In the fall of 2024, Hurricane Helene devastated North Carolina. Elsewhere, torrential rains collapsed mountainsides, swallowing villages, towns, and bodies in miles of mud. Volcanoes poured lava into inhabited spaces, lacing water with sulfur. Wildfires reduced entire landscapes to char, erasing homes and all forms of life that once inhabited them.

Communities, Presence disrupted. Destroyed. And now decomposing.

Nature is rising to interrupt human abuses of power. Yet, those who wield domination continue efforts to obliterate communities, histories, wisdom traditions, and, of course, the Earth. Reverence for life feels engulfed once again in the white noise of unbearable anguish.

That white noise invaded my studio, my capacity to metabolize such devastation. For months, I sat before a blank canvas, waiting for a break in the static, a glitch in the white noise to open a way forward.

In time, light filtered in through the window illuminating the canvas and its structure from behind. There it was! The window, literally becoming the portal of possibility.

On a palette I poured gold, bronze and yellow hues, letting the brush bring these to the canvas as it chose too. Ethereal light penetrated the canvass from behind, forming a rich invitational ground I could trust to hold what needed to be seen. Soul-stunting white noise giving way to “seeing what is felt”.

.

Something more was coming…

Devastation, and yet, a doorway… Light!  And the shadow of a bird presencing.

I stopped, needing to weep a while, recognizing the burning and the birthing that had arrived. So Painful and Possible. I sighed deeply, into continuing…

Wind-swept char covering everything, dimming even shadow bird… but still… Light, like Love, persisting.

Accompanied.

Always, She is there, appearing in the convergence – an outline now upon the threshold of Light. Reminding me to let go, let go, let go. Be brave enough to see. And in the midst of it all to blindly trust Light, trust Love. Tenderness holds me. She enters and Peace continues to form. 

The white noise gone, I am touched deeply by what remains – by the seeds that endure. Hope arrives through the tender act of presencing pain. Once again, we are held in creative light, a tender radiance that expands the limits of our present conditions.

As birds do, may we bear witness to what must be seen, and offer new seeds to the continuum of our becoming – flying amidst, and with, the Beauty that arises and calls us forward.