regenerate.

At the Squam art workshops last week I was able to get into nature and do some art I've not been familiar with until now. 

My second class was Earth Art with a sweet illustrator named Penny as our teacher. She had us meditate to come up with a word that means something to us and then we were to strike out to create a symbol of that word within the constraints of nature. Amazing. We all cried just a little by the time the class came to a close, our explanations reverberating through each classmate. 

Mine was Regenerate. Strange word, I thought at first. I based my 'design' on the ripples of a water droplet that I had been so intent on during class the previous day.

Regeneration. The tiny drop creates change and life beyond it's scope, bringing life back to itself in turn. It's hard to explain in my own words what I was feeling or meaning. The art said it best, really.

Just now I was reading 'A field guide to NOW' by Christina Rosalie, and something she wrote encompassed exactly how I felt about my Earth art project:

"...There is something fragile and breathtaking in me, like a field of irises; something unstoppable like the innate instinct that sends salmon upstream through rapids and turbines, following the scent of sweet water. Something tremulous, like the song of the thrush, that tells me this life is meant to be lived ardently, not merely spent. Life is abundant and impermanent. It burst forth, ripens, and then becomes just as quickly another thing. Leaf to soil. Breath to song. Bone to spirit. Natures claims us, holds us, remakes us again and again."

Perfect.

How nice that she was at Squam as well (I think we were both meditating and relaxing in solitude at the lake for hours one afternoon, just a few rocks over from one another?). It's simply magical there.