Maria has made a beautiful hanging piece, she is calling it “Show Your Soul,” and it is up for sale now on her blog.
The title came from the author and analyst and poet Clarissa Pinkola Estes who has written a beautiful and timely essay about finding ones footing and ground in difficult times.
Maria is finding her strength and truth and showing her soul, in her art, in her life. I believe these times are a gift to her, to me.
Estes writes to my spirit.
“My friends, do not lose heart,” she says. “We were made for these times.”
The light of the soul, she writes, “throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of the soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.”
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. To simply show up and reveal yourself is an act of great strength. I trust it.
In any dark time, writes Estes, there is a tendency to veer toward despairing over how much wrong or unmended tears there are in the fabric of the world. “Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.”
We cannot change the world all at once, or by ourselves. These are not battles to be fought, but souls to be lit like candles in the wind.
Any small, calm, act of good and mercy is a gift from one soul to another – to assist any one in this often poor and suffering world is an act of power and strength and revelation. We can’t know what might tip the scales, or if we shall live to see that day, and it doesn’t matter. It matters that we stand up and show our souls.
It is not our task to convince or persuade others or to sink into argument and rage and despair. Argument and impatience kills hope and exhausts the spirit.
I think it is my mission to be calm and steady, to help calm the storm in any small way, with a word, a quote, a photograph. This is one of the strongest things I can do, and I do not need money, vast organizations, pollsters, donors, billionaires, modern media or the approval or presence of another human being to do it.
I believe people of empathy and compassion are a powerful army, a tribe touched by the spirit of our Gods. They will make the earth tremble. I think these are our times.
If you choose, stand up and show your soul.