The Storm

oil on wood in upcycled frame

We're burning up or we're in danger of dissolving In this chaos of pleasure or resentment. Now we have to start getting images for it… and once you get the image of the storm then you can begin dialoging with the image. Jung said" What do you want from me, and this much I will accept from you and this much I will not accept from you." So Jung  allowed experience to turn into an image, to then turn into a dialog. And that's Sofia (truth) in a nutshell.  J Gary Sparks (Wierd Studies Episode 114: Aurora Consurgens.)

I wrote this quote in my journal a year back then came across it just now while I am painting "The Storm", the tarot card The three of swords. I have the "image of the storm". I find myself having many a dialog with this painting as the figure emerges from the storm, her heart pierced with sorrow, her tears the rain over a vast turbulent sea. 

Sorrow,  grief, and betrayal and the dark keywords of this card.  And I have all of those of late. A favorite relative died recently- the one old person in my life who gave me the best life advice, who had her head on straight. Then a friend of 20 years, not much older than myself, died just weeks ago. I have lost a parent and a sister. And this week I had to make the impossible decision to euthanize our ten month old kitten, who somehow broke himself so badly he only had a 20% chance of living without pain and constant incontinence (I feel I betrayed his trust- I still cry just writing this). So many tears come with this human package!

Buddha started on the path to enlightenment when he experienced sorrow, disease,  and death for the first time.  It cracks us open,  it breaks us apart, it tears us down, but it also opens us up. There is a great joy in sorrow. The joy of remembering the time you had with the person or furr baby you've lost. The joy that shines through the storm clouds. Light that didn't permeate your perfect skin before comes pouring in. As Leonard Cohen says "The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together, physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things."– from Diamonds in the Line

Knowing grief we can feel Empathy. We can accept the imperfection. We can see truths we could not see before. It hurts like fucking hell but its here we can grow.