Meeting The Muse ~ Our Sacred Garden

By Melanie Lee
Author, “A Year In Sedona~Meeting The Muse At Wisdom’s Edge”
(August 27, 2018)

My mission is to wake people up to the beauty of our Earth,
      to fill them with curiosity to learn about the diverse and fascinating habits and customs
of all living creatures and their habitats.
      It is about how to love and to know how much we all need each other. 
                                                                            – Adele Seronde

Last spring I attended a friendly literary soiree at the home of Adele Seronde, the renowned Sedona artist, poet and author. A fascinating woman who never fails to amaze me with her creative outpourings, Adele embodies the very best of Sedona’s spirit of wild and timeless beauty and its special place in the pantheon of nature’s wonders. We met not long after I moved to Sedona some five years ago, and since then we’ve become better acquainted as I’ve kept up with her work and she’s kept up with mine.

Adele’s two most recently published books of poetry, whose covers are embellished with her paintings, offer rare and valuable insights about her own life (“All My Loves and Deaths”) as well as the collective life of a country currently mired in divisive discourse (“War On Two Worlds, Peace On One”). Adele’s trip to wisdom’s edge is instructive and important for many reasons, not least of which is her unwavering belief in the healing potential of nature.

Upon arriving in Sedona some five years ago, my husband Louis and I discovered First Friday, a monthly event in the tradition of art walks and gallery nights in towns and cities across the country. One First Friday featured a retrospective for Adele, 60 Years of Chasing Life. Curated by Goldenstein Gallery, the show celebrated her long and illustrious career a painter, writer, environmental activist and social visionary. Advance press had portrayed her as larger than life and upon meeting her I saw it was true. Genuine warmth and wisdom radiated from her still stellar smile and beautiful face and I thought she must have been thrilled with the hordes of admirers who’d shown up to pay respects.

We spent a good bit of time with her, chatting about her work, the ins and outs of blog writing and how quickly the new technology was changing. I told her I could share some blog tips and she seemed grateful, suggesting we stay in touch. A minute more of pleasant small talk, a quick photo together and then she was whisked away to mingle with the others there to marvel at this living legend’s contributions. I moved on through the exhibit, peering at and savoring the rollicking colors and seductive textures of her wall size paintings. I quickly fell in love with them, particularly her powerful abstracts, all exhibiting a decided sense of disciplined freedom (the true definition of beauty, someone once said), each a testament to her fiercely personal expressionism in the service of nature. I felt in her work a beckoning, shimmering quality that bespoke a kind of transformative spiritual electricity, an intangible sense of grace that has probably always been available to awakened souls.

When I got to the Gardens for Humanity part of the exhibit, I found it perfectly captured the spirit of the group Adele founded in 1995, an educational initiative springing from her belief that Nature is probably the greatest work of art any of us will ever encounter on this earth. The garden, she says, is a metaphor for healing and changing both self and community, symbolic of the Sacred Garden, the original paradise of everyone’s dreams. Her visionary effort to educate young people (which is of course, all of the young at heart among us who love gardens), has birthed scores of community gardens across the country. Since its inception, Gardens for Humanity has received numerous accolades, including the “Take Pride in America” award for encouraging volunteers to create gardens.

That night’s garden exhibit included artwork by young people celebrating nature and I photographed one little fellow obviously enchanted with his surroundings. Shy and sweet, he nevertheless appeared thrilled that I’d asked him to pose for a photo alongside the replica of a sweet garden and pond complete with rocks, plants, flowers and a small tree and tiny waterfall for good measure.

I’d been not only educated but completely inspired during that lovely First Friday, and before we left we bought two of Adele’s books. Living Bridge is her book of poetry dedicated to her five children and eleven grandchildren and Our Sacred Garden: The Living Earth, Awakening the Visionary in Us is a fusion of nature stories, spiritual inspiration and personal memoir written straight from the heart of a remarkably gifted and kind soul who’s made important and lasting contributions. Adele had told me she wasn’t through writing, that there would be more poetry and another book, this one about revamping the country’s educational system.

What’s left to say but “Hurray!”… and the sooner she finished that book, the better. I’m on board because what this remarkable woman has something to say that a world in need sorely needs to hear.

Melanie Lee is an award-winning writer, editor, artist and author. Growing up in Texas, she read mostly biography and autobiography and dreamed of being a writer who could help inspire others to meet their muse by honoring beauty in everyday life. She holds degrees in languages and journalism and was a features editor and columnist, writing everything from lifestyle stories and business news to profiles of entrepreneurs, artists and inventors engaged in the creative pursuit of right livelihood. She lived for ten years in Northern New Mexico where she was creator and director of Sojourns Writing Workshops of Santa Fe.

At the second half of life she moved to Sedona with her husband Louis Michalski. She met her muse anew, took up painting, became a yoga teacher and avid hiker and wrote “A Year in Sedona~Meeting the Muse at Wisdom’s Edge“,  available on Amazon.com or from the author. She can be contacted at 
P.O. Box 1419   Sedona, AZ  86339 or  atwisdomsedge@gmail.com