Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve, 1513

I salute you. I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

"Letter to a Friend" by Fra Giovanni Giocondo, 1513

*

Wishing my readers 

the deep magic of the season

peace and love 

and many blessings 

in 2018

*

Yuletide Greetings

‘’Yuletide Greetings!” is the cheery message on one of my Christmas cards this year. Yuletide is a familiar term for this season, but where does the word actually come from? It seems that in Scandinavian lands ‘Jul’ or ‘Jule’ was, and still is, the term for the midwinter month, and there still exists the tradition of burning the Yule log on the hearth fire. 

But like the Christmas tree itself, many of these customs have been carried over from old pagan traditions. Even the very date of Christmas has nothing to do with the actual day of the birth of Jesus, but is believed to originally have been a celebration for the Sun God, perhaps to persuade that god to return to strength and brightness following the shortest and darkest days of the year.

It is a sad fact that when early Christianity was making inroads into Europe many pagan temples and sacred sites were destroyed by those zealously spreading the word of the new faith, and churches of the new religion were built upon the remaining foundations. So we have the buildings of one faith built upon the remains of the faiths which came before it, and new traditions and celebratory dates also were ‘built upon’ those of the previous faiths.

These layerings of traditions, dates and buildings tell us, not just what is, but what has been in our past. The ruins of the past are always to be glimpsed in the present. But what of the future? We cannot know what faiths and beliefs the future may hold, in a hundred, or even in a thousand years. Perhaps, like our own present, the distant future will contain the fragmented pieces of the beliefs which now dominate our world, which themselves have been replaced by other faiths which the unknown future holds. But what if we tread still further into the unknown? What if we reach out, not a mere millennium, but some five thousand years into our future?

Five thousand years ago the civilization of Sumer existed: a time as far into our past as we are imagining our hypothetical future. In that time there was no dominant male god. In that time there was a great goddess: Inanna. In that time the Supreme Deity was a ‘she’. Who would dare predict that in another five thousand years this will not happen again, and that ‘God the Father’ will belong among the ruins of a dim and distant past, which is our own time. Perhaps it will take far less time than another five millennia for this to happen, for these things do seem to happen in unpredictable cycles.

A tipping point is reached, and suddenly the landscape around us changes, and nothing is quite as we had known it. It is the landscape of faiths, of traditions, and we need to dig just a little way down to discover that our foundations are those of another faith entirely. Perhaps this is the time of the year to celebrate, not one faith in particular, but faith itself: a faith which renews itself through all the ages, finding new forms in its striving to bring a measure of trust and peace of heart. 

Painting Druids bringing the Mistletoe by Edward Atkinson Hornel

Magnificat

MAGNIFICAT 

What shall I do

with this quiet joy?

It calls forth the expanse

of my soul, calls

it forth to go singing

through the world...

to rock the cradles of death

gently and without fear.. 

to collect the rain

in my spread hands

 and spill it

like laughter...

Calls it forth

to bear into this world

a place

where light will glisten the edge

 of every wing

and blade of grass and

Shine 

along every hair on every head..

Gleam 

among the turnings of every wave.

Glorify

the turning open of each life,

each human hand.

from "Magnificat" by Christina Hutchin

My soul magnifies God.

Luke 1:46

*

The Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth is closely connected to the canticle 

of the Magnificat that she sang on that occasion.

*

Painting "The Visit" by Dorothy Webster Hawksley, (1884-1970)

Beyond the Blue Seas

“Beyond the blue seas, and beyond the high mountains” is the stirring description which carries us to the world of Vasilissa the Beautiful and the witch Baba Yaga: perhaps the Russian equivalent of our “once upon a time” phrase. Vasilissa the Beautiful follows much the same themes as our own Cinderella: a story involving a cruel stepmother and stepsisters whose exploitive coldness must be contended with, a pure and beautiful young woman who arouses the stepmother’s jealousy, and the hag Baba Yaga.

