Pulling Down Deep Heaven: Part 2

If I climbed up

to the tippy-top of a tree,

and held out my bucket-

Could I catch the sun-drops,

and keep them with me…

…then share with others

at the base of the tree?

-jpe

If any creative act, (be it visual, musical, theatrical, written or otherwise), is a definitively spiritual endeavor, then there are certain qualities to that activity that are common to all of us.  For one, there’s a sense that a battle is going on. At the very least, the effort involved in climbing to the tippy top of the tree to pull down heaven is hard work and can be very exhausting.

Lately I have felt, alongside the exhilaration of creating, an increasing weariness. Participating in an art show, painting commissions, looking for and recording beauty can be very tiring in a manner different than other work tires.  My husband read one of his incredible short stories to the students and faculty at my school where I teach. He recounted how exhausting that was, to offer his work “out there” in the world.  As we drove home from this event, the weariness was palpable. Every time we talk to our daughter at college as she studies music, she is exhausted, pulling long hours in the practice room, theory tests, exams, and an unbelievable performing schedule. And my music educator friend, Sheri, told me in our swim team conversation, how tired and worn out she is at the holidays teaching music and performing in various holiday events in the area.

I am learning from a wonderful book by Steven Pressfield, that art is war. His book, titled, The War of Art, affirms the spiritual nature of our creative commitment to bring beauty into the world. He speaks in a martial tone, rallying us as if we artists are, in actuality, soldiers fighting a cosmic war.  He outlines the weapons needed to pull down deep heaven, though he does not use that specific phrase.

The effort involves showing up to the page or canvas, doing our scales, honing our craft, working on technique, practicing, preparing. And then we must offer it, share it, put it out there, get in the ring or out on the dance floor, run the race, fight the good fight, never giving up no matter how beat down we may feel by critics, reviews, circumstances, or our own thoughts.  We are to fight the resistance that comes in any form it may throw at us to keep us down, or out of the playing field.

Being engaged even on a small level in pulling down deep heaven is no mere trifling. It requires a soldierly mindset mixed with childlike mirth as we place one foot in front of the other up the tree, climbing ’til we reach the tippy top.  The climb down may be harder…carrying what we have gathered there from the heavens, and then summoning the courage to share it with others.  It requires miles and miles of walking or riding on a donkey to an unfamiliar town, to give birth to our heaven-sent burden in less than ideal surroundings and circumstances.  We are to write, draw, paint, make music in and around our messy lives.  None of it seems to go the way we imagined or think it should. I have a hunch Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have thought this as well. Yet we are to continue on this journey, like Mary and Joseph, until it is time.  Time for what heaven wants to bring to us and through us, be it a babe, a sonnet, a drawing, a song.

May we have the martial spirit of Mary in our hearts and daily lives this season.  May we be encouraged by the thought that our exhaustion in creative endeavors is due to the fact that we are in the fight: the calling and work of pulling down deep heaven.

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I wrote the above several days before Friday, December 14th, the day someone entered a school in Connecticut with the express purpose of killing.  Children, adults, his aim was all.  If ever there was proof that a battle is going on, and that we need to engage in that battle to bring down the light of Deep Heaven to shine in these dark days, it is now.

Rise up, oh Artists of all kinds…Rise up and wage battle with the darkness! For we do not fight in vain!

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*If you missed Part 1 of this series and would like to read it, click here.

A Christmas Line

A Christmas Line

If you followed a line from the angel on your tree
All the way down to where presents should be

Would you revisit  memories of the years gone by
Curling ‘round ornaments with a twinkle in your eye?

Would you find yourself there when your babies were born?
When they made preschool ornaments, now shabby and torn?

Would you see faces of friends who  made or gave one to you?
Would you relive your childhood, tracing baubles from then too?

And as your line meandered through santas and stars,
Penguins and trees, toy trains and cars…

Would you find ‘neath your tree more gifts than you could count?
Dazzled by the ache as your memories mount?

Your line would’ve found, from the angel to the earth
A trove of presents that fill you with mirth.

Though the tree will soon fill with wrapped boxes underneath
They can never surpass what I’ve already received.

