AMMONITE NAUTILOID PRACTICE: Celebrating Flux and Embodying Love through Dance

AMMONITE DANCE. Let's dance to integrate our past, present, and approaching future. Although the ammonite, an extinct marine mollusc, is more closely related to an octopus or squid, it reminds us of the chambered nautilus and serves wonderfully to illustrate our human experience. Here, I dance with the ammonite, symbol of continuity and survival when all is FLUX. (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

"Our ability to find something to love, and to love again for the first time, depends greatly on how we resolve and integrate where we've been before. A great model for us exists in the chambered nautilus, an exquisite shell create that lives along the ocean floor." --Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening


Hallelujah for resiliency! That human ability to manage disruptions, constant change of addition and reduction! To rise and fall with FLUX. In Mark Nepo's description of the nautilus, he explains how the animal lives in its most recent chamber and uses the other to stay afloat.

You might ask why I am writing about resiliency at a time of holiday celebration. Like many, I am challenged by the winter holiday season. I am especially challenged when my darling Chiboogamoo travels to the Bahamas to teach his Emory course on Modern and Ancient Environments and is absent for New Year's celebrations. I must welcome 2016 without him.

Last night, we quietly and privately acknowledged 2016's beginning by viewing the most recent Star Wars movie and eating take out Chinese. We read our fortune cookies and kissed. 

To address the challenge of FLUX and my emotional rising and fallings, I have stretched myself in the past year in some of the following ways:

The Daily Creative Practice: Having a practice allows me to know what actions to take to maintain my physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual equilibrium. I may miss a day here and there, but I know how to return to a structure that keeps me afloat. Thank you members of the Daily Creative Practice.

InterPlay: This improvisational system buoys me. I feel so fortunate to have acquired certification in such a playful but wise way of experiencing my life. Yes to InterPlay buoyancy! Thank you Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry.

Forgiving: Even though my "forgiveness practice" is in its infancy, I KNOW that the act of forgiving oneself and others is POWERFUL. BIBO is part of this practice. Breathe in. Breathe out. Thank you Soyinka Rahim!

Love: It may sound funny to say this--I'm still exploring what love is. Being loving is challenging for me. I struggle with loving as well. What is love? I know right now, I feel exhausted and in need of renewal around love. Not the kind I have for my husband Chiboogamoo. Not that kind. 

But the BIG LOVE. Self love. Love for family, community, all of humanity. Witnessing so much violence in American culture and in the world haunts me. Even the new Star Wars movie and the previews that accompanied it were filled with communities at war and massive extensive killings.

Two years ago, I wrote this in a blog using ammonites as a metaphor for survival:

"Today, yesterday, tomorrow, before, and again in the future, I will return to this symbolic value of the ammonite: SURVIVAL. Now, at my wise age of 55, I am imbuing my ammonites' totemic power of "survival" with a playful, joyful dance. 

As each one of us gathers our years and deepens our wisdom, we experience the ebb and flow of life's gifts. We bid some friends good-bye. We change jobs. We face new environments. At each turn of the spiral we meet challenges, loss, growth, and new opportunities to survive with the exquisite appreciation of life's force. Life has heft and weight to it. 

Let's dance the ammonite spiral. Let's celebrate our survival from one day to the next with joy and love in our hearts!" 
--Hallelujah Truth, from "Ammonite Celebration" (see link below)

After I publish this blog post today, I commit to dancing the "Ammonite Spiral." During the next ten days, as I bring in 2016 without my darling husband, I will continue to return to this ammonite nautiloid dance. I will be dancing on behalf of LOVE. Love for myself. Love for you. Love for us all.

AMMONITE DANCE #2. (Collaboration: Art by Hallelujah Truth and Photo manipulations by Trish Weaver, then altered again by HT)

That's Coffee with Hallelujah. Soul Blog with me and tell me about your experience with the ammonite dance. Let's all dance together joyfully and with ease.

Other Hallelujah Truth related blog posts: 

ICHTHYOSAUR EYES AND AMMONITES: Fall is a time for introspection and pondering survival from mass extinctions

AMMONITE CELEBRATION: Dancing with the fossils as totems of survival and thriving existences

DANCE. THEN DANCE AGAIN! (Art by HT and TW)

 

AMMONITE CELEBRATION: Dancing with the fossils as totems of survival and thriving existences

AMMONITE CELEBRATION. Hallelujah to the ammonite! Welcome to learning a little about one of my sacred totems which serves as a potent reminder of survival. (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for knowledge! Hallelujah for preserving the accumulative wisdom by securing it in writing! Hallelujah for recognizing deep time and stories of survival in the rocks--like the story of the ammonite! 