As with so many of these stories, Vasilissa’s tale endures because when we read it we sense deeper stirrings of themes to which we feel powerfully drawn. Is Baba Yaga merely a one-dimensional forest witch… or does she perhaps offer us lessons for our own lives? True to tradition, Baba Yaga is grotesquely ugly, with straggling hair as white as death and whose face seems more to be a leathery mask of wrinkles. She has at her command the powers of magical flight. The fence which borders her house is made from human bones, and upon each fence post rests a human skull with brightly-glowing eyes.

The setting has all the spine-chilling attributes of a storybook evil witch, but can we really consider Baba Yaga herself to be ‘evil’? In the story she actually provides Vasilissa with the means to overcome the wicked stepmother and stepdaughters by giving her one of those fiery-eyed skulls. When Vasilissa carries the skull back to her own home, the glowing eyes burn up the tyrannical stepmother together with her daughters, and she is freed to claim back her own life.

So Baba Yaga is perhaps neither strictly ‘good’ nor ‘evil’ in any clear-cut sense, any more than a tornado which destroys a community with its ferocious power can be considered as having done ‘evil’. A torrential downpour of rain might relieve a long period of drought, but the rain is not ‘good’ in any moral sense. The forces of nature simply are. 

Unlike the stepmother, Baba Yaga feels no jealousy towards Vasilissa’s great beauty. She cannot. To Baba Yaga, her own hideous appearance is simply a part of who she is, just as Vasilissa’s beauty reflects her pure soul. We would say that Baba Yaga owns her own ugliness. But what of Vasilissa? Her encounter with Baba Yaga has worked its own changes upon her as well. Baba Yaga has long left behind any need to feel ‘beautiful’. She is who she is. Baba Yaga’s true power has been to liberate herself from herself.

In her turn, in putting up with such cruel treatment in her own home for so long, Vasilissa, by being too submissive and servile, has in a sense kept herself captive. Baba Yaga’s gift to Vasilissa has been to awaken her to her own strength. Vasilissa returns empowered. In a sense the fiery-eyed skull is a mere prop, a showy trick which distracts from what has really taken place. It is the transformed Vasilissa who does the real vanquishing, and it is the transformed Vasilissa who now is free to claim her own life back.

Illustration by Forest Rogers

When I was the Forest

When I was the stream, when I was the

forest, when I was still the field,

when I was every hoof, foot,

fin and wing, when I

was the sky

itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever

wondered was there anything I might need,

for there was nothing

I could not

love.

It was when I left all we once were that

the agony began, the fear and questions came,

and I wept, I wept. And tears

I had never known

before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to

the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,

I begged -I begged to wed every object

and creature,

and when they accepted,

God was ever present in my arms.

                                             And He did not say,

“Where have you

been?”

For then I knew my soul - every soul - has always held

Him.

*

Meister Eckhart 

(1260 – 1328)

Autumn Alchemy

The air is very still. Around them the trees perform their autumn alchemy, transmuting their leaves into gold against the gold of the late October sun: gold against gold. Together they walk between the trees. Hand in hand, as always. They do not speak. Words would add nothing to their togetherness.

Every now and then one of them stops to read a text on a stone, out loud, but softly, while the other waits quietly. And then they walk on. Sometimes the woman bends over as if to brush away some leaves from the stones, and only then they let go of each other. Many of the texts they know by heart, but every now and then they discover a new one, and pause to read it with great concentration. Their bodies stretch forward, and quietly they read names, dates, wishes for peace: gestures of a love which endures long beyond the dates on which they were inscribed.

Sometimes the effort needed is too much for them. Then they speak in turn, each one carrying the words forward to the end of the inscription. The rhythm of the one glides effortlessly into that of the other, as if one voice only is speaking. But a beautiful text they read together, simultaneously. The woman now and then shakes her head compassionately: "So young still, so very young." "Come", says the man then. And at another place they might just nod, or agree together: "Yes, yes, that is a wonderful age!"