-jpe

December 13, 2012

*I created the drawing in ONE LINE. Perhaps you can see the beginning of it up by the angel’s hair and follow it to the tree-skirt end. Sometimes I drew over and through things, sometimes I retraced my steps back to where I needed to go.  But one line it is, and only a splash of color.

**If you’d like to read more of my poetry from around Christmastime, click here. This is page 2 of the Poetry Category that you can always access from the category section in the right hand margin. Just  keep scrolling ’til you get to the section from last December.

***Also, I have a couple of poet friends who are marking their December days with a line of their own.  If you enjoy poetry, find Alice’s here, and Kevin’s here.

Once Again…Winter Trees

 

As I walked this morning, I looked at the swept-clean world and thought of a favorite poem of mine. I thought I would repost it here for you.  My jaw just dropped on the floor as I looked at the date of this drawing and poem.  One year ago, to the day, exactly. Enjoy!

Winter Trees

Like hands raised in praise
they stand tall and freed
From the dripping colors
that bowed them in the breeze.

Unfettered now from leafy sails
Which bent them low in windy gales
Enabled more to endure the season
Unburdened by Beauty’s reason.

The cosmic broom has swept away
the fluff and fancies of an autumn day.
All that Beauty which weighed them down
Has been brushed clean…nary a leaf on the ground.

‘Tis Beauty too, these fingered wrists
which pierce the heavens and the mists.
And so I’ll stand among them now
with hands raised, though they bow…

In hopes the cosmic broom will sweep
away the follies that I keep,
The fluff that weighs my hands from raising
that I might freely stand, the heaven’s praising.

-jpe
11.28.2011
upon my walk…again

Revelations in Dust

Keepsakes

Yesterday
I wiped away
the dust and grime
on all surfaces lay

besmirching the shine
life’s glory maligned.
How long it was there
I truly could not say.

What of this play
on words which may
or may not enshrine
a moment in my mind?

Is it kind
to pause and then rewind
the minutes behind-
with memories  make hay?

In the dust, did I find
that for which my heart did pine?
Memories in grime
a family full-living
day after day.

-jpe
11/11/2012

In Friday’s glance at the large teacup on our little breakfast table and I winced at the dusty collection of minuscule flotsam and jetsam. In the Saturday cleaning hours I freed the teacup from its shine-robbing film.

In Sunday’s glance at the renewed sparkle of this teacup I saw the aftermath of lunch with young ones who have left the carnage for upstairs play.  Too excited, they do not think about what happens to the abandoned lot.

It struck me that this clutter, yea even the dust and grime, holds evidence of a full-life lived fully…of all manner of activity here at the table.  Looking closely at the dust on Friday, I had found paint specks, crayon shards, glitter, bits and bibbles of school projects and art creations; cat litter from a beloved pet’s paws; crumbs and bits of food from before-school breakfasts and days-off lunches.

Why do I need to wipe the dust away? Why rid my home of the last remaining clues that my life has not been for naught?

Would that I could have gathered and placed all the dust of these many years in a jar to keep…

Keepsakes in dust.  The bits and bibbles that speak reams to a mother’s heart.

A Knitting Ditty

For all who are seized with thoughts of yarn and needles clicking together and wools to wear and gifts to give and designs to try and stitches to learn. You are not alone.

Do you knit?

(To the tune of “Do your ears hang low?”)

Do you knit and purl?
Do you give it all a whirl?
Do you continental knit? Like the Europeans do?
Do you throw it o’er your needle, like Americans will do?
Do you knit and purl?

If you knit and purl
You can make anything in the world…
You can bobble, you can seed
You can cable, lace, and swirl.
You can make a vest to wear
Or a headband for your hair…
If you knit and purl.

Would you knit and purl
If you knew it would unfurl
All the knots in your life?
All the tangles of your world?

If you knew it would bring joy
and cause your heart to skip and twirl?
Would you knit and purl?

-jpe

**Pssst…and did you know I have a secret blog called Drawn2Knit? Well, it’s not really a secret. But it’s for beginners…any who might like to learn some basics of knitting!   Check it out here! 

