Behold Your Hands, Human

Posted on April 24, 2024 by ShellyLFrancis

Have you stopped lately to honor your hands? Behold your hands, human. Palms. Fingers, eight, plus two thumbs.

Emotikin (an art manikin) holds two wooden doll hands rubberbanded on the wrists. Green and blue grape hyacinths are in the background.

What can you hold? Tension? Beauty? Love? Truth?

Hold out your hands and close your eyes and you will receive a big surprise.

The Emotikin now holds only the single right-handed wooden hand, well worn with scratches and patina.

My peace I give you.

Here, take my hand.

Whose hand do you want to hold?

The two wooden hands are now nested in a royal blue ceramic bowl with one hand's shadow off to the right on the ground. Also in the bowl is a smaller wooden bowl full of pink blossom buds.

Supposing I could make an offering of these hands, these bowls of beauty and strength?

My hands, like Walt Whitman’s singing self, can hold multitudes. Yet I have no fingers or thumbs.

Emotikin's hands are seen up close, well worn, well-loved, with many grape hyancinths and foliage blurred in the background.

My hands may be empty, but I am not empty handed.

Some hands are tired. Needs must rest.

Emotikin's hands are pointing to two yellow dandelions.

Supposing it’s not what we hold, but what we behold that matters.

Behold not the hands but the flowers the heart beholds!

Here’s to you and your amazing hands, whatever they’re beholding today!

Thanks for reading! Check out our video version as well:

Click to watch this 1-min short on YouTube.

P.S. If you enjoyed this reflection, check out our new card deck, Supposing: Reflections for Accessing Your Wise Inner Artist, available in print and on the Deckible app.

The Dandelion and the Seashell

Posted on May 16, 2015 by ShellyLFrancis

It was half-past high tide and love at first sight
when the tiny pink seashell
caught my heart from her spot on the sand.

She paused in her talk with the shell-shard and seaweed
to blow me a kiss of hello.

“Oh, hello! Pleased to meet you,” I said
as I sat down and scooped her up in my palm.
“I’ve never seen anyone like you before in this cove.”

“That’s cuz I’m new here,” she replied.
“Can you show me around?”

We walked up the beach
and I showed her some sights
she’d never seen from the height of my hand.
At the Driftwood Plateau we met a lone plant
who had grown in the sea-tossed-up soil.
“Seashell, meet Dandelion.
Dandelion, Seashell.”

“I thought dandelions were bright yellow with petals?”
Seashell asked with a pure questioning heart.
“I am still a yellow dandelion,” said the flower,
“But my yellow has transformed into seeds.
What you see now are my daughter ideas
almost ready to spread.”

“Is it true I can blow on your face
to make my wishes come true?”
asked Seashell.

What you may not know
(Because I know I didn’t)

is that dandelions can make wishes, too,
by blowing into the face of pink seashells.

Each blew hard as they could
to send their wish flying.
Seashell did a backflip.
Dandelion launched seeds.

“Ha! Now my wish can come true,”
laughed the shell when she landed.
“I’m hoping a wave will arise
and sweep me back to the sea. That’s where I belong.”