Gratitude Practice 2021 Day 361: The Cloza (Harvesting Rapeseed) by Jules Breton 1860
Feb 4, 2021
Tonight, grateful for a postcard of "The Colza" that I purchased at the Dallas Museum of Art in late fall of 2013. I love everything about this painting. I've had this 5x7 postcard propped up on a stack of books on my nightstand, posted to my refrigerator door or on a bookshelf in my home office for the last eight years. It's survived two apartments in Dallas, Texas, one duplex in Holladay, Utah and our home in beautiful Salt Lake City. This painting often known as, The Rapeseed Harvest, was created in 1860 by French artist Jules Brenton and I'm grateful everyday for the image of these strong, determined, and hard working women.
Grateful for these women and what they have come to represent to me. Grateful for their version of femininity, for their strong capable arm, legs, backs, hearts and minds. Grateful for their resilience, for their sisterhood and for what I can only imagine is a colorful and enriching conversation. Grateful for the various phases, the multiple methods, the determined postures and approaches to the same tedious task. Grateful for their sense of purpose and innovation and grit. Totally convinced that these women are done and ready and completely over it but together they keeps going a little longer and a little farther to improve the overall experience for the others of tomorrow.
Grateful for her...the one bravely submitting her offering...most certainly it is her best effort and most certainly it is equally flawed, feeble and yet completely fabulous. Grateful for her...for her unshakeable confidence in her capacity to do a little good...for the value of individual contribution...and for her willingness to step-up, show up and work hard. Grateful for her...for how she keeps working hard especially when the reserves run low and especially in the exhausting, irritating, dirt filled thankless moments. Grateful for her...for how she knows it's her job to create the balance and has absolutely given up the idea of chasing after it. Grateful for her...for her trusty blue apron, her soft but functional preparedness, her strong sturdy frame, and her bold bare feet. Grateful for her...for her undoubtable conviction that she is not just enough...but that she has always been enough...just how she is. Grateful for her...for how she takes up the perfect amount of space both in this painting but more importantly in the universe as she continues to learn and morph and change and contribute to her tribe and to her community. I am grateful for...her.
Grateful for these women and how I can, and have, and will continue to identify with each of them. Grateful for the inspiring hard working women that I often see both in this painting and in my real life. Grateful for the hardworking women who are pushing boundaries, holding space, and lifting heavy unthinkable loads far above their weary heads to simply keep plowing forward. Grateful for the women who carefully remain focused, for those who notice and remember both the big and littles details, for those who no matter the task or the ask will anchor their aprons, put their hair in a high ponytail and join you...no...matter...what. Grateful for the women who most simply put...do the work. Grateful for their help, for their meaningful contribution, for their brilliant minds, for their resourceful problem solving and for their collective examples and shared experiences. Grateful for the shared language and for the listening, for the rants and the
revelry, for the compassion and the champion-ing, for the passion and the dogged persistence. Grateful for the vulnerability AND for the vault. Grateful for the rowdy inappropriate bursts of boisterous laughter that are always needed to get you through an endlessly dusty overgrown Rapeseed fields and for the sacred shared seasons of tear filled sorrow. Grateful for those who are unwaveringly with you during the planting, the watering, the tending, the weeding and most certainly during the harvest...come what may.
Grateful for sacred sisterhood...for my sacred sisterhood...for those carefully captured in this beautiful painting and for the ride or die women who so deeply enrich my life no matter the season, or task or messy exhausted phase of life's endless Rapeseed harvest.