I was thinking this week about collections. Last month I purchased a new bowl for myself at the Alberta Craft Gallery in Calgary.  Actually, I was looking for a birthday gift for a friend and couldn’t resist getting something for myself, because my birthday was coming up  too. When I opened the gift  box later I was reminded that I am beginning to collect bowls. This beautiful new one, created by Lisa McGrath, was beautiful and  playful.  Actually, the truth of the matter was, when I unwrapped the package I received feedback from my husband… “another bowl?”. The practical part of me had given myself permission, reminding myself that bowls and vessels are useful. I thought, “I love eating out of handmade bowls”. The emotional side of me, connected to my heart, thought “You will love using, gazing and sharing this bowl”. And that is how it can go. And then, a collection grows. And then later, perhaps, when I tell my friends and family I absolutely love the beauty and functionality of bowls, I will get more. Is that how collections start? Maybe.  Perhaps it is also how we discover what we love.

Some of us love to create items that we then fall in love with. I do that too.  Sometimes however, I get so many ideas of what I could create by hand. For example, my love vessels leads to a desire to felt vessels out of wool again.  Wool although not as practical as clay is such a transformative material. This can lead to dreaming of weaving baskets of grasses or ribbon, or taking up pottery. Sometimes, this leads to more collections, in this case, more vessels. Can you relate?

Well, that is how the process goes for me. I can get pulled in so many directions. This joy of writing, another form of creating, can even lead to collections of  writings, poems and stories. Words of the heart.

I think perhaps, my heart is like vessel, a bowl. It holds my favourite things.  Through writing I discover what draws me and I begin to fill this internal vessel, this heart.

What is it you collect, create or gather? Pens, art supplies, cups, musical instruments, cushions, paper clips, cars, plants, books? Gather up the collection.  Select two favourite items in this collection today and then be curious.  What might this say about you and your needs for today, the longings of your heart? What might it tell you about your own gifts: perhaps your eye for beauty, your sense of practicality, or your sentimentality?   Hold one favourite item from a collection carefully in your hands, ponder it, write a song or notice more carefully  what you see and feel. Slow down and pay attention.  As expressive arts therapist Sally Atkins reminds us, “We are listening ourselves into being.”