HOME $3600, 36”x48”, oil on canvas.

On this painting’s title: This morning I followed the sun and warm air out to the fence where fresh green rose canes and buds were waiting. I had on gloves ready to pull dead vines clinging to the same panels the roses cling to, and the dead grasses encircling their feet. I’m thinking how summer is fast, hot and furious with the intent and need to grow wild, make fruit, make seeds - so many seeds - the pulsing tangle ensures survival. Then winter comes and shrinks everything down to bones, sticks, the dried tissues of the death part, of earth’s body. I think how glad I am it does this so I can more easily clear out what is ready to be composted. I can make space for air and energy to flow and circulate around this season’s new life. Now, I will be able to get to the rose petals, the heart medicine, when the tangle of last year’s excess is cleared and burned/composted. THIS is the scripture of the land, one of the endless sermons that plants deliver. THESE are the lessons of a nurturer, our Earth. The land speaks in metaphor and these lessons carry all that we need to know about living and dying in a flesh body AND all that we need to know about caring for our own soul and others’ souls while here. The land, the plants, and their symbiosis with other creatures, tell us how to live here...but only when we interact with them. Only when we enter into relationship with them can we hear/see/know these metaphors. THIS is the church, the holy book, the prayer that Earth offers. This way of living on Earth can also be called indigenous technology, indigenous knowledge, indigenous cosmology...and is the most holistic and spiritual way of living on Earth in my personal opinion (〰️and it’s what the ancestors say〰️). Please stop looking the other way and ignoring this. Decolonize the concept of God, decolonize our relationship to God, to spirit, to source.〰️