Leanne Shawler, Artist

You may have noticed that I took a wee little blogging break. No particular reason, beyond that I always take a blogging break, it seems, around December-January of each year. I've also been participating in an online course over at Abbey of the Arts: "Coming Home to the Body" , which is my first tentative step towards a better incarnational understanding of God in the world, in me. (aka God's presence.) This page of my art journal is an illustration of one wee line from the class: Meanwhile, part of me wondered about the point of continuing this blog. The priest at my mum's church posted a link on his Facebook feed called "Social Media as a Sacrament" which made me think some more, although not in the direction the author meant. (And I confess, I whined a little bit in the comments.) I still have blog post ideas, but is it the best use of my time when I can count my regular commenters on one hand and still have fingers left over? (And that...

Yes, so I wasn't planning to do a word for the year, but after a reflection suggested by Christianne Squires in her weekly e-newsletter, I found myself with one anyway: balance [updated to add, Christianne posted her reflection questions on her blog...] And then I visited Mary Ann Moss's blog which is always a visual delight and discovered her word for 2014 which is just brilliant. Go check it out , I'll still be here ... As I commented there, my word for 2014 seemed rather plain jane, and a word for the year should delight the palate as well as inspire the soul, and so I hit the thesaurus.... eurhythmy  It means a system of harmonious body movement to the rhythm of spoken words, according to the online Merriam Webster dictionary . This made sense, because I'm beginning the year with a course called "Coming Home to the Body: A Women's Journey Toward Contemplative Embodiment"  on Abbey of the Arts . It fits the incarnational ponderings sin...