musing on courage, smitten by the Friend within

We are developing trust in ourselves 

to meet what hides in the dark.

We discover ourselves

rooted in the truth

of a power known as love.

I’m smitten.

diving in and through

    first day

 several days later

I had hit a real snag and my mind was holding control of my process.

It was holding hard and tight.
I painted the sharks, the thoughts, and this hairy being swimming for her life, away~

The story exists when it does and the hold it can have was felt anew.

It was a means to an end.

I paint to discover what lies beyond the mind's control.
Then the trust appeared again, the going in, the letting go, the curiousity, the willingness not to know where this was leading.

Feeling what I was feeling was the way in.

The paint continued to carry me through, literally through, all the thoughts.

It works.
It is meditation in action.
The process clears the mind which enables the heart to breathe freely as it is meant to be.

"In my end is my beginning" Eliot wrote, "In my beginning is my end."
This painting is a celebration of life death life. 
It leaves me quiet, present.

keeping the connection when challenged by the new

Sometimes I really don’t know what is happening in a painting. 

And I watch myself. 

I see when I am caught by the characters and the story. I am hesitant to make something happen, so I return to a mark, and just let that carry my engagement. 
Often I notice that the disturbance is due to my feeling not connected. There is the thought, I don’t feel connected, I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know who these characters are. 
And I notice a resistance sometimes to naming the characters and letting them be “Her, the Great Mother” and “me, the hairy wild new creature”. 

A story is as much one thought as a train of thoughts.

 I moved too fast into the two figures in this next painting.

Then like I said, I fell into a story, I didn’t like the wild thing any more, and I made a big figure of blue, out of habit. 
I moved too fast.

At the first sight of the wild thing’s hairy arm, I knew I was on the threshold of something new appearing. 
And I got scared.

The wild thing got larger, they met one another face to face.
but I was stopped by my mind.
so, I turned to the dot and covered the figures in blue dots. I was comforting myself not to know how to ask the right question to open up the way.

What would I paint if I didn’t have to know who these two figures were?

What would I paint if I didn’t have to know who this one hairy arm was? 

Maybe that’s it, I was afraid just to be alone with this hairy armed creature.

I painted little evergreen trees on a hill behind them.

What would I paint if I didn’t have to like this wild thing?

What would I paint if I didn’t have to fix this predicament I put myself into?

Splashes of blue from the blue figure to the wild thing.

What would I paint if I didn’t have to connect the two figures in any way?

What would I paint if they didn’t have to be connected to one another?

When I was walking yesterday I heard myself say I wanted to kill the wild thing.

How to do that? I didn’t want to go there.

So now it is full of blue and I’m writing this analysis/commentary instead of painting....

Not a process. Yes, a process.
 I am not in control of or know the direction of this process.

 I want my part in the process to be as fully intuitive as possible. 
I am learning through the forms, how to let go.
My mind does want to take the direction, show me where it is going, help me stay comfortable in knowing, because I am meeting something new in myself.

This is not easy, no one said it was.

I want to learn how to ask the question that reaches below my mind.

I want to discover how to keep the connection during these transitions without relying on the safety of thought/planning/action.

The body senses danger in this opening, not knowing what resides in the darkness.
My awareness remains steady, knowing there is a great container for this alchemy.

painting through the story

i'd been painting lines, alive lines, for months and then in this painting they took a form.
the form they took appeared before my eyes,
i could see the form before the paint landed.

this creature took form.
a wild thing
a small wild thing,
i call it wild maybe it is not wild, just hairy and unknown!.


given some wiring i have about authority
those who know
those who lead
and my wiring for giving authority to others
i felt into painting a large figure to the right of the painting
in relation to this small hairy figure.

a story appeared immediately that she was going to control the wild thing
put it back into its box.

which was a story,
i could feel immediately how it locked me into what to paint next to fulfill this story line....
and i let myself paint it as it came

so i listened and i painted a box
then i noticed
i didn't know if it was coming out of the box or going into the box
so i painted more about the box,
feeling the wall and the roof and the protection/separation inherent in the box

painting through a story called on my self trust,
to keep painting as the story kept forming
to know that i don't know

then i noticed the possibility, the feeling, that this large figure was actually not controlling the wild thing but assisting it out of its box.

well, that could be as true as the story of control, and actually that felt, well,
 like, why not?

