QUIET the mind...open the HEART

"Meditation speaks. It speaks in silence. It reveals. It reveals to the aspirant that matter and spirit are one, quantity and quality are one, the immanent and the transcendent are one."

Sri Chinmoy

Sanctuary

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/sanctuary-lianne-schneider.html

In the last post, I spoke about the first steps towards listening to your heart and I mentioned that in this post, I'd talk a little bit about meditation and introduce you to a guided meditation to open your heart. Steve Mueller, author of the "Personal Development Blog Gone Wild" on his Planet of Success blogsite lists a number of steps for beginning the practice of meditation that I'm going to share with you here:

1. Sit down in a comfortable upright position
2. Make sure that your spine is straight
3. Focus your attention on your respiratory organs
4. Feel the natural flow of air entering and leaving your body
5. Allow your mind to calm down, while you focus on breathing
6. [Optional] Begin to vocalize the mantra of your choice
7. Watch as your mind begins to ease, enjoy the inner peace
8. Enjoy the tranquility and go with what feels natural to you
9. If a thought begins to arise, think and contemplate about it
10. If a certain scenario/day-dream begins to unfold, follow it
11. Remain in the meditative state as long as it feels right

All of those steps are important and they sound easy enough, but I suspect that for most of us it's a bit more difficult than this. I'm reminded of a scene from Eat, Pray, Love, where Julia Roberts is attempting to discipline herself to meditate. She's living in an ashram and the discipline involves getting up at 4 a.m. and spending several hours in the meditation room in the lotus position. But the harder she tries, the more impossible it is. Her mind races, fills with inconsequential thoughts and distractions and she begins to question herself. "Why can't I do this right?" "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Now she's angry and frustrated and a long way from the inner peace meditation is supposed to bring! I can sympathize. My first attempts at even a guided meditation were dismal "failures" for the same reasons and I would say to my instructor again and again, "I can't do this right."

To prepare myself for meditation, I like to listen to the sound of trickling water - a personal tabletop waterfall is just the thing. But what helped me the most apart from having settled on a mantra with which I could be comfortable, was to really focus on step 3 above...paying attention to the breath. I mean consciously following your breath in and out with a predetermined intention to breathe IN peace and breathe OUT negative feelings, energy, thoughts. Breathe in through the nose, deeply, and in your mind's eye follow the air into your lungs and more importantly, into your heart. See your breath as if it were light - filling your body - your arms, legs, torso but centering in the heart. When you breathe back out, do so through your mouth but expel the air slowly. Do this by pursing your lips, shaping them as if you were going to whistle or blow up a balloon and feel the resistance through which the air has to pass. At the same time pull in your tummy and contract your diaphragm. Slow deep breaths keep you from hyperventilating, slow your heart rate and oxygenate and refresh the body. At first, you may find it difficult to pair this breathing practice with repeating a mantra but eventually you will find a rhythm that breathes in on the first syllable or part of the syllable and out on the second part. For example, if you are using the traditional Om mantra (pronounced approximately Oh-um but without the clear syllabification) you would breathe in deeply through your nose on "Oh," hold it for a second or two and breathe out slowly, compressing the diaphragm on "um." Likewise if you use the word "Abba" - in on "Ab" and out on "ba."

After about 10 breaths, and with twice daily or even once daily practice for a week, the breathing/mantra combination will feel very natural and in the manner of "self-hypnosis" will get you to a very relaxed and receptive state in which you can begin to open and listen to your heart - steps 7 through 11 in Mueller's list.

Below you'll find a very simple guided meditation to open the heart chakra (a chakra is an energy center in the body that we may talk about in a later post). This is only eight minutes long but it introduces you to three methods of locating and opening your heart chakra. 

From EnergyFundamentals.org

There are many wonderful sites online where you can listen to various kinds of meditation, experience guided meditations geared toward specific purposes and even download some of them for repeated use. I have dozens of these in my files as well as some meditation systems I've paid for which I personally find helpful but think they are an unnecessary expense in most cases. Online, one of my favorite sites for guided meditations is http://www.tarabrach.com/new-to-meditation.html where you will find some very helpful introductory exercises and then some really beautiful longer meditations. That's where I go when I cannot meditate without a guide - and for me, that's most of the time. 

