Journaling comes in many forms. Most people think of it as writing, yet those same people may not write. Everyone journals. It’s a matter of noticing how. How do you connect with the Divine? How do you hear direction, get ideas, feel inspired and fed? Where do you think those ideas and positive emotions come from?
One form of journaling is artistic creations. I have been working on my medicine shield. I started it on the trip to the ocean. It tells a story, one that is literal, and then one that is also deep and ongoing. The finished shield will talk to me. But it could talk to others and say totally different things.
This cedar ring (representative of the life giving, spiritual tree) is adorned with a piece of driftwood that represents the tree of life. This has come up in so many meditations, the fluidity of the generations, how we bear the love and knowledge of our ancestors in our daily lives, but also how we carry it through to future generations.
Today I was trying to get ahead of the morning pain. I was reciting the rosary in bed, as I stared at the ceiling. I could see my Grandpa Plumb, kneeling in the pews, then his mother Grandma Mickey (Catherine Plumb). And then I pondered all of the generations before. I don’t know if the ones that came before Grandma Mickey were Catholic, if they said the prayers or attended a church, but they were in my thoughts and visions.
Then the future generations came to mind, not bound to a church, but definitely connected to a lineage. What will come of the future, when today we wrestle with Covid 19, Black Lives Matter, and a full shift of the world as we know it. When I glance over at the medicine shield, I am pondering the tree. I want to add bead blossoms to the limbs. I wonder what that will look like. I know the journaling of the future generations will be in those glass flowers.
micheleplumbstowell.org 