Dear
Heron Dancers,
Rain. Rain again today. Birds singing in the rain. Their songs sound different bouncing off wet leaves and navigating between raindrops. Rain in the woods gives birdsong fullness and depth. In the background, drops hit the forest floor with a percussive effect. Wind rustles branches. The woods are a symphony in the rain.
I like to walk and paddle in warm rain. Rain invites you inward.
Thank you to all who wrote in supporting the recent experiments at Heron Dance, as well as those who expressed concern. I was paddling faster than the current for a little while. I felt I needed to in order to break through into new territory. I needed to break out of a cycle of struggle and disillusionment, and I built up my energy to do that.
As one example of many, subscriber and songwriter William Renfrow wrote, “Yes, press for greatness, push oneself beyond boundaries, but what about the flow of the river, attunement with nature, quietude leading to an appreciation of beauty, in each exquisite moment?” (We’ve posted William’s entire letter on our website here.)
I set that river aside for a little while to venture into new territory. I felt like I was riding a tiger and the excitement combined with nervousness was akin to ecstasy. Ultimately though, the objective is a life of meaning, a peaceful, thoughtful life, but one that also is full, alive and creative. Peace is elusive. Living in touch with calmness is elusive.
I’ve been making notes in my journal about the times when my life has had a deep peace about it. My thoughts first go to early mornings on wilderness rivers and lakes. I think of long, tiring fall canoe trips in the cold and rain followed by a day of warm sunshine.
Wilderness memories are ballast in my life but, to find peace in the human world, something more is needed. Peace comes from knowing what you want out of life, paring down, simplifying, focusing on a few important things. Do works of beauty. Serve something bigger than yourself. Pour yourself into satisfying work. Then, deep relaxation. Make an art form of deep relaxation.
Nurture your friendship with yourself, with your inner world. Minimize the extraneous. Minimize the number of moving parts. Be careful of who and what you let into your life. Protect your time. Do creative work. Be gentle on yourself. Make room for love in your life. Build close friendships with good people. Read. Think. Spend time alone.
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
- James Baldwin
A peaceful life requires a center point, a place of balance. Everything unique and beautiful grows out of the still point, that place of quiet reflection, meditation or prayer.
No matter how extreme my experiments and adventures, everything is fine in my life if I make sacred room for a quiet center. It needs to be nurtured, paid attention to. If I do that, it will guide me through troubled waters. It has guided me through some very troubled waters indeed, including cancer and the early years of Heron Dance. When I lose touch with it, my life spins out of control.
To nurture a quiet center, we sometimes need to be hard on ourselves, hard on our attraction to trivial and insignificant things.
Whenever I’ve been alone for more than twenty-four hours, my mind has become preoccupied with my screw-ups, my embarrassments, the things I should have done differently. There are a lot of those things. I’ve bounced up against boundaries all my life. But others have told me that they experience the same. After three days, a deep peace takes over, but in the interim, I encounter anger towards myself and others — others in the broadest sense, including the systems of power in human world. My mind, operating in a vacuum, is simply looking for something to do, something to focus on. After three days, I’m fine. I’m free.
The human mind solves problems. That’s what it wants to do because that’s what it is good at. It is all about the world out there; it is uncomfortable turning inward. It doesn’t want to be alone with itself in a room or a forest. It wants activity, controversy. Conflict excites it. It is constantly searching for something to worry about, something to fear, something to get excited about. It likes human relationships. It craves distraction from the truths at the center of our lives.
Nothing is more controversial, nothing more avoided, nothing more threatening to our self-constructed narrative, than the truth. We certainly don’t want to be alone in a room or a forest with truth for any length of time.
But art and writing and all creativity, including creating a full, deep experience of life require a relationship with that quiet center. There’s always something more important to do. The house needs cleaning. Bills need to be paid. There’s a great show on television. No, no, sit there alone in a room. Confront that scary silence, that aloneness. Make friends with it.
Your creative work requires that.
Everything beautiful grows out of that.
In celebration of the Great Mystery of Life,
Written by Elliott Merrick with an introduction by Lawrence Millman
In 1929, at the age of 24, Elliott Merrick left his position as an advertising executive in New Jersey and headed up to Labrador to work as an unpaid volunteer for the Grenfell Mission.
In 1933 he wrote True North, a book about his experiences in the northern wilderness, living and working with trappers, Indians, and with the nurse he met and married in a remote community.
The book describes the hard work and severe conditions, along with the joy and friendship he and his wife experienced.
Visit
here to order True North.
Visit
here to read additional excerpts.
Visit
here to view Night Paddle, the image
featured above.
Great Egret Blue Notecards
Great Egret Blue Notecard Portfolio
Ten full-color notecards, featuring the Roderick MacIver watercolor Great Egret Blue, comes in a beautiful wallet folder with matching envelopes.
Great Egret Blue is also available as a Limited Edition Print.
Visit
here to order the Great Egret Blue Notecards.
Visit
here to view the Great Egret Blue image