there was a benevolence to the sense of this possibility in comparison to the known story i've always held about the authorities in my life.
where does all the negative wiring live, is it as real as the benevolent truth behind all stories?

when i asked if anyone else could join the painting, i was first feeling this eye to belong to the other side of the woman's face, and it became a being in its own right.

perhaps that's what is happening,
i am becoming a being in my own right.
the gray figure
bodied by the house and open doorway
might be the ghost of my former self,
holding that wild thing inside for so long....
that's one way to analyze it.

the unconscious gives me images
when i dream in paint
i am more often able to name them.

the benevolence here is the key.
michelle cassou wrote that the creative process is benevolent and i have always felt how important that is for me to remember.
the stories I tell myself are so often harsh and limiting,
it is time to discover a new story line, based on a felt sense of what is true and good.
we need that kind of empathic story line to take on greater meaning...

in the end, beginning now, i don't know what any of this means,
it could mean this, too
 shame,
unworthiness
and it's out now.
seen.

tender
 it is tender and new
i don't know why it appears so hairy, but it is!

this is a mystery
and it is interesting to me not to know
but to trust this as a process,
revealing what lives
beneath the story lines.

I trust my intuition.

slow listening

process moves slowly 

sometimes.

I return to the paper as I hear the call to return.

There is no rush.

I am listening.

the surprise of self

The surprises that wait for the painter around a corner - something they may not have even seen or imagined when they began the painting - may be waiting for you to discover also!

  We begin fresh every time. 

Keeping an open, curious mind and following the lead of our intuition, the paint will flow where and how it needs to go. 

We will naturally judge it as good or bad, until we don’t believe those thoughts. 

We will follow a story line for a brief time, feeling some sense of certainty of the path we are taking, until we notice, “oh, I’m telling a story about this!” 

Then we find ourselves once again, open to another layer of the unknown that is unveiling itself before our very eyes.

During the process, we keep seeing our need to know. Actually it isn’t “ours” - it is a natural function of the mind to know, to interpret and in the process we practice letting go of this need to know. The mind wants to keep us safe by, it wants us to know where the painting is going, where in fact “we” are going.

 But imagine being aware of how we feel with this or that color, this or that shape, and simply staying with ourselves through it all, being held by this flow of the color soaked brush. The brush knows how to move if we will let it move!

So we return again to the paint table and let another color speak to us.

My teacher used to say “sometimes all we know is what color it is.”

I have watched many people begin process painting using pure and non-representational forms. Painting this way frees the mind from its need to know what is happening and is so often a deeply satisfying experience of letting intuition lead through pure color. Unexpectedly, our inner world is touched by these seeming meaningless marks.

  

   I have also discovered that what deepens my process is letting more literal shapes take form in the painting, from my life. Houses, Trees, Animals, People are such a vital part of our lives, why not let them join the painting? This invites, for some painters, the process to touch us in ways that we may choose to avoid, but which when met, will open us to a great freedom from fear. We are invited out of the mind’s meaning making once again, through the process itself. 

To let ourselves be touched by our very own lives in the presence of our own awareness is a powerful and loving creative act.

  I began the new process painting sessions with the senior citizens at the Scrabble Senior Center last week and they took my breath away with their paintings! I don’t know of any group activity that I enjoy more than this; entering and reentering this mystery of life and watching it appear on paper, in color.

   We all have much to learn here. We aren’t here to be like someone else, but to be ourselves. Being ourselves is what we’ve been given to do. It does take courage to step out of our old clothes when we know they don’t fit us any longer!

 I invite you to bring forth the images within you and enjoy the surprises that wait for you, through the painting process.

always more than i could know

process painting has lead me beyond my ideas of anything.
i thought it was not to be shown.
it was a rule i kept and became one that kept me.

but the point is to paint, letting go of the need to show it.
this allowed me to go deeper, to let my self express.

what is painted, is often universal, bigger than my small me.
i'm glad for that.
i'm glad to show it.

She's got my whole world in her hands

I brought this painting home from my studio last week. 

This is how the process continued. 

I had been entering entering entering, making smaller and smaller marks, and then yesterday the feeling of purple rose up, and this purple one embraced and seemed to carry the whole. I needed to paint larger and larger areas of color. The judgements were loud, "this is not process painting" -"I'm missing the connection." 

