, CO.

Please come if you can! I'd love to hear from you.

The tasks that are entrusted to us are often difficult. Almost everything that matters is difficult, and everything matters. – Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke

I think one of the most difficult tasks is to talk open heartedly to each other– by that I mean not just across race, gender and age, but to each other: Trump supporters, Hillary supporters, Bernie supporters. All these allegiances have their reasons.

I don't write about politics. You have all heard about the march, or perhaps you were in DC (or another city!) this weekend– where more than four million people across the globe, of all ages, races and religions gathered. We had no security checks, no violence and no fear.  It was an extraordinary experience of being in the midst of what is most admirable in human beings. 

We marched in harmony, good humor and kindness, all the way to the Washington Monument. The only policeman we saw along the way was when my friend and I climbed onto the roof behind the Smithsonian in order to see Gloria Steinem. Everyone down from the roof the policeman shouted. Once we were all back on the ground, he ran along the high wall, waving his arms as the crowd clapped and cheered for him.

Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet has advice that is timeless to anyone struggling to find, (and then lose), and find again, his or her voice– or struggling in these troubled times:

...We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This in the end is the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.

I didn't know there was a black walnut tree in these woods. I discovered it by stepping on bones and feathers in the mist of leaves and mud below its mantle. Great Horned Owl feathers! Last year at this time– after hearing a pair of these owls bring in the dawn with their mating calls– I found an entire perfect wing. The only predator these owls have are each other. One pair has a mile of territory. If this was a dream, surely it would be about loss and fragility, the season of winter– but also the sense of magic and mystery in the natural world. If I were in a story (which of course I am) I would know that things happen in threes, and this is the third remains of Great Horned Owl I have found.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. 

–Richard Rohr

day draw near
another one
do what you can.

–On Angels, Czeslaw Milosz