Many Moons

It's been Many Moons since my last journal.  Writing class, Penland Auction and teacher work-days are all over.  Finished my first week with learners at Chowan University.  One week down and 15 more to go -- The Count Down Begins!

Baking this weekend helped me clear my head and focus on "What I want to make today!"  I want to make color!  Color, color and more color.  The high point of this semester is my teaching Oil Painting Methods.  Teaching this class at this moment in my life is a blessing from Creator.  God did this!  I know beyond a shadow of doubt that God did it.  I’m so broken and I've missed oil painting.  It's a jealous first lover that warms me in hue, value and intensity.

I'm a Blues Warrior traveling the original Blues Trails on Hwy 301 Business and Highways 97 and 258.  I'm content and at peace with the circumstances of my life.  God's plan is a perfect plan and much better than what I could come up with.  I'm guilty of chasing a Waterfall of a man who talks God, has a sharp tongue and lashes out "to rip you a new one."  The Holy Spirit delivered me.  Looks can be deceiving.

So, it's just Jesus and me on this two hour to and from journey each day.  Patricia is my NDN art sister, the first I've ever had.  Patricia and I are cut from the same remnant of humanity; were like fraternal twins.  Libby Lynn is my love child.  I thank God for the blessings of friendship and my connections to people and places.  It brings me joy as I drive on Algonquin homeland.

Reflections on Week #1 Your Book Starts Here

I’m becoming a writer via online learning at the Loft Literary Center on Washington Avenue South in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  The seed for being a writer was buried deep inside me planted by growing up in Yat’s Kitchen by Mattie Burnette Randolph and her mother, Momma Mary Burnette.  These two French Edisto Gullah grand mothers’ gave me the world through Algonquin fiber arts.  Now Yat’s Kitchen has become Indigo Blues, a book of three short stories, poetry and art about Algonquin culture through the eyes of women’s stories during creative hands activities in coastal Carolina.

Indigo Blues was conceived during my Fall 2014 journey from Toisnot to Chowanook along the paved Algonquin trail that is now Hwy 258.  This road was one of our major Trail of Dreams 303 years ago.  My sojourn reconnected me with childhood travels along Hwy 258 with momma and mama and the stories of adventures along what I knew as The Blues Highway.

Chowanook is the site of the former Chowan Baptist Female Institute, which is now Chowan University.  A large white plantation house presides at the end of a long U-shaped entrance behind Squirrel Park nestled beside Lank Vann.  So much symbolism is attached to my being at Chowanook and I credit it all to Divine intervention.  The Holy Spirit is leading me to a place to walk out God’s purpose for my life.  It’s the experience of being in the right place at the right time under the right circumstances.  It’s my realizing that timing matters, and in life we have to wait our turn.  It’s about God’s will being done, not my own.  My desire to teach at a small college has manifested itself in my life in such a way as to connect me with Algonquin culture.

So, I’m bringing form and shape to my life through writing under the guidance of Mary Carroll Moore at the Loft.  The best writers come out of the Loft community and I plan to be one of them.  I’m part of the 21^st Century generation of women writers coming of age at the Loft.  The sum of the achievements of my fellow learners in Your Book Starts Here is astounding and we have the potential to give voice to the reality of living in the USA.

My memory verse for this week:

“If you hear the dogs, keep going.  
If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.  If there’s shouting after you, keep going.  
Don’t ever stop. Don’t ever quit.  
Don’t give up.  Don’t give in. 
If you want a taste of freedom,
 keep going!”

--Harriet Tubman

The Thrill Is Gone: Observations on Experiencing Freedom

Indigo Blues Fibershed

I was blessed to witness B.B. King perform “The Thrill Is Gone” on more than one occasion.  I never knew his Blues lyrics would one day be an anthem of freedom in the circumstances of my life.  But here we are as I walk out the last summer of life with my momma.  Her broken heart combined with my own is a heavy burden but for the Divine Mercy of Jesus Christ.  Once upon a time I had the love of a family, now in the second quarter of my life it has come down to a few precious moments shared with my momma.  To love and be loved in return is the greatest blessing we can experience on this Earth Walk.  Cherish it!  Guard it as your most precious possession because life is short and fragile, what’s here today can be gone tomorrow and redo isn’t an option.  Some circumstances only happen once in life, choose well!.....