February 22, 2017 – Making beauty a practice

A few days into this new year I decided I’d post a photo of something that I found beautiful on Instagram every day for the remainder of the year.  We’re not yet two months in and I’m not doing very well at the daily part.  I’m over a week behind today and most days since I last posted I’ve not taken any pictures of beautiful things.  What’s more I’ve not even thought about my Instagram promise.  Packing up, cleaning the house, traveling and getting into the groove of life back at home have all taken my attention away.  While trying not to make myself wrong, I’m thinking about what it takes to integrate a new practice, a new way of being, and make it part of us.

I’ve heard of those who take on a practice for a year – a painting a day, a poem a day, running x miles every day, meditating every day – I heard of a restaurant reviewer in the Southwest who took on eating in a different taco shop every day in the space of a year.  I wonder if these people are naturally iron-willed, able to carve out space and time for their commitment – for themselves – in a way that I just wasn’t born with.  I am so easily drawn away from my priorities by just about anything and anyone. When I look at it from this direction, I’m impressed I accomplish all that I do!

I’ve finished something close to 100 large-scale paintings, I’ve faithfully written and published these posts every week for almost two and a half years, I can get stuff done.  Maybe it’s the daily part that’s my challenge?  Last year it was my commitment to paint every single day.  It took both the presence of mind and the will to overcome inertia to paint all but a handful of days.  There’s also the power of public commitment.  Knowing someone is paying attention – and that you will see me if I fail to show up – keeps me on track.  This is all useful in keeping a commitment – but I’m wondering if there isn’t a gentler, more integral way that we can shift our habits, how we spend our time.

On vacation I started reading a book called “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible” by Charles Eisenstein.  I told someone that I was reading this book and the response I got was “that sounds like a book you would read.”  I get it.  The title containing the word “beautiful” does seem to make it right up my alley.  But what Charles Eisenstein means when he uses the word “beautiful” is beyond what people associate with me and what I do.  He’s talking about living inside an entirely new story that holds every part of modern life differently.  A beautiful world is not simply one with physical beauty for our eyes to take in, but is filled with generosity, forgiveness, kindness and humor – which we see with our hearts rather than our eyes.  It is also a world that is in harmony with the planet and with each other – beyond scarcity, starvation and war.

It’s hard to put into words the depth of the impact this book has had on me – and I’m not even completely finished with it yet.  I can’t think of another book I’ve ever read that has spoken to me as deeply and powerfully as this one has.  I’m finding in this book a reflection of something I’ve longed to be true – which is giving me the capacity to find a kind of peace with – a way to hold more powerfully – the accelerating chaos of our world.  I’ve always been naturally optimistic and am now a creator and purveyor of beauty, so if I don’t have another way to hold the breakdown happening all around us, I’m sunk.

Besides the overall idea and message, there are two things that I really appreciate in the book:  the first is that he includes what his critics are saying about his ideas – and then answers them.  This helps not only my own skepticism, but more importantly it helps the tender part of me that so much wants to step into this more beautiful world’s story, but is afraid that to do so is naïve – that I am a misguided Pollyanna if I do.  The other thing I appreciate is that he holds that getting to – that living – this more beautiful world is a process.  It’s a process that begins within me – and you.  The part of me that aches to do something, anything, is calmed by reading that until we know exactly what to do, doing nothing is what most serves.  There’s no “making this happen” as a force of will.  In fact, attempting to do so is living the “story of separation” as he calls it.

So what if using willpower to force myself to do something I committed to – and fearing that I’ll be judged if I don’t – are both part of the story of separation Charles Eisenstein is describing?  He writes about the role of pleasure in the more beautiful world – and how pleasure can be defined as the experience of having a need met.  If the need is deep and true, the experience of meeting it is intense and potent.  I see that I’ve been holding my daily post on Instagram as a box I need to check.  But when I look at the need it fills, I recall the days so far this year I went out with my camera wondering what might catch my eye that I’d want to share.  It’s one of the things I do that is the most me.  It is in doing this that I encounter the seeds that germinate into my paintings.  Immersed like this, I forget time, food, email and other distracting impulses – and I find it intensely pleasurable.

We live in a pervasive story that says we have no time for filling our soul’s real needs.  It’s a story of money, of busy, of information, of not enough – and too much – at the same time.  And it’s a story that perpetuates itself.  It’s so pervasive that even when we do have the circumstances to fill these needs – say when we retire – or like me when I became blessed to make it my livelihood – we can still be resistant to spending time this way.  It takes courage for me to place these needs at the top of my priorities.  I might have taken just five minutes out of each day this past week to wander, open to being astonished by beauty.  It was easy on vacation, but back in the “real world” doing so is hindered by the habit of rushing, thinking I have so little time.  Here’s the thing, I can’t will away the rushing habit either.

I ended last week’s post with this:

It seems to me that one of the gifts of this time we are living in is that we are being given the impetus to decide what our priorities are and to get real about them.  I’ve never been more certain that seeing, capturing, making beauty – and supporting others to do the same – is what I’m here to do.  There is a beautiful world to save.

Isn’t it amazing that I wrote those words and then catapulted myself into a week where I didn’t live them?  Reading these words today as if someone outside me is delivering to me this message, and I realize living this more beautiful world is a process that requires great patience and faithfulness.  The idea of this world comes long before the living of it.  But the living of it cannot happen until the thought takes up residence in us.

There is purpose in commitment and purpose in failing to keep it – as long as there is some part of us that is awake enough to notice that we’ve fallen asleep.  In teaching about centering prayer – a form of meditation – Cynthia Bourgeault told of a woman who complained to Fr. Thomas Keating that during the 20 minute meditation she must have had to return to her sacred work 10,000 times because her mind kept drifting.  Fr. Keating said to her what a wonderful blessing for her to be able to return to God 10,000 times!

This brings me to two thoughts: one is that we must be engaged with our soul’s needs and desires – like my need for beauty – we must start by paying attention to ourselves.  The second is that we are supported by each other – especially those of us who are oriented around being in relationship.  The shift comes when we are listening to our souls – and leaning into each other.  This is how we return to beauty those 10,000 times.

With my love,

Cara