Greeting the darkness

I passed this fearsome creature on the way to the ferry dock a day or two ago. I was going the back way, down a road I rarely travel, but surely I have seen this gorilla before -- or is he meant to be Darth Vader? Nonetheless he was so arresting that I stopped and backed up to take a photograph.

It's obvious that he stands out more in snow -- and surely his eyes are much more noticeable. But it seems to me this would be a menacing figure no matter what environment surrounded him. Something about the thrust of the shoulders, the threat of a forward step...

Isn't it interesting, the conclusions that we draw about a person's state of mind from looking at the posture of his body? That makes me wonder again about that study cited in Blink, where the scientists discovered that curving facial muscles into frowns made them feel irritable and angry. And yet when we try to cover our anger with false smiles, it rarely seems to work: the anger not only remains but leaks out.

To see what was more threatening about this guy -- the darkness or the posture -- I decided to use PhotoShop to dress him in pink. At first it seemed to make little difference: that thrust of menace was still there. And I thought, this creature's dark surface is a given, part of the metal of which he is made. But actually it is how he carries himself that makes him scary.

Which for some reason makes me think of a conversation I had last night with a friend about that Buddhist take on the difference between pain and suffering. Pain and darkness are inevitable in life: it is what it is, and often hard to bear. But it's really our attitude toward it, how we deal with it, how we carry our darkness into the world, that creates our suffering and influences those around us.

But as I continue to look at these two images, the pink one is becoming less threatening. And, interestingly enough, the more I stare at the pink, the less threatening the dark one becomes as well. So now I'm wondering if our task is really to reach out past our fear of the dark, to embrace it, to make the effort to befriend it, to choose to mentally clothe it in light. Perhaps the menace wasn't captured in the form at all, but merely a projection of my own fears and shadows.

The Napkin of Enlightenment

It all began this morning, when I looked for a photo to blog about. Instead I was given a photo for my new poetry blog, and a chance to articulate thoughts that had circled, unspoken, in my head during yesterday's workshop.

We'd been shown a circle with a line through it, that one which is drawn on the lower left quadrant of the napkin. And the question was raised: if the line is life, from birth on the left to death on the right, and if all that white space above the line is the overworld, then is the space below the underworld? And does that mean, in fact, that life is hell?

Much debate and discussion ensued, and I found myself thinking "but what is outside the circle?" and "what if you rotated the circle clockwise a quarter turn: wouldn't the dark and light then lose the perceived power of their division, and become just passing shadows playing across a surface?"

So then this morning my image appeared, of a beautiful wall in Verona, partially enshadowed, dramatically colored, dominated by a diagonal shadow and an elaborate (and very closed) door. For some reason this image needed a poem, not one of these meditations, so I worked on that til it was time to go to church.

After church I went to coffee with a friend, and found myself explaining and drawing it all out -- the circle in the lower left, the underworld; the wall on the lower right, the facade -- and then, for good measure, I drew out another image from Lynn's workshop. It's the circle in the upper left quadrant of the napkin, meant to trace the movement of the solar calendar as light plays over the surface of our spiritual lives; a movement from the Summer Solstice of naive belief at the top to the dark night of despair in the winter solstice at the bottom.

When I then explained that when you hit rock bottom, the light finally shines through the darkness, like a single ray, we realized it was time for the circle to break open, to unfold into spring like a flower into bloom, like an orange cut open for all to eat; that it was time for all separation between in and out, us and them, dark and light, God and not-God to cease, and for openness to be the order of the day.

The sweetness of that discovery was as pure and delicious as the cinnamon twist we shared (to offset the extra cups of coffee that led to our conclusions); as full of delight as this poem by Rumi:

I know there is a gold mine in you.
When you find it,
the wonderment of the earth's gifts
you will lay aside
as naturally as does a child a doll.

Letting go -- again

Of all the madonna images I captured while in Italy, this one -- which may not technically be a madonna at all -- was one of the most moving. It's particularly moving this morning, as my younger daughter's Christmas break ends today, and she will be driving through the mountains in winter to the next chapter of her life, which will play out in southern California.

We had to say our goodbyes last night, because I'm off to a workshop (Lynn Bauman, on the Psalms) this morning and will only wake her for a quick hug. For me there's something timeless about hugging my daughters, as if I am instantly transported to all the other hugs, all the other goodbyes, all the other tender moments in our lives together, and in that moment all the maturity and responsibility they've developed in their 20 years of growing seems to fade into the mutual vulnerability and affection that is captured here.

Lynn was explaining, in our opening session last night, about the Helikos Tropon, the spiraling process of our growth in faith from the conventional understanding of our childhood (if you "do the right thing" God will take care of you and nothing bad will happen) through pain, darkness, and awakening to the post-conventional, more mystical understanding of the divine that characterizes enlightenment.

