Author: Alyssa Kanitsch

As an artist, I am deeply inspired by imagery that explores tangible metaphors. This is perhaps why I am drawn to the world of fairytale, fantasy, dreams and iconic or religious artwork; especially from artists in the early renaissance. In many of my paintings, I try to use images, landscapes and objects to weave together a story or a sense of nostalgia and distant memory. My favourite art medium is acrylics, however, I also love mucking around with mixed media and pastel, and I occasionally work with oils. I have been known to paint furniture, murals and surfboards, mostly because I love to surround myself with the energy of colour.

The collision of the sacred in ordinary spaces

Published on by Alyssa Kanitsch2 Comments

“Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. On the contrary, everything is sacred.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

There is a quietness and comfort that can only be found in the everyday. I believe that the most intimate sense of the presence of the Spirit is found in the nuts and bolts of our daily lives. The rising in the morning, the dirty dishes, the mealtimes, the shopping. The things we must do in our daily lives are like sea masts that tether us to our sense of purpose, of usefulness.

We seem to be bent toward thinking that God lives elsewhere….somewhere majestic, or at least in some piece of nature that is particularly divine or spectacular. But God firmly and persistently meets us in the daily grind, right where we are, with no makeup and no pre-rehearsed words. In our clumsiness, our boredom, our failings, our addictions and doubts.

I can hear so many voices, from Jesus, the mystics and spiritual men and women throughout the ages, cautioning us of fruitlessness of seeking God as if God were to be found outside of ourselves. Together they form a beautiful life affirming cacophony of voices inviting us to embrace Divinity with childlike eyes of wonder…

Paul the Apostle:

“In God, (or Divine Source) we live and move and have our being”

Julian Of Norwich:

“Greatly ought we to rejoice that God dwells in our soul; and more greatly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is created to be God’s dwelling place, and the dwelling of our souls is God, who is uncreated.”

St John of the Cross:

“However softly we speak, God is so close to us that he can hear us; nor do we need wings to go in search of him, but merely to seek solitude and contemplate him within ourselves, without being surprised to find such a good Guest there.” ~

Jesus in John 17:

“So that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us”

God is at home in you, where you are. You can speak to Spirit just as you are. Divine presence is always with you, wherever you are. You do not need any earthy being to mediate between you and God. Where you are, that’s where God is. Right now this moment. In your sacred space, at home.

And it is not necessary to have great things to do. I turn my little omelette in the pan for the love of God.

Brother Lawrence





			
		

	
	



			
				


			
				



			

			
				
			
		

	
	

		
		
Suspended in Twilight

				

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This post is dedicated to the many of us who struggle with insomnia, for whatever reason. I chose the word ‘suspended’ for the title of this post (and painting) quite deliberately. The experience of sleeplessness, for me anyway, feels like being suspended in a night-time bubble, somewhere between wakefulness and slumber. Sometimes it’s like being pushed and pulled by a relentless tide of anxiety offering no rest.





Yet I have had many tangible experiences of grace as I wrestle with this complex and frustrating state of being. I am left with the sense that there is something curious and mysterious about being in that night-time bubble. 





Grace came to me in the moments between tenaciously trying to sleep and the overwhelm of giving up. 





Grace came in the little snippet of time where my mind was side-lined, where God seemed to divide my bones and marrow and allow me to perceive The Presence that exists within and beyond myself.  





Grace came in the peculiar kind of silence where God speaks without words. 





Grace was in the invitation to surrender to the world that is moving and happening, invisible to the matrix-like world of the everyday. 





If I hold on to these experiences- which are so hard to describe- I can see that this invitation, this grace is always there.





Thomas Merton (1915-1968) beautifully expresses the way we are held by God in these restless hours: 





Insomnia can be  form of contemplation. You just lie there, inert, helpless, alone, in the dark, and let yourself be crushed by the inscrutable tyranny of time. The plank bed becomes an altar and you lie there without trying to understand any longer in what sense you can be called a sacrifice 
Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas





 There is a river of wisdom, affection and healing that we access at the very heart of our frailty. May we all journey forward with our nets full of gifts as we are graced to lean into Spirit long enough to hear her whispers. 


			
		

	
	



			
				



			

			
				
			
		

	
	

		
		
Unknowable One

				

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I heard the call of the Unknowable One.
They left a trail of scarlet breadcrumbs
For my soul to follow,
Because I was lost.
Because my heart was baked hard
like the stony desert.
Yes, it was The Unknowable One
Who scattered their hearts and flowers
across my path.
"There's beauty even here", I heard them say
(when the ocean of my thoughts subsided a little).
"I have no way of understanding.
This new country is unknown." I replied.
And so, they enfolded me in mother-arms;
I was cocooned there.
Nothing else to do 
But be carried
by the Unknowable One.





			
		

	
	



			
				



			

			
				
			
		

	
	

		
		
Tears Like Myrrh

				

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She can gather up all the fragments.
All the failed lives
And all lives have failed.
We all cast a shadow.
I don't know the magic she weaves,
where tears become sacred drops
Like myrrh bleeding from a tree.
And the upside down way
feeble knees and broken feet
are the very vehicle 
by which God travels the Earth.
They say our hearts must crack open like a seed.
Head first in the ground we go.
Then we become like that Myrrh tree,
with branches too beautiful to be seen with human eyes.
Our senses have become dulled,
through fighting endless battles with fickle tides.
One day we will see the illumination.
With clear eyes, 
see how our wings have formed, 
how love has transformed our lives.
For love has shaped us.
And love tends to us,
from seed to sapling to tree.
With branches like arms reaching upward, 
and our blood, our tears are Myrrh.