Category: Spirituality

Painting Dreams

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Science tells us that we all dream, even if we don’t remember them. We spend such a large part of our lives in the dreamworld. It takes up a solid residency. One could easily imagine that our dreaming lives are every bit as tangible as our waking lives. We live in a duality of experience. One is porous, fluid, and disembodied. The other is rigid, sequential and limited by our physical bodies.

There’s something deeply intriguing about dreams…the phenomenon of waking up knowing you have participated in a storyline, and sometimes remembering only snippets or nothing at all just the vague feeling it leaves you. I always think it’s like some inner sage who is tap tap tapping on the door of my mind trying to tell me some important things. And I feel like I most often miss their memo. There’s confusing elements to dreams also. Confusing how they pay no heed to linear timeframes and socially acceptable conventions. It’s like emblazoned on the dream threshold is the statement: “You are entering into a symbolic space. There are no rules and absolutely nothing will fit neatly in your cognitive boxes”

We would like otherworldly visitations to come as distinct voices with clear instructions, but they may only give small signs in dreams, or as sudden hunches and insights that cannot be denied. They feel more as if they emerge from inside and steer you from within like an inner guardian angel. . . . And, most amazing, it has never forgotten you, although you may have spent most of your life ignoring it. -James Hillman-

Working with dream images

James Hillman has an interesting way of working with dreams. He asks us as dreamers to ‘stay with the image’ and resist analysing it, because in the analysis we reduce it down to a label and void it of it’s transformative power. By viewing the images as sacred in this sense, we are taking our ego, or ‘what it means to us’ out of the equation and just regarding the image in an open-handed, curious way. Rather than a black cat pouncing meaning opposition or manipulation, for instance; we ask how does it feel to have a black cat try to pounce on you? And does the dream image like what you are saying about it? He uses the analogy of going to an art gallery. A painting we are looking at does not want to be compared to another artists work, but rather it wants the viewer to see it in it’s own right. Essentially I think Hillman sees the dream as inhabiting the realm of the soul, the inner person or the depths of who a person is. The parts of ourselves that are so much larger than the ‘facts about us’, the soul is the God-breathed connected self in contrast to the ego self which is covered in these labels, and entered on tasks and one dimensional definitions.

I’m working on a project at the moment where I am recording my dreams as much as possible, and then attempting to draw and paint significant images from them. So far this exercise is adding clarity and depth to my experience within the dream and the possible meaning I am bringing into my awareness. Images automatically carry metaphor and also bring multiple interpretations to the table. These have truly been a wellspring for my creativity, giving me a sense of direction and purpose in my art.

Dreams respond to our intention. The more we pay heed to them, the more they seem to enter into our waking world bringing their treasures to us, showing us that there is much much more to life than what we perceive in our everyday lives.

“Don’t ignore your dreams, in them your soul is awake and you are your true self.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana

Perhaps in dreams we are our true wise and more larger selves, playing in a landscape that pays no heed to the rules and conventions of the world. We take our place as droplets in the oceanic heart of God, and like weavers we patch up our anxieties and angst and hidden fears, allowing God to wipe our brows and prepare us for the next day.

Safe in the Arms of Jesus

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No words can express the horror of finding out your child was killed in a car wreck.

I know I’m not alone, I know these sudden deaths happen to so many, causing unthinkable grief and heartache. It’s the kind of broken heart that never heals. However, despite witnessing two close friends lose their children suddenly, and way too early, I never, ever thought it would happen to me.

I think about my son everyday. Yet on the anniversary of Jordan’s death, I can’t help but to walk once again through the unthinkable, like a slow motion picture reel. At eight years, I am amazed how I have been able to continue on. So much has changed. Birthdays and Christmases have come and gone. Jordan’s two younger brothers are now young men. Eight years ago, I truly thought that the world would stop. I would stop. Frozen in a moment. And in some ways I am frozen, or more precisely, altered. Forever changed.

This year I wanted to recount my very first feeling about the tragedy of my son’s death.. At the time, the shock of what had happened made the first few weeks and months somewhat of a nightmarish blur. But I do remember having a vivid sense of Jordan being scooped up by God, into the arms of Jesus like a child.

