What the outside world calls Christmas morning has dawned cold and clear, the patchwork of snow upon the land glowing golden in the light of an ascendant sun.
We did not get that thing we most wanted for this day, which was snow, but it appears that we may be blessed with some after the weekend. Even now, the clouds of change, those long, wispy bands that foretell the coming of a new system, have begun to rise and stretch themselves outward across the western sky. We don’t anticipate enough of a change to deliver any weather yet today, but they hold our hopes for the days to come.
Meanwhile, we are spending the day as quietly as possible (“quietly” being relative, given the workload required to keep things going here), honoring winter’s gifts and being grateful for them. We are, after all, four days post-solstice now, our whole world aglow in the light of an ascendant sun once more.
Today’s featured work is as golden as that light, and reminds us that illumination comes in many forms, too — sometimes most effectively as the twinned lights of wisdom and long experience, hard and otherwise. From its description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
This traditional sculpture by carver Paul Dancebow (Taos Pueblo) is done in classic Pueblo style. Carved of cedar, his upturned face is finely detailed, as is his long hair, tied back in traditional style. He’s wrapped in a blanket, and his body curves gently, following the natural line of the wood. He stands atop an alabaster base, golden in color with silver-white matrices throughout. Another view shown below.
Cedar on alabaster base
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This is an elder wrought in the old way, emergent from the golden glow of the wood itself, body moving with the medium’s own form and shape, face upturned to the light and lips parted in song or prayer. The level of detail evoked from a minimalist carving style os remarkable, allowing the cedar to speak instead of the knife, the spirit within instead of the sculptor.
But what finishes the work so perfectly is the base upon which it stands: a plain beveled disc of alabaster in a remarkable mix of shades, shot through with local minerals like quartzite and mica that make it appear as though this elder, perhaps an ancestor spirit now, really is emergent from the very light itself.
And it’s a reminder of one of the essential teachings of our collective ways: of respect and honor for elders, for those who very years of accumulated experience have given them insight into our world and the nature of existence that remains wholly outside the reach of younger generations still. It’s also emblematic of another of our essential teachings, one that shows us where true beauty lies: not in a culture devoted to an artificially-unlined and entirely plastic attractions of “youth,” but to the deeper, broader, more comprehensive beauty that accompanies lines and wrinkles, both on our faces and in the subtleties of long experience and the wisdom acquired with it.
It is, in part, the same lesson that winter itself teaches us: Neither age nor dormancy, nor even more lasting transitions, are developments to spurn or scorn; indeed, it is quite the opposite. Winter marks the moment of the return of the light, just as age marks the time when we emerge more fully into the knowledge and wisdom the spirits intend for us. Together with our Mother Earth, we are aglow in the light of an ascendant sun now.
~ Aji
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