Sparrows, Nibs, and Needs

Mobile: Risenshine (26” x 21”)

On clearing out

“You’re right,” said sparrow, “it *is* easier to fly without all that baggage.”

Bear just smiled, watching the sweet glow of a rising sun.

Thoughts while making

A funny thing happens with paint. And life.

When you try to gloss over problems, they grow. Even the tiniest ones.

In painting, I see this with something called a “nib.”

Nibs are little pieces of dust or dirt – technically contaminants – that can make their way onto your painting surface.

Often, they’re as small as a pinhead, barely noticeable … at first.

However, add another coat of paint, and your pin-sized problem doubles in size.

Add another coat, and that which was once nearly invisible becomes all you can see.

When I first started making mobiles, I often wouldn’t even see the nib until the second coat of paint. When I saw it earlier in the process, I sometimes tried to ignore it. Other times, I thought I could “out paint” it – trying to add more paint around it to even things out.

Problem is, nibs that are left unnoticed or ignored, don’t go away. And since the nib is trapped in the paint itself, there really isn’t a way to out paint it. Oh, how I tried.

Over time, I learned that the only way to deal with a nib is to, um, deal with it. Pretending it’s not there is not a strategy.

With nibs, you let the paint dry and sand away the high spot. Then, repaint as needed. Problem solved. It’s called, appropriately enough, denibing

In life, however, having the awareness to even see those nibs – especially the pin-sized ones – can be challenging. But we all know they’re there: those places where the dust and dirt of our hurts and resents, unmet needs, and unspoken truths, accumulate and contaminate.

And every time we gloss over them, ignore them, try to outthink them, outrun them, deny them, justify them, feel ashamed of them, push them down, cover them up, that nib is growing, bigger and bigger until we’re willing to do the work to deal with it.

What’s one small nib in your life that you can face today, with compassion, with courage, with love. To acknowledge. To accept. To sand away – allowing for a new foundation from which to meet tomorrow?