Working on a Prayer Flag

I have another swap going and this one is for a prayer flag. I keep saying I want to push myself into more of the art forms so this is one way. It feels like an uphill climb in the mountains and for those of you who have not been hiking at higher altitudes, believe me, its hard to breathe, your muscles ache and suddenly its exhausting!

I've started out with a scrappy rectangle of blue velvet, one of my Skecher's shoe laces and some of that heavier white embroidery floss. Blue is a color that evokes trust among its many other characteristics, so trust it is for the theme of the flag. I am randomly stitching with the white, as a symbol of how one moves through life. It is already halting and flowing without a plan or real goal.

The metal rectangular pin towards the bottom is an angel holding a 6-pointed star. Its clasp is crushed and so I stitched the pin part of it to the velvet as best I could. It does give weight to the flag and offers another dimension to the interpretation.

TRUST is a firm belief in the truth or strength of someone or something. Its the confidence we place in a person. Its what we have when we honestly believe in a positive outcome. And I think its one of those very fragile characteristics in that when it fails, it becomes hard to restore. 

I want to incorporate the angel's 6-point star onto the blank space of the flag. Tradition/
myth/legend says this particular angelic star brings clarity of thought and enhances intuition. When identification-based trust is in need of repair, the situations we find ourselves in have strong emotional implications, and we need clarity of thought to ease ourselves away from distrust and back into emotional well-being. 

I've lost my trust often enough in my lifetime, so when I started to create this prayer flag, I knew it needed to be some concept I actually wanted to draw into my life. Yet, in truth, I let the meaning of the color blue guide my choices. I wanted to go with the energy of the foundation fabric.

I've made it a personal practice to stay positive in life and not get too caught up in the negative. Sure I do get caught. I am human. My faith in human nature has been crushed many times, and my trust in divine outcomes have challenged my sanity, as well as affecting my health and well-being. 

This is what life does. 

I don't want to get on board the train of cliches about how life is supposed to work, because sometimes it just doesn't work out how we want.

However, if people of spirit can hold the line, and trust against devastating circumstances, if they can love beyond the resentments & rejections, and if they forgive beyond the unforgivable, something must change. I trust in that. I believe that everything changes. This is a flag I want to fly, a flag for trust.

More on that angel pin. I went looking in my odd collections for things to add to the prayer flag and for whatever reason, this pin seemed fitting to the theme though I didn't know why. Is this the same angel that is on top of holiday trees with the star...? 

With a bit of research, I learned that there was a high-ranking angel who was charged with the care of the stars, Moon and constellations. However, the angel fell from grace for two reasons: First was for loving a woman; secondly for teaching mortals the science of Astrology. As I thought about the angel, it struck me how it might have felt to be a celestial being and then to be disgraced. Disgraced for loving? For teaching? What were the good ol' boys of that era thinking? How does someone with that experience ever trust such a system? Its like being fired from a career that you devoted your entire beingness to. Suddenly, I was thinking how hard it is to be the object of bullying, or to feel rejection by people you love and trust. An angel could forgive and learn to trust. Even a fallen angel. 

There's that word again. Trust. I didn't know this swap would touch me so deeply.

I've got another week to work on this International prayer flag swap and have no idea where on Earth it will fly or for whom. The evolution of it as an art form is captivating.