So been reading this book....

From the first of the year I've been reading this book with my book club and we take a chapter a week and meet once a month.  First off the gals in the book club are so awesome, whole, real and full of great wisdom.  Blessed is not big enough to describe them.  There's a lot of information and in this book to do, though it was set up for a weekly exchange...a 12 week course it's just impossible to do less you had only it to do.  But I read it, underline what speaks to me and then let it simmer inside and then before we are to met I re read it again...drilling in to my head.

So this is what I read this week...

Most spiritual directors are already familiar with journaling as a powerful tool to get in touch with interior movement and as a way to pray with words stirring through us. Art Journaling emerges from a similar impulse, but offers access to our visual language. Essentially it is a way of working with both word and image to bypass the inner critic and create a safe space for expression and connecting with our intuitive voice. Spiritual director Jane Comerford, CSJ, describes this intuitive flow of visual expression as “gush art” because it helps us to break through our resistance and work from our feelings and body sense to respond to God and life more freely.  As we bypass our internal censors, we come to new awareness of ourselves. 

I'm a spiritual person and really pull my inspiration from Nature and the Earth....though call it God, Big Man UpStairs,  The one who knows, Good orderly direction...etc...you get the picture. 

After reading what this sister Jane Comerford has put together for spiritual director and has given it a name,"Gush Art."  I'm tickled Pink to know that is what my Tack Down Tuesdays have given me the new awareness of self and I've really stopped listening to the critic.  

Because I weekly...sometimes struggle but still do them the Tack Down Tuesday's I've met that safe place to express...the inner critic knows all to well where to be...not in my head that's for sure.  I really pull from a place of pure emotion using the papers, colors, shapes, edges torn or straight.  

I honestly wouldn't know what I would be doing without it...I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be an artist and create...I never now were or why sometimes just the need to express and exhale all the stuff I pick up with my senses daily.  

Rambling...
Week 7 notes