Friday, April 17, 2020

A Sketch Exploring Holding and Pouring

One of my online journaling groups has been reading Cynthia Bourgeault's Mystical Hope:  Trusting in the Mercy of God.  This week, my thoughts kept coming back to this idea:

"IF only we could understand this more deeply!  If only we could see and trust that all our ways of getting there, all our courses over time--our good deeds, our evil deeds, our regrets, our compulsive choosings and the fallout from those choosings, our things left undone and paths never actualized--are quietly held in an exquisite fullness that simply poises in itself, then pours itself out in a single glance of the heart.  If we could only glimpse that, even for an instant, we would be able to sens the immensity of the love that seeks to meet us at the crossroads of the Now, when we yield ourselves entirely into it" (p. 64-65).

As I thought about what to sketch, my brain kept coming back to the idea of pouring and holding.  I began with this kind of flowing line:






I added to the sketch on Wednesday.  I first began with the idea of a braided basket, but I like that it can also look like cut glass or crystal or even, perhps, wood:




And last night I added an edited version of the quote, so that in later years, I'd be sure to have it:





I thought about adding more to the sketch, about making a list of all the good deeds, the evil deeds, the opportunities missed, the choosings and the things left undone--but I didn't want to depress myself, and I wanted to leave the sketch with some room for mystery.

Unlike the last time I sketched with this Grunewald Guild group, I'm not creating a new sketch every day, although I am sketching every day.  Unlike last time, I don't have as many chunks of undistracted time in my schedule.  But it's good to do what I can--and these sketches remind me that it doesn't take huge swaths of time.

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