Next post - the remaining steps to listening to the heart. Beginning next Wednesday, I will be offline and unable to post for several weeks although I am going to try to write a post or two in advance and schedule them to post when I am away. 

Digital Painting and the question of value - continued

"Nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Oscar Wilde

Mum's Mum

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/mums-mum-lianne-schneider.html

The question of value - the price that digital art commands in the art marketplace - is a complicated one. Few would argue the point that a traditional painting is a one of a kind possession while digital art is purposely made for duplication. Yet most traditional artists today have their work professionally photographed in order to produce at least limited edition prints of their "masterpiece." Museums sell prints, posters and art cards of famous works. Yet none of this activity reduces the value of the original work. I contend that the digital artist's original work was often as time consuming and difficult to produce as the painter's. [As I said in my short rant the other day, in some cases I suspect that it is MORE time consuming and difficult. How many "Oneness" paintings do you think Newman could have created in a day if they are similar to that one? Several I'm sure - yet it takes me two weeks full time to do most of my digital paintings.] And it is certainly possible that a digital artist could, if he/she wished to, limit the number of prints, or restrict the reproductions to giclee on canvas in order to increase the value of those reproductions. A Certificate of Authenticity might also reassure buyers that there is intrinsic value in a print or canvas of a digital work. But even employing those methods, could a digital artist expect to command the kind of price for even a large limited edition print than prints of an original oil or acrylic would get? 

I don't think so. In an article back in 2008, the TUTS website posted on its Design and Illustration division "54 Mind-Blowing Digital Paintings." Virtually ALL of them were Manga comics, fantasy figures, game figures, or illustrations - all brilliant yes - but none that looked like traditional paintings and all designed for digital viewing, gaming or animation. None commanded a $44 million price tag either. That has changed very little in the past six years - traditional digital painting seldom makes it into these lists and fractal art virtually never. Fantasy art and 3D continue to command the most attention and the highest prices for digital art because these forms are essential to video gaming, animation and interactive web designs. 

There IS some hope, however, whether you are a traditional digital painter or a digital abstract artist. The "hope" comes in the form of an article in Vulture by Jerry Saltz that is something of a "swan song" for the traditional gallery show. Decrying the fact that art shows go up but "without much consequence except for sales or no sales," Saltz says that internet sites now offer "high end sales" and online art auctions and that such sites are proliferating at an amazing pace. This means "art is about nothing but commerce" which is not what the gallery venue was; it was a place to engage with other artists, critics and students of art, a place for conversation and thought. He complains, "When so much art is sold online and at art fairs, it's great for the lucky artists who make money but it leaves out everyone who isn't already a brand." Art dealer, Kenny Schachter goes a step further, noting that "the higher and higher prices are for fewer and fewer artists." 

Dealing an additional blow to the gallery show, auction houses like Christie's are now providing a venue for emerging artists "unrepresented by galleries," and in this way making that art available only to collectors, not the general public. This again, is a great thing for the few lucky artists selected by such auction houses (physical auctions or online auction houses like ArtSpace) but such art remains the possession of the wealthy, and the very process, says Saltz, "makes being around art less special. Too many buyers keep their purchases in storage, in crates, awaiting resale. Mediocre Chinese photorealism has become a tradeable packaged good." 

So the narrow thread of "hope" offered by the death of the physical gallery show still offers little enough in the way of value and acceptance to the digital artist. I see "high end art" on a site I belong to and I've no idea how it was selected to be on that "high end" page. Most of the items offer a high priced original oil or acrylic, however, so I personally do not consider that traditional digital painting. These pieces were created as traditional art works initially and THEN digitized for much lower priced prints. Digital art, BY DEFINITION, is art created originally with digital tools and digital techniques. My own painting above is certainly no Georgia O'Keefe, nor does it pretend to be but it was hand-painted digitally stroke by stroke (in this case pointillist dot by pointillist dot) just as O'Keefe did her flowers. 

