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This is a picture of my friend Silvija's magnificent real Christmas tree. She has done this every year I have known her (since Grade 9). Inspiring!

Here is another inspiring text I discovered. It takes such a load off my mind (which I realize is the Small Mind). It is so easy to be happy and relax when the Big Mind is taking care of everything.


This is a quote from the book “God Loves Fun”
by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

“Turn back and you will see that the whole life is like a dream. Isn’t it?
See the past. Is it not like a dream?
Till today, till this moment?
You came here, you settled; the day before, you had started from somewhere.
Before that you did something, something else on New Year...you enjoyed your
Christmas presents. The Year before, and the year before, you cried and yelled
and much before you shuttled back and forth from school for years- bored,
waiting for the weekend. Isn’t it? That is all gone. Is it not like a dream?

And what is going to happen? A few more days, what can happen?
At the most, you will laugh and jump, or you will cry and sit. So what!
Anyway, it is all going to pass, however you spend your time. Why bother so much?
In order to smile and laugh, you are bothering so much. Your effort to smile and laugh
is making you cry and weep. There is nothing you need to do.
Just smile and laugh. Life has no purpose, no mission. It is a game, it is a play.
Life has no message. Life itself is an expression of joy.
There is nothing you have to do.
Everything is being done by the Big Mind.”

ATCs

My Artist Trading Cards for this month were inspired by the challenge set by Ronna in the ATCQuarterly. She asked for a card inspired by the theme of "Dollars and Sense". I have an old wallet with currency from the countries I have visited and decided to sacrifice the paper money for this project. Does it make sense to cut up money? If you are an ATC artist, yes!

I mixed pieces of bills from Hungary and Bali with Canada Tire money, newsprint from a local oriental daily paper and bits of gold paper to represent the real thing. When all the pieces were layered onto my ATC-sized cardstock with Mod Podge and then completely dried, I punched in some holes. Then the collage was glued onto another card of copper cardboard, so that the copper peeked through and looked like "cents" (pennies). It was a great way to spend this wintery afternoon.

I look forward to the trade this Saturday in Dunvegan, as always, but this month is special. We will stay on after the trade for a party, sharing some finger food and bubbly. This is a great tradition and we get inspiration from opening up our collections for review.

Soltice

It is early in a deliciously stormy day: sleeping in, waking to the sound of the wind snapping the flags above the town hall across the road, listening to seasonal music from around the world on the CBC (with my budgies chiming in), the scent of Reto's freshly baked "Hazelnuss Stengeli" wafting upstairs and now connecting to my family/friends/visitors through the net.....all heavenly!

This day begins two glorious weeks off from karma-yoga type work. Time to spend in my art studio, reading The Gazette in front of the fireplace, skating on the Rideau canal in Ottawa, and just Being at home. Thirty two years ago I was expecting my daughter's birth "any minute"...she arrived on the 23rd. Happy birthday, now in India, dear Simone!

I offer you this photo I made yesterday in minus 26 degrees. It expresses to me the essence of this shortest day of the year: pure and simple, deepest inner life. Like the New Moon, we have reached the Nadir of Nature's cycle, the darkest time with the most potential.

Winter

As of next Monday, all car owners in Quebec are required by law to have four winter tires installed on their cars. It seems that many drivers were stalling with the decision to make this big investment. Four new tires can slide you back about $700.-!

A recent snowstorm was a joyful event for our local snowmobile owners, snowman builders and photographers. Maybe it was not so wonderful for all those driving (or stuck in slush) with their summer tires. Freezing rain was the icing on our cake: I went out to take some pictures of Nature's poetry to share with you.

Expiry Date

This Bruxmania bloomed inside my studio recently. I thought the plant had stopped blooming for this season but it seems to have liked the move inside and the dose of fertilizer. I feel the same way sometimes: a period of creativity ends and I feel burnt out. All it takes is a change of scene and new inspiration and there I go again. That is spirituality at work, like this pure white, light-filled flower, in itself a perfect mandala.

Do you buy things that have a "best before" date that has passed? The product was still good yesterday..... but today it is no longer up to standard. How many of us buy it anyway at a lower price and figure it is still good, that we got a deal? I used to. Now I ask myself if it's not a better deal to let it go. If I didn't have it on my shopping list, I don't need it. "Enough is a feast" is a way to be self-sufficient. After the expiry date has passed, there is no guarantee of quality, no more refunds and maybe there is a risk to our health. Whoever made it says it isn't good anymore.

