Meditation and Meaningfulness

 

Meditation has been a part of my since I was about 12 and the health teacher introduced the full body relaxation...you begin at your toes and work up the body.  An exercise to help one relax and sleep.  The reason a teenager needed that is a longer story and not needed for here.  Although I will say that I still use this one on occasion.   There are many ways that you can meditate and what works for me may not work for you, it can be deeply personal or armored open.

As part of my Sabbatical I decided to try something completely different. I will confess that it's not something that particularly interested me but since you should always try something new I thought I'd give it a go and enrolled I an online Icon Writing course.    Now meditation is my thing, but I would not have said icons were, I admire them, appreciate artwork but have ever needed to bring one home! I've also never held a paint brush (except to paint walls, fences etc) never learned brush stokes.   The learning curve was steep, at least in my mind.

All materials had to be sourced,most weren't locally  available and took some tracking down.  The school was super helpful.  Learning to make egg tempura and mixing pigments sometimes brought me to despair and the instructor assured us all that it was not anexact science,  after all what is one brush of egg? Pigment? It all depends on the size of that brush and how much it holds.  Patience became key!

Patience was necessary every step of the way for the brush strokes that the instructor made look so easy.  For the layer upon layer of paint that was carefully added. Patience as each layer dried and meditate while doing the strokes, waiting, repeating the process for several hours each day.  Ten sessions and no it wasn't a mere ten days.  Each layer and colour required a minimum of five layers, thinner layers were the goal. It was a slow layering process. Ideally you remember to change the direction of the stokeseach time.  As you layeryou introduce lighter colours for the contrast and shadows with the are getting smaller and smaller to layer (we won't discuss the eyes).  And if you messed up, we'll the instructor assuredyou could just redo the area and try again.  Another layer will fix it....yes indeed it does.

The process required quiet spaceport several hours each session,focus,meditative strokes of the brush, care, waiting, lots and lots of waiting quietly for a layer to dry, for glue to be just right for the gold leafing and meditative music playing inches background. 

The world kept moving.  Life kept happening but for those few hours every day all was quiet in my world and my life as bells rang, kyries were sung and layers were built.  The quietness of the exercise brought excitement to see my imperfect finished product and a quietness to my days as I slowly worked toward that goal.  Is it perfect, definitely not but it is a process with no exact time, no exact measurement. It  requires you to rely on feel and look and wait as opposed to too soon.  An exercise in patience and a new appreciation for the writing and the message of an icon. 

My apologies for not taking pictures every step of the way.  I was too busy practicing and holding the moment instead of the photo.