February 15, 2009

Many Paths

While an undergraduate student, I attended a presentation by a visual artist who was speaking about some of his work. A member of the audience commented to him that he noticed there were a lot of star images in his paintings and he wondered if there was any significance to them. The artist commented that he liked stars including how all the points lead to the same centre when drawn figuratively the way we often do. I have never forgotten that line. Further, it became a metaphor for me of a philosophy I hold about wellness and about people's life journeys (for example, of growth, healing, transformation): there are many paths.

I believe there are  many paths that can support the same centre or movement toward it. Sometimes we alight along one that is just the right one for a particular thing. Often in the bigger sense of our journeys and life, many elements and angles support our growing, rather than one, and these can include seeming contradictions: movement and stillness, opening to and closing from. 

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