I am represented by a small gallery in upstate New York but sales in this gallery tend to be original photography or original oil/acrylic works, sculpture and jewelry and that is primarily who is represented by this gallery - photographers and traditional artists. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare. I have friends whose photographic art (photographs altered by applying textures or recomposing several photographic images) is licensed by high volume publishers and while I consider their work to be art in the truest sense of the word, and I'm incredibly happy for each of them that their artwork is popular enough to make a living from it, that is not the case for most of us who are digital artists and digital painters. Saltz ponders the question of the future of medium sized and small galleries by asking, "I wonder if a much bigger shakeout is about to happen, one that makes art resemble any mainstream business." And if it's just business, is it art? 

The question of value then is multifaceted. Does a piece have value because it's in a traditional medium, because the critics like it, because a gallery is willing to show it, an auction house willing to auction it...or is its value based solely on market forces. Can a digital work even begin to compete and if so, how will the value of such easily reproducible art be maintained or even increased? If I were to license and sell 20,000 copies of the digital painting above would that make it more or less valuable as a work of art? If I master the business tools of social media, online art sites, self-promotion, looking at trends, checking out decor magazines for hot colors, do I do that at the cost of the actual artistic merits of my work? Or am I just smart enough to realize that digital art and digital painting are not meant to be measured by the same standards as an original oil and that its very accessibility and availability to the average person who loves what they see and can actually afford to own it makes it more valuable? I think the day is coming when a person will look at a digital painting and say, "I love that painting...Oh good, it's digital - and that means I can own it!"  Value is really not so much in the medium as in the eye of the beholder as well as in the heart of the artist who created it. 

Digital painting and the question of value...

"Wow, this painting is great! ...oh, it's only digital." 

Kelley McMorris

Outer Harbor - South Entrance
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/buffalo-south-entrance-light-lianne-schneider.html

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a wonderful illustration posted on Facebook that had been reposted from artist/illustrator Kelley McMorris' blog. At the top was a sketch of a digital artist thinking and planning his/her next digital art creation - paying attention to light, form, composition, color, message. This kind of thinking goes into the creation of a digital work BEFORE one ever puts pen to tablet just as it goes into creating a traditional artwork before putting brush to canvas. At the bottom of the illustration, however, was another sketch of the same artist sitting back in his/her chair and saying, "Computer draw me a horse." The two sketches demonstrate the difference between what actually happens in the process of creating a digital artwork and what the public perception of such art might be.

Until I took up digital painting, I probably suffered from the same misconceptions. Now, I know better and, like many other digital artists - illustrators, cartoonists, 3D fantasy creators, fractal artists as well as digital painters - I'm anxious for the day that digitally created art is perceived by both the public and gallery owners and art critics as valid and valuable art. That day has not yet arrived. Few critics can even agree on what constitutes "digital art" let alone consider it for the rarefied atmosphere of upscale galleries. Isn't most photography digital now? Photography as art seems to make the cut for what constitutes "fine art" though photo composites and significantly altered and textured works are not viewed the same way. Besides, I don't recall any photograph ever bringing $44 million at auction. (I'm speaking of the recent auction price for the Barnett Newman "Onement VI" painting that looks like a blue ping pong table top).

I hope you'll pardon my outrage about this but just because some ritzy art critic decided to tout Newman's series of paintings in New York art circles doesn't make it art, let alone art worth $44 million. Perhaps it's the "little green monster" at work in me, but I can assure you that a great deal more thought, time, effort, reflection about mood and message went into my digital painting pictured above than went into this work. Give me a roll of blue painters' tape and a gallon of oil based house paint and I could create the match for this in red or yellow or whatever color the critic might like. Then there is the $75 million for a 1950 Rothko, or the $148 million for Jackson Pollack's No. 5...but I'll stop there.

There is debate even within the digital painters' circle though about whether what we do is merely a duplication of traditional painting techniques or an expansion of them, and further whether a work created specifically for reproduction and print, even in limited editions, could ever have the value of a singular "original" traditional painting. So let's dissect the process and the question of reproducibility versus value.