Gladly, I just let myself paint the large purple figure and the green landscape she stood on. 

She holds everything and everyone. 

The process continues now, I am in it. 

Trusting that the process works when I allow it, I notice that I like to paint. 

I like to allow myself to be on the path I've found myself on.

Thankfully, there is room for humor on this path!

what is form?

what is form?
what takes form?

the word form is laden with meaning from the hallways of the art school i attended.
i used it thinking it was meaning shape, the shape of anything.
something takes form.
form was laden with meaning.

but when this painting began to "take form," there seemed not to be any particular edge to this or that "form."

once again, process painting takes me to new places and toward new understandings.

passing through

the expression continues
comes closer to home

in the world 
my mother's voice is strained
in my inner world my heart is straining 
to express

in relation to her
the care
the helplessness.

words don't quite hold
all the feeling
the open door lets the conditioning pass through.

grateful for paint today.

the door is open

I don’t know where this is going.

I don’t know what this is about.

I want to put it - my experience - on hold, 

to see it,

to know it,

to judge it,

once and for all.

is it good?

is it beautiful?

is it wrong?

is it of value?

And it keeps moving.

Life brings gifts 

And there is fear.

There is mistrust. 

There is anger.

There is such a need to control.

So I paint.

I let the feelings have a form

Snakes

Little openings 

Blood

Knives

Dark beings coming out from under the bed.

Like that.

Letting it be like that.

Letting it (what is it?)

Letting all of this life I am living have a form.

I keep painting,

Feeling the energy move,

Feeling the mind want to know,

the door remains open,

Endlessly open

to life itself.

to my life.

And 

There is a knowing of something true.

From a true place

Awareness knows

Here is kindness

Here is care

and 

Here is wonder.

Here is wonder not to know

And wonder to know that I don’t know

And that I feel much

And I paint

And sometimes I call it courage.

Nothing 

good or bad 

really wants to stay

Because of this open door.

It welcomes everything to be felt

And to pass through. 

I like this word AND

It is an endless invitation of welcome.

I paint and I write, today.

I am encouraged by someone who loves me,

sometimes more than I can love myself,

to do so.

dear reader, 

sister or brother,

may you too, engage fully in and with your life today,

may it pass smoothly, through and through, your open heart!

beginning again

bones

calling 

for flesh

and ground

to walk on

living in the meaning full and meaning less

how does meaning occur?

what gives meaning to our lives?

what is meaning?

can we live without it?

can we grasp it?

and can we let it go,

giving rise perhaps, 

to a deeper sense of meaning that is not mind made?

Mind/Ego gives meaning to forms and colors as I paint.
Mind/Ego needs meaning to know where it stands.
Without knowing where it stands it is put in great danger. 
The meaning it creates can also create a disturbance in me,
When I believe what I am thinking, when I identify with Mind.
If I like what is painted, I am stressed to lose it, 
If I don't like it, I am stressed to get rid of it.

I've heard that this is the function of mind - to name, to grasp...
Identified with mind, I have a preference for every experience that arises.

a stroke of the brush is made 
and mind will name it
this or that
it loves to do this
.and that.

Meaning created by mind has a quality of holding tight, 
keeping something intact. 
It has the quality of resistance, 
not yielding to something greater than it can know.
Being able to step back and let the painting be painted,
I allow the process to do its work through me. 
I let go and am returned to a wholeness that is easy and good.
Laughter is a by-product of letting go.

in life,
in process,
with awareness, 
the effort to hold meaning intact is dislodged, 
gently.


When I am aware of the feeling of touch 
of colored brush to paper,
without knowing what anything is
I feel 
the quality
the contact
the sense of connection
of felt meaning, 
of being, 
in the heart.

This brings rest to what is seeking meaning.
This brings to rest what is seeking to be seen.
This brings the awareness of a deep and abiding joy into my life.


the meaningful encounter
breathing
living 
issuing out of the silence we share
we become more sensitive to one another
and we find meaning, 
after all, 
without looking for it.

the gift of process

We are in process. Sometimes we may forget that we are in process because we are thinking thinking thinking about where we are heading. 

By letting thinking have us, we miss the moment 

                                                     - b e i n g  h e r e  n o w- 

the fullness that is beyond our thinking of being fulfilled when we reach our goal is subtle and always present, waiting for our heart's attention.