Their bench is occupied. A woman, middle-aged, alone. They greet her. "Good afternoon madam." But the woman does not respond. Her head is lowered, sunk deep in her own thoughts with a resigned finality. She hardly seems to notice them as they walk past her. They walk on, a little taken aback, to the next bench. There they rest.

A bird starts singing its evening song, sitting in a tall tree which bends over a new grave. The song sounds so full of life. In the distance a church bell starts ringing, almost as if in response to the bird’s own cadences.

"That late already? Come, we’d better go now." Hand in hand they walk back between the trees, past the woman on the bench. She looks up at last as they approach her, grateful to have the cemetery to herself. Grief is, after all, a private thing. High overhead a formation of geese is flying. Winter is nigh.

Are We Still or are We Moving?

Are we still or are we moving? Even when our senses tell us that we might be keeping perfectly still, we know that we are moving, both with the Earth’s rotation through its cycles of day and night and with the movement of the Earth itself as it swims through the dark ocean of space. But to our ancestors these movements were unknown, unrecognised – and unthought-of. In those distant days, before science started to tell us otherwise, stillness was simply stillness.

But let us put science aside. If we are still, are we still moving? Supposing that we are lying ill in bed with a fever? Just as a burning fever is necessary before the healing can occur, we sometimes must undergo a critical turning point where we are turned around, inside out, undergoing a radical shift, to face a truth within. In life it is often suffering that leads us to open doors within ourselves that we probably would not have opened had we not first experienced this suffering. The suffering creates movement: a movement towards a process in which true healing can begin.

Our ancestors might not have been aware of the Earth’s movement through space, but movement for them came in other, perhaps more richer forms. For them, movement was a process: that sense of a journey which moves ever inwards and outwards once more. In mystic - and mythic - terms, a journey towards a centre is also a journey towards an edge, and it is this paradox which finds its most powerful expression in the form of the labyrinth.

And yet, such a paradox exists only in our everyday material reality, and is seen as being paradoxical only by our everyday senses. Once we are in the labyrinth and we walk the winding path which leads us inexorably towards the centre, we enter a timeless mythic landscape. Such paradoxes will then become meaningless, and the centre which is also an edge becomes a reality: a revealed truth. The labyrinth is a three-dimensional lesson offering a great and simple truth: that a movement – any movement – is a movement towards stillness, and that movement and stillness are themselves an eternal dynamic between action and rest.

Are we still or are we moving? We follow the winding path within ourselves and discover at our innermost centre, at the very core of our being, not the confines which we had imagined, but new infinities offering a true healing of the self.

Saint Michael and the Dragon

When the Saint George of legend valiantly sets out to fight the dragon and rescue the fair maiden, the king’s daughter, he not only accomplishes his mission; he also supplies us with a powerful archetype of the bold knight and the damsel in distress. But: ‘as above, so below’ is the dictum at the cornerstone of Western mysticism, and so we might expect to find Saint George’s bravery mirrored by events in the heavens.

Today, September 29, we celebrate the feast of the archangel Saint Michael, whose name means ‘the one who is like God’. The principal task of Michael is to fight against evil, and evil in Western tradition is personified by the dragon. According to John of Patmos, the author of the Book of Revelation, this battle between these two ultimate adversaries took place in the heavens. John gives us a stirring account of the conflict: Michael and the other angels fight against the dragon and its accompanying demons, “and the great dragon, that old snake… was conquered and thrown out of heavens into the deep.”

When we gaze up into the night sky it might seem a peaceful and orderly place. But appearances can be deceptive, for our telescopes reveal to us stars exploding with such violence that the worlds around them must surely be destroyed. The cosmos is itself a battleground, and reflects the epic struggle of the angels taking place on less visible planes. In John’s narrative Michael emerges as the victor of the battle against the powers of darkness. And so the celebration of Saint Michael on this day is a calling to us to acknowledge and recognize those powers which seek to unbalance the cosmic equilibrium, and each in our own way to strive against them, whether they be destructive forces in the world itself, or demons of a more personal nature with which we must do battle inside ourselves.

