July 11, 2023 – A

I call this "High Mountain Lake Sunset,"
and see it as eternal and everlasting.

I created it by playing with shapes and colors,
allowing it to create itself
by showing me what it wanted to be.

All art forms itself that way,
through a "dear and glorious communion"
with some recipient of its need to be
shaped and formed into a specific shape and form
that only it foresees and serves.

For what? For the joy of it, of course.
The sheer delight of making something from nothing.
And the satisfaction of having done it.

This is what we are all about.
We work with our life,
only sensing its shape and form,
and serving our vision of what it needs to be,
is striving to become through us
by us being us to the best of our ability
at any/every point in time and place
while the opportunity lasts.

I woke up this morning thinking 
of two African/American spirituals.
"All my trials, Lord, soon be over,"
"I'm gonna lay down my burdens,
down by the riverside."

And that connected me to the "centering vision"
which came to me as a Big Dream
all those years ago.

I was told by three members of the Circle of Shamans
that I wasn't accepted as a member of the Circle.
They were an old man, who delivered the decision,
a young, warrior-Shaman, who was glad 
I didn't make the cut,
and I would never be one with him,
and middle-aged woman who was sad for me,
but resigned to serve the will of the Circle.

In the dream I was consoling her,
communing with her my understanding 
of the Circle's decision,
and agreeing with it myself,
knowing that I did not belong there,
being, as I am,
too much of a maverick, loner, unorthodox,
independent-minded person,
to exemplify any creed, or doctrine,
or way of doing things--
too much like the wind blowing where it will,
for what and why, it has no idea.

In less than six months,
I will step into my 80th year.
Out of those almost 80 years,
I have this to say to you:

Live the remainder of your days
out of your own integrity.
Be the work of art you are,
shaping and forming yourself
by what feels right,
by what you sense is using you
to bring itself forth,
like the wind that blows where it will,
for why and what, it does not care.

Just to be! Just to become!
Even now, even yet, even so!

Doing with your life as I did
with the colors and shapes
that became "High Mountain Lake Sunset,"
that became/is still becoming me,
eager to see what is to yet be/become
of all those trials that "soon be over,"
and all those burdens--
which themselves are tools the artist works with
to bring ourselves forth,
being as we are,
in the words of Alexis Carrel,
"The marble and the sculptor."

('Man cannot remake himself without suffering, 
for he is both the marble and the sculptor')

Integrity demands/requires that we be who we are,
even as we live to discover what that is
by living our way to it
following our sense of "Yes" and "No"
"any way, nevertheless, even so"!

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