I tried to capture the image of this as a painting. My way of reaching towards Jordan, of communing with him, of loving him. A way of giving a hug I can no longer give. It’s been a strangely beautiful and sad undertaking. What I ‘saw’ was not a vision in the strict sense of the word. It was more like an impression, a perception, an idea. A sacred flicker of awareness. And more and more, as time moves me forward, I want to incline my ears and heart toward the subtle whispers of the Spirit.

My faith unraveled so much in the first years after Jordan died that I did not think this fleeting glimpse was at all significant. It’s a very dark road to walk where you entertain the idea that God may be like an evil demigod, demanding blood and sacrifice and full of vengeance. Thankfully, I am not in the place I was back then. I’m no longer angry at God, and I do not doubt the existence of God any more either. Far from being distant and uncaring, I have come to believe that all of my tears are kept by God, as tender reminders of love. Even more poignant, God would cherish my tears because God was and is weeping with me all the while. And somehow, I am held through it all.

Despite this inner knowing, I always seem to ask the same question around this time of year. “Where is my son, is he safe, is he well…he is not here… where is he?”. I don’t think I will ever stop asking this question. There is a part of me that is still overwhelmed by the thought that I am here, flesh and blood and breath, and my boy is not.

My beautiful mum-in-law rang me one year and said “…You know I always think of Jordan safe in the arms of Jesus”. She sent me a note in the mail, and wrote in her characteristically shaky hand, the lines of an old hymn;

Safe in the arms of Jesus
Safe on his gentle breast.
There by his love overshadowed
Sweetly my soul shall rest.
Free from the blight of sorrow
Free from my doubts and fears.
Only a few more trials
Only a few more tears

Then she wrote: “I trust in God. Jordan! He is safe.

I must hold these two things in tandem. I trust God…Jordan my child, my heart, is safe and happy. He is home. But I will never stop grieving, because he’s gone from the Earth. They say our loved ones are with us, closer than we think. It’s the idea of the ‘cloud of witnesses’ who are ever present, cheering us on. But most often, Jordan seems so so far away. I feel like a blind person groping around for clues.

Perhaps, we are suspended on the edges of the Real World. On the edge, things are out of focus and unclear. And though we are unaware of it, ‘God is not far from any one of us’ (Acts 17:28). And we are all, whether living or departed connected by the same source of all Life.

Another Painting for the Fridge

Published on by Alyssa Kanitsch3 Comments

I’m not liking any of my art at the moment, and that’s a good thing.

It’s good, because it means I have been making art as a process, rather than a final product. I’ve been experimenting and being sloppy. Just putting anything on paper and watching with detached curiosity how I react to these strange clunky drawings.. That said, sometimes later on I see some value in something I have made and actually end up liking it a lot.

I have so little energy that I tend to create in short bursts, and this stops me from overthinking. My inner critic is upstaged by a migraine or just the feeling of deep exhaustion. Whilst chronic illness is no walk in the park, it does tend to whittle away at the superfluous fluff of life. Yes, Ms Perfect begone, you meant well but I have no bandwidth for you now.

It’s easy to fall into the feeling of being somehow ‘blocked’ as an artist when you are not making art that seems ‘good’ in your own eyes. Positive thoughts or kind and generous words from friends does not always assuage the lonely experience of frustration and discouragement.

My theory with artist block is that our footprints in the world are unavoidably tangled with our unconscious, and often discouragement points to something deeper going on. I believe creativity is so very important. Dostoyevsky says in his book, “The Idiot”, “Beauty will save the world”…what an intense and weighty statement. Art, I believe, is a homage to any and every kind of beauty. In our world of industrialisation, capitalism, patriarchy, greed, chaos and deep suffering, beauty and our response to it in the form of art- provides a healing salve.

So it’s no wonder then, that we put such pressure on ourselves as artists- even the label feels a bit lofty. If I say I am an artist I have just labeled myself as something I really don’t think I can live up to. But what’s the alternative? I need to find a way to sit with both the importance in creating art and the expendable quality of it. Like, it’s just paint on canvas. It’s just words strung together. It’s just something you may have put on your mum’s fridge when you were a child. It’s pretty ordinary. It’s also alchemical magic and wonder. Both. That’s probably where the magic is located- in the collision of something so ordinary with the ineffable. We are drawing pictures of God. We are responding to a mysterious reality- one that we may have caught a mere fleeting glimpse, a reality that we were previously unaware of. We sit still just long enough for it to make us gasp, and to have our imaginations filled with a story so vast that we only hear and see little snippets. And the storyteller is not us. We notice something lovely or fascinating we didn’t see before. So, we respond, and in the process, complete the alchemical reaction by creating something from our unique perspective.