And so Saint George rides out to join battle with the terrible monster and rescue the fair maiden. The maiden is essential to the story, for she represents all that is pure and good: those qualities that must be guarded and cherished, especially in the face of evil. Saint George battles the dragon on earth as Saint Michael battles the dragon in the heavens. The one reflects the other, and although the outcome of the battle might at times seem uncertain, to fight and to strive for victory is all and everything.

Painting by James Powell

At the Still Point of the Turning World

To ‘stand in truth’. What this phrase means will be different for each one of us, for we all have our own personal truth. But beyond this personal truth, we probably feel intuitively that such a place to stand is a place beyond the habitual momentum which pushes us forward, a place which is, in T.S. Eliot’s phrase, at ‘the still point of the turning world’. We feel that this is a place of peace and sanctuary, where it is safe for us to let go of all those chattering voices in us that, perhaps for years, have told us that we are ‘unworthy’, or that we ‘cannot’, or that just give us a feeling that we are ‘not good enough’.

This place where we can ‘stand in truth’ is a place where we can dare to push off from to meet new challenges, even if we feel that our legs tremble with the effort. For this place invests us with the authority of our true Spirit. 
But where is this place to stand? Anywhere where we are, we only need to take one step inside ourselves towards it, and we are there. This is because it is a place where the universe wishes us to be. We only need to show that we are willing to be there, and it will rush to meet us, and allow us to ‘stand in truth.

Painting: Saint Agnes by Edward Burne-Jones

A Gentle Guide

As we travel through the landscape of our lives we must be willing “to go” where the Divine Energy takes us. Often, we must be pried out of familiar surroundings, security, comfort zones, and ego identities. The universe will move us: as old skins cannot contain new wine, and we find we are no longer able to live the old life we once found so secure. Once we arrive, temporarily to rest, with introspection we can then look back and say "Ah... now I see the workings of Wisdom in that journey." 

Sophia - Wisdom - always allows us time to get settled into the new skins, the new view, the new unknown. Her Spirit is a gentle guide, quietly leading, prodding, and moving us to a new heightened sense of awareness and a new view of our souls and the internal work that needs to be done.

Ink painting by Gao Xingjian

The Divine Bride

The return of Mary Magdalene into our consciousness can be understood as a collective necessity to revitalise our connection with Sophia: the intuitive or female way of 'knowing' and 'being' - knowledge which comes from the heart (see my earlier post "Sophia - The Breath of Life"). This 'wave of awareness' is becoming increasingly necessary to make it possible to integrate the presently-dominating male energy with its neglected female complementary Sophia energy. The return of the Magdalene therefore is not so much about the historical Mary Magdalene whose sandaled feet walked beside those of Jesus, but is more about the primal concept of the bride, who is the divine completion of Christ the groom.

Many of us now feel that the time has come to honour this 'holy union', because of our growing awareness that we need both male and female energy, on all levels of existence and of consciousness. We ultimately need a balance - a balancing of both male and female energies - to become whole once more. These are basic cosmic principles. Where only the sun, as a symbol of the male, rules, we find barren desert.

In our times we begin to hear the 'voice of the bride', the sacred aspect of Sophia. We must now also begin to listen by giving her back the role of Divine Completion and Partnership. In Christianity this completion lies enfolded in Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. In India in Shiva and Shakti.
Many such holy couples can be found in ancient religions, and all represent the life-force and the eternal return of Life. Divinity is not just an echo of a painting on a ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. It is everywhere. Each one of us enfolds something holy imbued by the Divine. And so the ultimate holy matrimony is present in every human being who unites him/herself with the spirit of its consciousness.

