September 8, 2010

Everybody Needs Beauty


©2010 Shannon M. Wilson
Pointed pen with Sumi ink and watercolor
pencil on Arches text. 


I've been reading a lot of John Muir lately... and Thoreau...and the poetry of mystics who find God in a raindrop. They know something about simplicity and the way wind breathes over you like a mantra when you stop running.  Whenever I pick up my nibs to practice lettering, I always come back to these kinds of writers and thinkers.  I have such a longing for the kind of peace they speak of -- peace that can be found in nature, in being truly present, or in the prayerful openness of meditation. I'm getting closer.  Not only have I stopped running, but I'm dead in my tracks looking over my shoulder for a new path. A lot of things led me here, from overwhelming busyness to unspoken fears that this was all there was. But the biggest catalysts were two books, "Simple Abundance," and "Captivating" that kept finding their way to my bedside table for a third, fourth, fifth reading. Through language that both called and convicted, the authors have helped spark the wild soul and beauty seeker in me and I have a new lens through which I see everything -- things that are and things that could be.