Step off the Path

I love circles. I have painted and collaged circles for years and to me they represent the cycles of nature. I also love spirals and they represent transformation. Climbing a spiral staircase, you are walking the circle but also ascending. You gain a fresh perspective with each step. A change of perspective is important but so are routines. The daily habits can be undertaken without a lot of thought when you have a routine. This is like walking the circle, but the past 15 months have created a break in the circle. Life as we knew it stopped. Things are changing again where I live, but not entirely.

As we reemerge to a new normal you have an opportunity, a rare gift, to reevaluate your path. Before the "great pause" as I am calling this past year and a half, I found myself caught in the normal calendar of booking events, looking ahead, planning and really being in the circular normalcy. The way things are and have always been and I assumed would continue. When operating in this mode I am planning and problem-solving. Plotting and taking the steps to accomplish what I have set out to do. Most of the time this circular existence serves me well. Then life changes and I find myself pushed off the path.

The pandemic jolted the world to a halt. Globally we are still amid this great pause. I initially scrambled to pivot and dance within the new teaching reality. I stayed busy and I alternated between action and stunned silence. Life was a roller coaster ride, and I never knew what it would be from day to day, but I kept pushing and showing up. Then my world fell apart, almost. My husband and I were out hiking in November when he had a heart attack. We are active hikers, in good health, but I come from a medical family and knew the signs. We were fortunate that due to Covid restrictions the trail we originally wanted to hike that day was closed because it was on Native land. We took a hike near our home. This saved his life. The time I spent waiting during the procedure to place a stent into the blocked artery seemed like days, years and even lifetimes. He has made a full recovery and because he was in good shape, he didn’t have any heart damage. We are now back to hiking even more strenuous trails. A good outcome that shook our worlds.

This experience pushed me off the path I had been trudging along. That was over 7 months ago and recently I just lost a dear friend to cancer. We all have had loses and challenges in our lives and I now embrace this time for change and use it to step off the path and jump into a place of healing. To get off the perpetual and sometimes unconscious cycle, I must fall down the tunnel into sacred space. This is not a dark night of the soul experience, but a place of liminality. A liminal stage is when you stand at the threshold. It is a place between a sense of self, identity, time, or community, and a new way, which has not yet emerged. All transformation happens within this place of between. This liminal space, or sacred space, is where creativity is born as well.

I have often called myself a synthesizer because I will take an idea and rework it into a completely new direction. Going into the sacred space is letting go of all knowing. I allow myself to move out of the unending cycle. All my knowing and desire to do, fix and be, must be released so transformation can take place in this liminal space. It takes effort to step off the circular path and remain patiently on the threshold (limen, in Latin). You will be uncomfortable, you will wish to jump back into your routine, you will make excuses, but to stay in this place between the familiar and the completely unknown, is necessary to deepen your creativity and your spirit. There alone you release your known world and reach for the new one which is moving toward you. It is in this place between letting go and grasping the new identity that you are transformed. This is the sacred space where the old world can fall apart, and a bigger world is birthed. If we don't encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy.

The events that life throws at us asks us to step into this place of faith and hope. We all must deal with these losses at some time in our life. Art making is a place where you push yourself into this space. Life events may push you to the threshold of your creativity and this place is scary, yet necessary to really make authentic art. When you find yourself normalizing your art, jump off the path and go make some really bad art. Push yourself, fail, repeat, get up and push yourself again beyond your normal. Discover and explore your liminal space. Stand on the threshold and grab the hand of your muse.