Making Beauty
- Anna O'Malley
- Jun 1
- 2 min read
Dear being, where are you sourcing inspiration these days? Comfort? Healing?
For me, as is so often the case, the answer lies in my relationship with the natural world, and the magical realism I am deepening into in my relationship with beauty, sentience in the natural world, opening to intuition, seeing meaning and metaphor and mythos in it all--the challenges, the mysteries, the grace and the guidance.
There are endless opportunities to see and to make beauty.
I'd like to share a recent experience illuminating this, weaving the strands of relationship, beauty, and a ceremonial way of approaching the sanctity of it all.
Our last rainstorm brought down a few large branches from our beloved redwoods. It was such a shock to discover. These trees are kindred, and they form a natural healing sanctuary. There was a big wound to one of the trees, and it left a great void in the canopy.
I sensed both the tree's resilience and pain, and felt some grief and a sense of some loss. Undoubtedly also a reflection of something I was also processing at the time.
My inspiring friend Taira Restar suggested we make a dye from the redwood.
It was the perfect way to honor the beloved tree: making dye from the pigment-rich inner bark the cambium, of the fallen branches, and dying silk that will become an altar cloth.
It was an exquisite, soulful project and the redwood dye yielded such a delicate, subtle and ethereal beauty. After the silk was dyed I hung it in the redwood to steep in the energies of the mother tree, birdsong, and an ecology of deep beauty.
Such medicine.
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