Grotto

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Grotto, acrylic and ink on watercolor paper, 18″X24″, Lex Leonard

In the beginning
a cavern gestation
dark, warm, fluid
underwater quiet
a den in which to grow
without worry
a place to become
what I am

Then I emerged
all new and shiny
ready to become more
still me, but more

There is no need for me to fear
This dark
This hollow
This stillness
This solitary space
Imposed

The other time, in three days
here was something new
and shiny
still the same
yet more
not in ways of musts and rules
but a knowing…there is more
and it doesn’t matter what that is
just a reminder
to be me, here and now

I, too, will emerge from this antre
shaking off many things
having been exiled to
dark, still, quiet in
sacred space
knowing there is more

 

Author’s Note:

This is day eleven of the National Poetry Writing Month/Global Writing Month. I didn’t post yesterday’s poem. It is at the bottom of this post. And today I am not writing to the prompt.

I began this painting yesterday. I am several years removed from celebrating the traditions of Holy Week and Easter. I celebrate in another way taking with me a life of of what serves me.

I have no specific religion, but I do believe in Source.

I do believe in holy and wise people who came here to help us realize what gifts we are. To help us realize that we are wonderfully and perfectly and beautifully made. This is our personal gift as well as a gift to all beings. And it is our purpose to share our beautiful selves. Flaws, if you must, and all.

As I painted this on Good Friday, I was in a place in my fear. In darkness. And I knew there was a message for me. I used only bone black and titanium white to begin after having blessed the canvas with the elements and opened the directions. This is my holy practice with my art.

As I sat with this, faces began to emerge from the strokes. Many faces, even a figure. I thought I might just darken a few lines of all the faces, but I stopped at the one that was most obvious. I knew I was going to add the quinacridone crimson. So this face emerge d surround by red, fire, hair. Me. So she stays. I’m posting below several image points along the way as I painted.

I am a certified Intentional Creativity instructor, Red Thread Guide, and poet. Using Intentional Creativity as a spiritual practice is a powerful addition to my other practices – Passage Meditation with the Blue Mountain Center for Meditation and my shamanic practice.

Life, for me, is about weaving together that which serves and sharing the gifts I have been given to help all beings realize their beauty within.

My Process: 1. Blessing the canvas with the elements. 2. Writing the intention. 3. Opening the directions. 4. Faces emerge.

 

NaPoWriMo Day 10

Today’s prompt (optional, as always) is another one from the archives, first suggested to us by long-time Na/GloPoWriMo participant Vince Gotera. It’s the hay(na)ku). Created by the poet Eileen Tabios and named by Vince, the hay(na)ku is a variant on the haiku. A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words. You can write just one, or chain several together into a longer poem. For example, you could write a hay(na)ku sonnet, like the one that Vince himself wrote back during NaPoWriMo 2012!

 

Evolution

Paramecium
Swimming obedience
Survival in tedium

Prometheus
Clayed resilience
Sparked life abundance

Bohemian
Soaring avian
Extant not oblivion

Microscopic
Story mythical
Consummate zenithal marrow

Color of Woman

My journey into Intentional Creativity© began almost two years ago. It seems impossible that I will now become a Color of Woman certified teacher along with my certification as a Red Thread Guide.

Someone who never picked up a pencil to draw or a paintbrush to paint, I found a passion that combined with my new found self.

I liken my new self to sitting on a lovely, perfectly balanced little three legged stool. One leg grounding me in Passage Meditation. The second leg grounding me in shamanic practice. And now, the third leg opening portals on the canvas to move through intention, to weave a red thread to create, and connect.

Below are a few photos of my initiate book. Some friends expressed the wish to purchase it. So it is now set up to explore and purchase, if you are interested, from Blurb.

In the coming months you will see more of my poetry and painting. I will have the originals for sale as well as prints and a card line. I will be offering workshops to spread the beauty within through discernment and discovery using my three legged stool!

