22 Aug Intricate Beauty Comes From Dedication and Patience
Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty is part of a lineage of Native American beaders that show every year at Indian Market in Santa Fe. Her dress (shown) took her ten months to create. That’s ten months of 16 hour days. Her mother, Juanita and her daughter, Jessica, helped her create the final dress that was shown at The National Museum of American Identity.
I went to Indian Market, the largest of its kind in the world, to see the beautiful work created by Native Americans all over the United States. One of the highlights is seeing the dress made by Joyce’s daughter, Jessica Growing Thunder, that took Jessica seven years of intricate beading to complete. [I wasn’t able to get a photo of Jessica’s dress, unfortunately.]
The physical beauty of the dress is one thing. Being in the energy of something that took dedicated commitment and attunement is extraordinary. Wearing the 50 pound dress Jessica says, “I feel all the energy. When we work, with every stitch we lay down, we are putting our prayers and our energy in it.”
Imagine. Imagine what our lives would be like if during the many hours of each day we put our prayers into each moment, into each gesture, into each interaction?
Most of the artists at Indian Market describe being part of a network of family and tribes that support them. Their work comes from being held in a larger matrix. Jessica hasn’t started using quills in her work yet saying, “In my tribe doing quillwork is a special gift that’s given to you through dreams and visions. I didn’t want to start until I got those visions. After last year’s Indian Market I got those dreams. Now I am waiting for the right moment. It’s a gift, it’s truly a special gift. You just can’t go jumping into it. You have to wait.”
So much of healing trauma is about dedication, learning the art of attending to your inner world, grafting out the positive moments to elicit a more stable base.
Intimately involved with that kind of dedication is patience. Waiting for the right moment. Listening. Allowing the gifts for our flourishing to arise from within and meet us from without. Our wounded parts want to jump in. The hurt feels so torturous that we want to get rid of it.
Learning patience allows us to slow down, learn to be with ourselves, and await the dream of our unfolding. Which will come. Never fear.
[I’d like to appreciate any and all persons who have felt the crush of domination yet still listened to the creative energy of life bringing forth healing, integration, and love for all of us. I am inspired when any of us continue to hope, to pray, to listen, who remember that who we are is so much more than that which binds us.
I also want to appreciate The Santa Fe New Mexican who reported this story in their 2010 Indian Market Guide. The quotes are from their story.]