In the Pursuit of Healing

In times gone by, the idea of alchemical processes was somewhat of a sacred pursuit, a desire to transform lead into gold, the medieval forerunner of chemistry concerned with the transmutation of matter.  Was it a fairytale?  Was it a metaphor for spiritual pursuits? As a painter, I have been inspired by a desire to make images that transport the viewer into stillness through the process of mixing and applying oil-based substances; a pursuit with a long historical tradition of alchemical processes. 

My studio, like many other artist's spaces, is a clutter of bottles, mediums, cans of paint, jars and tubes of pigments, brushes, palette knives, powders, glitter and glues. Rolls of canvas, finished pieces, pieces in process line the perimeter of the space. There are two large chunks of beeswax that I use to make encaustic mediums in the drawer of an old armoire, baskets of tools and boxes of outdated slides are stacked on top.  All the material stuff that gets mixed and melted, stirred and spread around on surfaces-- in the hope of making something meaningful-- unfortunately sometimes has its own toxicity. 

When I was in graduate school, I read a book by Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art.  It stopped me in my new found tracks. Gablick deconstructed the art of making things as part of the problem. I couldn’t imagine what to do for awhile because my lifelong goal of painting was clearly a toxic pursuit. Almost all the mediums for painting have harmful substances contained within them.  Photographers work with noxious chemicals in the dark room or they did, pre-digital.  Painting has its own hazards. All manner of substances in each department of art have pernicious qualities. One couple, mentioned in Gablik’s book, quit working in photography all together. Another woman I have met in New Mexico made her practice cleaning up litter daily, for ten years she would get up and go collect garbage in Santa Fe and that became her art form.

I struggled for awhile with all of this and still do to some extent. 

Ms. Gablik came to speak at UNM thirty years ago after her book was published in 1991.  She said then that she didn’t know whether it was right to fly to give her talk in New Mexico.  She was thinking about the destruction that we were doing to the atmosphere ahead of others, but we still have not changed course. Now we find ourselves in the place of no return, Arctic ice melting and with climate disruption, pandemics may become more and more common. 

Yet, I decided then, as now, that painting has a place in the world.  And I wouldn’t wish, for instance, that Leonardo da Vinci had not painted his masterpiece, Salvator Mundi, Christ the Savior of the World or any other of his paintings that are now hanging in museums. But what of the unhealthy ingredients that make up the materials an artist uses currently?  What of the damaging effects chemicals have on the climate?

My first public outing after the year of quarantine was to see a Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum, from the collection of Jacques and Natasha Gelman. The show underlines Mexican Modernism of her time and includes paintings of her husband, Diego Rivera. Her work always gets to me in a way that is about the intrinsic powerful nature of her spirit.  It’s personal but it speaks to everyone. She was resilient in her life, a lifetime of tremendous hardship, full with pain and suffering do to a terrible accident, subsequent surgeries, loosing a pregnancy and ultimately a leg. One can barely imagine how she had the fortitude to keep painting.  Yet, her oeuvre would not exist, at least as we know it, had it not been for the profound experience of her suffering.  

I believe in the power of art to be healing. Academics have put that down in the past and certainly, I have felt I had to keep that belief to myself. But there is shift currently and especially through the voices of indigenous faculty, I have noticed a return to knowing art making as a sacred pursuit; there is power in the making and a secondary power in viewing that is undeniable.

Many artists love the materiality of their mediums, the colors, yes, and especially the plasticity of it.  That’s where the term ‘plastic’ derives from, in the sense of being easily shaped or molded.  The process of turning compounds into images of landscapes we feel we can step into, portraits we imagine we can reach out and touch, forms of pain or grace, heaven or hell, abstractions that transport us to another reality is often the driving force. Painters lose their ego selves when working intently on something outside of themselves; time sometimes gloriously ceases while we work.  Somedays, unexpectedly, when I am particularly immersed in the process, I might find myself in a meditative space. Fleeting, yes, but one reason the alchemical nature of the act of painting is so compelling to the artist. 

