These paintings were exhibited at Meteor Craft Operative in 2018, the show titled 'Color is a Medicine.' In the picture here they are installed after the show in a Resident Services Coordinator's office in an apartment building in North Portland. I found the office picture the other day, and it gave me pause to revisit the statement from the show.

Exhibit Statement:

When I paint I love to lay color, line, pattern, and texture down in response to what layers were previously there. I love experiencing the potential of unformed thoughts in the moments before they take definite energetic shape, when meaning hovers between clouds of association and dreams. In the making, a larger whole emerges which I couldn't have planned beforehand.

For this project, created mostly while recuperating from unexpected surgery, I aimed to approach each studio day with few predetermined commitments as to what I'd keep and what I'd let go of and bury beneath layers. For this process I purposefully loosened expectations for how and why I create what I do. It felt luxurious to mix paint directly on the panels with little control over perfecting a stroke or a line but to instead savor the colors for their own sake in and of themselves.

In the process I aimed to let go of expectations for any preconceived favorable outcomes, and chose to focus on simply remembering the joy in the surprise of color mixing. In a life spent shouldering multiple responsibilities, painting provides me the space to relish the open and creative potential embedded in the unformed and the undetermined. The expansiveness becomes its own form of medicine, and color its own salve.

I realized today that I'm tired of the grind of self improvement. I want a vacation from trying to be something different than who I am - a vacation from high expectations that likely are not my own expectations but rather are other people's ideas that I've put onto myself without realizing it. This doesn't come from nowhere, but instead has been growing for awhile. I'm wanting so badly to just be, and to just love myself as I am. Who knew?

I am the granddaughter of a woman who was in the Hitler Youth. That's neither here nor there, and I'm not particularly interested in publicly defaming her memory today. She was still a grandmother, decidedly not Richard Spencer-like and you probably wouldn't have punched her if you'd have met her; she cooked dinner, washed laundry, and like many German women tacitly participated in the sort of mundane everyday culture that ultimately dehumanizes then murders difference. Her daily life was remarkably similar to the daily lives of many Americans.

She wasn't evil. She didn't cower in the dark recesses of human consciousness. She was my grandmother. Racism, and the structures that uphold it to reinforce fear and resource hoarding, are rendered invisible when paired with seemingly benign daily routine. It is by changing our habits and our internal thought processes that we're able to individually address the racial biases that overall contribute to systemic abuse.

Growing up and in my professional sphere I've worked to expand how we can encounter ethnic and religious difference in ways that celebrate the complexities of human experience. When it comes to the politically charged topic of Israel, I've kept a distance, remaining silent because I default to doing work within my own community where I live to help people feel safe and heard rather than focusing on a country that is on another continent. I know in large part it is my family history that shapes my reserve: there truly is very little reason to add my thoughts to an already murky stew of conflicting thought and opinion. It's not easy, and I've lost friends over this effort to remain neutral.

But, this morning I received a message from a friend which served as a reminder that within this community there are cultural overlaps that by their very nature include the struggles of conflict in other regions. He asked why there hasn't been a more solid response of rebuke and condemnation by Jewish leadership to the massacre in Palestine Israel, which occurred on the cusp of the major Muslim holiday of Ramadan.

I cannot speak on behalf of others, but his straightforward and stern message calling me out on my own silence is taken to heart.

A few years ago I visited Israel for a conference, and not surprisingly I fell in love with the confluence of world culture within Jerusalem. Amusingly, it wasn't even on my radar that Christians love the area until I sat next to one on the plane who'd already made the trip multiple times. Up until that moment I'd primarily focused on Jerusalem as a site contested between two Abrahamic expressions, Judaism and Islam, but not until I listened to the woman excitedly tell me of all the pilgrimage spots she'd be traveling to did it belatedly dawn on me how many people feel a deep personal connection to this land regardless of what passport they hold. Jerusalem truly is a world site. Regardless of which political body pretends control of it, the site remains sacred on a global scale. Nobody can claim it because everybody claims it.

And, of course, it isn't only the three major Abrahamic traditions who call the area home. Bahá'í, Bedouins, Druze, Kemetic pagans, atheists, Samarian Roma, and more also worship in the region according to their inspirations. When in the Old City, I watched Korean Christians lie prostrate in the Holy Sepulchre and I visited the courtyard of an Ethiopian Coptic church. I walked the streets with a Mizrahi Jewish tour guide whose family came to Israel after being expelled from Iraq decades ago. He took me to a rooftop and pointed out the wall in the distance separating people from one another. He was not proud of the wall. I passed a memorial to the Armenian genocide. When I stood with other women and put my hand on the surface of the Kotel, I felt the electric buzz of centuries spinning through my veins and I couldn't find the words to explain the euphoria until I sat with my eyes closed only to open them and see a white dove perched by a chair, breathing its peace.

