Art Heals day 30 :: Trust Your Body {prayer painting}
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This month's Prayer Art Invitation was TRUST YOUR BODY.
I found this intention to bring up lots of stuff this month about healing, life, holism, death, relationship, change, courage....
My practice, and this painting, helped me remember this about my truth - who am I to not trust my body?
This body I dwell in... this earth body I dwell on, too.
We often cling to notions of Trust being something that must be earned - and in certain contexts, this is wise for our vulnerable spirits as we build resiliency and strength in relationships with one another.
Yet, I sense an equal truth on the flipside, as well.
It takes great strength and courage to choose Trust before we measure whether or not it has been adequately earned. There is risk in this. And there is incredible possibility and healing, too.
What if we didn't have to earn one another's trust, chipping away at protective layers of subjective suspicion and conditioning? What if we just trusted completely, wholly, that whether we were hurt or disappointed we are capable of handling the transformation in loving ways?
What if we could participate in exchange so fully that the deepest healing could do its natural work within us, and the incredible possibility born of generous trust could grow into realizations of thriving and connection beyond our most intimate hopes?
What if this very sort of trust is activated when we, first, {remember to} trust our bodies?
When this painting was nearly complete, I had one of those moments where I had to get a pen in my hand fast and shift from painter to scribe.
Here are some raw glimpses of what hit the journal page that night (unedited):
We will bleed.Sometimes there will be blood given for our own healing - but not always our own.Sometimes it will be bleeding because of us - the blood of those we love,though we may not intend to cause harm.
We will hurt others in choosing our selves, gifts, path, truth.We won't mean to, but we will - this is life, transforming.
Can we trust ourselves anyway?Can we trust that we are all that we need, in sovereignty and together?Can we trust each other to lick our own wounds and rest, to drink from the pool of forgiveness and keep moving with the packToward the hunt, the den, the summit, Toward the Trust In Us as part of something greater than we can comprehend?
We will bleed and we will healeven when the healing is dying.
Birthing, dying - they are messy business.Blood flows, breaths gasp, hearts race and skip.We release things we didn't even know we held onto and we feel we might not survive the abyss of such movement.
Who knows if we dofor don't we come out either side of that abyss different than before?
What if Life has no beginning or end?Is whole in all of its transforming mysteries...Able. One. Essential and not. Timeless.
If I told you I wanted to help you die easier while you live,would you understand I only want to help you trust in letting go?
It is inevitable, the bleeding.
The blood in your hands - and sometimes on your hands -is not loss or time-ticking threat, but LIFE ,a celebration of courage rising from the abysmal moments into your own purity expressed.
We can surrender to the exchanges of Life working through us.We will hurt.And we can grieve and forgive.We can love.We can rise up into the ecstasy of joining and becoming.
We can dare to see each other bleed, even by our own hands, our own hearts and wombs.And we can thank the powers that be for this gift to feel it all moving through us
in all ways
breathing and breathless, within
We can embody Trust.
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This deeper Trust, for me, always begins within.
Listening to my heart and the stillness that fuels its pulse, in rhythm with All.
Listening closer, then, to my Whole body, in honor and reverence for her seamless guidance toward grounding in Life.
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