Kahlo had some of these moments when she was painting, moments where she was elevated beyond her human condition, of that I am certain.  Her work continues to touch us in the way that the alchemical processes of painting can - visually her images hit our hearts, fill us with compassion, yearning and the aspects of human suffering we can all identify with, a sacred pursuit.

Women in Conversation

Northern air blows in a cold and tumultuous day in New Mexico. I take out a bag of sweaters from my old pine amoire and pull on a new pair of boots to take my dog, Belle, out for a walk.  I think about the poet, Mary Oliver all morning after listening to a superb interview she did with Krista Tippet for On Being in 2015. She has passed away and yet, hearing her recorded voice, calms my heart and so I listen to the podcast two mornings in a row.  

During the months of quarantine, I am blessed to be in a small chat room conversation with another extraordinary woman, South African, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.  She is a politician/activist who was South Africa's Deputy Minister of Defence from 1999 to April 2004 and then, Deputy Minister of Health until August 2007.  She speaks about the healing work she has done to develop the belief that change is possible.

In my mind, these two women are in conversation, one, the poet, Mary Oliver together with the activist, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge. I listen closely. Oliver asks, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?  Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge shares with her, her amazing life story.  She begins to study medicine and then, becomes a very different sort of medicine woman. Not the kind that goes to medical school, a different type.  She will tell Mary Oliver how she endured a year in solitary confinement after three arrests for political activism in the 1980s. And later, how she comes to be a strong leader in part because as a practicing Quaker, she accepts that God is in everyone.  This is key to the transition post-apartheid in South Africa and must be key in the United States if we are to evolve beyond racism: God is in everyone. She would tell Mary that she is the first Black woman, South African Quaker, and pacifist to serve as Deputy Minister of Defence. 

Madlala-Routledge, elected to Parliment in 1994, and inspired by her pacifist beliefs was appointed the Deputy Minister of Defense five years later. She came to raise the consciousness of the country, "if you want peace, you must prepare for peace". She is a fierce example of what we need in order to redirect the world toward equality for all. 

Mary Oliver and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge speak in the poetics of action about how grace can happen when we focus on the exercise of ending sentences with peaceful resolutions. When we stand up for women and girls who suffer because of the imbalance of power between genders, people of color and whites, and the inequalities of wealth, then at least we are speaking truth. Madlala-Routledge has done much difficult work.  She has campaigned to end sex-trafficking of women in South Africa and continues to be a healing voice for her country. She worked to change the HIV/AIDS denial to a national emergency when she took on the position of Deputy Minister of Health in 2004.*  She is one of the wise women in the world leading us to see the importance of consciousness and to holding ourselves to high standards.   

Yes, God is in everyone, every person, every child is of God.  Will we really get that in our heart of hearts? I wonder each day of this most unusual time if we will awaken to a higher vibration?  

May 29, 2021

Months of quarantine have passed and we are now, it would seem, on the side of new potential. A fragile egg has cracked to reveal the birth of something. When the mother bird sings to her babies, what will this new form become?  Change is possible, (I know it is) I hope when we speak of change, it will be for the betterment of all.

A Thousand Mornings

All night my heart makes its way

however it can over the rough ground

of uncertainties, but only until night

meets and then is overwhelmed by

morning, the light deepening, the

wind easing and just waiting, as I

too wait (and when have I ever been

disappointed?) for the redbird to sing.

~Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings

* Founder and Executive Director of Embrace Dignity, a non-profit campaigning for legal reform to abolish the exploitive system of prostitution and support South African women wanting to exit the sex industry.

Love in the Time of Coronavirus Part II

 

This is the place on my website where I share/have shared, for the past 10 years, words on art and ecology, healing and nature.  At least bi-annually I write on the process of making art as a sacred practice, my inspirations in nature, experiences as an artist and something about the ecology of the places where I hike.  Especially in regard to special places along my beloved Rio Grande and in the mountains of Albuquerque, the Sandias, the ever changing, often at sunset watermelon- colored mountains, I like to visit them in words as well.  

