Bear and Frog soul catcher

"A bear with a frog in its mouth": oil on canvas, 14x18  -- to be swallowed into peace and truth -- Transformation

My youngest son came over to my place for a couple of weeks after work.  He was baking Christmas cookies and I helped him decorate them.  And then my oldest daughter came over for a couple of days and she made jewelry.  It was a wonderful feeling to have them "home."  And then they went back to their homes and their Christmas schedules with their partners and I found myself alone.  I woke with a deep sense of loneliness and thought of what my friend Vanessa had said to me, "Many people find Christmas a difficult time."This morning I made it past the lights and tinsel, the candy and chocolate, the stockings and presents and the carols and wishes of good cheer, I made it to a sacred and holy place.  A place where the germination of hope and truth ignited and as a cell multiplied out to where the celestial beings sang and the animals swayed on earth.  A place where betrayal, the father initially thought the child was another humans, to faith, the woman says to the angel "may it be so."  With her words she creates a new pathway for all females to follow a place where, as in our sacred stories, the supernatural impregnates a human female and we as humans are about to learn something we need to know.  A place that is not only history but is alive today and all that I need to do is inhale, to let it in.  To step into it and know that I belong.  The supernatural invites with a sense of urgency. Swallowed by the bear, the ancestors, the land and the sacred story of peace, hope, joy and love.