I Want to Go A-Walking

I Want to Go A-Walking

I want to go a-walking
all the live-long day
To hear the crickets chirping
and see the bales of hay.

To wrest the beauty hiding
in weeds along the way
To find my heartbeat’s rhythm
I lost in the busy fray.

To breathe the fresh air heaping
transforming work into play
To feel the wall-less space
my voice freed to say.

Though I only go a-walking
a small portion of my day
The weeds turn into flowers
and I know it will be okay.

-jpe

October 4, 2012

Other poems I’ve written about walking are here and here and here.

These autumn days are beautiful walking days! Especially down my favorite Silver Dapple Lane (above). 5″x 5″ pastel in My Little Black Book.

A Bale of Words

Available in My Etsy Shoppe

Another “sitting” out in my favorite field just after the baling. This time with my pastels in My Little Black Book.

Available in My Etsy Shoppe

And a different sort of “bale” here…words bundled together in a little poem I wrote several years ago:

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I like you standing there…

Your presence brings comfort amid the recently ravaged landscape.

I walk beside my favorite field,

once filled with waves of grass and weed,

fern and vine, wildflower and morning glory.

I wince at the shearing—

too much is exposed.

But soon you are there.

All that I loved so is bound up in you.

Your solid cylinder a testimony to the weightiness of glory.

Your firm shadows welcome on the sun-blanched scalp.

I hope that you will remain,

that I might gain

some sense of solidity when I next pass by.

But alas, I hope in vain.

Another will come and lead you away to wait in shelter as fodder for animals.

I grieve the cycle, knowing it will begin again,

wondering if there will be an alternate end for me.

-jpe

upon her walk 9/23/08

The Dreaming Tree

I sit beneath the dreaming tree
letting heart run wild and free.

The path to here is long but sure.
For crazy days this is my cure.

Lean and long, grow and gaze,
Wonder at how beauty plays

On dappled thoughts here and there.
My tree whispers love and care.

-jpe (jennifer pilkington edwards)

My Dad’s Poem in response to this one:

Your Dreaming Tree means much to me
Because of it I long to see
My own dazzling Dreaming Tree
To sit beneath and once again a poet be
For time and care and pain, all three
Have robbed my soul of dreams of He
Whose very soul made my tree.

-edward lee pilkington 8/4/2012

And then, my response to his poem:

Dear dad, be assured of thy dreaming tree
For it grows beside my own, so tall and willowy.

Though many storms have bent it low
It sways in the breeze with graceful flow.

Knots and scars have made it strong
Weathered bark withstands the throng.

Within its willows live countless ones
Who through its branches have seen the Son.

I know one day you will once again be
dreaming under your willow tree.

When time and care and pain is o’er
We’ll sit  ‘neath our trees on that glistening shore.

And write our poems of the Beauty we see
Then dance the days together, just my daddy and me.

-jpe 8/4/2012

A Little Poem

I chanced to see
the trees dancing
in the breeze.

Said I to the trees
could we dance
together please?

And I curtsied
to the boughs
of the trees.

-jpe

Whose Fields These Are

 

Whose fields these are…

 

 

Whose fields these are I think I know…

His house presides o’er fence below.

 

His cattle say their grace each day

Content to watch and eat and stay.

 

The fields, they hum a beckoning tune-

To roam, to fly, to surf their dune,

 

To live with graceful, swaying ease,

To know no bounds, nor responsibilities.

 

To run and play and frolic free,

To chase the butterfly…or not…as you please.

 

Walking away, their song remains,

Though I am bound for my life’s restrain.

 

And as I enter my home’s gate,

I bow my head to plead for grace…

 

To watch and eat and yes, to stay;

To boundlessly live within the fray.

 

May 29, 2010

Jennifer Edwards

**For those of you who have just recently joined me here on Drawn2Life:

My neighborhood is right next to a beautiful farm owned and run by an incredibly young 84 year old man named Mr. Whicker.  You can read more about “My Field” here and here and here.  And for even more, you can click on the category “The Field” over in the right-hand margin.  It is a place of inspiration for me which I frequent every day on my walks and as I drive through it, out into the world.