Cloister of the Heart : I Am the Immaculate Conception

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

I Am the Immaculate Conception

I am the Immaculate Conception
was her words to Bernadette

She was a poor shepherdess,

Bernadette,

growing up at the foothills of the Pyrenees,

on the banks of the Gave du Pau.

Tending the very poor family's

small flock of sheep

When the most miraculous vision

appeared to her.

A vision of Light

with roses on Her feet.

From this numinous event

flowed forth a stream of healing water,

a holy place was born,

Bernadette's life was transformed

into one of passion,

commitment and a vocation to the highest Love

Bernadette's message : God is everywhere!

A place where the fire was lit long ago

and the fire of your Soul

and Its unconditional love

is kept alive

And such is the miracle within our own hearts

as She brings forth the waters of regeneration,

healing and wholeness,

teaching you that Love is everywhere

A wearable altar to

Our Lady of Lourdes

L'immaculee Conception

Hand soldered lead-free silver

patina'd by hand

Vintage prayer card set between glass

creating a miniature shadowbox filled with

seed pearls and small freshwater pearls

as well as a tiny vintage Lourdes connector

Vintage buttons from a street market in Paris

a tiny crown

a vintage Lourdes medal with prayer on the back

an image of Our Lady of Lourdes set in resin

in a sterling silver cup

beaded chain that contain mother of pearl buttons,

rondelle,

aurora borealis

a tiny sterling silver Agnus Dei heart locket

and two different kinds of linked antiqued chain

The back of the pendant contains the basilica

of Lourdes from the same vintage holy card

Stacked mother of pearl buttons,

swarovski crystals

rondelles

silver toned roses

aurora borealis

freshwater pearls

Sterling Silver element with artist's name engraved on it

You can read here how my sacred altars

are prepared with holy relics and oils

with love,

Hettienne

1 comment:

Patty AntleApril 17, 2014 at 5:54 AM
Your art is wonderful Hettienne! Love visiting you!
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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, April 16, 2014

I Am the Immaculate Conception

1 comment:

Namaste

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