National Wildlife & Art Week

According to my calendar National Wildlife Week and Art Week are this week! Loving artists and wildlife, I can't think of anything better than this. Well come to think of it, I can.  What would be better than this is if everyone more fully realized what wildlife and artists do for us.  Artist wake us up. They show us beauty and wonder and many of them do so through their interpretations of wildlife.

Thanks to The Woodscrollers buffalo, deer and wolf grace our home as does Merritt Ireland's fabric piece "Two Crows."  We didn't set out to find animal-related art.  It just happened as we came upon works that moved us.  Art and wildlife move me and at times because I'm moved I judge humans as a result.

As one who loves animals, it's challenging for me to write about wildlife and not find some thread of judgment within. I don't get why people want heads and antlers in their homes.  Of course this may be art to them though I've assumed an animal's head on the wall gives one a sense of potency and power that is otherwise missing.  And I sure don't get arm-chair hunting.  I've now had two friends tell me of hunters who through internet sites find the animal they want killed on a hunting preserve and then have someone else kill the animal then send the desired part to them. 

Then there are those who want animal hides around for their beauty I guess.  Last fall at a local art opening in a home, I looked down to see I was standing on a zebra skin and I nearly threw up.  I got off the rug and out of the home as fast as I could.

I judge because I feel pain and grief.  Despite so many more people standing up for animals wild and domestic today, animals and the wild are under such assault politically. 

Yet when I look at the animals on our walls and consider the ones I see in visions, I know the animals both wild and domestic do not want me hurting, judging or tuned out.  They want me loving, loving, loving.  For they continue to arrive and grace Earth in hopes that more and more of us will show up in our wisest and most compassionate selves. 

Animals are woven into our lives in ways we don't often realize.  Many sports teams would have an identity crisis and be mascotless if suddenly the animals found a way to go on strike.  Think about it. We've the Timber wolves, the Bears, the Lions, the Bulls, the Hawks, the Ravens and the Cardinals to name a few.  But to go on strike though is not the animal way.

The animal way is to love, to continuing coming to Mother Earth to live among us and in relation to us despite our blindsides and shortcomings.  This is true power, potency, beauty and grace. 

So in this week dedicated to Wildlife and Art I am most grateful to the animals here on Earth who model for me the art of the heart and for artists who open their hearts to the Muse and create. 

Imagine the Shift in your life of more greatly appreciating artists and wildlife not just this week but every week, every day!

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 19 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com