The Message Behind the Symbols

The image asks Christians to honour 

the Divine Feminine.

Some may find Her in the Holy Spirit.

Some may find her in our pre-Christian roots.

Wherever  you find Her,

may She bring peace and blessings

to you

as we prepare to celebrate the birth 

of Her 

Holy Child

and the return  of the sun.

Honour Her

The Winter Child tells us to honour his 

MOTHER  

.

SHE 

from whom all things come.

The Ghosts That Haunt Me

The Ghosts That Haunt Me

oil pastels on paper

approx 17" x 20"

I was looking down at a goat that was strung up by its legs.  

The goat was beautiful. 

It had shiny black fur and the most gentle
Christlike look on its face.

I had cut the skin off its head from the eyes back and I was slicing and eating pieces of its 'meat'. 

Suddenly I saw that the goat was only unconscious.

I realized that I would have to take its heart out and kill it because it would suffer terribly if I put the scalp back on particularly as I had eaten part of it.

It was a horrifying dilemma.

I couldn't kill the goat but I couldn't let it suffer either.


*** 

The black goat represents my unconscious.  

That was easy to figure out - the word 'unconscious' 
was the word I used myself in the dream to describe it.

Peeling back the unconscious (the scalp) and eating 
parts of it (taking in) suggests to me that there are 
some shadow issues I've integrated into my conscious personality.

But the rest of the dream is more problematic.

And "getting to the heart of everything" is going to be a bloody, painful mess.

How Clearly the Dying See

It is coming up to the fourth anniversary of the day

my father died.

His last few days were full of visions and visits from

people I couldn't see.

One afternoon a fist punched its way through the 

ceiling of the room.

He wasn't surprised or even concerned that I 

couldn't see it.

But the symbolism of an open portal between this 

world and the next has been with me ever since. 



***

The Dart Players

Do you see the female figure between the two men?

I didn't plan it but I was interested to see She was there.

The Mother seems to be everywhere.

Even church - although that is the last place I 

thought I would find Her.

Part of a particularly lovely contemporary 

Anglican hymn:

She Flies On

Refrain: She comes sailing on the wind

Her wings flashing in the sun

on a journey just begun, She flies on.

And in the passage of Her light

Her song rings out through the night;

full of laughter, full of light, She flies on ...

Desert turned to gardens ...

and down through the ages she flew on ...

Refrain

Long after the deep darkness

that fell upon the word,

after dawn returned in flame of rising sun,

the Spirit touched the earth again,

again Her wings unfurled,

bringing life in wind and fire as She flew on.  

Refrain

Me

I knew there had to be one more picture in the series.

So I took the pieces that flew apart yesterday and put them
back together again this morning.

This is the sketch of the new 'whole'.

I call it ... "Me".

Pieces of Me

Did Alice know?

I never found out.

The Pieces

"The Self might be thought of as the archetype of wholeness, and its intention is to restore wholeness to the human psyche which has been so fragmented

 - even through means which may appear to be at first destructive."

The Dream of the Cosmos, a Quest for the Soul

Anne Baring

I met for supper with three other women last week.

One of the women has twice survived breast cancer 

and chemo.

Last year her husband said he wanted to downsize 

so they sold their house.  About three months ago 

he told her he wanted a divorce.

Her children are grown up and gone.

She doesn't feel capable of going back to work as an 

EA at a local school in September.

She went through a celebratory 'glad to be rid of 

him' time of lavish spending on herself. But last 

week the bravado was gone. 

She sees that there is no husband, no family, no 

money. Just fragments of a life scattered around her 

like broken glass.

Her depression is absolute.

I feel for her.

But it is only when you are in pieces that the

process of becoming whole can begin.

I Once Was Blind II

How hard to drop the window dressing - the extraneous details that distract from the whole.

The basic shapes are starting to appear. 

Some were not in the first effort but have appeared in this one - others are emerging from behind the frippery.


I have never appreciated the courage of abstract artists.

And I certainly didn't realize how clearly they see. 




Psalm 119:18
Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things ...

***