I often think of the creative process as akin to dreaming. Ineffable images and symbols come bubbling to the surface, and our only job is to make a little bit of sense to them. This is why it’s often not until we view something we have made later on that we see some of the meaning, or the themes that our unconscious wants to bring to the surface. And yet to really find the sense of satisfaction in making art, I must also take on the attitude:”This is just another painting for the fridge”. No good can come from being overly self-conscious. We end up editing all the interesting stuff out. Probably one of the most crucial tasks we have artists is to be as authentically ourselves as we can be. Crinkles, quirks and all.

We might indeed be saying something important, in our art. But, the unchecked wisdom that comes from the unassuming childlike parts of us are perhaps most precious.

I love this encouragement:

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Dr Seuss

….A good one for your fridge

The Beauty of “Unknowing”

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“We sometimes tend to think we know all we need to know to answer these kinds of questions—but sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds. We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all.”

1 Corinthians 8:1 MSG

I get overwhelmed by the amount of useless information there is floating around in the ether. At the moment it makes me feel like plugging my ears against the cacophony of voices, cocooning myself in a cave and fashioning a bubble of silence. It comes to us in many forms, but at the moment I am particularly thinking of the ‘wellness gurus’. This is a corner of the internet I come across regularly as person who is dealing with a largely misunderstood chronic illness. The information is delivered as ‘the answer’ by people who exude that smug confidence, bequeathing some cutting edge knowledge- and now you should follow their programme/diet/intervention to the letter. In fact, to achieve wellness you have a moral obligation to do so! The implied message is often one of blame for what you have or haven’t done. Taglines range from the overly dramatic “Biggest food lies…” to “10 steps to recovery…” and “Are you doing this right?”….ad nauseum.

Going down the rabbit hole of seeking answers has made me realise how little we know collectively of the world, our bodies and how our mind and soul works. This endless tirade of ‘knowledge’ is not limited to wellness. It comes into spirituality, politics and all manner of human rights topics, dividing humanity into arbitrary groups and labels.


Why are we so drawn towards black and white answers to everything? Author and psychologist Ian McGilchrist would argue that it’s the left hemisphere of our brains. Its function is much like a secretary. Organising, filing things, reducing complexities to simple forms, analysing and categorising…a useful road map, but one with a limited function. The right hemisphere in contrast, will take the world in holistically. It can hold two seemingly opposite phenomena at the same time. According to McGilchrist, the right hemisphere is intuitive, and as such connects with metaphor and story because it can hold a deeper truth than just a linear sequence of events. It seems the right hemisphere of our brains are more comfortable with dualities and unanswered questions. Our culture is dominated by the left-hemisphere values of absolutes, details and sequence, giving a utilitarian anti-human feel to the world (this is why art and beauty are so important but that’s a whole other topic!). Perhaps this is partly linked to the vague sense of purposelessness I feel from time to time. The world can feel one-dimensional and unsatisfying. Can you relate? It’s no wonder so many of us are plagued with various addictions – which at the root are linked with a lack of meaning and connection.


Getting back to the pursuit of endless knowledge, which is the cornerstone of this age of information. The idea of mystery seems to be diminished as lazy thinking, or at best, simple-minded naivety. To me, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Being realistic about what we can and can’t change requires wisdom and humility. We only have to look at the past, to see that not only does history repeat itself (war, dictatorships for instance); but at the same time we do not know how things will unfold in the future. There is a tension between being subject to the opposite forces of predictable cycles and random events. It’s clear that there is something much larger going on.


How freeing would it be to embrace the unknowing, the mystery with a sense of wonder and adventure. To me, we all get caught up in this vacuum of pursuing knowledge. But we are searching within the confines of our limitations. It’s like trying to fly by jumping off a roof and flapping our arms.


But how can I embrace the unknowing? I’m wired for judging and analysing things and my mind wants to put everything into small neat boxes. Yet there is the ‘Still Small Voice’ who invites me to find rest. She whispers: ‘There is a God and it’s not you’. Sometimes I can hear it, sometimes not. Whether I can hear it or not there is a deep communion between the Spirit that dwells within and God that will eventually bring me to freedom and wholeness, a wholeness that has nothing to do with figuring it all out. In fact, God works most efficiently in my messes and failures. In the brain fog and self sabotage. 


