Soul Journey

This month (September 2021) I’ve decided to ‘work’ much less, to take a creative sabbatical and to focus more on creative ecology work, including Climate Museum UK. Last weekend I picked up this book ‘The Journey of Soul Initiation’ by Bill Plotkin and opened up a sketchbook, and the inspiration hasn’t stopped flowing. It’s a manual for a deep journey to find your Soul purpose, which he defines as finding your true, individual niche as a life-enhancing gift to people and the greater Earth community.

In October I’m going on a creative and shamanic retreat with artist Kate Walters, to the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland. This was a place of inspiration to my Mum, Janice, who visited there after leaving college. She died last summer, so I will be thinking of her. She chose my name Bridget for the Hebrides, the islands of Bridget, and my brother’s name Benedict, for the Benedictine Abbey on Iona. I know that this retreat will be really doing ‘the work’, just not the kind that I’ve been spending nearly 7 days a week doing for the past two years. I’m out of practice of this real work, if I’ve ever truly done it, but I feel it’s just a wellspring that has been dammed up, and is pouring out now. I’ve been working for years on engaging people with the Earth crisis, but have been stopping my own grief at the state of the planet being felt or expressed. I’m feeling quite overwhelmed with these feelings right now so the art-making is a therapeutic necessity.

One key thing I hope will help with this is an online course with Tree Sisters, called Liberating Our Creative Voice for the Earth. The course doula, Kathleen Brigidina, started us off with a meditation to visualise the rose of our hearts, the flow of waters in our bodies, and the loving connections between us, Earth and sky. This helped confirm to me that I see art as a sacred practice, growing the larder of soul-memory, widening the portal to interbeing.

Three other new influences in this powerful fortnight for me include ecstatic dance in a park, amazing kundalini yoga classes, and joining the Time to Shine community for change-makers facilitated by Emily Johnsson.

Oh, and I’ve also been singing and playing guitar, and feeling moved by music, feeling as if I’m hearing songs for the first time that had just passed through without touching for the past few years. (Currently listening to ‘Dreams at Midnight’ by Madrugada: “something’s breaking, moving you along to the awakening”)

So much of my work is about exploring the value of arts and culture in the face of the Earth crisis, which involves categorising, defining and teaching. But it’s time to practice!

You can see more of my paintings done this week, in this blogpost https://graftage.wordpress.com/2021/09/22/soul-journey/