Episode 6: Wonderwalk

9/29/21
The Growing Creative Podcast
S1E6: Wonder Walk

Resource Links:

-  "Wonder Walk, Worship Walk" Blog Post  by Jane Boutwell

-   "Time of Wonder"  by Robert McCloskey 
     

Jane Boutwell is an artist & creative coach based in Atlanta, Georgia. She loves to nurture and empower others to pursue their creative callings.

"I am an artist with an inquisitive mind, a heart connected to nature and a soul yearning towards God…a child of dirt and dance…a beauty bringing blessing writer… a poetic painter and potter.

Starting with mud pies as a child in the backyard, my creativity includes tactile, intuitive, and deeply-in-touch-with-nature ways of being in the world. I see myself as an apprentice in God’s art studio of the natural world that is full of metaphor, imprinted with the character of the Maker.

It is my passion to share the shimmering beauty and deep truths I find in the creative medium that seems most fitting. Those creative expressions include gardening, quilting, writing, painting, sketching, ceramics, dancing, creative coaching, podcasting, and family life with my husband and four children in Tucker/Atlanta, Georgia."

Join the email list to learn more about special offerings : https://www.janeboutwellstudio.com/contact
Free Sketchbooking resource here: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5f7b3597322e6ae12d5c774e

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Transcript

The more, I learn about trauma and our response to stress and how to come to true healing. And that of course, leads to a holistic creativity. The more I realize that the simple act of coming back into our body, reconnecting with our five senses and especially connecting with nature through our five senses is so powerful. It seems too simple to be that powerful,

but it is one of the biggest ways because when we experience stress and trauma, the way our brain tries to protect us from an experience that's overwhelming is to disengage and disconnect from our body. So this week's episode, while it's simple, in a lot of ways, it's so important. And I hope that it's one that you'll come back to when you find yourself needing to come back into the experience of being in your body and connecting with the natural world as a way to bring deep whole healing to all of you.

And that healing will pour out in greater creativity. You're listening to the growing creative podcast and I'm your host Jane Boutwell, I'm an artist and a creative coach. This is a space that will nurture your heart and empower you to pursue your creative calling. Whatever that may be Today. I'm going to share a blessing, prayer and a story, a bit of a story,

both of which I hope are invitations to your heart, to be more wide awake to the world of wonder we live in, especially as we're in a season of transition, this shifting from summer into fall, it's slower coming down south, where I am in Georgia, that I can sense that it's beginning. So first I'm going to share this prayer that I wrote as an invitation to my own family,

to have a wonder walk or a worship walk for us to do on a Sunday morning. But I would love to think of you putting your earbuds in and listening as you go for a walk and whatever kind of woods or wilderness you have near at hand Lord, oh great maker. As we walk through the nature you made help us stay awake and aware of how it feels to experience this world of wonders.

You designed our bodies to feel and sense this world and particular ways that speak to our hearts, nines, and bodies, deep truths about who you are and what you love. All creation is groaning in a state of warfare, hence of destruction and death brought on by the fall. Yet your love seeings louder help us to listen to the music of your beautiful,

loving design. As we feel the security of the ground pressing into our feet, as we feel protected under the cathedral ceiling of outstretched tree limbs help our sense of delight and surprise. Stay sensitive to the sudden sparkle of a spider's web intricately twinkling, and the do bring our awareness to how the rustle of leaves, cadence of insect chirp, and the sprinkle of Birdsong calms and soothes our bodies.

As we feel the soft velvet Moss on our poem, the tickle of a caterpillar crawling down our finger, the brush of leaves against our cheeks. Let us know these as kisses from our maker who smiles with kindness, crinkling his eyes. When his children play in his Wonderland, we love you father. Amen. Other than this prayer, this invitation to live fully connected and alive with your bodies in this world,

you were made to experience. I wanted to share a story that I love to read to my kids this time of year. I won't read you the whole story because it is rather long. It is a story written by Robert McCloskey. He wrote make way for ducklings and blueberries for Sal. Those are the two books that are most commonly talked about. The book that I especially love of his is called time of wonder.

And it has such a chanting descriptions of this family and countering the world they live in and experiencing nature as the seasons shift. And I want to share it with you today. Just a few excerpts that really speak to my heart at the beginning of the story, there's a walk in the woods and it says back from the shore, the trees look like ghosts.

