Under Starlit Skies

When I wake in the morning, the first thing I do is walk up to the studio, which is also my workplace, and turn on the heat. It is an act of hope and a statement of intention to do something creative every day.

During winter, the sky is dark when I do this. And when that darkness is dotted with stars, especially Orion’s Belt, I feel a song in my heart. Always. It tickles me. Makes me laugh. Transforms me.

I wake early for the spaciousness of morning. In the silence, I sense possibilities. I could finish making a book today. I could sew a ditty bag. I could decorate a box. I have choices.

Now that spring has arrived, the starlit skies are accompanied by the symphony of frogs. At night, they are deafening; in the morning, more of an echo that follows me back to the house where I take time for journalling and contemplation.

I have been reading A Hidden Wholeness by Parker J. Palmer, leaving little scraps of paper between the pages like Hansel and Gretel, hoping to find my way back through the dense forest of ideas. One such idea builds an image that I am excited about: if you take a strip of paper and fasten the ends together, you have a circle with an inside or an outside that you can trace with your finger. If you take that same strip of paper and give it a twist before attaching the ends, you have something called a “Möbius strip”. When you run your finger along the inside, you will suddenly find yourself on the outside, and then, further along, on the inside again. The movement between inner and outer is continuous. Uninterrupted. It is not either/or. It is both/and.

Spring is the season of surprise when we realize once again that despite our perennial doubts, winter’s darkness yields to light and winter’s deaths give rise to new life. So one metaphor for spring is “the flowering of paradox”. As spring’s wonders arise from winter’s hardships, we are invited to reflect on the many “both/ands” we must hold to  live life fully and well — and to become more confident that as creatures embedded in nature, we know in our bones how to hold them.
Parker J. Palmer

I like to imagine that I am skating along that Möbius strip beneath starlit skies and that there is no break between inner and outer. There is spirituality in my work and work in my spirituality so that when I enter my studio, everything is creative and even the travelling back and forth from the studio is part of the metaphor… inside, outside, inside, outside…