“It is solved by walking.” – St. Augustine

‘Solvitur ambulando‘ is a Latin phrase yet suggests the simplest of meditations.

World Labyrinth Day, May 1, 2010 ©chwrenn

On many occasions as an artist, I have solved a painting by taking a walk. In Charleston, the simple act of walking in this beauty is enough to readjust anyone’s thinking.

Now there is a movement afoot to make walking a labyrinth a fresh and healing spiritual ritual. It can be a metaphor for living one’s life, for quieting one’s “monkey mind” as Lauren Artress (Walking a Sacred Path) writes. It is for those of us who have difficulty with traditional meditation. The labyrinth is a circle and also a large spiral, patterned after those in the natural world, as basic to our everyday lives as the water encircling the drain in our bathtubs. This one is patterned after the one built around 1220 in the cathedral in Chartres, France, which is 42 feet wide. It circles and turns in four quadrants, with eleven concentric circles, to a center, which represents our the rose, the heart, the center of our being.

Bon Secours St Francis Meditation Garden

Saturday was World Labyrinth Day, where many gathered to walk as One at One. This gathering was held at the beautiful new meditation garden at Bon Secours St Francis Hospital in Charleston. The gardens and grounds are a healing place, surrounded by ancient live oaks, paths and flowers. The new labyrinth amidst this beauty is open for walking.

Aristotle said that “the soul thinks in images.” The labyrinth invites us to move, to get out of our boxes, to let go, to go with the flow of our imaginings. It invites us, too, to take stock of ourselves, and to be willing to be shaken from our complacency and pride and to live our lives by taking creative turns, so that in the end, we do not look back on our lives in the end, with regrets.

Personally I was captivated the first time I walked one. There is simply something magical here.

I was called to be an artist. And as an old old midwife said to me "If the Lord wants you to do something, you won't have no good luck' til you do." So, here I am, sharing what I love, longing to illuminate the work of art, which is everywhere.

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Posted in architecture, art, beauty, Charleston South Carolina, creativity, Poetry, religion, spirituality, travel, Writing

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What’s this?

Welcome to my blog about the Lowcountry of South Carolina, a place proud with beauty, history and art. Sometimes we feel a call, to be, to go, to do. I was called to be an artist, and as an old midwife from Alabama said, “If the good Lord wants you to do something, you won’t have no good luck until you do it.”

So here I am writing about what I know, about the 'under glimmer' as the poet Basho, says, the way I have learned to see, to notice. I am inspired by, and talking about the history and art and culture of this place that has called me to herself. By the ancestors.

My background includes a degree in fine arts from a small private college in Florida, and before that, four years of all girls' boarding school in Asheville. I worked as a professional photographer, helped my children grow up, and now and I love seasoned things, good food, better conversation, beauty, my beloved and beautiful Italian Greyhound, Beau. Moved by the sacred places and stories of this beautiful historic land called the Lowcountry, I am here in spirit and I hope to infect you with my love of this place.

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