Writer/artist Stephen Danzig contends, "Within the digital creative matrix is a human consciousness that must utilize the traditional processes of understanding line, color theory and subject matter - its linear function is the same by definition as traditional processes and must be judged and valued accordingly." There is some agreement about the similarities in the creative processes. According to the Wikipedia article on digital painting, "As a method of creating an art object, it adapts traditional painting medium such as acrylic paint, oils, ink, etc. and applies the pigment to traditional carriers, such as woven canvas cloth, paper, polyester etc. by means of computer software driving industrial robotic or office machinery (printers)....'Traditional digital painting' creates an image in a stroke-by-stroke, brush-in-hand fashion but the canvas and the painting tools are digital." 

I consider myself a traditional digital painter because even though I work from a sketch or a reference photograph, I apply each stroke and color in my painting individually just as if I were working with acrylics (my previous traditional medium) on wood or canvas. I work doubly hard to create the effect of tooth, texture, brushstrokes - aspects of a finished painting that would be automatic using traditional materials. I am not talking about programs - and there are many excellent ones on the market - like Corel Painter that will "clone" a photograph and convert it into any kind of painting with just a few keystrokes and the push of a few buttons. (Not that that is as easy as it looks either!) I am talking about starting with a blank "canvas" or a simple black and white sketch and actually painting each brushstroke, being responsible for color mixing, type and size of brush, desired output style, proper lighting and so forth. Even using a reference photo - as a painter would use a model or paint in plein air - does not negate the incredibly detailed work the true digital painter has to do.

This is where the disagreement often begins about the merits of digital painting. It is both harder and easier than traditional painting, I think. It is harder because as J. D. Jarvis, the Museum of Computer Art's contributing editor says, "Digital artists work hard to mimic the effects of gravity, absorption or resistance and interaction with grain and texture that happen naturally (or by chance) with physical materials. And, since these "accidents" shape the nature of such material-based work, digital tools force us into devising new virtual techniques." I have to use digitally rendered effects like "noise" or "grunge" or canvas texture to give my work the same kind of dimension and texture a physical painting would have. But it's easier and more freeing too for several reasons. Contrary to Stephen Danzig's assertion that digital art has the same linear function as traditional art, creating a digital painting or illustration is NOT a linear process. It is a layered process. Some of my digital paintings or digital composites have more than 30 layers. One folk art painting I did had 84 separate layers before I was even remotely satisfied with the final project. This is a major difference but one that should bring added value to the finished output. "Digital tools offer production techniques ...such as multiple undos and the ability to save and combine previous renditions of a single project and, thereby, allows us to risk pushing a composition in a direction that while it may have destroyed a physical work on traditional materials, only brings a digital composition greater depth and more polish. If nothing else, we are allowed to know that flash of inspiration wasn't really a good way to go after all and can return to the previous undamaged state. For this reason alone, digital compositions should be the strongest, most polished and thoroughly explored compositions in art and, at the same time, the most spontaneous." 

To be continued in Friday's post....

Giving up? Or merely letting go?

We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. –Joseph Campbell

A Song of What Will Be

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/a-song-of-what-will-be-lianne-schneider.html

 
Daniell Koepke, founder of the Internal Acceptance Movement, speaks of the wide gap between what it means to give up and what it means to let go, to accept things as they are. She says, "There is a big difference between giving up and letting go. Giving up means selling yourself short. It means allowing fear and struggle to limit your opportunities and keep you stuck. Letting go means freeing yourself from something that is no longer serving you. Giving up reduces your life. Letting go expands it. Giving up is imprisoning. Letting go is liberation. Giving up is self-defeat. Letting go is self-care."

We've probably all struggled at some time or another with this difference and often our unwillingness to let go is a sign that we see that act as giving up, as failing to live up to our own standards or promises. We don't see letting go as an opportunity to change for the better or to move on to a greater sense of self-worth or happier relationships. Particularly when it comes to relationships, we have a tendency to cling to the past, even to romanticize or idealize them. Letting go of someone we have loved intensely, someone WE chose, seems both an admission of failure and a betrayal of a love we promised would be everlasting. Too often, even when someone breaks our hearts, we just cannot make ourselves let go. We lie to ourselves, in fact, calling our determination to stick it out even when the relationship is brutally demeaning an act of hope. 