A gorgeous warm November day, the sun a white presence behind thin clouds, I have been like many, reflecting on this year, these quarantine days. What a strange year it has been. But in the midst of all that is irregular, I find myself repeating a gathering, for the second year in a row. Patches of Yerba Mansa in the woods are small offerings of calm.  I have collected a few dark pieces of the mansa root and started one batch of brew in October and will start another on the New Moon this coming Sunday.  The first one that I made is already dark and rich, I sampled a bit last night but thought it may be premature. I will keep that little jar in the dark for a couple more weeks at least.  This second one will be interesting to compare to the first and see if there is a difference in the harvest.  It’s recommmended that the roots soak in alcohol, in the dark, for a month or six weeks before it is ready to be a healing tincture. 

This patch is a place near to me, on the east side of the river where I often walk with my golden dog, Belle. The low growing plants are endangered due to lack of healthy habitat and so I have watched this patch for several years reluctant to take any of the roots. But last year a friend took me to a larger patch a bit farther south and on the other side of the river.  I have been grateful for that brew this year in 2020. Many evenings when I needed to settle my anxiety, and there was much this year, I would make a micro- cocktail with a teaspoon of the tincture and a little cherry juice. Like an aperitif, it would settle me down just a bit. I love the Yerba Mansa- especially its indescribable scent, a rich earthy smell, unique with a bit of a spicy high note. As a healing remedy it has been used for generations, this plant medicine also known as lizard tail, swamp root, manza, Anemopsis de Californie, and Anemia Californica.

Digging with a sturdy stick I find a place where the root is close to the surface and take a piece about three inches long, leaving some of it still hidden underground.  I re-cover what is exposed with some leaves that fell upon the area. A forest of bliss this place is for me, thin but full with many stories: coyote sightings, sandhill cranes in the winter, once a rare bobcat passed through and now, the cottonwoods ever magical presence a yellow canopy overhead just starting to fade. I have been walking through this bosque along the river for almost thirty years. 

Mansa prefers very wet soil or shallow water and I imagine the bosque floor must have been covered with it when the river was allowed to flood each spring.  Now the flood plain is controlled and there is little to no water in the river and very rarely flooding in the spring. In the three decades I have lived here, I have only seen a flood in spring twice.

I have been under the impression, perhaps the false impression, that the Yerba Mansa was used traditionally as a sedative but looking up the medicinal uses that is not how it is listed. Interesting, as I have been feeling that it is helpful in that regard but perhaps it was the Sotol, the agave nectar that it was made with, that actually settled me.  I find that it has been used to treat inflammation, so in that way, it is calming; as an antimicrobial; to treat gout; an excess of uric acid and as a poultice to relieve muscle swelling.  

Another source lists it as a remedy for the common cold, a pain-killer, for digestive problems and tuberculosis. There is a long list of medicinal uses listed by Michael Moore and other herbalists including chronic bronchitis, cough, anorexia, used in the forms of oils, tinctures and topical doses. Yerba mansa leaf tea and the root is used to treat uterine cancer, ease menstrual cramps, induce conception, and staunch excessive bleeding after childbirth (Bocek, 1984; Artschwager-Kay, 1996); as a treatment for other gynecological conditions including yeast infection, and vaginitis (Moore, 1989; Davidow, 1999); or to treat venereal sores and ulcers (Bean and Saubel, 1972) 

Michael Cottingham, clinical herbalist, says you can use Fresh Root Extract, which contains more medicinal aromatics. Make a “ 1:2 Fresh Root Extract, using at least 70% Alcohol as your menstrum or solvent. You can also, make a Dry Root Extract, using a 1:5 ratio, and at least 60% Alcohol as your solvent. There have been times when I have made a Whole Fresh Plant Extract, using Fresh Roots, Leaf, and Flower.” *

He says, “Yerba Mansa is so good at treating bacterial and viral infections, but excels at bacterial infections in ANY of the mucous membranes, especially when there is a lot of inflammation present!”

Use for:

#1  Rhinitis, sinusitis, or upper respiratory, inflamed and infected (bacteria) situations - 

Adult Dosage: 25 to 50 drops, up to 5 times a day. Add drops to big glasses of water for more effectiveness. Remember water is a vehicle and substance that creates movement. Water is an important remedy when treating inflamed and infected mucous membranes. 

