Alegria! - Joy - a meandering...

"If you have no hope - Create!"

"I see a light shining - Alegria!"

Two nights ago (Aug 11) we were watching the closing ceremonies of
the Paris Olympics.  As the athletes walked into the stadium,
I tried to read what country they were from printed on their
clothing.  I could have sworn one said "Alegria."
And I said: "Alegria?  Where's that!?"
Later I read it again, it said "Algiers."

Something went off inside when I read it as Alegria.
That was a Cirque du Soleil artistic circus performance many
years ago that we watched, and one of the opening lines was:
"If you have no hope - Create! Alegria!" (which means Joy)

Two nights ago that remembrance sparked a light in me to
Create again...

I got out the card table and pulled the poster board and Craypas
oil sticks from beneath the bed, set up a space and began to
Create...  Resulting in the above picture - just movement and color.
That's all that was needed.

I felt the heaviness that I've been carrying lift; a release occurred 
as something within gave expression through color and movement...

I felt the stuck energy unlock.  Having been swallowed up by my
current life experience, I knew my energy was out of sync.

The act of creating heals, frees,
and ignites something within...

I thought: Maybe creating is a way through;
a reclaiming of myself; a realignment...

I'm sure most true artists know this...
I just had to experience it for myself;
to feel it...

And how awed I was to experience that
"The Divine" (however called) speaks
through ordinary means,
like watching TV :) not just in moments
of silent meditation...

Alegria!

Mystic Meandering
Aug 12, 2024

~

Photo: Funky Vortex Art
Aug 2024
Mystic Meandering

 

The Soul's Secret Signature - C.S. Lewis

...Are not all friendships born at the moment when at last you
meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and
uncertain at best) of that something which you were born
desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all
the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and
day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking
for, watching for, listening for? But you'be never had it...

All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have
been but hints of it - tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite
fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear.
But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came
an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself,
you would know it.

Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say:
"Here at last is the thing I was made for."  We cannot tell each
other about it.  It is the secret signature of each soul, the
incommunicable and unappeasable longing, the thing we
desired before we met our wives [husbands] or made our friends
or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our
deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife [husband] or
friend or work.  While we are, this is.  If we lose this, we lose all.

C.S. Lewis
from: The Problem of Pain

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
[the True Friend] -

and say, sit.  Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Star Burst Crystal

Regaining the Rhythm of "Self" - John O'Donohue

When you regain a sense of your life as a journey of discovery,
you return to rhythm with your self.  When you take the time
to travel with reverence, a richer life unfolds before you.
Moments of beauty begin to braid your days.  When your
mind becomes more acquainted with reverence, the light,
grace and elegance of beauty find you more frequently.
When the destination becomes gracious, the journey
becomes an adventure of beauty.

John O'Donohue
Excerpt from: Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering