Returning to the Center

I found this little doorbell angel in Venice. Though I grew up with images of singing angels holding hymnals, their mouths formed in perfect O's, I'm not sure I've ever seen one suggesting that I read a book before.

As I was meditating this morning, it came to me that it has been quite some time since I tackled In Trouble and In Wonder, Lynn Bauman's inspiring study guide on the Gospel of Thomas -- the guide that started me on this amazing path as a contemplative photographer -- and, much as I am enjoying my readings in Buddhist Psychology, it feels like it may be time again to get back to my Christian roots.

The good news is that I will be off on a retreat next week, and we've been told to bring three texts: the Bible, Cynthia Bourgeault's The Wisdom Way of Knowing, and Bauman's Gospel of Thomas: the Wisdom of the Twin. So I know I will have that opportunity to further explore the same faith that inspired so many of the wonderful images I brought home from Italy.

Seeing this image this morning confirms my sense that it's time to get back into the Book of Thomas, my copy of which, interestingly enough, has two angels on its cover. It's clear I'm ready to further explore the wisdom, comfort, and challenges offered in that text. Which seems entirely appropriate, both because I am nearing the end of The Wise Heart, and because I have been feeling a bit odd lately about this blog.

The posts since I have returned from Italy have been increasingly challenging to write, and as I think about that, I realize that it's been feeling a bit like standing on a dock while stepping into a boat -- as if the boat has not been secured to the dock but is rather drifting slowly away.

Between the words and images, my story-telling feet seem to be getting farther and farther apart, so, though I continue to remain fairly centered, it feels like that's taking more and more effort. And I'm wondering if that has something to do the stretch I'm feeling as I try to connect the essentially Christian nature of my Italian images with the Buddhist principles I've been exploring.

To put it another way, this is a bridge I've been standing on for many years -- or perhaps it's a see-saw (or, as we called it growing up, a teeter-totter) -- and for years I've been strolling up and down, drifting toward one end or the other and then heading back to center when the tipping gets a bit uncomfortable. I firmly believe there is -- and should be -- a connection here, but clearly I am ready again to wander to the Christian end of things.

So perhaps before I leave for Canada I will finish the Kornfield book, which, as we move closer and closer to Election Day seems to tie in very closely with my thoughts about the imminent future of our country. In fact, today's reading included an inspirational quote from that quintessential Republican, Dwight Eisenhower:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

It sounds to me like Eisenhower was finding himself equally stressed between two points -- in his case, between his lifelong career as a military man and his commitment to the future of humanity. I am encouraged to read that in taking a stand he moved in a very visible way toward the greater good, and find myself hoping that our political candidates would do the same.

Both McCain and Obama seem, as the campaign draws near its climax, to be drifting away from principle into the murky world of whatever-I-have-to-do-to-win. I'm hoping they, like Eisenhower, will step back from whatever personal goals they may have and examine their motives, return to their roots, and embrace again a commitment to what they believe to be the needs of this country, its people, and the world.

I say this because I watched a really excellent piece on the two men and their backgrounds on PBS last night (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/), and while I found it encouraging to see what they're really about, I think that from this perspective, at this point in time, both their platforms are looking a little tippy...

All of which reminds me of this wonderful poem by William Butler Yeats, called "The Second Coming":

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?