#2 Joint Inflammation - Any kind, but if there is a suspected bacteria origin, even better! In Lyme Disease, the bacteria often lives in the joints of its host, causing super inflammation and pain. Yerba Mansa is well known in the Mexican Herbal Tradition for treating gout, arthritis, and just about any type of joint inflammation. 

Adult Dosage: 30 drops, up to 5 times a day. Again, always add to a big glass of water.

#3 Gum Inflammation, receding gums, periodontal disease, especially if from a bacterial presence. 

Adult Dosage: As a Mouth Rinse - add  30 drops of Yerba Mansa extract to a cup of saline (salt) water, and rinse and spit. Do this 2 times a day.  You can also take internally, an additional dose of 20 drops, up to 3 times a day, especially if your gum or mouth trouble is from a suspected bacterial infection (which most are!).

#4  Subacute head cold, with thick mucus. 

Adult Dosage: 30 drops of Fresh Root Extract in a warm glass of water, up to 5 times a day. Sometimes, a warm cup of Fresh Ginger Root Tea, with drops added is spectacular in its relief!

Good for what ails us during the time of the coronavirus. We are living through such uncertain times and it is comforting to me to find solace in the forest, through the rhythms of nature. At the changing of the leaves on the cottonwoods, the stillness of the Yerba Mansa plants below offer many different shades of brown as they transform in fall. A few sandhill cranes pass over us the next day when we return, a lone Great Blue Heron makes the screeching sound of a dinosaur and ducks squeek on the ponds. 

*Note: See September 17, 2015 at www.voyagebotanica.net Part 2, January 3, 2019 and January 30, 2020, The Spice of Life Tea by Michael Cottingham, clinical herbalist

 

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Corona: from Latin, 16th century, meaning wreath or crown

We are in the midst of the first weeks of self-quarantine in the United States due to the novel coronavirus. Other places, China and parts of Europe, have already been in a state of lock down, so news from abroad has prepared us in some ways psychologically, but not in the real time experience of it. A strange surreal moment, one of great uncertainty in the world.

This global focus on a singular stunning issue reminds me of other times in my life: the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, when I was in grade school and my teachers wept. When his brother, Robert was assassinated the world was again, galvanized in disbelief. The images of those shocking moments were played and replayed on television, seared into the collective consciousness. Through the following thirty years we watched more violence and social unrest and maybe became somewhat complacent to the events of war, of civil rights for all, of inequality, of rivers burning, of oceans of toxicity, of animal extinctions, as they unfolded before our eyes. Or maybe we became numb. Maybe we still believed in separation. Many things kept us in illusion.

Another state of focused urgency erupted at Y2K when we thought the technological systems in place would rip the net of communication down around us. We worried that at the stroke of midnight on December 31st, as if we were at Cinderella’s ball, that the electronic strings of time, pulling us into the 21st century, would disappear. I remember being afraid that the collapse of computer systems would disrupt everything we had come to depend upon. The murders of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr., these fallen kings, left a terrible dark stain on democracy but Y2K turned out to be a minor glitch. There was a much more ominous event the following year on September 11th, that brought the world to its knees, a far more shocking, focal point.
     In the era of terrorism, perhaps we think that nothing could shock us anymore, yet, here we are stunned again by the sudden and overwhelming outbreak of Covid-19 and all of the economic repercussions. We are in fight or flight with neither option available to us. As so many sad stories are being revealed, it is hard to sort through, the number of cases now global; we are overwhelmed with a tsunami of information to be considered.
     Already in this short term perspective, it is awakening our compassion and the realization that we truly are not separate. One elder care center in Kirkland, Washington has lost 29 residents to the virus and more in the facility have tested positive, both residents and employees. Crews of workers in white jumpsuits are in day three of cleaning the facility, the invisible nature of a virus is not so easy to contain or clean away. Forces which have significant influence, especially on our elderly are evident in the number of deaths. We
may not understand what this novel virus is exactly but we know that it is not a common cold or flu. We know that we do not have immunity, the definition being relevant to the zeitgeist: bodily protection from something foreign. And not having the ability to resist a particular infection with specific antibodies or white blood cells is what it seems we are struggling to comprehend. We do know that many people are recovering and children it seems have a greater resistance to Covid-19. Thankfully!