And as I listened I realized that I am no longer naive enough to automatically believe that because I am a good and faithful person God will protect my daughter as she travels. So I can't blindly assume that her journey will be a safe one: I can only know that she is a good driver, pray that she will be safe, hope she will make good decisions on the road, and trust that there will be gifts and learnings for both of us in this latest in a lifelong series of separations.

I wish you safe travels, little one, and pray for all the parents and children of the world as we all practice the letting go that growth requires.

Responsibility? Or blame...

I remember once, long ago, a statement made by the priest who counseled me through my divorce. He said, quoting a psalm (which one, I no longer remember) that the fact is we can trust no one but God; that it is the fundamental nature of the human condition that each of us is primarily self-absorbed.

I wonder, now, some 28 years later, if he still believes that to be true. I wonder, too, if that message to me was a gift or a curse. The gift in it, of course -- and I very much took his statement to heart -- is that I learned to turn my need for support inward and upward; to rely primarily upon myself and God.

But this morning I find myself wondering if, in internalizing that statement as "gospel truth," I may have done myself a disfavor. Have I somehow, in assuming that I alone -- in company with the divine -- am responsible for my own emotional health, have I cut myself off, created a wall, ceased to seek out people and circumstances which would provide vital connections and support? Is it just a matter of lowered expectations?

Does that sense -- that I am the only one I can count on -- come from that statement he made, or from a damaged childhood? And have I, in operating out of that space, in some way harmed my own children; lowered THEIR expectations?

At the root of all these questions lies a new betrayal, a small one; a friend who failed to answer a cry for help. It wasn't even help for me, it was help for one of my daughters. But it does make me question my judgment, and leaves me spinning in a sea of unpleasant choices which circle primarily around questions of responsibility -- always a challenge for a parent.

And, curiously enough, a dear friend xeroxed a page for me just a day or so ago which speaks exactly to this question (I'm sorry; I can't tell you where this is from):

"This word responsibility and your concept of it can be frightening, because you are afraid that things you have done will end up hurting other people...[but] That is not the kind of responsibility that I am talking about. I will tell you again that you do not move in random patterns. You move in a cohesive, beautiful, exciting, extending pattern of power. The responsibility of which I speak is the realization that, if you observe the movement of your life and do not like what you see, it is YOU that must make the changes in it. Growth comes through change; exciting growth comes through responsible change...

How do you know when you need to make new choices? When you look at your life and see parts of it that are not rewarding to you or to others. Then YOU have to be responsible for becoming aware of what new choices would restore that balance again."

So there it is. Something appears to be out of balance, and it is my job to sit with that, in what seems for now to be a cold and lonely place, and assess my contribution to the problem; to see what change might need to be made.

In the seasons of life, another winter has arrived. The blessing in that is knowing spring cannot be far behind.

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An addendum: I have, since writing this, learned that what felt like a betrayal was in fact a completely predictable and entirely understandable oversight, compounded into what looked like betrayal by my assumptions, my lack of trust, and my lack of persistence. I am SO GRATEFUL that I took the time to sit with it, and took the risk of believing... and now I get to look at what thought patterns I have that are getting in the way for me; now I get to decide how I might begin to make different choices.

Struggling with the impulse to buy

I rose early this morning, awakened by concerns for my younger daughter, who is stranded in Portland because flooding and mudslides have blocked the roads and train tracks between that city and Seattle. And when I went looking for images for today's post, it was this one -- of a necklace she fell in love with in Venice two years ago -- which popped out at me.

The necklace sat in a store window facing the Piazza San Marco, so we saw it almost every day as we walked by. It was ridiculously expensive -- thousands of dollars -- so there was no chance of our ever purchasing it. But that didn't change her reaction to it; she actually mentioned it again a few days ago, it was such a memorable experience.

Though I see the magnificence of the work, the piece doesn't call to me, but I certainly know how it feels to be drawn to something in that way. It is often true that this tendency is particularly strong just after Christmas -- a sort of residue of the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy, I suppose. And in fact, just yesterday I went to visit a friend's art exhibit and that acquisitional lust hit me: I fell madly, desperately in love with one of her paintings. Unfortunately she doesn't want to sell this piece so she has set the price ridiculously high. I told her I'd buy it anyway, or work out some sort of co-ownership deal with her, but she's still not sure she can bear to part with it.