Israeli culture is uniquely an amalgam of world cultures coalescing in one geographically tight area. Yemeni, Iraqi, Moroccan, Tunisian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, American, French, Ugandan, and Ethiopian Jews hold passports. The list goes on and on. I saw a reconstruction of an Indian Synagogue next to a reconstruction of a Dutch Sephardic Synagogue. To call the country names like 'Israhell' does a gross disservice to the creativity with which multiple cultural expressions manage to live together with limited resources.

And, adding to all of this are the Palestinian people who are not only denied access to this sacred city but are denied easy access to basic resources like water. During my short time there I also saw multiple checkpoints, numerous machine guns, and long unnecessary lines for families to get from A to B on their daily routine.

One of my longest and most meaningful conversations happened with a man in the courtyard of the Al Aqsa mosque, who was proselytizing on behalf of Islam. He spoke English, and spent his days with his fellow co-religionists chatting with tourists and handing out free Korans. We talked a long time. There was no reason for him to give me as much of his time as he did, but honestly I wanted to stay on the platform as long as I could and so welcomed the conversation. The winter sun was shining just perfectly over everything, a women's group was studying Koran under a nearby awning, and awed tourists were snapping selfies before being shuffled off by the guards tasked with keeping the flow of people moving along.

At one point I said to him in all awe and sincerity, "You live in the most beautiful place in the world. You truly are lucky to live here." And, he agreed. But, before he nodded his agreement, I saw a small flicker of another emotion, a nanosecond of despair and sadness that he couldn't conceal. Yes, he lived in the most beautiful place in the world and yes he was lucky to be there every day but yet he could only live as a visitor in an area his family had likely lived for countless generations. Was it luck to be placed in bodily danger every day by an exclusionary government? What does luck mean in this context? Unlike the millions of people who travel thousands of miles to stand where he does, he breaths the sacredness every day. And, he shares the beauty of his religion every day with those able to listen. In that sense it is truly a lucky life, regardless of bodily harm. And, yet, there are those who would claim he ought not to be allowed to participate in his own lived experience; they'd rather dismiss him as a terrorist or a fanatic. We talked awhile longer, and I almost signed a conversion statement but confessed to him that I would have mostly signed it primarily so that I could see inside the beautiful mosque (which is only available to adherents of Islam). That didn't feel like an honest reason to sign a statement of belief, and he understood my position. I didn't commit to a new religion that day, but I did expand my library with the English language Koran he gave me.

When I look at pictures of the embassy dedication ceremony this week, I see none of the cultural vibrancy that marks the city life in Jerusalem. I see no evidence of the efforts to coexist that people of myriad cultures expend to live together while often uncomfortably navigating an intentionally striated and racially biased social hierarchy. I see none of the collective sacred energy that has transformed this tiny map dot into the global center that it is. I see none of this, but I do see the same sort of *mundane everyday culture that ultimately dehumanizes then murders difference* that characterized the normalcy of everyday racism influencing my grandmother's early life during the Hitler Years. I can't not see it. I don't know any Jewish Americans who approve of this new embassy, and yet here it now stands mowing down the efforts of people to acknowledge the humanity of Palestinians who live in the region and deserve recognition. To kill and injure so many people is an inhumane act of racism and religious intolerance. My heart goes out to those touched by the tragedy.

We can find grounding in the notion that as humans we are entitled to a relationship with the earth and elements under our feet. I'm not talking about ownership or  submission, but relationship. We live with some portion of our body connected to the earth at all times, and it is our spiritual birthright to live in connection with the air, water, earth, and fire that sustains us. To foster and nurture that relationship, we must gain understanding of the indigenous and ancestral relationships experienced by the people of the areas where we live, and to treat these relationships with the sacred respect they deserve. This is true whether our feet are rooted in Oregon or in Palestine or in Israel. When we treat the land beneath our feet as sacred, then all places become The Most Beautiful Place In the World.

I had this dream in the days right before leaving for NYC last week and in it I looked in the mirror and my scalp was bald, pocked, and pasty like the craters of the moon. On top of my head was this white thing that is hard to describe; a chalky upside pokey sharp pronged comb like an upside down burr poking directly into my skull and several inches into my brain.

Dusty, matte, it was perhaps carved out of ivory yet was potentially crumbly and definitely breakable.

In my dream, I reached up and slowly pulled it out and threw it away, and felt great relief once it was removed as though it was a tracking device that could no longer chart my movements. It was as though this was an implanted tool used to dictate my thoughts and aspirations, and I'd perfectly removed its prickly spines from my lunar brain.

I was finally free.

In my waking life all last week I had the scattered feeling of being unmoored, simultaneously freed and yet also stymied by what consumer analysts call the 'paradox of choice' (what I had always mistakenly called the 'paralysis of choice.') No matter what you call it, the freedom unnerved me and energetically I froze in place. Without anything to make the decisions for me, how was I to proceed? Did I miss the flipped chalky crown that controlled my thoughts and choreographed my movements? In a way, yes.