I am in love with paleontology, one particular paleontologist (my Chiboogamoo), and the wealth of lessons that have entered my life through geological explorations, expansive discussions, and books that deepen my understanding.

One such book is Planet Ocean: Dancing to the Fossil Record, written by Brad Matsen and illustrated by Ray Troll. In addition to being in love with the way these two collaborators explain the origin of the Earth visually and verbally, I appreciate the symbolic value attributed to the humble ammonite, an ancestor of the chambered nautilus and octopus.

THE HUMBLE AMMONITE. While so much of the world hovers around dinosaurs and anything with a backbone preserved in the fossil record with a lot of "hoo-ha", this mighty mollusk is appreciated by those who seek more subtle displays of longevity from our Earth's past. (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

The ammonite persisted through several mass extinctions over a 330-million-year history only dying out 65-million years ago along with the dinosaurs when more than 96 percent of life on Earth ceased to exist. Ammonites, which fossilized easily, are abundantly available for purchase around the world, and it is possible to dig some up as I did years ago along a lake in Idaho. But what about its symbolic value and my reason for celebrating it at this period in my life?

Brad Matsen writes that the ammonite's survival story so impressed him when he was writing the book, Planet Ocean, that he bought one as a gift of encouragement for his college age daughter and penned this letter: 

"Dear Laura, 

This ammonite is to honor surviving your first semseter at college and to share some of the natural elegance I'm discovering lately. The fossil was found in Morocco, in North Africa, which was once the bottom of the sea. A moment of meditation with it in your hands will give you clues to survival, no matter what the situation.

Love, Dad"
 

HALLELUJAH CELEBRATING THE AMMONITE. I will wear my ammonites while I dance joyfully, easefully, playfully. Thus, I shall move into my life's spiral as a celebratory act. Will you join me? (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

Today, yesterday, tomorrow, before, and again in the future, I will return to this symbolic value of the ammonite: SURVIVAL. Now, at my wise age of 55, I am imbuing my ammonites' totemic power of "survival" with a playful, joyful dance. 

As each one of us gathers our years and deepens our wisdom, we experience the ebb and flow of life's gifts. We bid some friends good-bye. We change jobs. We face new environments. At each turn of the spiral we meet challenges, loss, growth, and new opportunities to survive with the exquisite appreciation of life's force. Life has heft and weight to it. 

Let's dance the ammonite spiral. Let's celebrate our survival from one day to the next with joy and love in our hearts! Hallelujah!

That's Coffee With Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me and share your journey with me. What books have you read that morphed into a drawing, a poem, a journal record? Do you have an ammonite story of survival?

Acknowledgement: Thank you TJ Worthington for this prompt that you wrote for our Facebook group, The Daily Creative Practice (join us here). The above blog entry is my response! :

MONDAY FUNDAY #9
How has reading informed your art form(s)?
Looking at reading as visualization, perhaps a source for learning visualization. Have particular writers inspired you to visual expression? Ever had inspiration from reading to do something visual, in writing, or other art expression, music, movement? Self-help books, facebook, online, biographies, poetry, spiritual, fiction, children's books, magazines? How does one transfer an idea or insight gathered from one art form into another art form? I don't mean these particular questions to be answered, but an attempt to point to examples. Or does reading have no part at all in your art expression? Or sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.

#REVERB11: TRANSFORMATION

TRANSFORMATION. (December 16, 2011)                     Art by Hallelujah Truth

TRANSFORMING. (During 2011)

AMMONITE BEGINNINGS. (January 2011)

#REVERB11 (December 16) PROMPT. TRANSITIONS. Over the past year have you experienced any major or minor life transitions? How has your life changed? (Tiffany Moore)

Hallelujah for JOURNEYS that bring TRANSFORMATION! During 2011, I have gone deeper and wider in the PURSUITS I love. I have gained a more confident and exuberant voice as a blogger! As an artist who draws daily, I have become surer of my line and the expression of my color. As a result of my persistent writing and drawing, I have exploded into the role of a MENTOR who supports others in their CREATIVE JOURNEYS!

THE CREATIVE WRITERS I MENTORED FALL 2011. It is a privilege to assist others in the ways they want to express their spirit. Thank you class!

TRANSFORMATION 2011. Read this series of three drawings from the ammonite origin (bottom) to the exuberant fleshy star creature (top)!