deliberate beauty

This was so wonderfully expressed I had to share it, there are so many things that go into what we make, for me it is not only beauty but our intentions of what we wish to express.  

Shekinah

I have been happily beading in my small corner, finding joy in melding colors, making these necklaces that are more like talking storybooks to me.  Narratives of our lives, a sequence of days broken up by moments of joy echoed by the little bursts of beads I incorporate.  Sad moments are present too, but I prefer to think of them as teaching lessons, so perhaps the round of horn, or the cluster of iridescent glass is a hallmark to what we have known, processed or experienced. 

I was talking to G last night about how people have been stringing beads for centuries, the various meanings, associations and cultural traditions associated with them.  Beads have been used as covenants between nations, currency, gifts of love, material and spiritual wealth, celebratory and funerary pieces.  When I am in my quiet space beading I think of all the women before me...unknown mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters and grandmas who have done the very same, and I feel a connection that tips me on my axis. Yes there are men also who have produced beautiful beadwork, (and I salute them as well), yet it is the feminine aspect of this rite and tradition that gets me thinking.  I ruminate on my direct experience as a woman and mother who has a little one that sits at my knees, looks up at me with her shining eyes and says "Please mama can I bead with you?" and so the thread continues, this is my handiwork of knowledge that I am passing on to her.  She is fortunate to have some wonderful distant aunties like  fanci and Anvilartifacts that encourage this learning as well by sending her random beads and bits for her to experiment and explore with.   

As fanci says: "Each element of the universe has the entire universe inside it somehow, just like each of our cells has the dna to make a whole other us."  

And so I sit and continue to make these storybook strands feeling a kinship to the artisans before me, as well as the spider who patiently spins her web, and the birds who build their nests outside my window piece by piece...

xo