Many blessings and much gratitude,

Lexanne

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Feint

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Little bee
you came out
almost
too soon,
winter’s trickster feint

But sun is warm
bones thaw
you move again with grace
about your daily chores

Your wings loose
and stretch
ready for flight

Violas call
You cleave

And I ride your back
honeymeade our drink
eternity our design

Misnomer

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Misnomer

I walk to hear birds

They are back
after winter break
building nests, returning
in sunrise I hear them
distant

Squeaky chatter
you tip your wing
a glimpse of orange golden glow
Sits atop

How can there be seagulls in Colorado?

sea….gulls

I am told there are no such things as
sea…gulls,
a misnomer

They are opportunistic
Make homes near reservoirs
Cold is no bother
as long as they are well fed

They also live in the Arctic

gulls

Simply
gulls


I wonder which they
prefer?

Colors

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Shaman Dreams, detail, by Lex Leonard

Shaman Dreams, detail, by Lex Leonard

First you learn to see
hues and tints
shadows and light
they are always there
not always noticed

Let go of what
you think you see, what you
want to see. Allow for unexpected
to surprise you

It will

You watch, without
judgement, without need

See, it will unfold
invite you into a new
way of being

 

Authors Note:

Happy National Poetry Month and Glo/NaPoWriMo!

Spring

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Spring

 

Winter negotiates spring,
i
ts last watered drops, ice tears
nourish that which will be,
release of what no longer serves.

After snow, graupel,
downpour of rain, I see your
green blush arms reach
to azure sky. I await, I inscribe your
nod to a new found spring.

 

Awww. It’s spring, at least in part. NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo begins tomorrow.

I welcome this as much as longer days and quick melting snow and birdsong.

Won’t you join me?

 

Seducing the Muse

I do not share events very often, but this is one I would love for you to check out.

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Make your inner critic your ally and let your Muse out to play
Find out how to rewire your brain patterns and quickly lower stress levels
Journey into the portal of your imagination with a world-class artist
Discover how to enter the “flow state” and free your creative, playful self

I know Shiloh Sophia through my own experience with Intentional Creativity and healing/transformation this past year. And I would like to introduce you to her joy with her complimentary event at the Shift Network.

Visit my “Events” page if you are interested in more information.

Below are just a few muses I painted this year while I was immersed in the process of Intentional Creativity.

Sister Starwalker

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Sister Starwalker

Do not worry if you seem not to dream.
                                                  It is an ominous place in time.

I am with you
         and your dreams will unfold
              and you will be safe
                   and you will know.

Under Moon or dark sky               Star Nations cradle you.
                       They sing your story,
and you hear.

Together we walk
                   and Ancestors come.
They show you the way and you go.

And
if you still do not seem to dream,
rest in me anyway          sweet one rest.

I am your Sister Starwalker
                   and
I will always be.

 

Author’s Note:

I have begun my journey as a Color of Woman In Training 2019 under the guide of Shiloh Sophia and other graduates and wise women from the Intentional Creativity Foundation. A group of Cosmic Cowgirls who ride their paths honoring the feminine in all walks of life.  I am so very full of gratitude to be a part of this group, this circle woven together by the Red Thread.

One of our first assignments in our training is to create our personal Legend-Archetype.

Her name is Sister Starwalker.

Her incarnation is not only to paint her, but to write her Chronicles. The first steps are to write MY incarnation story and begin painting employing the 13 steps of Intentional Creativity.

She is at a resting place right now. Time to listen. Time to write.

She Who Is began her naming process. She speaks who she is and what she does.

She Who Is

She Who is Wildwoman in the Wilderness of Being

She Who Carries the Night

She Who Stands Guard

She Who Honors Ancestral Wisdom

She Who Listens

She Who Illuminates

She Who is Sister Starwalker

And now that she is named and resting in her image and colors, I begin her Chronicles.

