Cover of The Forest Lover

Let’s start with a quote and go from there.

“Has it ever occurred to you that to clutch at life fearfully, unwilling to spend it, is not a form of gratitude to God for life?”

Source: The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland

The quote is from a book I received as a Christmas present from my sister Pauline DeForest. The book is a fictionalized account of Emily Carr‘s life. The nice thing about fictionalized accounts of someone’s life is the thrill of getting close to that character in a way that is not open to you any other way.

Emily Carr was a British Columbian artist who for much of her career went unrecognized as one of the premier voices of the rugged heavily forested, west coast at the turn of the twentieth century. Reading the book is to witness the struggle of an artist to come to terms with her art and her “voice”. Her challenge to speak with paint what she truly felt inside about a place and a native people she dearly loved, is one in essence I believe we all experience in some for or another.

Here is another quote spoken by Emily Carr herself,

“But if I throw my life at art again, like a wild dance, give everything in the search for a deeper seeing even if none of my family, not a single hiving being, like the results, maybe I might feel I’d lived fully. But I’ll never find out by staying upstairs and doodling imaginary forests.”

 

Source:The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland

The book is brilliantly written and pulls hard at your heart stings, helps you feel deeply the emotional landscape of an artist seeking to pull all the experience within out into the daylight for others to see and feel and understand. The book is a rollicking look at the turbulence and joy of life with all its twists and turns. Emily Carr lived and breath fully, hiding away at times, while at others pushing ahead with a devil may care attitude.

What makes the book so universal is that Emily Carr’s struggles to express the godness in everything is our own struggle to do just the same thing, maybe not on such a large canvas as hers, but never the less, just as important, just as profound.

Within us all is the touch of greatness. You don’t have to invent it, or develop it, it is all ready there. The task is to express it, through your own life in a way that satisfies you, not some other arbiter of what is right or good. It’s finding the means to express what is all ready there that brings about joy, and happiness and transformation.

As Emily so rightly points out, we can’t get there by sitting upstairs pretending, we need to get out there and toss ourselves into the fray.

So in this New Year of 2012 I invite you all to leave your comfortable rooms, and join in the glorious battle of expression to put our there the true passion of our lives that is wholly true to you, and your spirit.

Here’s to a passionate year of discovery and transformation.

Until we meet again:

BE INSPIRED

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Tags: Christmas Present, Clutch, Deforest, Devil, Emily Carr, Emotional Landscape, Forests, Godness, gratitude, Joy Of Life, Life Source, Nice Thing, Sister Pauline, Susan Vreeland, Trill, Turbulence, Twentieth Century, Twists, Upstairs, Voices, West Coast, Wild Dance