DAVID WHYTE AND LONGING

SACRED LINE  16"x12" Mixed Media on canvas

I attended the "Winter Harvest" event with David Whyte here in Vancouver.  It wasn't until I'd left the time of conversations with self and others in my pew that I realized I went with a longing that was ancient.  A longing of wanting to be seen and heard.  On reflection, before I left my home I'd imagined myself in a conversation with him.  A conversation that came from a deep longing.  One that I soon realized was not only from my childhood of longing to be seen and heard but from a line of longing. Tiny voices crying in the night far from home wrapped in their blanket without a parent or grandparent to comfort them, to blow away their fears with one soft whisper.One can only come to see, to understand, to accept, to embrace with kind gentleness that which has required diligent searching.  In a deep silence.  In a time of vast aloneness.  Solitary.  And then the cry of the hawk, of the northern flicker, the footprints of the four-legged short tail antlered one lead to the place where longing was twisted and beaten from being different and there at my grandmother's feet it became a part of her.  The roots of longing made their way into her skin, forced its way, penetrating the tissue.But that is not all that I inherited.  As the doe stands facing me and the northern flicker rests on my shoulder and hawk above my head, I see my grandmother has become the soapberry bush that she loved.  She now bears the fruit to nourish others.  This too is a part of my inheritance.  This is the sacred line.  The line that is woven from the supernatural ones who watch over us who shift the shape of longing to understanding and kindness.