Chronicles of Sister Starwalker

One – Incarnation

She stood on her tippy toes, barefoot at the upper point of the crescent Moon. After a deep breath in, she released it, and slid down. If it was a good full release, she would end at the tip of the other side of Moon. It was just for a moment of ecstasy until she slid back to rest in the middle of Moon’s crescent smile.

Moon wasn’t really a crescent, although that is how most people described it in each orbit, thinking the rest of the Moon was gone. Paying little attention to what was really there.

Oh, they missed the most important part. Moon is always there, full and luscious, knowing when to shine brightest and when to dim. Moon is wise in all her years knowing that it takes dark to see stars.

As there she sat in the middle of the crescent, her voice opened into gratitude.

She was young.

It’s not what one on Earth would think of as young. She was sixty-two, and that made her barely a baby among the Star Nations. She had just begun her journey with them.

She felt blessed by the Ancestors to be honored to share her gift, the one who could look at dreams without fear, find their owners, and stand guard as dreams unfolded. But that wasn’t always true when she was on Earth.

But here they named her Sister Starwalker, an honoring of tremendous responsibility she accepted with humility and joy.

Sister Starwalker had other gifts, too. When walking on Earth, the place she chose to be, she was known as the Wildwoman who tramped through the city and found the open spaces and talked to Mother Tree and left gifts of sparkly stones in cracks and crevices for others to find, if they stood in silence long enough to see.

She would sing her own songs as she walked her familiar. Out loud! Yes! And people crossed the street  away from her or paused at the pavilion seeking shade as an excuse not to make eye contact. They were not escaping from the heat of the sun, but from Sister Starwalker’s brilliance.

Silence was her place of being. She learned to settle anywhere to call it to her. And she listened and taught others to do the same. A few understood, but most others were frightened of what they thought was a void.  

Oh, Sister Starwalker wanted to share what she heard in the silence. The whisper of Spirit’s love songs to her. The crows who really did watch and wanted to converse. All the chatterings that can only be deciphered and nuanced when all was still. You see, it wasn’t really silent at all.

Her heartbeat. Yes. In the silence she could hear it beat and as the reverberation spread from her center Light out, she could feel it, hear it entwine with other heartbeats, and together it became one gigantic beat.

Oh, she wanted to tell others what a gift of silence is to calming fears and weaving that red thread to others to finally discover. But most preferred the noise. She understood since it took her a very long time to find her silent place within, to drown out the noise that demanded her attention.

“Silly, little Ego,” she would tell it when it called to her demanding she give her all. “Go take a nap, I have silence to listen to.”

Sister Starwalker had much to learn and, now, had eternity to do it. It was her consecration, something she had searched for and didn’t find until she came to silence.

She had other gifts, too, that helped her in her new quest.

She carried the night with her.

She so loved the dark. When she learned to paint, she discovered it had colors that you couldn’t see until you were quiet and listened for them. There were all shades of blue and grey and green and magenta and oranges and yellows, too. Really! It surprised her the first time she saw them, heard them. And then she could not ever not see them again.

Now that she was at here in silence, she could sit and wait for illumination and then she could hear Ancestors tell their stories to their beloveds. She could shine Moon’s light just where it was needed, like a prism coming through her to others.

On Earth, she was afraid to dream. When she did, her sleep was fitful and she awoke exhausted and sad and angry and scared and, worst of all, unworthy. So she decided to stop dreaming. And she did.

But here, now, she could be brave and stand guard when others were afraid to dream. Sister Starwalker knew the dangers of dreaming. Some, like her Earthly self, were not willing to set aside their fear to hear their stories. But now she learned what she could do.

She grew as a warrior to that which no longer served. She knew how to do that. Now. And even a little bit when she was on Earth.

When she was summoned home, she stepped through the veil and was named. They didn’t even have to tell her. She heard it from deep within and she knew what she was to do.

And she began her night, just like every night…being with Moon, hearing the colors tell their stories, Ancestor whispers, crows sleeping, and listening in the silence to the music of the Universe to discover where she would be needed this night…