Portrait of Blessings for the May 2015 Challenge at Our Creative Corner

I can hardly believe that it has already been a month since I last updated this blog and that it is time for the next design team installment for the Our Creative Corner challenge. 

Shari is hosting the new challenge “April Showers bring May Flowers” for the month of May and this is what she asked to do:

“This month, the challenge is to create something, a mixed-media project, a journal page, a scrapbook page, a card or tag...Anything, that reflects the Spring rains and/or Spring flowers in your part of the world.”  

If you play along and enter the blog challenge  with your piece of creative work (you can link-up your entry and peruse the rest of the fantastic design team inspiration projects here -> Our Creative Corner) – you could be the recipient of a fantastic prize from our sponsor Designs by Ryn,  click the logo to go over there. 

I am really excited to tell you about this sponsor as well because in a few days time I will be doing a Sponsor Spotlight post over here and at Our Creative Corner for the company and I really can’t wait to showcase Ryn’s beautiful designs. 

Now back to the challenge.  Spring for Zululand (my part of the southern hemispheric world) is all the way over in September and the peak of the rainy season is in January.  So I had to think a little bit about what spring flowers and rain would be like.  Then I got a sneaky little idea and because I am a rebel decided to interpret the theme a little more liberally (hope I dont get kicked off the team for that) and I created this mixed media canvas below that I am boldly naming “Showers of Blessing”.  I attempted to paint the feel of a shower of blessing in a spring colour palette.  I will go into greater detail of how I came to the interpretive concept for this piece and how it relates to the theme in detail later but for now here is my submission.

OUT OF YOUR HANDS

Nothing is under your control. Everything is out of your hands now, as it always was.

So your hands are free, to embrace whatever comes, moment by moment.

Out of your hands, into trust.

- Jeff Foster -

Recently I have made a commitment to myself to facilitate more love, harmony and healing into my being.  In an attempt to do so, I have sought guidance from wherever I can, so I have been reading all kinds of inspirational writings and teachings. My current favourites, or the writings that I have gravitated toward at this period in my life are those of Jeff Foster, an astrophysicist-turned spiritual awakening writer and some works by Geshe Kelsang, whom I became more curious about upon participating in a weekly Mahasiddha Kadampa Meditation group that  meets in my area.


Simultaneously during the process of thinking about a project for Shari’s challenge, that which I was reading, my quest to find balance, in addition to my daily meditation practise which begins by holding a wish to use the meditation as a way to be blessed and to bless others, I began noticing the same "quotes". They were interjecting themselves all over the social media and internet sites that I frequent. It was in the books that I was reading, it was in the stuff that I was watching.   

Gradually I became aware of the possibility that perhaps I was noticing these coincidences of similar ideas not so much for their frequency of appearance but because of a kind of synchronicity, that there was a yearning for the personal meaningfulness of the message contained in the ideas that made me notice them more. 

 I began to think that perhaps I should pay attention because it is something that my soul needs to conceive of, receive and put in action. The key ideas that kept recurring were of gratitude, of sowing what you reap, of being what you want to receive.
 
So the more I tried to think of what to create for Shari’s challenge, the more I kept seeing an image in my head of myself being showered with blessings that I could bring into being by showering the same blessings forth.  And this is really how the concept was born. 

I had created other projects for the theme that would have been more obviously related to the theme of rain and flowers - they featured umbrellas, floral paper arrangements and rain.  I don’t know why it just didnt seem to sit right in my being. I felt completely compelled to create this project instead for the challenge. Eventually, I let myself be directed by what my heart was really wanting me to create and thus here it is.

Heh, who knows – perhaps this is all part of some grander scheme, where someone else reading this blog has a synchronistic moment themselves. I don’t know, all I do know is that I really had to make this project.
Here are few pictures of the project while I was working on it -

 

OUT OF YOUR HANDS
Nothing is under your control. Everything is out of your hands now, as it always was.
So your hands are free, to embrace whatever comes, moment by moment.
Out of your hands, into trust.
- Jeff Foster -