We all get knocked off center sometimes. We work hard to maintain level. We struggle to retain some quality of pre-knowing because it feels safe. But what does that knowledge and safety add up to?
Perhaps living on the edge is a better place to be. It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable. It certainly doesn’t feel safe. The waves are bigger. But the stars are brighter. The answers lie out there with our imagination.
Aging has its own beauty and power.
A creative challenge from Lori Ryker, founder of Artemis institute and Anna Taugher of IAMACOLLECTION.
Anna and I have teamed up to create a challenge to get you to collaborate with nature and get your creative juices flowing this winter. We hope you will join us in the first installment of Earthly Instractable: an online community challenge.
At the core of our existence is the desire to create and make. Regardless of scale we create everyday. The act of creation, which is activity combined with positive intention, can be as simple as setting the table for breakfast or baking a cake, and as complex as architecture or composing a symphony. All of these creative acts provide a connection for who and how we are in the world. They set-up, set-aside, negotiate, and connect us to the world we live in.
To take the opportunity to respond to the world from our own point of view provides the time for contemplation, interaction, and experience with the pure joy of nature.
We have been wondering what would come about if many, many, people were to take a bit of time in nature and spend it in contemplation and creation. This is our Challenge, take some time for yourself to “be” in nature, collaborate with and create something wonderful, wonderous!
Follow these simple steps for your semi-permanent creation:
First –
Step 1: Walk some distance into a natural area, stop at a place you feel comfortable in.
Step 2: Gather material that is straight in nature.
Step 3: Place the material into a cylindrical to semi-spherical shape, finished scale is up to you.
Step 4: Intertwine, wind, and connect the material until it is stable in its final shape, adding material as needed. (don’t forget it’s winter, ice and snow can be a great material to use)
Step 5: Place yourself inside your structure, en-joy.
Next-
Have a photo made of you in your Winter Earthly Instructable and post to Instagram no later than midnight February 16 with the following hashtag #earthlyinstructable
AND THE WINNER IS !
A winner will be selected from the top three submissions based on likes and comments submitted by midnight February 16. The winner will receive the inspiring book My People’s Dreaming: An Aboriginal Elder Speaks on Life, Land, Spirit and Forgiveness, Written by Max Dulumunmun Harrison and Peter McConchie, provided by Artemis Institute.
The winner will be announced through Instagram, and also on : iamacollection.com, loriryker.com, and on Facebook as Artemis Institute.
Revelations arise through many avenues. Sometimes they come quietly when we are on our own, until bam! The power for potential change is revealed. Sometimes it is our friends who point out an obvious quality in ourselves we fail to recognize on our own. Or maybe we know this quality but we simply do not give it much thought, because we simply are who we are.
I credit a friend to the recent consideration of my “black and white” point of view. Is it too extreme? Am I missing out on other possibilities in life because choices, positions and decisions seem so clearly “to be” or “not to be”? And it’s not that I align myself with anyone else’s sense of black and white, right or wrong. I simply have my own point of view.
I know this practice and way of seeing the world serves professional accomplishments. But what is the outcome for our personal lives when we are living within the mushiness of another’s sense of the world, timing and spirit ? The either/or view of the world seems ultimately Limiting when living in relation to another. Even when looking from the outside with respect to social conventions of what’s acceptable behavior, the over simplification of choice , when taken to the extreme “good” or “bad” seems never rich enough for life’s unfolding expression. Perhaps the black and white of choice is a matter of survival when we find ourselves on a tricky path.
The last month or so I have been challenging my decision process , stretching choice between black and white to feel what living in the gray is like. Gray is certainly a more muddy, less clear sense of reality than I normally choose. Gray gives us longer to consider choices. Living the gray broadens the sense of understanding in the world. And it can reassign the poles of black and white with other truths. Living the gray is messy, more inclusive, less simple. Living the gray is like singing a note and holding it as long as possible to feel what that note can become as it is sung.
Living the gray is living in a world where past limits fall away to new truths. Where the separation between earth, water, and air vanishes.
between here and there 