Close-up of Frieze in the St. Volusien’s Church in Foix, France

Once upon a Time

“Once upon a time”. How familiar these words are to us, even though it might have been long years ago in our childhood that we last read them on the printed page. The words conjure forth a sense of events about to unfold for us, of ‘what is going to happen next’, and we know then that we can settle down and listen captivated to some magical story filled with heroic daring and romance. 

Beginnings are full of promise. They hold something that is at the same time majestic and delicate, grandly unfolding and yet also fragile. We might not always know what is to come, but that ‘not knowing’ is the very thing which creates a sense of tension. But because this familiar phrase finds its place at the beginnings of stories, and because these stories have already been written, we know that we are going to find out ‘what is going to happen next’. All that we need to do to find out what that something might be is to sit and listen or read further.

And so we accompany a little girl in a red cape as she goes to visit her grandmother in her cottage in the dark woods, or we journey with a mixture of courage and dread with Beauty as she nears the castle of the Beast. The variations are as infinite as the human imagination, and it is our imagination that defines these stories. 

But whatever their individual variations, these stories always begin with “once upon a time”. But so do they always end with another familiar ringing phrase as well. There waiting patiently at the end of the story like an old friend is the reassuring phrase: “…and they lived happily ever after.” Even as we experience all the adventures and setbacks with which the characters must contend along the way, we know that things will work out in the end because ‘happily ever after’ will be the story's concluding words.

Our life, as we know all too well, tends to have a rather different format from one of these stories. What our imagination cannot define, but only wonder about, is what has yet to be written down. “Once upon a time” could also be the commencement of our own lives, or of the coming year, or even of the day that is about to unfold, but whose events have yet to happen. We can guarantee that it will begin with this phrase. How our own story might end is less certain. Those words ‘happily ever after’ are so imprinted in our consciousness that they might lead us into a sense of false expectation, into thinking that this is the way that things ought to end. But perhaps the words offer something more significant than false expectations which might lead only to disappointment.

Perhaps these formulaic story phrases also offer us promise, of a sense that events are unfolding as they should, even if these events are very different from what we had imagined for ourselves. “Once upon a time” is always the beginning. And if we allow ourselves the space, and perhaps also the compassion and forgiveness for our circumstances, it is always possible that “happily ever after” will be the conclusion.

Illustration: Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs by Lidia Postma

In the Heart of Heaven

Are you feeling restful? We usually take this question as meaning that we are being asked if we feel at ease and contented, if our thoughts are peaceful and untroubled. If all is well with us then it is nice to be able to reply in the affirmative. These are the states of wellbeing in our everyday world, but supposing that we alter the question slightly.

Supposing instead the question is: are you at rest within yourself? Now there is a deeper meaning implied: something which hints at a state of rest beyond simply ‘feeling restful’. The key word seems to be ‘within’. This, we sense, is something beyond feeling merely at ease about things. It carries the promise of a deeper world that is somewhere accessible: a peace beyond even ordinary contentment. But do we even have to feel good about things to reach this inner level?

Even when the ocean is a raging storm on the surface and great white-foamed waves are tossing and rolling, we know that deep beneath those waves all is calm in the depths, where the silent blue waters remain indifferent to the fury of the weather above. So perhaps it is possible that in our own lives we can reach this deeper peace, even when the events around us are filling our every thought with stress and confusion. The storm may rage around us, but these still, quiet depths within ourselves are always there and always accessible. But how are we to access them?

In one of the Gnostic texts known as ‘The Paraphrase of Shem’ the creative Light utters the mysterious phrase:

AI EIS AI OU PHAR DOU IA EI OU

This strange phrase seems to be beyond translation: unrecognisable as a known language, perhaps it is intended as a magical incantation. But in spite of this ambiguity we need not wonder about what is being said, because the following passage in the text gives us the intended meaning: ‘I am in great rest’, is what the Light is saying. The text further explains that in this blissful state all impurities are burned away in the presence of this purest of lights, and a state of rest like no other is offered.

