A word from Maureen ...
I love surprises.  And words.  And themes.  I love subtle patterns which reveal themselves in bursts of discovery. 

One such mini-adventure happened last month.  It began when I opened Christi Friesen's latest book, Steampunkery, which is full of Christi's signature wit and humor, plus, of course, the gears and mechanical parts which give Steampunk its name. 

That next week we had the pleasure of keeping company with our 9 and 10 year old grandsons.  One of the activities was to take apart my grandparents' broken down old clock to see if the parts might take on new life in future artworks, inspired by Christi's book, of course. 

It turned out that the clock mechanism itself, once removed from its case, proved to be a piece of artwork in and of itself.  We marveled at the intricacy with which it worked and the minds, and eyesight, which created such magic. Each little gear and peg and lever was necessary in order for the whole to function.  That became evident when we accidentally broke off one tiny peg, and suddenly the whole mechanism stopped working. 

A few nights later Dan and I watched Shane Acker's animated movie, 9, which features a group of Stitchpunk puppets, complete with, yes, gears. But this time the gears were encased in burlap and were given souls and the responsibility to save the world.

Then, this past week, I visited with a friend who is moving to California, and she gifted me with some of the things which she is leaving behind.  One of those things was an old nautilus shell which had been cut apart to reveal its chambers and the delicate ductwork which connects them all.  Once again, as with Christi's book, the movie 9 and the clockworks, the attention to detail and the precision with which it all worked, were awesome.

These four mini-events seemed connected in my mind somehow, though three were created by people and one was present in nature, created by the Source that is.  So how do they relate?  And why were these called to my attention this week, this week in which I'm looking at the year ahead and making choices on how to fill in those blank pages on the calendar with dates for classes and trips and studio time and events?

Perhaps I'm struggling here to pull together things that don't quite relate, just to make a point, but I think they do fit together.  They all involved many little parts or gears or chambers, all put together to make one working whole, one wonderfully planned event, one unique contribution to the experience of being alive. Each one was created in a seemingly endless array of creations that make up our world, but was done so with harmony and balance and order and excellence.

Do any of these things in and of themselves matter?  Surely the world would go on without one more book or clock or movie or creature to swim in the sea, no matter how wonderful it was.  But who are we to judge our part in the whole of creation?  Who are we to know what might happen if that tiny peg that is us just broke off and floated away and left our part undone?

To find our place in that world, to make our contributions, just may be our biggest adventure.  To do so with attention to beauty and soul and wonder and excellence just may be our calling.