Truth Windows, Quiet Mornings and the Gifts of Revisiting Old Art Journals

Episode 42

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It’s a lovely cloudy morning here in Wisconsin and I’m sitting at my little art table in my bedroom with coffee and the windows open that look out onto the woods around our house. I love these quiet mornings, this is the time when I sit and wander inside myself and with whatever inspires me in the moment. Today that is a sketchbook/art journal I wrote in two years ago that I picked up off my shelf the other day and started flipping through. I came across little sketches, creative ideas and thoughts I had forgotten about and they began stirring up fresh creative ideas and reflections. It reminded me how important it is to look back sometimes and how glad I am that I write things down by hand, not just on my computer or my phone, which I also do a lot of. But it is such a different, precious experience to keep handwritten journals and sketchbooks and then get to find them again later.

One entry I found was from October 2022 with a quote from the gorgeous book by Mark Nepo called Drinking from the River of Light: The Life of Expression that I was reading at the time which I share on the podcast. He writes about “Truth windows”:

“There is one other type of window to speak of-a truth window. In a cob house, an ancient type of dwelling built of mud, clay and straw, there’s always a wall that has a truth window. This isn’t a window to the outside, but an opening that shows what the wall is made of. This is the window of transparency.

There are always always two windows to care for: our window on the world, which opens both inwardly and outwardly, and our truth window, which dares to show what our walls are made of.”

Isn’t that amazing?! I am so inspired by this idea, which is what I wrote about in my art journal a couple years ago and now is swirling around inside of me again this morning.

Here are a few photos of my art journal, the book by Mark Nepo and my little morning nest spot in my bedroom along with a couple of truth window photos I found: