Blog

Transcending Trump: August 28

Transcending Trump: August 28

Comments 1 comment

This was the week of the three Trumps: the Fort Meyer Commander-in-Chief Trump, the axe-wielding Phoenix rally Trump, and the Reno call for unity Trump. It’s enough to make my head swim. Some suggest that’s the whole purpose, a carefully choreographed ploy to keep us all insanely off balance. This mandala is a reminder of the perfect balance that lies at the real center of it all. The two triangles represent the divine feminine and masculine forces in perfect balance…

Read More Read More

Transcending Trump: August 14

Transcending Trump: August 14

Comments 0 Comment

It is an impossible task to make a mandala that transcends the possibility of nuclear war and the destruction of the human race. I note how this mandala seems rigid and closed (in mandala parlance, a stage 5 target mandala). The only light in at is in the North Korean flag. A scary commentary that if there is to be a way through this mess, it’s going to have to comes from the likes of Kim Jung Un.

Transcending Trump: August 21

Transcending Trump: August 21

Comments 1 comment

  I’ve changed the name of this series from Transforming Trump to Transcending Trump. It’s such a little change, but it acknowledges a huge truth. I do not have the power to transform Trump or the terrible divide within this country.  But perhaps with this seres I can do my part to help transcend its life-draining impact. The headline at the bottom of the mandala says it all: And suddenly it’s reality. In the wake of Charlottesville, there is no…

Read More Read More

Transcending Trump: August 7

Transcending Trump: August 7

Comments 0 Comment

The headlines opined: “Trump v. Nixon- No Comparison.” Of course, everyone has been making the comparison, with the Russia scandal so front and center in the headlines and the growing fear that our entire Constitutional system is under attack. I remember the day Nixon resigned.  I was watching TV with some friends of a friend in Paris. Reading the subtitles as President Nixon made his much-heralded announcement, one of them asked me, “Why would Americans force Nixon to step down?…

Read More Read More

Transforming Health Care

Transforming Health Care

Comments 0 Comment

  This week’s Transforming Trump mandala makes use of the star of life, the paramedics’ symbol for emergency medicine. Our medical system is so clearly on life support and in desperate need of a transplant.  I hope and I pray that those in power can find some way to bridge their differences and work together in the interest of our hurting nation- the same hope and prayer that people everywhere have echoed for millennia. The Flower of Life (and the…

Read More Read More

Transforming Trump: July 10-16

Transforming Trump: July 10-16

Comments 1 comment

As I cut out the headlines and arrange them on a 12 x 12 inch wood block, my blood pressure starts to rise and I am overwhelmed by a sense of fear and futility. Then I paint over them a thin layer of white acrylic paint, just enough to let the headlines fade into the background. I feel myself begin to relax. I take out the compass and draw the first flower of life and my own consciousness is transformed….

Read More Read More

Transforming Trump: July 2-9

Transforming Trump: July 2-9

Comments 0 Comment

Did you know that every shape there is can be found within the Flower of Life? Meditating with it can bring profound peace, even in the midst of chaos like we have today in our political life. It helps me put it into some kind of perspective. Is this what Americans experienced as the Teapot Dome scandal erupted around Warren G. Harding? Is it what my sister-in-law felt like as she endured eight years of the Obama presidency? Political shenanigans…

Read More Read More

Transforming Trump: June, 2017

Transforming Trump: June, 2017

Comments 1 comment

June 15. It was another day of gut-twisting news. I went upstairs to meditate and I saw a mandala of the flower of life floating over all the headlines that dominate so much of our collective psyche. A new art project was born. This project is for all of us, whatever our politics. It’s for transforming the angst we all feel over the daily barrage of headlines (albeit for different reasons.) I hope to complete a Transforming Trump mandala each…

Read More Read More

Black and White

Black and White

Comments 0 Comment

Elmina de Beaupuys lived in the polarized world of the 13th century, a time when the medieval Church and the gnostic Cathars offered contrasting belief systems and vied for the minds and hearts of the people who lived in the Languedoc region of southern France. It was a time not so unlike ours today. No compromise seemed possible and Elmina’s heart craved the certainty preached by the traveling priest Dominic. There are times when I know just how she feels, when…

Read More Read More

The Path to Perfection

The Path to Perfection

Comments 1 comment

Almost all physical evidence of the medieval Cathars has been erased, systematically destroyed by the Roman Church.  What remains are a carving here, a button or an old coin there to suggest that the Cathars knew full well the healing power of mandalas. Arthur Guirdham was a British psychiatrist who treated several clients who believed themselves to be the reincarnated souls of Cathar perfects. In his book The Great Heresy, he wrote that “Seven centuries ago the Cathars used [completing mandalas] to…

Read More Read More