I've watched friends hold on to relationships that were abusive, destructive and completely unfulfilling. I've stayed with relationships myself that totally undermined my self-esteem, convinced me that I was not "good enough" to merit a fully loving and intimate relationship. I've rationalized the choice to stay as the result of how I was raised, the way my Church defines love as all giving and no getting, self-sacrifice, and loving without expectations. To expect something from another is selfish love - or so I was led to believe. I've continued to love through hurt after hurt and comforted myself with the idea that I was a person of my word, faithful to my promises. That's all well and good but cold comfort when all one has at the end of the day - or a life - is a chimera.

But through all that I've learned a lot of valuable lessons and I hear the same thing from others who have finally been able to let go of the past - whether it involves a relationship, a career failure, a loss of a friend or loved one, a pet, or even one's long lost youth. Says American Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, "To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit." To let go is to release our spirit to soar and dive, to find its own heights and depths. To let go is to believe in a future that is "more." To let go is to forgive not only the "other" to which we cling, but ourselves for not having the courage to untie the ropes that have bound us to the past.

So it's important not to confuse giving up - on a dream, a relationship, a goal - with letting go and moving on to what is still possible, to becoming who we were meant to be. While this post is primarily about relationships, the same truth applies to our efforts in other areas of life too - our art, our careers, our lifestyle and health choices. We can't keep repeating the strategies of the past that did not work and expect them to work the next time! Don't give up - but do let go of what is not serving you. When I first tried to take this lesson to heart and put it into practice, I wrote this poem to express my willingness to finally "let go."

A song of what will be.

I released the anchors around a heart

that long tied me to a clouded past,

to heartache, need or suffering,

unknotted sturdy ropes that bound me

to a dock of mournful memories.

I've felt the churning chaos of life's storms,

wild whitecaps of my search for self,

endured those times I was becalmed,

adrift in open ocean without breeze

or sight of islands of safe refuge.

But now, as if by heaven's gift

I feel the westerlies begin to rise,

to clear ghostly cobwebs from the deck;

winds fill white sails to billowing,

and give gentle lift to my silvered hair.

I see myself standing at the helm

with new confidence and clarity,

a bright vision in my eager eyes

of inspiring ports of call to find

before life's journey ever ends.

With prayers to some universal source

as I set my course for parts unknown,

I imagine new horizons I will find

and give thanks for all my future joys.

The Gift of Failure

“There is no such thing as failure — failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”

Oprah Winfrey

Ride the Peace Train

One of my favorite blogs I follow religiously is a blog called "Brain Pickings" - a site I only discovered because a dear friend pointed me in that direction. The author, Maria Popova, is articulate, extremely well-read, refreshingly insightful and she always writes on art and literature with such a perfect sense of what is important in the work she's reviewing.  The author herself calls Brain Pickings a "weekly interestingness digest." 

and she'd be right. I've yet to scroll through the Sunday edition without getting caught up in the valuable lessons she shares through the work, writing and art of others, not to mention her own remarkably astute commentary. 

A few weeks ago, I marked an article to read later and then, as often happens, forgot about it in the crush of springtime activities - Easter, family visits, my Mom's 90th birthday, etc. But once I had a brief moment to go back to the file, I discovered this marvelous gem amidst all the other great articles on the Blog. It's an article on a subject we've probably all encountered but often neglected to dig into - failure. We avoid the topic because it has negative connotations, particularly in a society where it's often "winner take all" and "dog eat dog." Even our television shows express clearly how we feel about this subject - "Failure is not an option." 

We reject it because it has negative associations for us - failing damages our self-esteem, destroys our dreams, labels us as less than worthy. Or does it? As this marvelous quote above from Oprah Winfrey suggests, there are a gazillion lessons in failure and as many treasures to be found in those lessons that we would not learn any other way. It IS why and how we change direction and find another way around what seem to be insurmountable obstacles. There really could be no true success without a willingness and a capacity to accept what failure has to teach us. 

Popova's blog on the Gift of Failure comes from the title of a book by Sarah Lewis - 

The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery.  Lewis is the former curator of the Tate Modern Gallery and MoMA and a member of President Obama's Arts Policy Committee. In her book, she uses the example of Thomas Edison who tried endlessly to create a working lightbulb and said of his efforts, "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work." I think there are so many valuable lessons that Popova and Lewis have explored that I'd like to turn you on to the blog site with this introduction: 

Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Crucial Difference Between Success and Mastery

You  won't  be  sorry  that  you  were  introduced  to  this  wonderful  online  source  of  profound ideas  and  insight guarantee.

