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

A Season of Waiting

On the threshold

waiting

for the golden light

that desires to mirror itself

in my heart

inside

is silence

Advent, we say, is the season of waiting. We might more truly say that Advent is the season of desire - and desire unfulfilled, at that. Waiting is a form of emptiness, but it’s an emptiness that implies expectation: we wait for someone or something, do we not? And we desire the arrival of what we await.

In our hectic world we constantly face a barrage of distractions, from the chattering voices of social media with which we constantly keep in touch via our ubiquitous smartphones, from the pressures of commercialism which urge us to buy, buy, buy, at the very time of the year when we should be retreating into ourselves in silent contemplation and reflection. For this also is an aspect of advent: it is – or should be – a time of quiet reflection.

If only we can manage to be silent in ourselves, to still all those chattering voices which distract us, then we allow the true spirit of advent to reveal itself. That sense of expectant wonder is always present. Advent is in every moment. And that moment is universal. “Peace, be still.” were the words we are told Jesus spoke to calm the storm on that far Sea of Galilee. If we allow those words to echo in our hearts, whether we are Christian or not, and whether we celebrate the Christian day of Advent or not, we allow the true spirit of a universal advent to emerge, and we find ourselves filled with a renewing spirit of anticipation, wonder and silent joy.

The Journeying Star

Oh my heart, my other self;

you who dwell in city or in desert,

or in the cathedral silence of forests,

or close by the sea’s great voice

which is my voice also,

you look up and wonder at my shining.

Do you ask yourself:

what keeps me fixed in the night?

Why do I not journey

like the white and journeying moon?

There surely is heaven enough

in which to move;

there surely is space enough

for me to arc across the dark

above your head.

And yet I remain in my appointed place,

your dependable star,

obedient to your own stillness,

as fixed in my place as you are in yours:

we two are as immobile as mountains.

Perhaps you imagine

that if you remain in your place

then you always can find me;

you look up, and there I shall be:

we two are as predictable as the tides.

And then one night you move.

For the first time you dare

to take a single step,

and wonder of wonders:

I take that step with you.

You begin to walk, you move:

and I move with you.

And so your step becomes a journey,

and I journey with you

towards some promise,

some appointed destiny

some assignation rich with moment

for you and all who journey with you

towards your secret-bright redemption.

But wonder of wonders:

for the whole time you have been travelling

it is I who have remained in my appointed place:

it is you, my heart, who have been journeying;

and still you always can find me,

and I shall be with you

at your secret-bright redemption.

Illustration by Edmund Dulac, from the book The Stealers of Light by the Queen of Roumania

As Dew on the Earth

Choose now life

It descends from heaven

as dew on the earth

as light out of darkness

It comes as a storm wind

in squalls of darkness and light

Blessed are your nights, blessed are your days

your heart, your mind, your face.

*

Nu kies dan het leven

het daalt uit de hemel

als dauw op de aarde

als licht uit het donker.

Het komt als een stormwind 

in vlagen van donker en licht

Gezegend je nachten, gezegend je dagen,

je hart,  je verstand,  je gezicht.`

Huub Oosterhuis

translation by me

Artwork by Frank Zumbach

The Waves

The waves today are whales:

curling flukes of foam

that dissolve and vanish forevermore

as each wave folds upon itself

to break at my feet in a rush of white

here on the Oregon shore.

These are the leviathans of the Pacific

become one with their ocean home,

but more than this: these journeying giants

have now become the ocean itself:

tails of water, tails of foam.

In my vision it is the waves

which take the forms of tails,

slapping and rushing at the sand

to beach themselves at last,

wet and exhausted on the shore.

There are no whales, not today.

Perhaps tomorrow,

if I walk this same stretch of shore I will see them:

plumes of mist in the grey distance,

cruising the tug of currents

to their feeding grounds in the north.

For today, I have the white tails of the waves

with their memories older than an age

to remind me of times before my own

when all was new and beginning,

and the whales, the slide of currents,

the great ocean’s roll

were all and everything,

and the floating moon and the island sun

and the whales and the waves and my soul,

then as now, were one.

More than One Tone

Whisper

like a twig does

with a bird

like a snowdrop does

with the light

to hear a sigh

more than one tone of the harp

in one little shell

Feathers

There's a room I can glimpse in my mirror

Far and far from my home

This room is a river of fire

And this room is a circle of stones

This room is a plain that's as wide as the world

And this room is a land unknown

This room is a place where the owl calls

Through forests of mystery

And this room is a shore where the wild wave horses

Toss their white manes in the sea.

Feathers for my mirror

Feathers for my wings

Feathers for the world

Where the wild wolf sings

Feathers for my stories

Feathers for my pain

Feathers for my shelter

From the night's dark rain.

But if this room is a shadow

And if this room is a dream

And if this room is only a room

Then how would my mirror seem?

But feathered is my mirror

Feathered are my wings

And feathered is the world

Where my wild wolf sings

Feathered is the drum

Feathered is the moon

Feathered is the heart

That journeys alone.

And each feather that I find on my pathway

Each feather I must work to earn

I will know for each feather

That I give to my mirror

My mirror gives me one in return.

Nereid

How my body aches!

The tyrant shore's heaviness

drugs my tired limbs.

My throat is raw from breathing in

this unfamiliar, unseen nothing.

