the secret of the green

here is today's creative work:  a three-piece vertical, mixed-media collage of our very own willamette river!  we have summer days of freedom and time to synthesize to thank for this...following months (actually three years, all told...and more to come!) of inspirational kayaking and a more recent reading of luci shaw's book "breath for the bones; art, imagination and spirit:  reflections on creativity and faith".  creativity is a paradox; it is both fast and slow.  fast in that it all comes out at once.  slow in that it is formed for months below the surface.  inspiration?  another paradox: at once holy and completely mundane.  holy because of being divine image-bearers.  mundane because i started off in the garden which led me inside to clean which led me to sort and shred all the old papers in my file cabinet which led me to find old maps which led me to think "aha!  i could make that collage of the willamette river i've been thinking about".  so on it goes...the quotes on each piece are as follows, "...they are great crystals of light on the surface of the earth...pure, beyond a market value, how much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they!" henry david thoreau.  (surrounded by words:  chinook, wild, confluence of the sacred, salmon).  "...the pioneers--they, we--walk out into a world we think makes sense, we feel at home; meaning breaks off the surface, floating...what will draw our children back?"  kathleen dean moore (words: upstream, falls, navigate by listening, great heron, paddle with the current or against).  "i will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; i will make the wilderness a pool of water, and dry land springs of water."  isaiah 41:18 and "...if we stood quiet and listened, we could hear the gurgle of water running through the open, stone-lined irrigation ducts that criss-crossed the city in every direction.  water was the secret of the green."  luci shaw (words:  osprey, atlas of design, silvered banks, eagle).