Speaking of failure, however, I wonder if you noticed that there is no link beneath my own artwork above. That's because it's not posted on any of my sites yet - and it may not ever be. I've reworked this piece 100 times - starting with a simple photograph that was small and not terribly good to begin with. But I loved the composition of the piece and I was listening to Cat Stevens singing Peace Train one night and decided to try to do something with this. I consider this work a "failure" in the sense that I've not managed to achieve what I hoped with it - it doesn't "deliver" the feeling I wanted it to. But each reworking teaches me something new about digital art and painting and that's invaluable to me for the future. I may not ever finish this work to my satisfaction but what I've learned by failing to do it has stood me in very good stead in other works. 

Of virtual friendships, shared emotions and a tribute

I like to connect to people in the virtual world, exchanging thoughts and ideas, when in the physical world we might never have the opportunity to cross paths.

Demi Moore

Silent Stones
http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/Art/Digital-PaintingPhotoArt/i-jQdvNJp/A

There is a lot of talk these days about the superficiality of social media - the silly tweets about going shopping or taking a shower or getting caught up in some media/celebrity frenzy that says little of substance about who we are. I've heard some say that virtual relationships are not real - that one cannot trust them because people can assume a persona that is nothing like the person they "really" are. And that's true in some respects. People can pretend to be other than who they really are; people can use social media just as a means of attention-seeking; people can substitute superficial virtual relationships for the real thing because for one reason or another they are detached from the real world.  I don't deny any of that. 

But there is another truth regarding relationships forged and maintained through social media and a virtual environment. I've commented on it before and several of you have told me that  your marriages are a result of "meeting" someone online. I know, too, that some of you have made friendships that have lasted many years and are deeper than some you've had in the "real" world. That is certainly the case for me. Friendship is precious to me - whether it's in the physical world or the virtual one and these days, thanks to technology the line between the two can be very blurry. Skype allows us to see and speak to our "virtual" friends - as does Yahoo voice and video and other such services. I used to speak to a friend in London weekly and I prepared for that in the same way as I might have prepared for her to visit in person - I dressed for company, did my hair and makeup, tidied up the space around me, had my coffee ready to sit down together and be "present" to my friend. 

Emerson once wrote an essay on friendship in which he said, "I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, — a possession for all time." I feel that way about my "virtual" friends, too. I may choose or be forced into a somewhat isolated life for reasons of health or circumstance, but I honestly believe that my online friends know me, hear me and understand me every bit as well or better than others in the "real" world. 

Which brings me to the reason for posting again on a topic I've spoken of before - the shared emotions in those virtual exchanges. One might wonder how you can actually "feel" someone else's pain or sorrow when you can't look upon their face, or when you are simply reading their posts. And yet who among us would deny that we do. I've had friends who have reached out to me when they were terribly depressed and just needed someone to "talk" to and I've done the same. In this past week or so, friends I met on various art sites have posted on Facebook about personal loss - the deaths of beloved parents, the serious illness or frightening surgery they are facing themselves, the discouragement they feel about their job search or art careers, etc. I think we "write" our emotions more carefully in the virtual world - and express more clearly what it is we feel and need from our friends. I think we are even more generous with support, encouragement, prayers and positive thinking than we might be otherwise. 

This weekend, members of the art site, BlueCanvas, met in a way we used to meet - in a weekend forum where we shared features, poems, music, awards, congratulated and supported each other, talked about our lives at many levels and deepened our regard and appreciation of one another. That "BLUE Lounge" forum has not taken place for over a year - most of us have pursued other outlets for one reason or another, or our lives have pulled us away from that forum because of work or health or caregiving. And truthfully, the person who created that venue, carried too much of the burden of keeping the forum going - something those of you who host groups on other sites can appreciate, I'm sure. Nonetheless, this weekend, at the request of a number of old regulars, the BLUE Lounge opened again for an extended tribute to a FRIEND we lost recently - a friend almost none of us have ever met personally but whom we all loved and cherished. Our sense of loss is real, our grief is real, our desire to share that emotional response with one another, others whom we have never met either but love equally, is real. Thank you to my FRIENDS Berns, Chris and Foti and especially to Rosie for making this tribute to Aldolfo Hector Penas Alvarado possible and for reminding us of just how precious our virtual friendships are.