I woke up in the middle of the night and thought about the trinity; in the Christian faith, God is said to be a trinity on earth. The meaning of the Holy Trinity is rolling through my thoughts, as it seemed I had an epiphany at 3 am, and now to put insight into words in the light of day is more challenging. We are made form through our bodies, through our mothers’ bodies, but we are not form in our souls. We come from the unity of Creator into the illusion of separation. From the formlessness of Divinity into form, however we choose to name the great mystery, we are made manifest through Spirit. We are here it would seem to recognize there is something more powerful than our egoic selves.
     We cannot survive this deluge without trust in a higher power, the God of our understanding; whatever we believe in individually, may we be guided through this storm. May we learn to trust each other. Love in this time of uncertainty means opening our hearts with compassion to the world, to our family and friends, to our communities, trusting in something greater than fear. I recently heard it said, both faith and fear require a belief in the unknown. Our choice. We can be in unity and love or continue to believe we are separate.

Creativity, Maybe the Silver Lining

There is a way through the illusion of separation as we feel more connected than ever before. We can take time to be still, to sit in the light of our sacred hearts, for ourselves and all of our relations. For that is the best medicine.

We are mentoring each other through creative ways to engage. Through our imaginations we can deliver one another from the overwhelming fears. The trinity is about creator energy and that is what will get us through these difficult times. Ask any painter, ask a musician and they will tell you, that you practice and practice. You run scales for years so that you become proficient enough to sit at the piano for a recital. And then you have to give it over to something greater, step aside and let spirit flow through your being.

This is the time we have been waiting for, many have felt that we were on the brink of something big prior to the viral outbreak. Now is the time to link to one another’s hearts, to feel the great interdependence we share and create the new world together.

The Corridors of Migration

All of the images under New Work: Ornithology 2015-2017 were made in honor of the feathered ones who inhabit the places along the corridors of migration in New Mexico where I reside, the flyways of the Rocky Mountains and the middle Rio Grande.  The image of the wings of a Sandhill crane were painted from actual wings, found in a migratory sanctuary lying in a field like the wings of an angel.  They were attached to a clean breast bone, but no other signs of the bird were in plain sight.  I came upon them walking through a field just at the end of winter’s sleep, in February, after the Sandhill cranes flew north for their spring mating rituals. Emptied of the magnificent flocks of snow geese and cranes, I was somewhat forelorn that the cranes had gone, when I came upon the wings of a Sandhill crane.

Sandhill cranes, (vulernable to loss of habitat and degradation of habitat at major stop over points during migration), a Great-horned Owl, and the wings of a Barn Owl were each painted from the remains of life.

Please click the link at left for New Work: Ornithology, 2015-2017, to see more images.

 http://deborahgavel.squarespace.com/ornithology/

Collateral damage in the eco-system*

Some scientists say birds are more resilient to the perils along the Rio Grande and elsewhere because they can fly above the fray.  But they have to land at some point and within reach of a nurturing healthy habitat.  I found a Barn Owl, Genus Tyro, family Tytonidae, along the 1-25 freeway, in the breakdown lane, with one wing moving in the wind as if it might be waving. It had been very windy the night prior, perhaps it had been hit by a vehicle or crushed by high winds while hunting in the orchard above. The size of it, Its heart-shaped face and large dark eyes reminded me of a human infant’s face framed with a ruffle of lace.

We live in complexity. We consider city infrastructure as “normal;” the result of industrialization and militarization that cannot easily be turned backward on the calendar of our evolution.  There are consequences to our destructive behaviors, to our lack of mindfulness in nature.  On personal levels as well as in the macrocosm and the microcosm of nature, we are all effected by environmental destruction.  All plants, animals and minerals are part of the same earth space.  So much “collateral damage” is the consequence of our seeming inability to walk on earth in equanimity.*  

Just as the bones of our bodies, and the bodies of all living beings, are joined to make the whole functioning organism, so mirrors the larger body of Mother Earth.  We inhabit a system that is conjoined, so to speak, to each and everything through the shared existence of our mother ship’s atmosphere.

* “Collateral damage” see Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions.