A Global Gathering of Creative Beings Has Been Called
I am one of many colors in a constellation of astonishing beauty.
These are my letters. My musings on Poetry, Paintings, Revelation, Revolution, Research and Education have been sent to my community for 25 years.
May this Red Thread of Connection weave encouragement in your life!
“accidental self portrait” By Shiloh Sophia, July 2019
Dear One,
Today I am musing on how we ‘end up’ the way that we do. Marveling at how often I am working with skills taught to me by someone else, and how much we influence one another. Connected with that, is how I teach, and how people often ask how or where I get my ideas.
Will you get a cup of tea and have a little ‘Red Thread Cafe’ with me? In this message I will share with you a behind the scenes glimpse of my creative process.
This is how I do what I do. I am inspired. I follow a wild thread and end up in beauty.
I am thinking about how teaching drawing this last week with close to 2000 women participating, was a thread back to my mom Caron and my teacher Sue, teaching me to draw. And how my not being good at drawing, actually led to a lifetime pursuit of a way to draw that was my own. I talk about it in The Illustrative Woman class. As well as my desire to share this way of drawing that I discovered with others, drawing from within. When you are drawing from within, there is no external reference to compare it to – therefore nothing to get ‘wrong’. This means you are more open and intuitive, and in the case of metacognitive drawing, more insightful. To teach it to you I had to ask myself : What do I do to end up there? What is the easiest way to share it with many? It seems so simple, will anyone really get it?
Images and experiences call to my hands to create. Then call me to language to think more deeply about what is known and unknown. The first impulse, before thinking, is a craving to create, to make. It happens in the body.
Here is how the “accidental self portrait’ happened, I was editing a video when I saw that image emerge through the film frames and pause. It stopped me in my tracks. Wha? That part wasn’t made in photoshop, it just happened.
I thought, “This is me. This is me, how I feel to me”. I felt giddy. I took a screenshot to save it. I shared it with my inner circle of Intentional Creativity Teachers – one of them said: “This is a profound demonstration of having energetically woven Living Creation. The image alone is a Transmission.” And I felt yes, this is a transmission of some kind. The spiritual energetic stardust of me weaving with the physical clay of me. You can’t make this stuff up. When magical things happen I like to acknowledge them of course, and then let them inspire me to create.
Next, I wanted to write something to honor the image and go with it. So for a few days, I just let the inquiry ‘hang out in my consciousness’, what we in Intentional Creativity® call, Alchemical Consciousness. Where you can put something with intention into motion, it will keep cooking even when you aren’t looking because you have created the intention.
What came as a result, is the writing from this morning that goes with it. Both of my hands are in the image if you look closely. This morning I woke up with the words…”Another pair of hands” and I knew that was what I was looking for but not sure why. Sometimes a phrase is all I need to get going on writing.
The phrase, ‘another pair of hands’ is a term I have heard the women in my family say over many years… “We can use another pair of hands around here” or “We SURE CAN use another pair of hands around here” which means, “we are over-worked :) and you are welcome to pitch in.” Perhaps your family has said it too? Well I want to be another pair of hands to help, and how I help is bringing drawing, painting, creativity and my gifts out to the world. Many days it feels like it is not nearly enough. This is what I have right now.
In teaching, I reverse engineer the process at times so it is less mysterious, but perhaps that makes it even more so! Many times this is also how I discover ‘what happened’ so I can share it with others, and ask: is it duplicatable? In the case of this accidental image, perhaps not, but in the case of using image as your place to dive in for thinking, writing and interpreting, yes. When we intuitively draw and paint, it is so much fun and so insightful because the image is coming from within, through access to the subconscious and at times, the collective in the field as well.
The photoshop graphic above wanted to be made next, after the poem was written. When I say the graphic wanted it, I mean that in my imagination a tug tugged. It all started with the the accidental image, then me asking for language, then bringing it to the work of my hands, then I followed a wild hair down a rabbit hole and had a great time the entire time exploring image, mystery, language and then being able to share it with you here in this Red Thread Letter.
