WELCOME TO OUR BLOG
Welcome to the SevenPonds.com blog – a community-driven extension of SevenPonds.com! I hope you find comfort and community in the resources and stories featured here. I’m always happy to hear from readers and can be reached at suzette@sevenponds.com.
FEATURED
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“Making Mobiles” by Karolina Merska: An artist’s manual on how to create beautiful Polish pajaki -
“Hands Up to the Sky” by Michael Franti & Spearhead: A surprisingly upbeat song about acknowledging both loss and the beauty of life -
Coping With Election Grief: While half of Americans are celebrating, the other half are in mourning
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Categories
Author Archives: Greer Barker (Blog Writer, SevenPonds)
A Moment of Life and Death
Sixteenth and seventeenth century Dutch vanitas paintings weave life and death into a single, still moment
Life is fleeting, and death apparently eternal. Still life paintings that came out of the Netherlands in the late 1500s through the 1700s, known as vanitas, gather symbolic objects of death into a memorialized moment, halting the processes of both … Continue reading
Posted in Soulful Expressions
Tagged Adrian Van Utrecht, Art, Death in art, Dutch Painting, Life and Death, Painting, SevenPonds, Still Life, transience, Vanitas
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Between the Abstract and the Real
Death, architecture and the public imagination
How do we come to terms with something as abstract as death? Our own heavy, very real flesh will one day be in another indistinct form. The sacred bodies of our loved ones are subject to the same fate. What … Continue reading
Fed by the Shadow of Death
Renaissance painters were masters of light, life, death and shadow
The cultural bloom of the Italian – and wider European – Renaissance was fed by the shadow of death. The bubonic plague was carried by fleas traveling on rodents, who then hitched rides along the expanding trade routes in the … Continue reading
Finding Words
Emily McDowell's Empathy Cards beautifully frame empathic connection
Hallmark cards are there for the saccharine sweet moments in life, but how do you send a card to someone you know who is dying? Send one of Emily McDowell’s emotionally rich Empathy Cards. Being on either side of a terminal … Continue reading
Posted in Soulful Expressions
Tagged Art, Cancer, Death and Beauty, Design, Emily McDowell, Empathy, Empathy Cards, Soulful Expressions, terminal illness, Vulnerability
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Saving Face
Salvador Dali's portrait of his dead brother incorporates -- guess who? -- himself
Salvador Dali isn’t exactly known for his subtlety. His large ego was only surpassed — and certainly supported — by his wild creativity, which showed us a (very) different way(s) to look at the world. We can look to his paintings … Continue reading
Our Weekly Tip: Making Sacred Space With Smoke
Smudge sticks -- bundles of herbs that burn slowly -- can help create a sacred space for a memorial service and end-of-life ceremony
Our Tip of the Week: Our sense of smell is directly connected to the emotional centers of our brains. The waft of smoke from a sweetly-scented herbal bundle can bring us out of our heads and into our bodies as we … Continue reading
Posted in Practical Tips
Tagged DIY, DIY memorial, end of life ceremony, Herbs, Memorial ideas, natural memorial ideas, Sacred Space, Sage, Smudge sticks, Smudging
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