I have been an artist and wondersmith all of my life.
When I was a teenager riding the city bus in Phoenix to get to high school, I had a mystical experience where I found myself in the presence of the Divine. It was a half hour ride to get to school and I would spend that half hour in prayer and after a couple of years of this, I felt everything shift one day and I suddenly felt this overwhelming Presence that radiated the most incredible feeling of unconditional love I’ve ever felt. Human language can’t even come close to translating what I experienced; words are terribly inadequate in explaining this feeling. The closest I’ve come is when I see people talk about their Near Death Experiences and how they emerge into this energy of pure love and they struggle too, with trying to explain this incredible, vast love. They even mention how limiting words are in explaining it.
While I was in this state, I could see each person’s soul. Everyone had this bright, oval shape of pure light, where before they had been ordinary people riding the bus to work or school on a Monday morning. I could feel the Presence of the Divine moving between each person and as They did so, They would stop and say to each person, “This one is my favorite.” At each person, the same thing was said and I could feel how that particular person was the center of Their world. Each person was treated the same.
This may be difficult to process with out limited beliefs around love, because most of us live in a culture where love has to be earned or deserved in some way, and what was communicated to me was that each person was perfect exactly as they were, inside and out. I struggled with this, being a repressed Catholic girl, so I kept insisting there must be some way we weren’t deserving of this love. We must disappoint or make the Divine sad due to our actions or thoughts. But the Divine said no. I insisted.
Finally, I felt the Divine shift to sadness and They said, “Well, there is one thing.” Aha! I awaited their reply. They said, “None of you can see how beautiful you are.”
Wow! THAT was it! I was astounded. The other thing that happened that I experienced is that there is no gender to the Divine. Yes, the Divine contains all genders, but what I felt while I was merged with Them was that They were essentially nonbinary. From this place, goddesses and gods can emerge. This happened over 4 decades ago, and to this day, it influences my work. I specialize in Soul Portraits and when I do these portraits, I want to show you where you are beautiful, where you are part of a wonderful mystery that is unfolding the story of the universe. There you sit among planets and galaxies, made of stardust yourself.
I use soft pastels, colored pencils and glitter glue in my work, because I believe these media speak best to our inner light. They give the portraits a softness and moodiness that brings out the joy and magic you have inside you. Thank-you for visiting my site and may you be blessed beyond imagining!