For Adolfo:

THE SILENT STONES

The lowering sky is mourning

gray and somber above 

the silent stones that mark

your coming and your going.

They speak naught of who

you were and yet still are -

father, son, brother, spouse,

mother, daughter, sister, spouse.

What says the marble slab of

that which only I could know?

The blessing that your were?

The joy that only you could bring?

An eloquent language of silence

drowns out the syntax

of the wind, though it lifts me

upon its transcendent current

to some place above, beyond,

farther still - past all the limits

of time or space or language

itself - past thought or sentience,

in sacred consummation,

in ecstatic communion

with your eternal thou

not bound to ashes now interred

beneath the silent stones

that bear your names. 

© Lianne Schneider 2010

Celebrating the many rites of spring...

Life stands before me like an eternal spring

with new and brilliant clothes

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Deep Purple

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/deep-purple-lianne-schneider.html

This year, everywhere you turn, people seem to be celebrating spring more joyously than I can ever remember. Perhaps it’s only because it’s been such a very long, cold, snowy winter for most of us here in the northern and western hemisphere. The threat of one last bit of snow and ice is potentially still out there as the temperatures seesaw from 30s to 70s in a matter of hours all across the country. So our spring celebrations are doubly meaningful for many of us this year. But celebrating spring has had and still has great religious significance around the world as well – because spring is about rebirth, being “saved” from the dead of winter, triumphing over death, enslavement and evil and being renewed.

Sometimes we can be very myopic about our own particular celebrations, assuming that they are the most important or most meaningful. As a Christian, I celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter – as do Christians around the world. There is no more powerful symbol of renewal, salvation or triumph for Christians of any denomination than Resurrection or Easter. But Christians are not alone and not the first to welcome spring, to recall events of salvation or triumph over “the enemy” – whether that enemy is a brutal winter or an evil person.

While it is unlikely that you will find cards to celebrate many of these rites if you go looking for one in a Hallmark store, you will find cards wishing our Jewish friends a happy holiday about the same time of the year as Christians are celebrating Holy Week. That’s because in the Jewish faith, the Feast of Pesach or Passover is celebrated in the spring to commemorate the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the triumph over both Pharaoh and the hardships of the desert crossing. It’s an eight day celebration of freedom and the promise of new life and it begins with a Seder meal that includes unleavened bread and bitter herbs – symbols of how quickly the Israelites had to gather their few things and leave Egypt. The events celebrated during Passover are the heart and soul, the most sacred memories of the Jewish people, just as the events of Holy Week and Easter are for Christians. Jesus, of course, celebrated Passover.

Here are a number of other religious and non-religious rites and celebrations held around the world at some point between early March and May 1. That’s not a coincidence – any more than the timing of our Easter celebration is.

The symbols we attach to Easter may (even the name and the Easter egg and Easter rabbit) – and probably do – derive from spring festivals in certain Middle Eastern Mystery religions like Zoroastrianism or Mithraism. But if we look further afield – beyond the Middle East, we can see other traditions with similar or related meanings, all having to do with renewal and rebirth in some way.

Japanese Buddhists celebrate a spring festival called Ohigan – which literally means “the other shore gathering” but it is a celebration to honor ancestors and to express gratitude for enlightenment or awakening, a celebration of the birth of Buddha and wisdom itself. Those Japanese who practice the indigenous Shinto religion – an earth based religion – celebrate the spring equinox, praying to the spirits of nature…of the forest, the mountains, the rivers, the sun and the sea…to purify the land, to renew it.

In India, Hindus celebrate Holi, the festival of colors which marks the coming of spring and the new harvest of winter crops. Part of the celebration includes huge bonfires that are lit to cleanse the air of evil and symbolize the destruction of Holika, for whom the festival is named. The ashes from the fires are applied to the foreheads and some ash taken home to put on children’s foreheads to protect them against evil.

