Celebrating Saraswati In All Of Us
Dr. Lisa Chu
On the evening of the Strawberry Full Moon, we opened our circle around the beautiful chalk drawing of a lotus flower created by Tammy behind her studio. Kellie sounded the conch as Chris called in the directions.
We saged each other and called in our ancestors and absent souls into the circle.
Then we welcomed Amy and Charie, the June birthday girls, into the center, gifting each of them with our own blessing for their year to come. Keeping the energy flowing, Amy gifted us the bumble bee breath meditation, and Charie offered us a song – which spontaneously became a duet as Amy joined her…without rehearsal!
We headed inside the cozy warm studio to hear a few words about Saraswati, the Hindu Goddess of Art, Wisdom, and Music. She is called “the one who flows” or the “essence of the self”, and is celebrated as the source of our creativity and pure wisdom. She is often depicted as having four arms, holding in each hand the symbols of the musical instrument, a string of beads, and a book. Tammy read the poem, “The Artist’s Creed” by Jan Phillips, a beautiful reminder of how to honor, value, and create space for your own creative process.
Charie invoked Saraswati through a spoken word meditation and Sanskrit chant. Then we were free to choose our first activity of either art-making or writing. We had access to Tammy’s collection of paper, paints, markers, pastels, and collage materials. We enjoyed the freedom of just being in our own process, with no thought of outcome for our creativity. Wendy Sterndale lead us in a session of guided meditation, poetry writing, and chant composition. Her beautiful guidance opened the doorway of our imagination through metaphor and imagery. We “warmed up” with an exercise of finding new relationships among lists of words. Then we moved on to a visualization of traveling deep into the center of the earth to access our ancestors’ deeply held wisdom coming through us. Finally we were set free to compose a chant or a poem using what we had accessed during the first two exercises.
As we gathered for Circle Speak, some showed their artwork, others read lines of poetry, and Chris ended with a chant she composed. We were each inspired and reminded of the divine intuition and creativity planted within each of us, accessible all the time. All we must do is ask for Saraswati’s presence.
Take time for creativity in your life and trust your own inner rhythms in this time of great change.
By Dr. Lisa Chu
Moon Mothers of Half Moon Bay 