Imagination + Wonder
Photo: Greg Pupillo © Genesis+Art
Ice Age Trail Interstate Park
St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin
The daily dose of ugly news causes me a great deal of stress that leads to less happiness and a sense of doom. Injustice, power, lies and deceit, war, and toxic meanness that lacks any sense of a moral compass add to my growing sense of outrage. These threats, along with our addiction to social media put us in an endless spin cycle of ugliness. We seek likes on our social media that align us with an outraged group or the need to fight with a stranger about something. I have been sucked into a vortex more than once, where all stories of beauty became ignored. Once I realized this pattern I began to look anew.
As an artist, and someone who appreciates and loves the beauty of the natural world I have rediscovered this sensitivity within me. It’s amazing how the world changes when the filter is cleaned. Beauty abounds and reveals itself everywhere. My senses are alive with beauty, beauty despite the destruction of our planet, deep sorrow of injustice, and the bonds of connection dissolving among us. Ugliness is everywhere, but so is beauty. There is an ongoing story of beauty unfolding in the world. We just need to look for it, being less defined by how others believe you should think and be in the world. The world needs to hear of your own discoveries of beauty. This requires an inward journey to your imagination and curiosity with the earth that leads to wonder. Alexis Wright defines this liberation as ‘sovereignty of mind’:
When you move into the realm of your own
sovereignty of mind
By shielding yourself from the kinds of interferences
that rob you of the ability to think straight, that sap your spirit, or block you from seeing and making your own judgement, then you are able
to govern your own spirit and imagination.
When I made this inward migration, I crossed an internal border. A border of tension, that once crossed helped me on a journey to live by a different story where beauty abounds. Peg and I have found this over the years in creating art together and sharing that process with others. This in part is how we have come to, Art for a Burning World. A place to hold the tension between what is beautiful and terrible, of grief and loss, and moments of wonder and joy. A space to celebrate goodness, speak truth, and honor beauty. Our gatherings also intend to embody a way of being in the world that forms cells of resistance and resilience, create an outpost of transformation, and a seedbed of joy and beauty. A sacred place for creating art and your own beautiful stories born of your own inward migration. We desire to help you go forward on this inward migration of ‘sovereignty of mind’ where in defiance of a rising level of ugliness, you cultivate beauty – seeing it, creating it, savoring it. And with savoring beauty within will lead those who seek it, beautiful outward action. Joy is what the earth gives us daily and it is time to return the gift.
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