My mandala today is the unfurling fern frond spiral that seems to draw me as I draw it; it emerges from me when I am working in a classroom as the teacher. Tonight, we are working on our final portfolios.

I had students thinking of a name for their book/portfolio, then went directly to pulling an image at so-called random from our journals to put at the center of our soul map mandalas, and in my journal, I immediately saw the word “fern.” I knew it referred to the living shape I first saw in “Holding It Close.”

I like that it is a close to or echoes Mom’s soul shape, which is the nautilus.

I like that it has emerged spontaneously and that it came out of the energies in the classroom setting.

I see that it creates a clear pathway for the students to move to center along with me.

I think it peculiar and true that I can move the same drawing or writing project from class to class, school to school, and the emergent unspiraling frond is the same one.

I wish I could tell you how long this image has been with me. It derives from a Siberian Shamanic story or myth. I do not know how I received the information, but this is an ancient image. Ravens nesting in the Tree of Life. I do not know the meaning of it but I hesitated for at least a year, maybe longer to make this simple sketch. It carries so much power in my consciousness, power with deep history that has meaning in some unknown tradition BCE.

COMMENT from Sandy:
I wanted to include an image that I think speaks to yours. It is a quilt by an Alaskan fiber artist who is also a Unitarian. You can read an explication of the symbolism here: http://www.uuff.org/quilt.shtml
About the Ravens specifically, she says, “At the heart of the tree, a raven brings life to the quilt while evoking the next line of the hymn: “Wings set me free….” Another northern motif, Raven is the trickster of Native myth. In his guise as trickster, Raven brings both wisdom and humor into our sanctuary. Behind him the suggestion of mountains calls us to lift our eyes, seek physical and spiritual challenges, and remember the powerful role that the land plays in our lives.”
I’m saying that is exactly what your Ravens mean. You have beat back the dreaded death-bringer, cancer, and I believe you recently got a clean bill of health on a mammogram? Do you feel that death has turned benign and is now creatively nesting in your tree of life?

It’s your image, and what it means and the power it carries is ultimately yours, but I agree it is a very moving image that speaks to the ancient of days in all of us.

Raven’s Tree of Life

Pieced and Quilted by Stephanie Rudig, 2005

March 8th, Lake Fenwick, Kent, WA. My husband and I are walking in a forest that is managing to survive development all around it. We walk here with our golden retriever Dusty and today his cousin Blue Heeler Dakota. The dogs did not disturb this suburban rain forest. They did not see the red breasted sapsucker tearing away the bark in search of bugs. I stopped to search for the bald eagle, scree, scree high overhead. I could hear him but he did not come into view this day. The old trees – every branch heavy with ferns growing like exotic gardens. I spot first one and then many trillium, glowing white in a golden green impressionist forest.

March 6, 2008 Tree Woman with Fire Sticks came out of a random late night, closed-eyes scribble… What is she doing up in the tree? What are the fire sticks for?

A Pocket Museum

March 5, 2008

I gave each of my Creative Writing students at Linfield a 5x loupe and told them to go out into the beautiful spring weather. They were to collect natural objects to create “a pocket museum,” then to use their loupe to draw what they saw, and then to write analogies.

This purple periwinkle looks like an Easter bonnet,
the purple star of Perfect Repose,
a violet kiss in oaky weather,
a tattoo I might like to have on the back of my left knee,
the violet membrane protecting Inua, the feminine soul of a whale,
a lavender smile I saw out of the corner of my eye….

I paint and draw from forms created by indigenous
peoples because I believe that I may feel what they felt; maybe begin to know what they knew. I am trying to capture strains of knowledge from the akashic record. This is not an outlandish idea. Art students have copied the great masters for centuries. Their goal is to sense, to intuit and to learn from the great artists that have now passed.
I can do the same for much the same reason.