How can I not be exhausted

from such sustained effort

merely to remain alive

in this alien world of air?

Now dawn's silent light

has snared me,

has cast a silken net

across my glistening skin,

tight and unforgiving.

How can I know

how much time has passed

since I stranded here?

A single night?

A cycle of the white and silent moon?

A thousand years?

I recall stories of others of my kind,

washed ashore and becoming something other,

both less and more than they had been.

They never returned.

But in my struggle with the tides,

with the tug and slide of currents,

with life itself,

even in my struggle with this cruel nothing,

which cracks my throat with every breath,

I am resolved.

I will not become as those

whose lives are lived

in this unfamiliar, alien world of air.

I will not become something

other than who I truly am.

And so I mark my time.

I will wait patiently in this pain of dawn

I will wait in the sun's heat soon to come

I will wait curled up, unmoving:

a silken shadow where no shadows fall.

I will wait until some kind and trusting tide

returns me to my ocean home

in a single night,

or in a cycle of the white and silent moon,

or in a thousand years.

How could I live in this alien air?

How could my feet tread this alien earth?

I am as patient as the tides,

as inscrutable as my Mother Ocean

whose child I am

forever.

The Voice of the Ocean

Recently I visited Cape Lookout State Park on the Oregon coast:  a large peninsula which juts out into the Pacific. Standing at the entrance to the Cape I had a view of the ocean to either side, both to the north and to the south. On the north side lies a spectacular steep-sided bay which almost, but not quite, cuts the end of the Cape into an island. Being in such a place made me feel that I was standing at the edge of the world, and what lay beyond was all unknown and still to be discovered.

Now let's imagine that this landscape is a landscape made of time - which in some real sense, it is. Let's say that the coast lying to the south is the past, and the coast to the north is the future, and where I was standing on the peninsula is the present moment. This is the familiar landscape of time in which we all stand, with the past flowing through the present moment towards the unknown future. But there is another 'time' beyond this: the 'time' of the great ocean itself. To the ocean this 'past-present-future' time is meaningless. The ocean is eternal.

In that magical place that I had stood, the world around me seemed to offer me a lesson: a reminder of the eternal - and oh, how easy it is to think of the ocean in such a way! The unhurried waves role onto the wide beach, and the waves are themselves just the surface signs of the currents and undertows which flow unseen beneath. And even though the depths of that ocean remained hidden to me, the moving waves hinted at what might be happening below its surface: migrating whales on their long journey down to the southern feeding grounds (Earlier in the week I saw them spouting offshore!) and other creatures of that watery world that live out their lives in the silence of those blue depths.

Now overhead a bright harvest moon is shining, big and pale gold, the colour of ripe grain - just the way a harvest moon should look! The seasons turn, the waves which I hear from my window as I type this roll in to the wide sandy beach, as they have done for a thousand years and more, and these reflections on my visit to the Cape can be harvested. Unseen below the surface, the great whales slowly onward under the moon. In my imagination I can hear their songs echoing from the depths like the great voice of the ocean itself, and I feel that, simply because I am thinking about them, a small part of me is journeying with them through that deep blue eternity.

On the Shore

 

Almost exactly one hundred years ago the photographer Edward S. Curtis recorded with his camera an elderly Chinook woman gathering clams on the Pacific shore. The woman, we believe, was the daughter of the great Seattle, and was known as Princess Angelina. Now a century later, just a little farther south of where that photograph was taken, I stand on that same shore gazing out over that same ocean.

That photograph which Curtis made has inspired and informed so much of my life and my own writing and poetry. It is the archetypal image of a lone woman standing on the shore. Even a short while ago and half a world away I could not have imagined that I would be standing here, but a dear friend has made it possible, and the wished-for unthinkable has happened. The pathways of our life’s journeyings, whether they are those which happen on a map or which take place inside ourselves, are in the end always unpredictable. We know this so well through experience. We make our plans and the gods smile at our naivety and send us off in another direction entirely. At times that other direction is something other than we would have wished for, and yet on other occasions – as has happened to me now – it can bring rewards the more remarkable exactly because they were unexpected.

How many other footprints have been left on this same Pacific shore where I now stand? Princess Angelina’s certainly, but also those of Sacagawea, the courageous young Shoshone woman who was the invaluable guide on the William Clark and Merriweather Lewis expeditions of exploration. It was the wish of Sacagawea to see the ocean, and – just once – she did. And what of the many 19th-century settlers who with their wagons followed the Oregon Trail west? Finally to have reached this same shore where I now stand must have seemed like a blessing indeed after facing and persevering with the many dangers and hardships of their long journey. But to those settlers the ocean also clearly defined the limits of that journey: unlike the frontiers of the land it was a frontier that was absolute. Thus far, said the Oregon shore, and no farther.

The distant waves which even now I hear from my window as I write this have rolled in from another east: from Japan, from China, from Indonesia. The ocean as well has its journeys, and the patterns of its travelling currents are more predictable than the patterns of human travels. And what of my own footprints which I leave here on this shore? They will have been washed away by those journeying waves even before today’s sun has set, and certainly long before I myself travel back home to the Netherlands. And yet I have peace and take strength from knowing that, even though our timing might be different, they at last have joined those of Princess Angelina and Sacagawea. What the waves erase so easily finds a more enduring place in the memory, and it is there that my fragile footprints in the Oregon sand will remain.