Perhaps only in the heart of heaven is such perfect rest attainable, although we still may taste its sweetness, perhaps through the practice of meditation, or maybe we might use our own methods, such as listening to a favourite piece of music, or reading some choice lines of poetry, or being in a particular place where we feel contented and at home, whether in deep woodlands or by the sea’s shore.

Such places, such states, might seem to be a solitary activity, but always they are a dialogue, a communion with the Divine. In such moments, and without words, the Light is speaking to us, reminding us that even when we are by ourselves, even when we are only one, we still remain, and always will be, One.

Painting by Vasily Polenov

Easter Palms, Easter Eggs

Today it is Palm Sunday, and in countries where the tradition is observed children will walk with crosses made of palm leaves. This tradition commemorates the triumphal ride of Jesus into Jerusalem, when palm leaves were strewn in his path to carpet the way. Here in the Netherlands we have a charming children's rhyme, and this deceptively simple rhyme seems to be in the form of a riddle:

Pallem-pallem-Pasen
Ei koerei
Over ene zondag krijgen wij een ei. 
Eén ei is geen ei, 
twee ei is een hal-lef ei 
Drie ei is een Paas-ei!

"One egg is no egg - 
Two eggs are half an egg - 
Three eggs are an Easter egg!" 

It occurred to me that what at first seems a charmingly simple children's rhyme could be pointing us towards something much deeper, something which could offer us no less than a profound understanding of that most fundamental of ideas: the Holy Trinity.

In Christian tradition the Trinity existed from the beginning, so it is to the beginning of all things that we need to return to unravel this mystery of the Three-in-One:

One - the first state - is also none, for it is an existence without form. When this original state of the One becomes aware of itself – when it contemplates its own being – it becomes two, just as when we regard ourselves in a mirror there are ‘two’ of us, the one being aware of its reflected self. But still this is not yet the complete Self, not yet the complete story.

With this ‘Two’ growing aware of itself, ‘being’ turns into ‘becoming’. What these two manifest together is Form. So in this curious world of the Trinity, one plus one equals, not two, but three. Being, Awareness, Becoming: the three states of the Trinity which are the Three-in-One. As the rhyme tells us: the first egg is no-egg – it has no form. The second egg is half an egg – the process is still only half complete. But three eggs together are a whole egg: the egg has materialised into existence! 

So our humble Easter eggs form a wonderful connection with the 'Cosmic Egg'. And what at first seems like a simple children’s rhyme can contain a profound truth of what happened ‘in the beginning’. 

"Our Lady Częstochowa"

There is also a story (if I remember it correctly) that Peter challenged Mary Magdalene to prove her divine worth by changing the chicken's egg she happened to be holding. Before his eyes the egg turned red - which is how the tradition of painting Easter eggs began!

Painting of "Our Lady Częstochowaby" by Ulla Karttunen

Arise, My Darling, My Beautiful One

Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, 

come with me.

See! The winter is past; 

the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth.

The season of singing has come

and the voice of the turtledove

is heard in our land.

The fig tree ripens its figs,

and the vines are in blossom;

they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my beautiful one,

and come away...

*

Song of Solomon 2:10-13; 

Illustration by Z. Raban

What the Earth Mother Said to Me

Be in awe of the world around you.

It is a living, breathing organism 

fit not only for human habitation

but for the sustenance of all life, 

whatever form it takes.

Remember that all life is sacred;

we are all 

interdependent

interconnected

One.

Treat all with respect

and look for divinity in all things.

It is there 

even if it is not obvious

to the naked eye.

Instead

close your eyes

open your heart

and you shall find it.

Feel it. Live it. Be it.

The “multiverse" is truly within you

and all else that exists.

In the all-encompassing light of divinity

all is sacred

all is loved

all is One.

Respect all things.

Nature is your greatest teacher 

second only to yourself.

Do not harm either. 

The spirits of this place

will help and guide those 

who but ask. Let them be

your teachers, not your deities.

