Tag: Journaling

176 A New Type of Journaling

It turns out that the wound in my body does look like the bottom half of that, tiny opening through the middle, connecting the outside world to my inside world.

One of my new growing projects asks for picture journaling.  Starfeather is running a seven week series with a group of women.  We are asked to sketch a circle and use words in the further progress through a sketch.  My favorite thus far is from a meditation.  

I checked in with my mind.  What I saw was motion.  It pulled from the two sides of the back of my brain, up toward the forehead, the third eye.

I checked in with my heart, also in motion.  The picture was of a swirling of light, inside spiraling outward.

A Picture journal. Michele Plumb Stowell's painting of a circle with green, blue and orange colors and the words Third Eye, Heart and Body written in it.
Image drawn from meditation for picture journaling

I checked in with my body.  I saw a shape that was similar to an open ended hour glass.  This was far more mysterious to me than the other two, so I asked for clarification in a deeper meditation.  It turns out that the wound in my body does look like the bottom half of that, tiny opening through the middle, connecting the outside world to my inside world.  The connection is palpable.  The wounding of my body, the pain and wounding of our current world situation.  Astounding.  Associated.

Everything in motion.  We are in motion.  Shifting.  Growing. Evolving. As a whole, we are moving, somewhere, for some reason, in Divine grace.

84 Spring Medicine Shield

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.

Medicine shield with cedar ring and feathers.
Medicine Shield making as a form of journaling

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.