Wiccans – another earth and moon based religion – celebrate Ostara or the vernal equinox marking the first day of spring and the renewed life that comes with spring. This day has marked special celebrations in ancient cultures too – to honor Aphrodite, Hathor, and Ostara.

The Baha’i New Year is celebrated each year beginning at sundown on March 20. It is preceded by a 19 day period of fasting symbolizing the sparseness of winter or the less-fruitful growing seasons. But new growth begins with the coming of spring. The period of fasting is similar to the Christian practice of Lenten fasting and sacrifice. One month later, those of the Baha’i faith will celebrate the first day of Ridvan which marks the day when Baha'u'llah proclaimed his mission as the last of the prophets of God.

The spring celebrations conclude with the Wiccan celebration of Beltane on May 1 of each year. It’s a fire festival that represents the coming of summer and the fertility of the season. This late spring Celtic festival is closely tied to the farming calendar with prayers for a fruitful harvest.

So as you can see, Christians are hardly alone in celebrating rites of rebirth, renewal and salvation. Mankind has always been closely bound to the seasons of the year, the cycles of growth and harvest, and to the idea of “resurrection” whether of the physical body or of the spirit or the bursting forth of seeds and flowers to mark the triumph of life over death.

And so I wish you each according to your beliefs…a happy Easter, Passover, Ohigan, Ridvan, or Beltane. Respecting such traditions from all over the world reminds us once again that we are more alike than different and certainly more connected that we often realize. 

Chasing joy...

I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive....

Joseph Campbell

Joy Collector

http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/Art/Digital-PaintingPhotoArt/i-Bt57d5w/A

The great American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, in one of his interviews with Bill Moyers for the PBS series, "The Power of Myth," responded to one of Moyers' questions about human search for meaning this way:

         "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of life...so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive." 

The "rapture of being alive"...how many of us have been blessed enough to truly experience that? And how do you go about finding that? Surely we can't all spend our time sitting around "navel gazing" as some have mockingly described the meditative practices that blossomed in the late '60s and early '70s when Transcendental Meditation was all the rage and everyone was looking for a guru to teach them how to reach that state of pure detachment that is "ecstasy" or joy. 

And in truth, we actually can't find it by "dropping out" or complete detachment as some envision it. We find it by the simple act of being truly present to our own lives, to the moments of our lives, being completely aware and mindful of those moments and most of all by being grateful for each one of them. Elizabeth Lesser (Broken Open, 2004) describes it as, "It is a willing engagement with the whole messy miracle of life." By that she means that one cannot find rapture or joy by avoiding the pain or the brokenness in our lives. Quite the opposite - one cannot find rapture without embracing that, looking into the face of our fears and anguish and being grateful for it. It is there, where we would least expect to find it, that we realize and appreciate the joy of living. One cannot appreciate light without darkness, become blissful about spring if there were no winter or dormant period, know love without its lack. 

Here's the lesson in a metaphor - a poem I wrote some time ago called, "The Joy Collector." 

The Joy Collector

Like a lepidopterist, I set out to capture joy in my net,

searching in all the usual, obvious places,

in the garden of blooms I’d planted to be

an enticement for the rare and fragile, wingéd creatures.

And once captured what would I do

with each uniquely beautiful specimen?

Wait for it to finish out its brief life in a jar filled with leaves,

holes in the top and then, when it was living no more…

pin it to the corkboard, fix it under glass,

this now lifeless collection on display,

catalogued and labeled for me to show off my skills

as a butterfly hunter, satisfied, self-congratulatory? 

But true joy can’t be caught like that,

remaining as elusive as a Palos Verdes Blue;

rather it catches you utterly by surprise,

comes from places and events you least expect

and seldom where you are looking for it! 

Don’t chase after it…a butterfly hunter with a net -

and when you are very still, within and without,

perhaps even looking wonderingly another way

at something beautiful that catches your eye

and fills your awakening soul with delight,

she will settle gently on your shoulder, 

flutter in your heart...and live.

  

© Lianne Schneider May 2011

Be grateful for the darkness, for the pain, even for the grief - when you can stand still in the midst of that, then you will find your rapture, your joy. In truth, one of my favorite poets, Khalil Gibran said it best nearly 1000 years ago: