If you have a magic wand handy, pick it up, please. If not, just imagine one. We’re having an adventure! First, though, let me introduce you to my friend, Havi Brysk Mandell…
Havi is an Intentional Creativity® Sister. She’s a wander-er in wonder. A teacher who loves to learn. A leader of this community. And a writer of magical invitations, like the one I’m about to share with you, in her voice! (A cuppa would be in order, too!)
First, some magic words…
“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” – Loren Eiseley
“Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.” – Lao Tzu
“Water is the driver of nature.” – Leonardo da Vinci”
“Always be like water. Float in the times of pain or dance like waves along the wind which touches its surface.” – Santosh Kalwar
Meditating On Living Waters
It has been a bit over a week since those of us, in the Red Madonna community, held our Come Home to the Waters retreat. I know that a number of you reading this now may have had the experience of watching the replay – receiving messages, healing release, and creating a beautiful painting. Each painting that I have seen has felt like a beautiful healing balm and affirmation of the gifts of Water in our lives and as a precious teacher for ways we can be more like water.
I am finding myself experiencing my movement through all the moments of life as more of a lyrical dance of encounter and return, ebb and flow, of receiving and being touched by the presence of another as part of my unfolding, flowing life journey. I listen for the flow of harmony and disharmony and I am noticing flowing songs around me, some of which I never noticed before. That includes noticing the song of my tears as I witness stories of pain all around me and inviting that song to move me into a new consciousness, a new bubbling spring calling me to listen and follow….not denying the pain and grief, but to expand, as waters do, into a flow that holds both grief and joy, despair and wonder.
What are the messages you have received from water?
I wonder if you are willing to receive one of the precious messages of water: that water always returns and replenishes from its source, from abundant flow, rather than parched effort.
Water doesn’t apologize for remaining connected to its source. A spring doesn’t feel guilty for filling itself before it becomes a river. A river doesn’t nourish the land by trying harder. It nourishes because it never stops receiving.
I think that one of the deepest illusions of our time is that nourishment is something we’ll get to after we’ve done enough, after we’ve helped enough people, after we’ve answered enough emails, after we’ve carried enough responsibility. But life doesn’t work that way.
The source is not a reward for our effort. The source is where our effort begins, what births and flows it.
This is why we created Womb of the Living Waters.
It isn’t simply about painting. It isn’t simply about water. It isn’t even just about the Divine Feminine.
It is an invitation to return to the source from which your creativity, your compassion, your wisdom, and your love naturally arise.
It is a place to rediscover the current beneath the striving, because the world doesn’t only need our effort. It needs our aliveness. It needs people whose work arises from connection rather than depletion. People whose creativity flows from wonder instead of pressure. People who remember that beauty is not an escape from reality but one of the ways reality heals itself.
If you’ve recognized that you’ve been faithfully pouring yourself into the world while feeling less connected to the spring within… Perhaps this is your invitation, not because you need another thing to do, but because you deserve a place to be nourished, to remember, to receive, to let the waters within you begin to move again.
If that speaks to something true in you, if the waters within are stirring and the waters without calling I’d love to welcome you into this journey. I know what becomes possible when we stop living as if we are separate from the source that has been loving us all along.
Let’s become rivers again, not by trying harder, but by remembering the spring.
And let’s feel the pulse of the red thread that connects us come alive with the nourishing heart medicine that is the Sisterhood of Red Madonna. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to actively and creatively tend to the heartflow of connection, to creation, and to the Sacred Feminine in a loving, supportive community?
I invite you to consider deepening your journey with us and to join us for a year of immersion in the Cosmic Womb and Living Waters of Creation. HERE is the invitation to Red Madonna 2026. May your heart flow wild and free. May you feel the nourishing, healing blessings of the sacred waters. May you, in your own way, help heal the waters within and around us and be like the precious waters.If you have any questions about Red Madonna, please contact Havi, Red Madonna Director at havi.mandell@musea.org
With So Much Love and Gratitude, ~Havi, Sue, Olivia, Katie, and Hobby- the Red Madonna Team
ps… I – Sue – have been part of the Red Madonna journey since 2018. It feeds my soul. It keeps me on the road, even now. And it gives me a safe place to gather with women asking big questions in this moment. If you’re even just a smidge curious, click the magic HERE button to learn more. We’d be thrilled to have you with us!