The forest is so quiet that you can hear an insect, boring, a tunnel deep inside a and that other sound, not the beating of your heart, but the one like half a whisper is the sound of growing ferns. Pushing aside, dead leaves, unrolling their fiddleheads slowly unfurling, slowly stretching. I love fiddle heads. And I love this description of that quiet moment where you can hear your own heart beating,

and then imagining the sound of fiddleheads unfurling. That then goes on to chart a summer, spent on the islands with the coast all around and taking boat rides to get from one island to another, to visit friends. And as they have spent a day splashing in the water, now they're in a boat going along and it says in the evening when the tide is high again,

and all your guests have gone, you row around the point, feeling lonely until an owl asks a question, a Heron croaks, an answer, and then it says you snap off the light and road toward the dock. As the stars are gazing down, their reflections gazing up in the quiet of the night. 100 pairs of eyes are watching you while one pair of eyes is watching overall.

I just love to think of all the different ways of experiencing this world that we live in the different senses we can get of loneliness or of all, and wonder the questions that come when we bring our curiosity to experiencing the world as the summer is going along. There's in the story time of wonder. There's an amazing, powerful description of the sense of anticipation as the storm is brewing.

Something's coming, everybody's gathering and preparing, and then the hurricane whips through, and then after the hurricane passes, there's the sense that it's time to wrap up the summer and began getting ready for change. They're preparing the garden for the next season and it says, and here are the hummingbirds humming, a hymn to the morning, making a final round. The last,

the petunias and his time for the hummingbirds to leave the island. It is the end of another summer. It is time for you to leave the island to goodbye, to clams and mussels and barnacles, to crows and swallows goals and owls to sea urchins, seals and porpoises. It is time to reset the clock from the rise and fall of the tide to the come and go of the school.

Pack your bag and put in a few treasures, some gold feathers, a few shells, a book of pressed leaves, a piece of quartz that came from a crack in the old rock on the point and children don't forget your toothbrushes. I just love to read this at this time of year. As we switch into the season of new schedules of the fall of keeping our clock in a different way,

it's good for the change, but it is, it is sad to leave that rise and fall of the tide. We don't spend a whole summer at the coast, but we all wish we did as they're driving away, leaving the island and saying, farewell says, take a farewell. Look at the waves and sky, take a farewell sniff of the salty sea.

A little bit sad about the place you are leaving a little bit glad about the place you were going. It is a time of quiet. Wonder for wondering, for instance, where to hummingbirds go and hurricane. And that is how my charming friend, Robert McCloskey ended this book. And that is the invitation that I have for you today is to spend some time outside exploring,

noticing, sensing, and feeling what this world is like and paying attention to the curiosity that comes. What do you wonder about and what gives you a sense of awe and wonder, I'd love to hear from you and let me know, what is it about this natural world? I'm sure that not everybody has a cathedral of trees to walk underneath, depending on what part of the world you live in.

But I know for sure there are things that cause your heart to wonder and your curiosity to wonder about. And I'd love to hear about it. Thanks for joining me today. And until next time, hope you'll continue to grow, aware and sense the world and be inspired to keep curling creative. Thank you for listening to the growing creative podcast. I'd like to thank shepherd Martin for audio editing,

and then USIC is provided by sad. Moses. Don't forget to check out the show notes for transcripts and links to sources mentioned in the show today. If you want to stay connected, be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you don't miss an episode. If you go to the growing creative podcast.com and sign up for my studio newsletter, that will keep you in the loop.

We'll be opening the doors to the growing creative fellowship September 9th, through 21st love sending our members, tutorials, sharing monthly zoom group gatherings, as well as a monthly co-working session. We even send quarterly curated, creatively enhancing crates to cultivate your imagination. Ooh, that's a mouthful. If you need something to nurture your heart and empower you to pursue your creative calling,

I hope you'll join us in the membership. If you enjoy today's show, it means the world to me. If you'd leave a review and let me know and empower you to pursue your creative calling, I hope you'll join us in the membership. If you enjoy today's show, it means the world to me. If you'd leave a review and let me know what part peaked your curiosity or touched your heart,

and I'd love it. If you'd share the podcast with a friend that you know, might need an encouraging message today until next time, keep growing creative.