In return for wisdom they ask only 

respect.

Your intuition speaks truth.

Listen to it and do not be deceived

by the false truth of words.

The path to enlightenment 

honors peace.

We are caretakers only; we cannot "own"

the land and the sky.

It is not ours for the taking, 

yet it "belongs" to us

as we "belong" to it.

When Mother Earth is injured, 

all her children feel the pain.

She is a temple to life - she is life.

Feel the universal heartbeat that she holds. 

It is up to us to heal her, 

heal ourselves, 

just because we are here.

Live harmoniously together.

Take only that energy which you need 

to survive and return, replenish it in kind.

Cultivate balance and harm none.

All that you do 

shall be returned to you.

All is sacred. 

All is One.

Such is the Law.

Photo: Edward S. Curtis - 1923

Touch me, but don't touch me.

“Touch me, but don't touch me.” This statement might seem like a paradox. But when we examine it attentively and with compassion, what we realize is that what people want most of all is to be touched in the heart.

People wish to be touched emotionally, yes, but for reasons only they can know, they might prefer to keep some physical distance between the other and themselves: as if they have drawn a circle around themselves which protects them from an over-familiar approach by others, and which at the same time assures themselves some protection. When these signals are understood on both sides, and the boundaries are established, most people will respect these unspoken agreements.

But what happens when these signals show some discrepancy? What happens to these ‘unspoken signals’ when someone appears to be sending out conflicting signals? “Come closer - but not too close!” What happens when this yearning of the heart to be stirred or touched requires us to take a forbidding step out of our carefully-defined comfort zone? And once that step has been taken, how must we react when someone else then reaches out to us and invites us to communicate? Then we find that our precious inner space must undergo expansion and grow in the outer world if we are to be able to communicate in a meaningful way.

This step into a larger unknown might be a moment of hesitation, of withdrawal, even of fear. It is then, in that moment, that we somehow must find our way to compassion: compassion for ourselves and our incapacity to make space in our safe circle. After all, is this not what compassion is? To give space to something to just be, to give space to the other to be whoever he or she is or wants to be? It is unconditional and fearless acceptance of the other person. It is giving space without judgement or interfering with or wanting to change them. Why then should we not also apply all this to ourselves?

It can often seem more difficult to give that space to ourselves than to others. Still we should learn to look at ourselves in a compassionate way whenever we reach a point in our life where we have to move outside of our comfort zone if we wish to fulfil our heart's yearning. 

In allowing ourselves to be emotionally affected, in allowing ourselves to be deeply moved, we engage ourselves. Simone de Beauvoir wrote that the feeling of affection stems from a certain ethical attitude - an attitude in which one dares to connect with others and with the world around us. In that sense to be affected is a choice. And there is always a choice, even if we think that there is none. All we have to do is to dare: to dare to take that step into the emotional unknown, to dare to allow ourselves to be touched. For surely if we allow ourselves this greater space then others will feel this from us, and compassion will flourish and we will touch others as surely as we ourselves are touched. 

Painting: Couple by Edward Burne-Jones

The Transforming Void

Our world is full of distractions. When we feel too crowded-in, we talk in terms of ‘taking a break’, or we might even express a wish to ‘get away from it all’. We might think of such places as being away from the crowd, as offering us a longed-for solitude. But it is perhaps the case that, were we truly to find ourselves in such extreme isolation, we would long for social company, for the daily round of meeting and chatting which we had become conditioned to and which we then would miss. The security of an ‘away-from-it-all’ holiday lies in knowing that it is limited in time, and that we soon-enough will ‘get back to it all’.

But what about those who ‘get away from it all’ and then choose not to return? A previous post on my blog tells the story of Mary of Egypt, a 6th-century hermit who lived in total seclusion in the Jordanian Desert, not for months, nor even for years, but for almost five long decades. Mary was a seeker, a soul on a quest for an encounter with the Spirit, and in this sense her solitary existence was also a pilgrimage: a journey into herself across an inner void perhaps more vast than the great and unforgiving void of the barren wastelands which surrounded her. 

