April 12, 2020 – Peace and joy, even now… especially now

“Farewell”  – 15″x15″ A painting I finished in January that I named in honor of Joe’s flying mentor in the last days of his life.

It’s Easter morning, my phone said 5:37am.   I’ve not been sleeping well for weeks, waking up in the middle of the night hot and with my cranky shoulder aching. Thankfully I was able to get back to sleep so I have a reasonably bright brain.  I just read my dear friend Betsey’s hauntingly beautiful post “Beauty for Ashes” which may have rustled the desire to respond – a conversation of sorts.  I want to write.

We do things the way we do things. Betsey takes lots of time to carefully craft a piece of writing, interspersed with the most exquisite photographs from her time in nature; I wake and hear a voice that says “write” and sit in bed with my laptop and see what comes.

It’s been a month since I read “Cancel Everything” in The Atlantic on Tuesday March 10^th.  This article landed in me what we needed to do.  That night I wrote “stay home this week if you feel vulnerable” in an email to the artists in my regular groups.  Then as a few came in to paint or draw on Wednesday, it felt almost dangerous to be in each other’s presence.  That afternoon I wrote an update that I was moving our painting sessions online – like most of the world now – onto Zoom.

Since then time has become really, really strange.  Marilee in our Thursday group sent an email yesterday with a graphic that read: “2020 is a unique Leap Year. It has 29 days in February, 300 days in March and 5 years in April.”   Reflecting back on what we were doing, and how we were thinking just 6 weeks ago makes my head spin.

Feeling the fear and anxiety that is just everywhere now, knowing there are beloved people dying, even as dedicated healers are working to save them.  We are living through a global pandemic.

Though we want to, it’s impossible to make plans – not the way we used to.  It feels like the future has been erased, but it’s really that we are now acutely aware of what has been taught and taught and taught – all we have is this moment. The present moment – it’s a cliché – but clichés are clichés because they are true.

It’s always been the only place and time that life happens.  It is in a present moment when I witness something that inspires me to paint it.  I pick up my brush and put it in the paint and on the paper in a present moment.  I pet Bo’s soft ears, I kiss Joe, I open the refrigerator to pull out the stuff for dinner then too. It’s just that now we really have to live it.

In early March, on a Wednesday call with Maralyn and Lyn, my treasured conversation partners, I said that I wanted to let this moment have its way with me and the art I make.  As in, I want to surrender to the transformational capacity held in what is happening to us, to humankind.   Typical me – the one that so often feels not-all-the-way-baked, the one who is aching to live some imagined unfulfilled potential. God this is tiresome!

There has been a tidal wave of spiritually supportive content generated in the past month.  Sandy, who has been coming to the Zoom gathering regularly on Fridays – now that she’s not driving 2 hours each way – sent me a recording of a talk by a teacher called Rupert Spira.  The transmission I received was this:

Regardless of life circumstance, our true nature is peace and joy. There is no work or practice to “get there.”  All there is to do is realize it.  And there has never been a time when it has been more imperative that we communicate our true nature to those around us, in the way that is ours to communicate. (Underlines are mine.)

His words were coming through ear buds while I was up on the hill with Bo and I stopped for a second, just before heading down the next steep deer trail and looked out to the hills across town.  I felt the return – landing back in the center of myself – and I heard Sister Mary’s words:

“The time has come to stop seeking – and to know you have already been found.”

There’s no transformation that my art needs to go through!  My true nature is peace and joy and my art – as it is – is one of the most obvious ways that I communicate this.

Last Christmastime I was in Ace Hardware in San Rafael – amidst their holiday decorations when my eye was caught by a piece of ceramic with a quote on it.  I was struck even more by whose words they were, as I was by the actual message:

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”  -Anne Frank

Teachers come in all forms, not the least a Jewish teenager hoping to survive the Holocaust.  There’s no way she could have known that something like 80 years later her words would be bringing inspiration to someone in a hardware store a half a world away, someone who would be born a couple of decades later.  Anne knew her true nature and communicated it regardless of her circumstance.

But so are millions of people now. Necessity is giving birth to invention all over the place and people are showing up in beautiful ways – sewing masks, grocery shopping for our elders, making signs, singing, clapping, howling and cooking.

I take heart in knowing, regardless of how this unfolds, that humans are responding with heart and creativity – working to connect in any way we can.  I’m letting myself be reminded – as much as can happen in any given moment – that what I really am is peace and joy.  I hope you know that you are too.

Wishing you peace and joy this Easter day.

Love,

Cara