Cloister of the Heart : On Sharings of the Heart

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

On Sharings of the Heart

From 1 to 12 December I journeyed A Virgin a Day with Rebecca of Recuerda mi Corazon and many others in her circle.

What a joy, grace and blessing this was. Each day I sensed a deeper sense of joy and gratitude bubbling within.

I visited incredible websites, learnt many new things, made wonderful new friends and never did I use the word 'beautiful' so often. As Lisa of PritiLisa said, it called for a Thesaurus to find some more ways of expressing our wonder and joy.

The power of sharing our deepest held feelings, values, traditions and truths. The depth of devotion, to the Divine, each in our own particular and personal way, shared in a space of respect and honour and witnessing. For twelve days a circle of Light was held and the talking stick shared equally.

I am still making my rounds to each and every participant in a good bye, till next time our paths meet.

And such good news, it does not have to end! Rebecca has extended an invitation to participate in Postcards from Paradise. Please visit her at http://corazon.typepad.com/recuerda_mi_corazon on a Sunday and you will find myself and many others there.

Dont hide your heart but reveal it
so that mine might be revealed,
and I might accept what I am capable of

Rumi

5 comments:

rebeccaDecember 14, 2011 at 7:03 PM
dear hettienne,
thank you for sharing this experience with your readers so graciously. yes our twelve days have been rich in beauty and friendship. i look forward to our sundays for any and all who wish to continue this bright connection.
paula pointed out that next year when we make this journey together it will culminate on 12/12/12!

holding you in love and light,
rebecca
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Dawn ElliottDecember 16, 2011 at 10:37 PM
Love the picture in the rock facade! So glad that you found and loved A Virgin a Day and will continue to be a part of our blogging world!
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Fran aka RedondowriterDecember 17, 2011 at 9:14 AM
Hetienne, I'm so glad you are enjoying SoulCollage! And thanks for letting me know. I'll be seeing you around, I'm sure!
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rebeccaJanuary 3, 2012 at 4:48 PM
dear one,
may you walk in light, fulfillment and mindful beauty.
may you know a brave heart, a healthy body, may laughter be your chosen language and love be your true compass for the brightest new year!

xoxoxoxoxoxo
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Annie JeffriesJanuary 5, 2012 at 7:51 PM
Good morning, Hettienne. Yes, Rebecca's Virgin a Day is pure magic. I love when that time comes around. Now that Postcards from Paradise is back on my radar, I'll be joining in soon. Happiest of New Years to you and yours.
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My life as a Pilgrim to sacred places

Pilgrimage and sacred ritual is my foremost spiritual practise. Raised Dutch Reformed Protestant, the rich lustre of sacred and holy places offered a well of inspiration for my parched soul. My travels have taken me to many different religions, cultures and traditions. You will see on the internet that I have written on many aspects of the spiritual journey. Until I came into contact with the mystical side of Christianity. My first ritual I attended was the festival of Archangel Michael in Mont Sant'Angelo in Italy, then visiting Padre Pio. Then followed walking the pilgrimage of Bridgid, the sacred well and labyrinth in Kildare, Ireland. And that is when my art appeared in the form of paintings. Ritual grounded in the knowing of the unconscious, awakens us from the dream of habitual seeing and thinking. The conscious mind lacks the ability or maybe the neural pathway to communicate the new-found wisdom intellectually, and thus the expression through art steps in. Well, that is only my experience and understanding, of course. But I had not been an artist till I participated in sacred ritual.

My stay at Lourdes and participating in the rituals daily, turned me into a full time artist.

When one participates in a ritual (probably any ritual, but when you regard it as sacred, you add a certain 'light' to it) you are transported into a different time and space : colors are different; the light is different; everything has meaning and the ordinary become extra-ordinary. My art novena for Lourdes in particular, highlights my statement that our lives are the altar to the Divine and I strive to capture that numinosity of the sacred ritual in my photographs and altars. I only started creating sacred altars on my return from Lourdes. These small shadowboxes are vignettes, a moment in time in the life of ordinary human beings, lifted out of the mundane into the numinous, merely by seeing life as sacred.

Wisdom of Oscar Wilde

“It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"In an old song the Mother sings: 'My sleeping is my dreaming, my dreaming is my thinking, my thinking is my wisdom.' She is the bed we are born in, in which we sleep and dream, where we are healed, love and die. In her wisdom we remember day's broken images and carry them down into dreams where their motions roll into shadows and root, growing into stories." ~Meinrad Craighead

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. ~Rumi

I am the mother of fair love and of respect and of knowledge and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth; in me is all hope of life and of virtue - Ecclesiasticus 24:24.

OPEN FLOWER

Near your breastbone there is an
Open Flower.
Drink the honey that is all around that flower.
Waves are coming in:
There is so much magnificence near the ocean!
Listen: Sound of big seashells!
Sound of bells!
Kabir says: Friend, listen this is what I have to say:
The guest I love is inside me!
~Kabir

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

On Sharings of the Heart

5 comments:

Namaste

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