A woman knows this void well. In a world whose social structures, whose very belief systems, are places built upon foundations of male power, women own this inner void as part of their natural estate. From the line of succession of a monarch to that monarch’s eldest son, from a deity who is thought of as being essentially masculine to that deity’s son, from religious beliefs whose texts quite literally spell out that men are a superior creation to women, from places of worship where women must occupy a segregated space that sometimes is actually hidden from the sight of the male congregation: all conspire to drive a woman into her own inner void and claim it as her own. For often-enough it is this emptiness which is the only place that is truly left to her.

But emptiness is power, for a void is never truly ‘empty’. Perhaps we do not need to actually live in a desert or in some other isolated place to experience this sense of pilgrimage, of self-exile. If what is within us, and sometimes what surrounds us, can at times seem like a void which might lead us to bleak despair, then that is perhaps the very moment to remember that it is the seeming emptiness of a void which can be full of the potential for transformation, and that what we experience as a void in our lives is not only not empty, but actually full of promise. The difference is only in our point of view, in how we choose to see the situation.

Who knows what miraculous mandalas Mary might have glimpsed in the red Jordanian sands? When Mary crossed the Jordan to live her life of self-imposed exile she took with her just three loaves of bread. The loaves quickly dried out and became inedible but Mary still managed to survive, for bread lasts but a little while, and yet the sustaining spirit endures.

Photo credit: India Flint

We Are Made For These Times

One night in my dream I heard a clear voice. The voice was so vivid that the phrase remained with me when I awoke. It had said to me: ‘You are made for these times’.

Belief sometimes comes before understanding. I knew that the words struck a chord with me, for they voiced what I do indeed believe: that I truly am meant to be here now, in this time. But why in such a difficult time? Both in my personal life and in unfolding world events there has been much to cope with. We prefer to make decisions based upon sound judgement and known circumstances, but so often we can find ourselves in a situation where we know so little about what might happen as a result of our decision, but we have to make that decision anyway. 

We make our decision, and we do our best to adapt to the changed circumstances. Adaptation is an existential process, certainly if it is in a phase of not knowing where it all might lead to. What are we trying to adapt to? And how do we grow and bear fruit? To find this out is a challenge which we all face in this day and age. But since adaptation is something that simply 'happens', it is not always possible to play a steering part in this process.

We cannot simply decide when and in which direction we adapt. What we instead can do is to let our soul-light shine and radiate outwards - not only by trying to be 'good' and acting out those ideals we think are positive, but by allowing the intrinsic nature of our inner being to be, unfettered by judgement or opinions. As the world is going through change and transformation we also are undergoing transformation on an individual scale. Even those of us who might not even think of ourselves as being particularly intuitive must now be feeling that something big is happening around us, that we are being driven towards… well, towards what, exactly?

There are many things happening right now which suddenly seem to be moving directly against what we might have hoped for: a more peaceful, more enlightened world – which also is a world in which women and men respect each other on equal terms, and children can be children, and not under-age workers or child soldiers. Now, because of these things, it can be so easy to feel overwhelmed by events, to feel that we are powerless against such a tidal flow of negative forces. We are not.

Our personal power is something which can never be taken from us. It is our personal power that gives us the ability to transform. To realize this is to empower ourselves, and this is when our individual transformation becomes a light to those around us, and in turn to those around them, and the power of this ripple effect expands outwards and transforms the greater world. Yes, these times are difficult, but that is exactly why we are here now. This is the time and this is the place, wherever that place may be, to make our stand and let our soul-light shine, for the darker the shadows, the more fiercely this soul-light will burn. We, all of us, ‘are made for these times’.

I wish you, my dear reader, all the trust and soul-power to shine brightly throughout the coming year.

Painting by Greg Spalenka