welcome back - and the magic of rituals
Welcome to this first quiet little conversation of the year! Thank you for being here today, I am so grateful you are choosing to spend some of your precious moments with these thoughts, words and images.
As we find our way in to the newness of January after the busyness of December, I'm grateful for the magic of how rituals help us be grounded and centered. For me, rituals are embodied in the way I move through my day, from lighting a candle as I sit in morning meditation, to the way I organize my studio space before I begin working and when I finish for the day, to the seasonal rituals of Solstice, and Christmas.
I'm not a New Years resolution kind of person, I'm more of a Kaizen kind of person and it works well with my desire to find and perfect ways of doing things, always looking for ways of refining and elevating my experiences of life.
What is kaizen? Kaizen is a Japanese term meaning “change for the better or continuous improvement”.
When I wrote the last quiet little conversation at the end of November, I was mentally ready for a break. But I soon found how much I missed the structure in my week of creating and collecting images, of pondering and writing and rewriting the words I wanted to share, of showing you the progress of the current paintings. I was surprised to realize how much of a stabilizing effect these rituals of writing and processing my thoughts about life and my studio work have on my day to day functioning.
I'm happy to be back at my desk today writing and curating images and ideas for you as we travel through January.
And as always, I want to express my gratitude to be living and working on the ancestral & unceded territories of the hən̓̓qəmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.I honour the incredible depths of grace, courage and perseverance of Indigenous Peoples, and look to them as an example as they find their voices amidst the noise and obfuscation of colonization.
until next time,
Mardell