The Life Death Life process painting continued and reconnected me to my living and breathing process. 

It spilled over into my oil paintings and I feel as if the thread has been returned to my hand.

It has brought me closer to the silent place where thinking does not have a chance. 

It takes trusting in the not knowing to open the space for the flowering.

a poem came out of the experience - "the fire within has a language of its own" - and can be read at womanhappytobepaintingandmusing.wordpress.com

beyond the visual by mary mckenney

                              

http://ccesf.org/beyond-the-visual/#comment-6

click on the above link to see the painting and read more of Mary's response to life through paint.


this is the piece of writing that opened the window this morning

Art is a visual medium. But it is mainly visual from the point of view of the observer. For the artist, the visual is only a means, a tool—a medium, yes,  but not just for the eyes. For the artist it’s about consciousness. The painting we observe is consciousness in a costume. The art is everything we cannot see. But the sensitive observer sees with the artist through the costume, the outer layer to the real creation.  So maybe art isn’t a visual medium as much as it is a vehicle, an opening, an exploration, an exposure. If the artist’s heart is open, the art will be timeless. And in timelessness is the opportunity for the observer to receive and respond to the work … because she is consciousness, too. In that way, art can be a mirror.

This painting definitely looks finished, doesn’t it? You might say it’s too finished, too “busy,” dense, impossible to see what’s going on, sort of interesting on the left where there’s some yellow, but too dark on the right. Someone named Arthur William Radford said, “Half of art is knowing when to stop.”  (I’d be curious to know what he thinks the other half is.) To know when to stop means that the artist must change from creator to speculator, make an aesthetic judgment, an active decision not to go past an arbitrary boundary, risking chaos. The initial brushstrokes may have burst forth with abandon, but what is crucial is stopping at … just … the right … place. That makes the artist half creator, half a judge of distance and control.

What does it mean to go too far, to ruin a lovely effect, to make something dark and hard to decipher? It means to lose control—not in a wild, destructive way, but to go beyond the limits of the mind. A true artist is not concerned with making a pleasing painting. A true artist does not care about the viewer orthe judgment. She cares about truth and readiness, the inner readiness that is consciousness. The painter who knows when to stop becomes a businessman, a seamstress with a tape measure, an authority, a jailer of the self and all its potential.

Mary McKenney

the fullness of giving way

giving way to the process

i pass through layer after layer 

of experience.

not knowing the outcome

allowing the not knowing

being the not knowing

i let go 

to the color and shape that has a will of its own

every moment.

this is the first painting i followed through with "on my own."

my classes with Barbara Kaufman are completed for the time being

and i lean into the wealth of gifts received in my time shared with her.

as i learned

in her company

 to listen to my own inner voice

feeling the questions

meeting the conflict that arises within

discovering its innate creative tension

as life itself,

 i give way to the fullness that always waits to be expressed.

with a full heart i continue to paint and live, 

supported without a doubt by this widely shared gift 

of meeting life through process painting.

jai ma!

a kind undoing and joining

Damn! I am just amazed.
To begin this painting with the entry point and to think that I knew what even THAT meant!
Oh, the mind is quite the spinner of the dream. It wants to be the creator, so badly, and it will use the slightest breath of a thought to stay in control!

The heart is the true weaver.

As I finished the previous painting, I could sense that something new was waiting to become known. I was willing to paint to know it. I could see that however I was painting, was the way I would know it. And yet, I could feel that the ways I knew before were not opening the painting further - I tested them but the flow was not there. So, that must have been a sign that it was finished.
The new could not move in the confines of my trying to open the way for it.

As I look at the new painting above (still in process) I can see that the whole appeared out of the womb entry, and in deed, I was born through and as my own form. The vulva and fallopian tubes begat children, pleasure, my self, and unknown galaxies....

I am being new born this spring through my own living process, finding a new strength in my legs. I am standing on my own two feet, in my center.
I am seeing through what comes up within and meeting it.
In the past few weeks I have felt such a new shift in my perspective...from the center everything looks just the way it looks, not more or less - friendly, above all, friendly and kind.

I'm just amazed, again and again for mind to be seen through - through paint - uncovered.
I continue to be in awe to watch knowing be dispelled so generously by this painting process.

