"To the rationally minded the mental processes of the intuitive appear to work backwards."

FRANCIS WICKES

I was propped on my stool in my studio coiling yarn over a Styrofoam ball. It was a brief moment stolen from a thousand other demands. If you had walked in and asked, "Why are you doing that?" I could have only answered, "I have no idea."

At that moment, I had no "Why," no purpose, no expected beneficial results for what I was doing. 

What I had was a persistent thought.

It all started with a visit from friends from the Bronx. Janet and Joel and their little dog Rusty hadn't been out of the city since lock-down, and they'd honored us by making our Kentucky farm their first destination. In addition to their wonderful company, fellowship in adventures, jokes and confabs, they came with treats from the city and several special gifts.

One of them was a ceramic bowl by Judith Eloise Hooper. I loved it right away. I enjoyed the variety of techniques she wedded together in a unified whole. I delighted in the fact that I could see the imprint of the artist's fingers captured forever in the clay.

The bowl came to mind often. I'd remember Janet and Joel's visit, and end up jumping from a wonderful memory to an image of the bowl... and the bowl always had three balls of blue-green yarn in it.

Every time I imagined the bowl, I'd see it holding three balls of blue-green yarn. Every time. I had no idea where they came from, but they certainly weren't going away!

Finally I succumbed. On the way back from an appointment, I stopped by a store to buy some yarn. Yarn is such wonderfully tactile stuff! I fell in love with a rather spendy merino blend that felt just right. Then in a fit of practicality, I picked up some styrofoam balls rather than buying two more skeins of yarn. 

They sat in their bag on my studio table for several days. When I had bought the yarn a voice in my head had scolded, "Extravagance!" and whenever I thought of making the yarn balls the same voice said, "What for? Waste of time!"

In the wee hours one morning, unable to sleep and too tired to think clearly enough to work, I fixed the end of the yarn onto a ball with a pin and started to wrap the beautiful, soft stuff around the crunchy white ball. It only took a few minutes. I snipped the yarn and tucked in the end. I placed the single ball into the bowl. It was good. Not done yet, but good. I went back to bed satisfied.

Now that I knew how little time it took, I found brief moments for the next two balls. It was amazing how utterly satisfying three balls of yarn in a bowl could be!

Little by little, I'm coming to see a bit of the "why" of my bowl and yarn balls. Part of it was just the satisfaction of following my intuition, of bringing to life the vision in my head. I am learning to be better at that, and do it more often.

I'm learning to ignore the snarky little voice in my head. I'm learning to let life be a process. I'm learning to let go of a final goal in the interest of the goodness of now, and what it might become in the future.

I'm learning to let one good thing

lead to another

in a flow

of goodness.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights..."

James 1:17