The “something new” I’ve chosen to try in February is a three evening class series called Art as a Spiritual Practice offered at Evenstar’s Chalice (“The place to BE for Everyday Enchantments and Inspiration.”) in Ypsilanti, MI. The teacher has a great name: Rocky Rains. He’s described as an “artist with over 40 years’experience as a Traditional Folk Magick practitioner”. Beyond “artist”, I had no idea what that means. But that’s part of the adventure! He’s further described as “a reliable guide for walking the pathof spiritual art making.” Guidance will surely be needed by this participant! The class is described as being for folks with any level of artistic experience. Thank goodness. We will use drawing, painting and craft work to learn how art can be prayer, ritual and a way to encounter the Divine. We are invited to learn how to access the creative force within and our inner wisdom and intuition. Becoming more intuitive is one of my ongoing goals.
Our first meeting was held on 2/1/18. The topic was Pan-Cultural Shamanism. Shamanism and shamanic journeying are interests of mine so this seemed auspicious. Rocky (Shadow Bear) shared that he is a practitioner of “the cunning arts” and explained briefly about his background with both Native American and other teachers. According to Rocky:
Europeans and Africans in British North America that came here in the 17th and 18th centuries brought with them the spiritual, religious and magical their traditions of their homelands. The blending of these traditions with those of the Native Peoples of North America became the bedrock for future iterations of American folk magic.
Rocky himself is a blend of Scots-Irish and Cherokee heritage. His ancestors were Appalachian mountain folk.
After smudging each of us, Rocky took us through a guided journey in which we were directed to observe and experience certain things that we would remember when we returned. The journey was fairly short but the imagery was vivid. Thus inspired, we each sewed and decorated a personal medicine bag (aka healer’s pouch, bundle, mesa in the Andean shamanic tradition, spirit bag) of leather. This is a spiritual container in which to place one or more sacred or meaningful objects. Rocky gave us each a small bundle of red material containing objects and herbs from various shamanic cultures (like tobacco,corn,soil from a liminal spot, Mugwort plus 16 more) to place inside. We can add more if we wish. I felt inspired to decorate the front of my pouch with an image related to a symbol I saw in the journey. This symbol was on a door leading further into spaces that we did not explore during this journey. Rocky also gave us each a piece of handmade parchment on which to draw this symbol before placing it into our pouch. We each received a master key as well.
It surprised me that a relatively brief guided journey could be so detailed and rich. When making the bag I did feel that I was in touch with some of my inner creativity. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t engage a process of working through my usual anxieties about right brain activities: “Will I do it right?”, “I’m not as creative as everyone else.”, “Mine isn’t going to turn out.”, etc. But it didn’t take too long to let go and just have fun with it.
You may wonder how this relates in my mind to preparing for retirement. Here’s how I see it. I’ve always enjoyed trying out new activities that are different from what I’m most comfortable with. Over the years I’ve done things like altered book making, tried hand quilting and weaving on a rudimentary loom, taken classes in medical intuition, done ecstatic dance, and gone zip lining and white water rafting, for example. As I approach retirement I want to really lock in and reinforce this behavior so that I can avoid getting into ruts and stagnation. I want to keep learning and experiencing, to take this way of living into retirement. I’ve been a lifelong learner; somehow it seems especially important right now to embrace this value and identity. This likely reflects some fearful thoughts I have related to retirement and aging that bear exploration. (That theme keeps cropping up so its time to get out the journal, Byron Katie’s The Work “One Belief at a Time” Worksheet, talk it through, etc.)
The theme of the next class is the Divine Feminine, something dear to my heart. But…. we’ll be painting! Stay tuned to see if my right brain can carry the day and take my hand along with it.