I was wondering if the expiry date is there to check out how "poor" we feel and to check out our values. A long time ago, I lived in the Alps and had employees from Sri Lanka. They were asylum seekers with nothing but a small bag of belongings. It was amazing to see how these people coped with the trauma they left behind and their new environment (by sticking together, having a dream for a better future, making music). One day I ordered fish from the local supplier. The Sri Lankans had a look at it and said they would not eat it. They were used to fish that had just left the water it lived in hours before. It took time to get the fish to where we lived, so maybe the freshness was pushing the expiry date. It was not good enough for the ("poor") asylum seekers but it good enough for us.

What is good enough and what is past the expiry date? I would like to investigate it in keeping with my intent to have spirituality as the main theme of my blog. In moments of doubt, I look for inspiration from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who said "It is difficult to be materialistic. All the important things in life cannot be bought". My other source of truth and wisdom is my very own Divine Bean (see my labels list).

Divine Bean says:
Dear Marlana, you can trust your instincts every time. Ask: is it good for me? Take only what is good for you. Don't worry about the last time or the next time. Right now tune in and trust the answer.

Thank you, thank you as always my Divine Bean!

Spirituality

A recent visit from my son John, a computer genius who was kind enough to format my new computer, helped me know more about blogs. He gave me a little booklet by Quamet that said a blog needs to have a "content with a purpose" that I can stick to. Othwerwise, it's just a facebook.

The title of this post is the purpose of my blog. I write about making art, my daily work, Nature and mysteries. These are all forms of spirituality to me. Something divine and timeless is expressing Itself in endlessly fascinating ways.

In today's post. I would like to introduce some people I work with. We all have similiar tasks in this factory that produces ready-made meals but, in some ways, the factory is like an ashram! We wear white and follow a strict daily program. We repeat and repeat. We all focus on one goal. We sacrifice. One difference is that Ashrams are usually in a secluded, inspiring, natural location...ours is noisy, stinky and ugly. Oh well. Still, in this uninspiring environment, I found beauty in the other people who work with me.

At the top meet Wil from Florida. He is a trained electrician who still needs to get his permit here. His goal is to save up some money and start a new life in Canada. He is fun to work with, waving to me and smiling across the huge production halls. I love his Florida accent!

Then, middle left, you see Andree. She took care of her elderly mother and younger dependent sister all her life; now her mother is going into a home and Andree is going out to work and moving out of her home into an apartment with her sister. She is showing me her fingertips all blistered from sorting deep-fried food all day. Somehow, she still smiles!

To the right is Xin (pronounced Sing) from China. She speaks only Chinese and the strangest sounding "French" I ever heard, but we communicate pretty well. Her parents borrowed money to send her to Canada so she could save up enough money to pay the debt and bring them over. She didn't like the first picture I took of her so she posed for this one and o.k.'d it. She looks serious but actually giggles a lot.

Then at the bottom meet Laurie, a local women who has done a lot of amazing things in her life and is now settled into collecting some revenue to retire on. I wouldn't be surprised if that handsome guy in her production line whisks her away to a new romantic adventure. She cheers me up every time we have a break together. Is it her smile or her gorgeous green eyes?

There are about 20 other people from work I could blog about...but I am definately the only one in there who takes pictures or wears a cotton bonnet with flames or chili peppers under her hair net or eats lunch on a porcelaine plate (instead of a plastic one). Xin wanted to take a picture of me.....yes, next time!

Notan

Yesterday I drove to Dunvegan for a meeting of the Artist Trading Cards group. We get together every last Saturday of the month to trade our original art cards with our peers. We can even trade with people who aren't there! Ronna brings in cards made by artists who send them to her by snail mail. We add our own card to the collection and then help ourselves to the one we like.

I made cards that had a haiku written on a piece of hand-painted paper. Each card had a layer of transparent embossed paper covering the haiku, making it even more Zen. My Haiku was:
In Dunvegan we
trade miniature artworks
one-for-one, for free.

This weekend was dedicated to doing what I love to do, so I sat down and made a series of ATCs for November. They are inspired by the concept of Notan, which I recently came across while Googling sacred sciences. Notan means "light/dark harmony" in Japanese. It is a concept that helps to design harmonious light and dark values in your painting. The idea is similiar to the Yin/Yang symbol: keeping light and dark in balance is the essence of harmony.

I invite you to try this out. Take a piece of 1" square white paper and cut out shapes. Use what is left of the square and all the pieces you cut out to make a design on a black or dark art card. The challenge is greater when you increase the size of your square to 2" ( like my cards # 5 and #6).