Last weekend when our first event - our monthly Art of Listening: Making Your Mark - had to move from in-person to virtual, facilitator Carol Eagan invited participants to practice at home. We invite you to join in too! Art is not about perfection, but about expression. May you play with making your mark.
A practice that supports my inner listening and quieting my busy brain is making mark on paper. I'd like to introduce you to that practice today.
Making Marks: this practice helps me, forces me to slow down, feel the pen or pencil in my hand, let my thoughts drift in and out of focus as I fill the page with marks.
Preparing:
Gift yourself an hour.
Find a nice pen or pencil, one that feels good in your hand. (Recently I've discovered water-soluble graphite, it's a joy to draw with.)
Find a sturdy, quality paper, just the right size... (I use my 5' x 8' sketchbook)
Hold these items, feel their weight and texture. notice the quality of how they feel in your hand or in your fingers as you hold the marking tool. Take a few quieting breaths.
1. Use your non- dominant hand,
"Touch your pencil tip to the page, then swing out into a lush upward, leftward curve until you've got the shape of a blade of grass being blow slightly to the right. Then make the line bow down, keeping it's arc, until if the grass blade had eyes on its tip it would be looking at the ground. At that point, stop, turn your stopping point into a cleavage, and send the pencil up and out into a mirroring image of your shape so far."
I love these instructions from Gail Godwin for drawing a heart. She goes on to talk about the image of the heart in Paul Klee's art work and his practice of drawing with alternate hands. "Whoever you are and however you draw it, each heart will have its own personality: one cheeky and plump, one long and skinny-mean with its tail aimed like a weapon, one dense and primal like the wooly mammoth's on the cave wall, one wispy and floating on its side like a blown leaf giving up the season's ghost."
2. Fill the page, around your heart with lines, shapes. let your pencil lead the way, continue to use your non-dominant hand. Slow down. Enjoy the practice of making lines and shapes on paper. Breath into each gesture. Be present to your thoughts, noticing where your mind wants to go, or where your thoughts return to over and over again. Listen to your inner voice.
Aurora’s Marks
3. Invitation: Take a few minutes for journaling after reading this poem/blessing by John O’Donahue
For Presence
Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.
Reflection:
How do you welcome the "quiet immensity of your own presence"?
What "secret symmetry " did you glimpse during this practice?
What do your marks wish you to remember?
One participant responded: “I enjoyed the opportunity to take your lead and create a wholehearted piece using the goldenrod stem as my mark maker late in the day with sunshine streaming rainbows through my window. Your exercise rounded out the endeavors of my day beautifully. Thank you.”
And you?
How might you respond to this invitation in your own way and rhythm?
We welcome hearing from you as we all explore ways of listening, being, and caring for ourselves and others in these times.