“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness…when I am weak, then I am strong”
(2 Corinthians 12 9-10)
Our weaknesses are the very parts of us that are fertile ground for the Spirit to work in most profoundly. We find God in our shadow. According to Jung, our ‘shadow’ is the aspects of ourselves that we cannot see and cannot accept in our conscious mind. We have an innate tendency, as humans, to reject anything that is weak and needy, whether in ourselves or others. God is not the one who condemns and judges- it is our own selves. We all have that brutal inner critic. A call to accept ourselves as ‘Not-God’ is an invitation toward self-compassion. It is only in this context we can see ourselves as we are: hopelessly flawed and fragile yet deeply and unconditionally loved. Self-compassion embodies the heart of God for us, and inevitably overflows to those around us.


Dwelling amongst our shadowy subconscious is the True Light, the author of life, the All. Separate from us, but at the same time in complete divine union with us. God is ever inviting us into greater realms of freedom to ‘live, move and have our being’ in them. Hence, there is a deep knowing within us all that transcends the surface of our analytical brains. It’s such an amazing thought, that the ‘Light shines in the darkness, but the darkness could not comprehend it’ (John 1:4)


I pray for us all that we can experience and understand this wide open space of love that invites us to life, despite the mystery that surrounds us.

Holy Week

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Today is Good Friday. I love Easter, I love the way the world has the opportunity to stop and take notice of the ineffable beauty of the death and resurrection of Christ. To reflect on the mysterious way God’s love has been made manifest in our world.

Psalm 22 is a poetic, heart wrenching portrayal of the crucifixion. When Jesus cried out in anguish “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” He was not, as many of us were taught, experiencing the horror of abandonment by God. Rather he was pointing to the whole psalm- much like when you sing the first line of a song we can sing along with the rest of the melody. The psalmist pours out his heartache and suffering to God, and declares in verse 24:

” For he as not despised my cries of deep despair. He’s my first responder to my sufferings, and when I was in pain, he was there all the time and heard the cries of the afflicted”

Psalm 22:24 Passion Translation

God did not abandon Jesus on the cross, and he does not abandon us, either. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us”. Jesus and the Father are one, who can separate them? And nobody is outside of God. The world-all of us-move and live and have our being in God. Breath by breath, beat by beat.

‘God formed man from the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul’

Genesis 2:7

When it comes to Christianity, I guess I would have to identify with the ‘deconstruction’ movement. At one time I was very evangelical in my beliefs, however over the course of my life, particularly when my son died certain things just didn’t add up.

The idea that God would give us one chance to say a sinners prayer and if we fail to, we are destined to an eternity of separation where we experience divine wrath. It just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense because the very air we breathe is given to us by God. ‘Ruach’ is the Hebrew word in the Torah which means ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’. when we inhale, we breathe God in. In our exhale, God breathes us in…Every breath we breathe is given to us by God.

A beautiful passage in Ephesians joyfully describes how God knew us ‘before the foundation of the world’ (Ephesians 1:4). If we are alive, we are pre-destined, cherished and loved. It breaks my heart that the love of the Father is constantly maligned…”Yes he is love, But….” To me there is no ‘but’. God is in essence love, and what good parent would abandon their child? No, the Father will go to the ends of the earth to bring us to himself, and I truly believe that the love of God is irresistible. In the end, ‘he will draw all people unto himself.’

Deconstructing my beliefs allowed me to blow out the cobwebs of things that I thought or did based on my insecurities or feelings of lack- or just the hinderances in my own soul that led me to believe that love has strings attached. I have found profound comfort in the ancient mystics. Both Christian and from other religions. They all speak about this love affair we have with God. A two way joyful and honest dialogue which openly welcomes unanswered questions and unknowing.

What captures me today is the drama and sorrow over the way Jesus’ body was broken open, so much so that it was unrecognisable…But really it must be so, when you consider the brokenness of humanity. Even the most privileged among us experience heartbreaking loss and grief. It seems the only course of action for a God who is All Loving is to break open and in so doing pour out this immense solidarity and incomprehensible salvation.

And this is for all. “Gather up all the fragments” said Jesus “Let nothing be wasted” .