Mothers & Mothering
“The Performer, His Audience, and the Maternal Instinct”
Music as the Maternal Instinct. A mother doesn't lullaby to get love – but to give.
Musicians, in contrast, are yearning to get – from the audience as the mother. Their music a cry for love. Listen to Beethoven – he is desperately seeking, not giving. They all are.
Read More » “The Mother as ‘the First Vision of Light'”
"My first Vision of Light."
– Blake, “To Thomas Butts”
From the root BHA, to shine, light, bright, is derived our epiphany and theophany, and photo.
Read More » “Mummy, I Hardly Knew You”
I was talking to a dentist friend who remarked on my mother across the room that she had dentures, he could tell.
I suddenly realized not only did I not know this about her – but so much else!
Read More » “Zen (and Not)”
Lucien Stryk says of Zen: "to use the fewest … strokes of the brush to express their feelings."
In that case, my paintings – now – are certainly Zen: very few strokes, so many only one.
But, to go further: what feeling to express?
Read More » “The ‘Magical Event’ of My Mother’s Passing”
In my meditation this morning, this was given to me:
It was Magical
to be with my mother
as she passed over.
Magical:
the Awareness
of the Supernatural Power
that ever bound us
– and ever will.
Read More » “All Mothers Want Only to Love”
The psychoanalyst George Frankl stated that
All mothers want only to love
and all children want only to be loved.
To which I would add
All children want only to love.
Read More » “Little Boy Lost – and Found”
On a busy street the little boy has lost his mother. He runs towards one mother – then stops because she’s not her. And then another. And another. Becoming ever more desperate.
And then he sees her and runs to her – arms open, smiling.
Read More » “Grateful Thoughts on Tolstoy’s ‘The Kingdom of God is Within You'” I rest all of my work on what could be called a personification, a domestication, of Tolstoy's "kingdom of God." Here is how he ends his great treatise.
Read More » “The Two Kalis” Within each of us there are two Kalis – the mother of fear and the Divine Mother of Love. The holiness of Sri Ramakrishna was that he came to Know only Her.
Read More » “The Drum Is Your Mother” Not only is music associated with The Mother, with our mothers – but especially so is the drum.
Marija Gimbutas, drawing on her most extensive analysis of the signs and design patterns that appear repeatedly in the cult objects and painted pottery of Neolithic Europe, writes concerning the Goddess and music about "the intimate relation between the drum and the Goddess."
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