Today I learned to hear the difference in a question from the soul and one from the mind.
The question posed by the mind gives me work to do and it does not open any door; it does not open me.
The question the soul asks awakens the dormant life force to come out and play, to join in, to participate.

This dormant life force is also me.
There is an including of myself that is occurring through this process in paint, in meditation and in daily life.
I am learning how to participate in my life.
When there is less of me in the way, there is more of me to smile to listen to pause to respond to paint to write to live and to meet life.

Barbara Kaufman has played such a valuable role in my seeing through what my mind says is so or should be so. She has been my sounding board, my projection, my friend, my mentor this year. I have a long held condition of bowing to authority - that whatever the other presents, I am lead to be that, too. And it is so impossible to be other than myself. I can join in the conversation now, as I am.

This is such a wonderful surrender and homecoming all rolled into one.
Again and again,
and again.
I send out my gratitude to Michelle Cassou for putting her experience and love into a form that we can all receive the best of, for ourselves.
It is a win-win, and that makes the world go round so well. This is the same world we all live in.  We can help one another see our blind spots when we are willing to have the conversation about what is true, through the heart.

It was a long journey to return to the friendly world of myself.
I am no longer an outsider.

life desires to be known

So a few weeks ago
Turmoil was boiling in me
I was pushing up against her every where I turned
The old ways of shutting her down appeared uninteresting
And I paced the rooms
She wouldn’t leave me alone
I was cornered.

The form this cauldron had taken was a painting
A process painting
A painting whose only purpose is raw and infinite possibility.

And I was reaching a new edge
What used to open all the doors
Connecting the dots
Finding more and more layers of connection
Wasn’t the way this one was going.

So I paced.
And paced some more.
Then I went directly to the book of questions.
I had to find my own way into this source,
to the doorway of the secret waiting to be known.

I wrote down what I was feeling:
I didn’t know what was happening
In the painting in my life.
I felt turmoil.

The path in is always at the point of what is appearing.
I asked myself what would I paint if it was ok to feel turmoil.

The hint came by noticing my resistance to this state I was in.
I didn’t like it.

What would I paint if it was ok to feel turmoil?
My answer was great desire.
I sensed, that this pressure wasn’t turmoil, that is what I had named it.
It was great desire pressing to the surface for air.
Great Desire.

And what would I paint?
A penis emerged out of a black hole that had appeared earlier in the painting.
It had no meaning, no reason to be there, and now it was the place for this emerging energy to be given a form.
The pleasure in process is the letting go of meaning.
A form has a life of its own and I just get out of the way.
And more and more and more penises emerged out of the black holes.

My desire had been met, honestly.

The next painting I began with a great deal of openness.
And the head of a child began to take form and then another figure.
But when BK asked me what is one thing I would paint from the last painting,
I knew it was the penis emerging out of the black hole.

So I began again.
One big emergent penis.
For no reason but to express my desire.
Oh, yes, my mind had a field day with the form it took.

Then flowers filled the space around the tall presence of desire.
And again, my mentor asked...what was I feeling before I painted all the flowers?
I knew exactly what I was feeling. I had been stopped.
What was I supposed to do with a penis?

My mind was happy with all the flowers. I was at ease with them. I liked the story about devotion and the lingam and shakti. I also did really feel that the penis was inside me. And there was an innocence to the flowering.
But of course there was more to this than the idea of shiva and shakti.

Something more than stories feeds my soul.
Something in my own life was waiting to emerge.

And I began another painting of a tall erect penis.
No black hole this time.
And when the penis was complete, I waited.
It did not take long for the vulva to begin to wrap itself around the head of the penis.
The doorway was the womb.
I am living in the body of a woman, after all.
And this is really not about penises or wombs or vulva.
And I am present to the connections these forms offer me to meet.

All this
(life-painting-writing-being-learningloving)
is taking place through a body and I am at my own doorstep now.
I can feel that I am painting in a new less exacting way, that what I painted before is done, the paintings of this past year were the stepping stones to now.
I am at a new edge and I can feel the urge to shut down and turn away.

Process painting can be done alone but one won’t go as far as is possible without the support of another.
The best other is one who has already passed through so many doors that doorways are all she sees now.

Door upon door upon door.
And the wonder of unlocking the next one,
in whatever form it takes.

process reveals what is true, beyond the idea of connection

I could have titled this post penis process, but alas I am stepping into this doorway with care, not daring.
What I am discovering lies beyond the form of the penis. But it was the form of a penis that released me from a mind in turmoil, a mind afraid of my own experience of desire.

