Of leather and acceptance



Jamie Okuma & Sandra Okuma  (Shoshone Bannock/Luiseno),
'The Haute Couture of the Indigenous Kind: Yesterday and Today

I am still working through  "Looking at Mindfulness" by Christophe Andre.  I blogged about this book about a month ago.  He is talking about impermanence and acceptance.  I have always thought of acceptance as a sort of giving in - as a defeat really, but this section made me think differently about this "...we decide to receive everything, to give space to what happens and what is.  Through acceptance, we open up an infinite inner space..."  and a little later  "Accepting what is makes us calmer, more intelligent, and therefore more able to change what should be changed."  I don't need to be defeated, but I need to see things as they are, even when that might mean being in a way that I don't like.  What a burden that lifts.

On a different note, I have been inspired by all the wonderful indigenous folks making fashion and decided to do a refashioning of my own last night.   I started with an old dress and added red and gold leather.  It is so nice to work with the leather, even if it is hard to sew and I love how it feels.  I was pretty happy about how this turned out and Runa joined for a while to work on her own leather project.  I am trying to find the balance between these quick project that give immediate gratification and the beading projects that take many months.