*Everything blossoms from within |* Laurie Doctor | 12” x 12” Graphite, acrylic, ink and cold wax on wood (yucca seed pod). New Editions Gallery

There’s a song sparrow that taps at our window every morning at dawn. Our window looks out over a ravine and gives the feeling of being in a tree house. The sparrow stands on the sill with his striped body tap-tapping at his own reflection — a would-be intruder in his territory and threat to his nest. I am struck by his diligence, as for over a month he has been tapping with his stout gray bill, going to all the windows on the north and west side of our house, facing an enemy in each one. I watch from the window as he flies away, wondering if he will reveal the hiding place for his nest, somewhere in the ravine.

Then I wonder how often we humans, with great diligence and sincerity, tap at imaginary dangers, fearing would-be enemies and what could happen next? How can we be ready for what comes, both the bad and the good, if we are tapping at our own reflection? It seems that many of us are still recovering from the isolation of Covid, from the despair of the world. And yet we know that tragedy, danger, and adversity are best met with a mind restored to clarity, to a condition of ease in spite of circumstance, and against all reason, a mind willing to welcome what comes.

There is only so much each of us can do, and what we choose to do matters. What choice restores a mind that is filled each day with more bad news and impossible tasks? How do we alleviate the anxiety that has claimed us? Who are we called to be in this world that speeds ahead with unnerving change?

I think that what I can do is in the realm of the small — by that I mean asking myself who or what I can serve outside my smaller circle of family and friends. There is a sense of overwhelm about how to make a difference, where to begin. We cannot fix everything — no one can— but we can heal. I believe that we are being invited to do this, being asked to go deeper not only into ourselves, but also into this physical world. We can make meaningful connections, and regain our ability to find dialogue. We can ask a question to a stranger. We can believe that these small acts make a difference.

The stranger that came here today is named Balim. He put a new window in my studio. For the first time I have a window that opens and lets in air without water coming in. Balim is from Iraq. I asked him the meaning of his name, and how to spell it. (I am not certain I got the spelling of his name correct). His dark eyes sparkled and he pointed upward saying hope and then, pausing, smile. His name means both hope and smile. Hope is such a confounded word in English — as T. S. Eliot said: hope would be hope for the wrong thing. But the gift that Balim gave me is that hope and smile, in his language, are the same thing. Now I am delighted with the discovery that hope is not only a noun or a passive verb, but also an active verb, an action. Hope can be the unknown response that a smile given to a stranger brings.

If hope and smile mean the same thing, then hope is the act of making a connection, and, in spite of all the cynical or fearful thoughts, is breaking out of isolation. Hope is being willing to make a move; it is not waiting until things look better, but acting as if. Making a decision like: I am going to act as if all things shall be well, and I am going to act as if I have something to smile about today, and smile….The brain scientists tell us that how we act makes changes in our thinking, and that behavior — what we do — changes our brain.

This past winter, as a way of paying attention in the bleakness of gray, a way of gathering promises and collecting hope, I gathered seeds. This gave me a reason to take a walk in the cold and see what I could find. It reminded me that a seed knows how to wait in the dark, and seeds need no evidence for blossoming. That if I walk long enough and pay attention, I will find something. On these walks I made discoveries, and discovery is a new beginning, and naturally joyful. I found seed pods of tulip poplar trees and yucca plants in the shape of flowers. Flowers. Attention has the power to stretch time, and the mind moves over to one side when absorbed by an image. These new images fueled my recent paintings, and the reflections on my book, which begins with Psyche’s first task: sorting the seeds.

*Everything becomes something else* | Laurie Doctor | 12” x 12” Graphite, acrylic, ink and cold wax on wood. (yucca seed pods) New Editions Gallery

The creative act begins with planting one seed. Healing begins with one small thing. Healing is not a matter of acquiring or fixing, but more like a kind of remembrance. Jorge Luis Borges said the same thing about making art — it is not so much a matter of making something new as it is a recognition, a remembrance. The recognition of something on this level, something ancient that you have always known, also has the paradoxical quality of newness, of discovery. It reminds us of the something that cannot be taken. It is that place before the separation between speech and song, before the separation between painting and writing, before the separation between humans and the rest of the natural world; before, before, before. The place before separation still exists, and this place opens with a small act of faith in what is.