Getting Away...

I found a T-Rex in a rock today... a kind of rorschach ink blot test with moss waiting to pounce on me as I walked through the woods, midway through a half day retreat. Can't you see it right there?

Let me back up.

This is a crazy time of year and this year seems crazier than most with all that’s going on. Since I sit on the committee that helped organize this women’s half day retreat, I couldn’t really hide in bed this morning or go with the rest of my family to watch Nick in his Dragon Boat races... so I headed off with all my craft gear in tow and many of the other supplies to a little church right on the edge of town.

I had a WONDERFUL time! I feel so much more recharged than I did this morning and so much more in touch with myself than I have in a long time!



The retreat itself was all about change, new beginnings and learning to live with chaos. Sounds perfect for my life right now. The leader told a wonderful Creation story common to all faiths by looking at where science and faith overlap to sing the proof of a world that did not just happen by accident. The whole timeline was also represented by circles of fabric that stood for different parts of the story. What a perfect thing to get a creative pattern person to look at. At first, I kept thinking about how badly everything was going to clash as all the circles were placed randomly on the floor. Soon I began to see how all of the patterns actually echoed the incredible diversity of culture and species that we have on this marvelous planet of ours. It made me think of this quote:

‘You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.’
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

So after listening to the Creation story, we headed out into a warm sunny Saturday morning with paint chips to try to find the same colours in Nature. I love a challenge, so instead of taking one, I took quite a few. The textured one was actually the easiest to match...



The brown gave me a bit of trouble until I found some older leaves...



The olive green didn’t quite match the moss, but that was as close as I could come...



The vibrant green was all around me in more vivid shades than my paint chip, but I loved the look of the fern leaves against this chip...



Amid all of this wonderful Nature walk, I found a reminder that really spoke to me. In the middle of a rotting stump where a tree had been cut down many years ago, new life was springing up. Not the same... not as a replacement... but new life none the less.



Life is all about cycles, about endings and beginnings, about new and old, about new possibilities out of something that seems dead. Then on the walk back to the church, I found the dinosaur in moss on the rock. The rest of the retreat was filled with good food, fellowship, hilarious attempts to follow a very gifted yoga leader and the making and trading of ATC (Artist’s Trading Cards) as part of the closing. It was a great day, a teaching day and a reminder about living.

It really is a Circle of Life kind of thing.