What the Heart Hides

Last night before an evening meeting, I took out my sketchbook, markers and book for my online journaling class.  I decided to stay in the car, where I knew I wouldn't be disturbed.  I reread the chapter in Joyce Rupp's Open the Door that talked about walls of illusions--we push on them and they seem solid, but they're really not.  Here's the quote that leapt out at me last night:  "Illusions are 'pretend doors.'  The counterfeit self is filled with these masquerades" (p. 32).

I was going to draw a wall and a hand, with a garden behind the wall and a desert on the side of the wall with the hand.  I couldn't get the perspective just right, so I traced my hand.  I thought about writing all my illusions about the future I assume I cannot have on the wall, but since I had to go to a meeting, I wasn't sure I wanted to dive deeply that way. So instead, I wrote questions on the fingers.

Yesterday I had been playing with haiku.  I came up with this one on my walk in the morning:

A monastery,

my heart shelters orphaned dreams.

Safe harbor, fierce storm.

I thought about creating some sort of collage, about the heart not as monastery but as homeless shelter and needing to find a few more beds.  I thought about that illustration about Madeline who lived in an orphanage with Miss Clavell:

But this morning, I went in a different direction:

At some point in the near future, I plan to journal about those abandoned dreams. I was going to use the word orphaned, but I needed the extra syllable for my haiku.

I like the hopefulness of this image.  I like the stars that represent the dreams in the heart.  I like the rays of light around the heart that also look like wheat.  I've had bread on the brain all week.  I'm intrigued by how these swirls come together.