March BJP Finished - Difficult to write about....

When you look at this detail picture and the whole piece below, what do you think it's about?




Like all of my BJP pieces this year, the cross represents the intersection between me and something else going on in my life. What do you think this is?

If you have the impression that it has something to do with spirituality, you're right. It's about me and my higher power.

This is a difficult subject for me, ever since my early college years when I abandoned all faith in the Christian church after witnessing several improprieties by the pastor of the Congregational Church where I had been Confirmed. For decades I declared myself an agnostic.

In my 50s, writing and reading poetry, learning Tai Chi, and befriending an artist-shaman who introduced me to the concept of "totem animals," brought me out of agnosticism and into a limbo of vague spiritualism. In this realm, there was no supreme being and definitely no force responsive to me or my needs. Rather, it seemed more like the power of positive thinking. A small force stemming from within me toward good, healing and beauty; a connection to the same force in others. There was a contentment in those years and an optimism I'd never felt before.

After getting married and moving to the small island community where I live now, my connections faded somewhat and I lost spiritual ground. Then, a year ago in March, something happened that will forever change my life... I became aware that my whole life of yo-yo dieting, overeating and binging was a matter of addiction. (I write about it on Words Paint.)

For the first time I grasped that I, alone, can not control my eating, that only if I admit I am a compulsive overeater and yield my will to a higher power, only then might I regain sanity. If you have not suffered addiction, or if you have seen me and seen that I am not morbidly obese, you may think I exaggerate. I do not. Whether dieting or gaining, I constantly thought about food, driven and obsessed particularly by sweets like chocolate, cake, cookies, pastries, ice cream, pie and candy, hating myself for it all the while.

I had no choice. I joined Overeaters Anonymous, became abstinent on the above mentioned sweets, lost about 60 pounds in the past year, and finally began to grapple with the concept of a higher power... faith and serenity, not from within me, but from outside me and available to me. At this point, I believe in a force for good and balance within the universe. I believe this force is what keeps me abstinent, keeps me from falling again into the grip of addiction.

I have tried to illustrate this force in my March BJP, the intersection between me and my higher power. Thanks for reading along... writing this post has helped me to clarify my thoughts and beliefs, as did working on the piece.