I had been painting, continually finding more and more layers of connection.
They appeared naturally in the process and I wasn't trying to make them happen.
It felt like an expansion of unending connective possibility.
Then the black lines came in, - opening, opening - and then the white teeth like shapes came along the smaller black lines.
I began to feel really distraught, the feeling of completion was not arising despite all the connections, a sure sign that there is something more to discover, yes?
I was stopped, blocked, looking for the next passageway.

 I went to Michelle's book of questions and practiced to bring my own question into form.

I wrote to myself:
I don't know what the painting (my life) is about, I feel turmoil.
Then I wrote the question out of the experience I was having:
What would I paint if it was ok to feel turmoil?
I would paint great desire -
In the turmoil was this resistance NOT to be feeling the way I was feeling.
I named it turmoil.
It was desire.

And it took on the form of a penis.
Glad that I was alone, I was free to paint a penis.
Not forced, but inviting.

The first one emerged out of a black hole that had appeared as a kind of lock shape, in my center.
And then one after the other, more pink desire emerged from the other black holes which had appeared earlier in the painting.

The penis was not threatening, and that was good for me to notice.
I enjoyed painting it and remembering all its qualities.
I haven't seen one in so many years, I had to really call in my memory!
The mental drama around a penis is lessening.

Is the penis the great connector in my belief system?
I hope not.
I mean, because without one, I would experience disconnection.
And I am not disconnected, far from it.

Belief number 3456 has burned up as I write this.

It felt like the only form I knew - in that moment - to express desire.
I am worried a bit about myself (I am conditioned to worry)
that that would be my way, as a woman, to express desire....

I can see that it is one way to express desire.
There are beliefs in me about desire.
This completion gave way to ease.

The next painting I began right away, letting the energy lead me on.
I thought I knew where it would lead but a child's head began to appear.
I painted the beginning very, very, very openly, not knowing at all what was arriving out of the brush.
I let myself slow down to let the lines relate to one another on their own, not from my ideas.
 I'm learning.
My dreaming that night was magical and friendly.

That's what this is.
I am learning
all the time
that the next moment and the next, I cannot know.
It brings with it awareness of living on the edge.

To feel connected to life is what I desire.


More concern at times, and at other times the furthest thing on my mind :
that I either don't want to do anything or I want to keep painting!
Desire takes many forms and I am releasing myself from the judgements I place on my experience, painting myself free from judgements that live through learned conditioning.

Clearly, I'm still on the mind see saw.
And insecurity,
though troubling to a mind that wants to know,
is also becoming more of a truth I am learning to live with.
In every moment I can pause and make a new choice.



I hope you have a wonderful day as your own truth is revealed,

BH

connection

Connecting the dots is what I am called to do.
The most satisfying way I do that is through painting.
Why would someone question the validity of what one is called to do?
Only through comparison and judgement would this be put into question.

I’m laying that one down now.
I paint.
That is my business.

We all have our calling.
For some of us it is a given, it has simply been the way we live.
Sometimes this is more challenging than you might imagine, to have one thing to do all one’s life.
To have the artha - the means - to pursue my dharma - my path - has been the baseline of what has held me through years of still life, landscape, self portrait, interiors and countless drawings.

My sight has been altered.
I cannot say ‘changed’ as that would imply something like changing my clothes or shoes. I didn’t change my subject or learn a new approach. It wasn’t like that.
But process painting caught me and has carried me while I found my feet and my sight on this new earth.

Tonight I recognized something.
I am attracted to my paintings. Through them, while I paint and when they are completed, I connect to something deep within myself.
 
Painting is how I listen and follow the call I hear, enacting a mystery play within my own life. I am the player and the stage. Many characters arrive to express what is unknown to me.
But I am not the director.
The director is that which I listen to, that which calls me, deeper and deeper in touch with itself.
This may be obvious to many in relationship to what they love.
 And tonight I put it into these words and say it for myself.

I am grateful for this life as a visual devotee of Love.
Now I know what love means.
It means to be held no matter what else is happening.
If we don’t get in the way of aggrandizing this most creative of impulses, we are fed by what we seek and are met and self expressed by the call itself.

I bow to what has held me when others could not.
I owe my life to it.