Guest Post by Frank Inzan Owen, 50th Year as an Artist, 1997

Where Three Rivers Meet: An Eyewitness Retrospective

by Frank Inzan Owen

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

–William Faulkner

 Introduction

Regardless of the medium — be it painting, sculpture, poetry, dance, music, ikebana, or even a martial art — the practice of any art involves a multidimensional, multisensorial process of opening up. This process is one of expanding our receptivity; receptivity to information, opening our senses to sense-impressions in our bodies and the environment, making space to commune with inspirational forces, setting aside time to align with higher powers.

I had the great fortune to be a witness, an artistic supporter, and a co-journeyer with Kathleen as she delved deeply into just such a process of active investigation and artistic creation. At that time, there was a particular theme (or source of inspiration), a particular method, and a unique creative output from the process at hand. When she recently asked me to “throw my spirit eyes back through time,” to reflect upon and write about those in depth explorations, I found it singularly auspicious because of the time of year and the content of her artistry at that time.

It is mid-August. From the Yulan Festival in China, Thailand’s Sat Chin Festival (Ghost Festival) to the lantern-lit observances of Obon in Japan, Hawaii, Brazil, and various parts of the U.S., in the traditions throughout East and Southeast Asia we are currently in the phase of the year considered a sacred time for honoring and remembering ancestors — the same thematic focus back in 1997 when Kathleen took up the project she calls The Home of the Ancestors. With ancestors and lineage as the theme, we approached the creative work at that time with a very specific process.

The Method

We met weekly for seven weeks and drew upon three practices — meditation, shamanic journeying (what author and dream guide Robert Moss calls “active dreaming”), and journaling. Meditation (a.k.a. zazen or shikantaza in Japanese) was utilized on the front end to assist us in purifying and re-setting heart-mind, and to transition from the typically rushed and stress-filled energies of daily life. Once we had set the space, and were “set” ourselves, we would alternate using either drum or rattle, with one person serving as the guiding sound and the other using the sound and time to journey into the Waking Dreamtime. Once the journey was complete, the information, visual images, and other impressions would be recorded in a sketchbook and journal for future artistic reference. As you will soon see, the result of these efforts is nothing short of profound.

 The Source of Inspiration

As stated, the theme or source of inspiration was Ancestors. Let’s get one thing straight, shall we? The ancestors is not a concept. It is not an intellectual affectation. From Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia to Peru, Hawaii, Indonesia, and Korea, the ancestors are not just “dead and gone folks.” The ancestors — in these lands, in the various spiritual traditions and cosmologies found therein — are very much alive. Alive.

Alive…as in…still existing. Existing…as in…still having consciousness. Consciousness…as in…having awareness. Awareness…as in…under the proper conditions: being able to communicate, being able to transmit information, being able to download knowledge.

Such a perception (and ongoing, lived experience), as it exists in so many indigenous cultures around the world, flies in the face of flatliner modernism, Western materialism, and the technocratic state in which we all find ourselves. Cultures with ancestral perception experience a profound, life-giving, life-honoring, land-loving, ancestral-revering way of being. Post-industrial cultures, however, operate from a perception that relegates all of life — including one’s own ancestors — to a mechanized view, one that assumes ancestors are a dead and gone past. But, as Mississippi writer William Faulkner has said, “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.”

In Kathleen’s case, it must be stated, she hails from quite a lineage, with a quite a past.

The O’Briens (Ua Briain in classical Irish) was a royal house established in 10th-century Ireland. Its progenitor was none other than Brian Boru, a descendant of what was called the Dalcassians — a Gaelic Irish tribe that sprung up along the River Shannon, whose banners bore what is called the Claiomh Solais of Nuada (the Sword of Light of Nuada, the first king of the Tuatha De Danann, a supernatural race of early Irish mythology). In time, Boru became the King of Munster (one of the provinces of Ireland) and was eventually installed as the High King of Ireland.

Fruits From the Ancestral Tree

The result of Kathleen’s ancestral artistic explorations is profound. With each subsequent journey, with each weekly session of delving deep, Kathleen peeled away various layers to reveal more and more ancestral insight, illumination, relevant awareness, and imagery. As your eyes gaze upon the paintings of the The Home of the Ancestors series, you will notice some core images — all of which are pertinent and illustrative of the energies of her ancestral lineage, many of which are rooted in the Celtic and pre-Celtic past.

• DNA strands (illustrative of the whole matter of ancestral investigation)
• Honeycombs (community, the sweetness of life, the base ingredient of mead, a drink of the Irish)
• Ravens (an animal totem often associated with vision and oracular insight)
• A woman holding a sword (blessing, ancestral sanction, the Sword of Nuada)
• Trees, branches (rootedness, family tree, lineage)
• A human form walking on a bridge (communication to ancestors, bridging the past-present)
• Spirals (time is not linear; time is an unbroken spiral along which information flows)
• Primal ancestors
• Waterfalls, springs, hills, moss, faery lights (images of place, sacred places)
• Blood droplets (bloodlines, sacrifice, blood of the past, blood of the present)
• Shield (royal imagery)

Conclusion

As your heart-mind and eyes wander through the images of the The Home of the Ancestors series, perhaps you will see other aspects that will reach out to you, speak to you, and issue an invitation to explore aspects of your own living ancestral awareness. The deep process of opening undertaken by the artist isn’t only for the artist, after all. As an observer, as a viewer, as a witness, you too are stepping into the ancient grove…you too are drinking from the sacred well.

Frank Inzan Owen (Hidden Mountain) is a Wayfarer, poet, and facilitator of contemplative soulwork in the School of Soft-Attention (www.schoolofsoftattention.com). He is the author of three books of poetry, The School of Soft-Attention, The Temple of Warm Harmony, and Stirrup of the Sun & Moon. His poetry website is: www.hiddenmountain.studio