When I looked at the graphic I thought – when people see that, they are going to say what they have always said to me “There is a lot going on there”.
It has never been a compliment, rather, a reaction to my ‘all too much-ness’. Now at 49, I have to admit. There is a lot going on there…here within me and within the worlds I choose to serve. And I love all of it. I am keeping the complexity, the irreverent and the lack of apology for who I am. As I invite you to also become more and more you. If it is just all too much, look away. Or. Choose to look closer.
Another Pair of Hands
These, are another pair of hands
Mother Life can use them for her work
To turn the soil of soul
Stir the compost of my longing
Alchemize my failures into blessings
These hands hold revolution prayers
Mother Life can use them to call circle
Evolution prayers shared in sister songs
My hands are trained in justice
Holding up the hope of women wise
These, my hands, pen poetry with purpose
Mother Life can use my words
I hold books with stories of another way
I see the crimes against humanity
My hands wipe my tears and yours
My hands seek to lift up, raise up, uphold
To hold, to cradle, to comfort, to soothe
To wipe the fevered brow of the world
These hands cannot reach all the places
My heart travels with salve for wounds
My hands seek the archeology of soul
The framework of consciousness reshaped
Reaching for your hands, I beckon,Come! Come! Come!
We shall not be alone
See us now, coming together, holding hands
These, are another pair of hands
Covered in thalo green, magenta and gold
Painting a new possibility for seeing and being
Stringing together quantum theory with love
Invoking consciousness to the sleepers
Mother Life has used these hands
I have offered them up as tools
Sacred work offered on the altar of change
An offering from an impossible heart
An intelligent heart that knows peace
Hands that were trained by women
By two mothers and two grandmothers
A red-headed cousin and two sisters
The women said to me and my hands:
“We are strong” “Here is how to do this”
“Do not shy away from hard work”
“Put your whole self into this”
“Your prayers, put them into your hands”
“Do not be afraid, though there is much to fear”
“Here, hold the tool like this” “Pay attention”
“You can do this” “Take your time honey”
“I will help you” “Here, hold this…”
“Keep the light steady, as night falls”
They held my hands
That long to hold the hands of the world
I do not reach all the places I hope
I keep trying with all my soul
To hold the hands of Mother Life
~ Shiloh Sophia
The accidental self portrait was caught on film on July 10, the day I reached an apogee in my soul work with my class, The Illustrative Woman. It is a little complex to explain… like me…but it has two paintings within it, Apothecary and Codex. I was reading a poem, We Are Medicine Makers (video below) and it had the energy of three classes and it was on the day of filming The Illustrative Woman. In the Apothecary painting, as well as in the other painting, it features my tools, brushes and pen and palette. And if you look closely – the plume pen is over the book of poetry and there is a brush in my hand, harder to see, but that is in the section of the brushes. Plus there is an eye over my eye.
Watch the poem I was reading, from Apothecary, when the screenshot was caught…. Each painting class has a writing portion, so this was the poem that arose out of the painting above. Watch on Facebook here Watch on YOUTUBE here
We have all kinds of wonderful new things to share with you. And you will see them emerging in Red Thread Letters over the coming months.
My love, Jonathan and I, are living our dreams out loud, in full color, and inviting many of you to come along on the adventure. We are so grateful for you, our community far and near. By the time you get this letter it will be a few days after it was written, because we are taking the weekend off for our anniversary!
In times of great change in our world, providing tools for resiliency and celebration is what I choose to create with my hands.
This Red Thread Letter marks a change in me, and my path…and I will share more about that as we move along together.
May your path be blessed. May Creativity find her way into your hands. Pick up the brush, the pen, the bead, the bread, the drum….
Hold hands with someone you love today.
Holding hands with Sue Hoya Sellars, 2014
My mother Caron’s hands covering mine, 2013
This is the painting that was super-imposed from Apothecary : Medicine Painting
We have all kinds of wonderful new things to share with you. And you will see them emerging in Red Thread Letters over the coming months.