Apparently, it's not easy to be untethered from a purpose, even if it's a purpose engineered for me by some other force. Sitting in the drift felt necessary somehow, even as it felt difficult to focus on anything but the most menial of tasks. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't relevantly dive into anything deeper than surface thought and conversation. It was good, but hard; receiving a glimpse into how habitually I live with a drive to find meaning....to live from task to task without the ability to focus was unbearable in a way although I was perpetually too distracted to notice how unbearable it was.

What a strange feeling, to witness how quickly I fall adrift when I have nothing to do and nothing to prove.

But, a funny thing also happened in the midst of this. Neil and I were staying in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn at my childhood friend's apartment and there was a small neighborhood used record store that Neil and I visited on our second to last day there. There was also a small selection of books for sale. I peered through the books while Neil shopped for records and I found The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. Even though I'm very interested in the history of alchemy, I've always stayed away from that particular book probably due precisely to its popularity. I just don't, you know, trust it. But, I took it off the shelf and thought to myself, "Well, you probably ought to read this as research into why people like it so much. You are interested in bringing alchemy as a topic into your work more, so why not?" I decided not to buy it though, and put it back on the shelf.

The next day (our final day in NY) our plans sorta fell through and so Neil suggested a trip to the aquarium in Coney Island. We took a bus and then the subway down there and had a great time in the sun, but didn't spend much time there as we needed to get back in time to get to the airport. On our way back on impulse I decided we ought to get off the bus a few stops early and walk back the rest of the way to the apartment to pick up our suitcases. We happened to pass by the record store again, this time with a sidewalk rummage sale going on (there was this new thing in the neighborhood where electronic cars were racing formula one style near the docks in Red Hook so an extra 10,000 people were in the neighborhood than ever are there regularly so all the businesses were putting their wares on the sidewalk.) I looked at the book table, and chuckled when I saw the book laying again on the table. Seeing it the second time felt like I might as well buy it. This particular copy has a lot of handwritten notes in the margins and was inexpensive so there was a 'no harm, no foul' energy to spending money on it.

Then we go to the airport, our flight is delayed an hour, but when we finally do sit down at our gate after wandering around a bit at JFK I pull out the book, crack it open, and guess what? Another passenger, sitting across from me is reading the exact same book! I nudge Neil and tell him to look over at the guy and Neil chuckles at the coincidence. He asks me if I'm going to say anything but I answer, "No." But, then as we get up to board the plane, I lean across the way and interrupt the man saying, "Sorry to intrude, but I noticed you're reading this book," and then I show him my copy. He responds that he just bought it that day.  "I already have a copy at home, but haven't read it yet. I decided to buy this copy today. I don't know why, though."  

I wished him a good flight, then left with Neil to board the plane.

When I read our old myths and histories, I find that the 'truest' stories are the one's nobody can definitively prove happened in a literal sense. The stories that resonate most deeply with our hearts and with our truest natures are the ones steeped in poetic truth.

It is useful to read history, especially ancient history, with a loose grasp rather than a tight mental grip. I find I relax my mind from any sense of urgency to prove whether or not something physically transpired but rather settle in to discerning what meaningful symbols rise to the top of our consciousness as we listen. 

Because, that is where the juicy energy is to be found. We find a story's true meaning from within its resonance...and it's latent effect on our subsequent thought patterns.

Stories shape how we walk in the world.

As millions of people know, the dominant Christian story attempts to eradicate both a divine feminine as well as the physical feminine from sharing the spotlight with the Jesus figure.

Jesus, as a teacher, focused on modeling how our behavior affects the world around us. For example, in Christianity there are moral stories about turning the other cheek or loving one's neighbor in an effort to offer forgiveness.

But, what we lose when the Divine Feminine is veiled is wisdom in how to navigate the necessary transitions from one life change to another. Are we not in a constant state of learning how to accept the transitions that form the container of our lives? Wouldn't knowing how to change with nature's flow encourage us to be more forgiving at our core?

The relevance of the worship of the Mary's of the Sea, Magdalene and the Mother and their daughter/granddaughter Sarah allows us to dive into a deeper appreciation of the different life stages we live through as creative people. If we can let go of the idea that the Divine Feminine is bound to genitalia or gender identity, but that the Feminine Principle represents on a deeper level our most creative impulses then we can look at the daughter Sarah, her mother Mary, and her grandmother Mary as different archetypal forms of generative energy living within us at any moment.

How strange and wonderful to envision the 'virgin' maiden Mary living through to her crone years as a doting grandmother. How lovely to understand at the deepest level that our sexual desires are not a reflection of shame or guilt but of our divine connection with the generative elements we embody simply through living in the world. This, our mental and spiritual acceptance of our generative and creative nature, is the biggest gift we have for ourselves and for each other. This understanding that we are creative beings down to the very cellular level is one of the largest lessons to integrate this lifetime. It is also, subsequently, one of the most hidden lessons buried within the Christian tradition. It deserves to be unearthed for those willing to find it.