Sketching with a Bit More Color

I continue to sketch almost every morning--sometimes it's brief, just a few minutes.  Other times, it stretches out.  We are in the final week of an online journaling class that's not only sketching but reading our way through Cynthia Bourgeault's Mystical Hope:  Trusting in the Mercy of God.

This morning, I decided I wanted to do something different than my usual sketching of swoops and swirls.  So I started with dots.  I ended by combining some of them into a sun or a star:

I've been using the same color markers for a month:  3 shades of gray and a violet.  This morning, I decided to add more, so I used 2 markers from a past journaling group, the blue and the gold. 

I had this Thomas Merton quote from the Bourgeault book on my brain:

"It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish altogether."  (quoted on p. 83)

This quote describes Merton's mystical experience on a Louisville street, the corner of 4th and Walnut, where he sees all the faces of his fellow humans and has insight into the nature of God by realizing how much he loves those humans (I'm oversimplifying, I know).

So I created a haiku-like thing out of Merton's words:

Points of light converge
Making meanness evaporate
Face and blaze of sun

I'd been having a few days of unsatisfying sketching.  It was a relief to have a morning that felt like a return to vital practices.