I don't think this is some sort of delayed manifestation of the Christmas buying frenzy, but the price is roughly equivalent to a Buddha statue I've been trying to talk myself out of purchasing for almost two years now -- and seriously considered suggesting as a Christmas present for myself -- so maybe it's connected. But the whole thing -- both the Buddha statue and my friend's painting -- seems pretty irrational: these are NOT things I need (I have other, smaller buddha statues, and no real place to put this one; I also have a house full of artwork, though there's a space on my office wall that would be a perfect fit for my friend's painting). What is it, this odd longing that comes over us sometimes, for things we can neither use nor afford?

I'm not quite sure I understand the allure of my buddha statue or my friend's painting. I could intellectualize it -- the buddha displays a calm that I find inspirational; the painting represents the moment after her divorce when my friend rediscovered hope and joy -- but the call to purchase seems to go deeper than that. The last time I felt it that strongly was five years ago, the FIRST time I went to Venice, and the piece I fell in love with and brought home still serves as a focus for my meditation practice, so I have no regrets about its purchase.

I guess what I struggle with here is another should: we should not "buy stuff;" any extra money we have should go to charity, to feed the hungry, heal the sick, provide rest for the weary. So it's hard to believe that God could have any part in a message that says "buy this." Although in cases like this -- one-of-a-kind works of art -- perhaps the point is to support the artist in her attempts to manifest the Creative Spirit in her life.

Maybe I'll just go back and photograph that picture -- as I did this necklace -- she'll probably want me to do that anyway. And then, at the very least, I can show it here: it really is a triumphant declaration that God can move us through pain and suffering and into a hope so suffused with joy that it sings right off the canvas.

At the intersection of language and art

I've been wondering for some time now if I needed to get back into writing poetry. The fact that Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas have both walked onto the page in these last few days intrigues me...

And then, last night, I was invited to write something to accompany an image I had shared with a friend. For some reason, I interpreted that to mean I should come up with a poem.

Although what I wrote surprised me, I came to realize that the results of my labors were expressing a sense of profound identification with the haunting sadness of dualism, as if some unseen observer could see all the ways we create our own misery; our own battlefields, both internal and external; our own sense of separation and devastation; our resentment of life's cycles and our constant longing to be other than we are.

What intrigues me more is that the words were written from the egoic point of view, whining, entitled, self-absorbed, ignorant. But the image I was writing about, like this one, spoke of another vision entirely; could step back from the ego to see both the truth of connectedness and the foolish illusions we create to keep us feeling separate and alone; the way a simple shift in perspective can reveal the tenderness and beauty that enfold us even as we weep or fight.

Does this mean that words will always keep us mired in thought -- futile, self-centered, comparing and defining -- and that it is only art that frees us to see the wholeness and connectedness of life? Then poetry would sit, like Jesus, in that in-between space, being both God and man, both connected and separate, both whole and divided, both language and art. And perhaps that's why we poets feel so stretched when we write: because we are bound to earthly images, yet always reaching for the stars...

Those post-Christmas blahs

Every year when the Christmas decorations go up I find myself shaking my head -- they look so... tacky! We've never been very conscious about acquiring "a look" for Christmas, so almost everything has been given to us by friends, family, or our children. And of course that red and green color scheme is totally at odds with our muted northwest style, sticking out like a sore thumb against the subtle grays, greens and blues that echo the sky and sea outside the windows.

But over the course of the season we grow accustomed to the bright colors, the lights on the tree, the silly dolls and garish stockings. And when they all come down, as they did, finally, yesterday (though the tree is still dripping needles in the corner of the living room), the room looks painfully dull and empty. That dull emptiness took over my meditation this morning. And so many responses sprang to mind:

1. I should buy something more colorful that could hang right there, where the stockings were, to liven up that dull stoniness.
2. Oh, God. It's like this empty colorless room mirrors the empty dullness that is winter, that lives in my heart right now.
3. If I were to take a chisel, and chip away at the sand-colored stone wall around my heart, would color emerge, like flowers in spring? Or would it all just turn to dust?
4. How did I ever think these dull colors were beautiful? Have I somehow deliberately damped down my natural exuberance, settled for less?
5. This morning I was reading about the extravagant generosity of Jesus' self-emptying. Is this what it is like, when all passion has been spent?
6. Or is that crazy brief flare of color at Christmas time like fireworks, or whistling in the dark: a last attempt to deny the cross that lies ahead?

Wherever the truth may lie, it seems that -- just as all that garish color has a way of clarifying the gap between the joy we're supposed to feel at Christmas and the sense of emptiness that so often rises to the surface in this season of light -- the stripping of the room symbolizes the fleeting nature of earthly pleasures and the necessity of learning to live with the rock-hard reality that lives below the surface.

It makes me think of that Dylan Thomas poem. Not A Child's Christmas in Wales, the one we most often think of in this season; the other famous one:

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night...

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.