Untying knots by the light of the rising sun

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. - Jean Cocteau

This morning's beach walk was clear and breezy. I still feel restless, like there is a problem to be solved, a journey to be embarked upon, and I suspect the lesson of patience is still on my horizon.

As I clicked on the radio and started the car, Henry Purcell's "The Gordian Knot United" was announced. I sat and watched the waves roll in, and listened, and thought about knots.

The Gordian knot, beyond its history, has become a metaphor for a particularly difficult problem, one with no seeming solution that one must be willing to cut away in order to solve. Perhaps that slashing represents the "out of the box" thinking (my own well-used metaphor). Today it seems to me to be an impatient rush to solution, that eliminates the healing and wisdom of the journey and process of finding a new pathway.

A little internet research this morning also reveled the healing power of the Gordian Knot. In fact, many people wear them as spiritual jewelery with healing properties...

"Three are the circles of existence:
The circle of Light where dwells nothing but God and only God can traverse it.
The circle of Chaos, from which all things by nature arise from death.
The Circle of awareness where all things spring from life."
Emerald tablet of Thoth

I'm not really sure I need to start wearing anything, my current practice of Spirit works fine for me. But today I do feel more open to new avenues of learning. I see in today's musings a reminder that some problems contain a gift in the solving, more so than the solution.

Clearness?

"Your job is to find what the world is trying to be." - William Stafford

I'm doing a lot of musing on a F/friend's blog post today about how she feels God speaks to her in a very direct way. Today was a very different Hampton Beach from yesterday. The skies were clear, and I felt as if I could see for miles.

I did not, however, feel on the inside any better than yesterday morning - I still felt lost in a fog, not the fog of unknowing or wonderment or forgetting (gracious we have many kinds of fog!). Just the simple fog of confusion, which muddles my process, leads me away from peace and leadings, and creates fear that is unwarranted and toxic.

This is the part where the bargaining with Spirit always begins for me. "If I could only glimpse one moment, be given one small step with which to proceed on the path...". This is also where the great sages and mystics of the Universe have also gotten stuck. Often. Somedays I am gracefully kicked back to "beginning mind" - or more often, I spend a little time wallowing.

Today I opened Stafford's book (which is always in my glovebox) and his words spoke to me, in a clear directive....

"Your job is to find what the world is trying to be."

The world, for today, is my Quaker Meeting. For there is where I feel so often that we collapse into a lack of Spirit, a lack of intent, an elimination of prayerful space. This week I have been hit with "nudges" - simple but profound signs (and interactions with others) that we are wanting to go deeper, to experience each other and Spirit in community. For me, the community is always involved. That's the hardest part - I'm a really a pretty good solitary spirit - involve others and I get cranky and trapped in assumptions. Repeatedly.

I have no idea what is in store next. Which is most likely exactly where I need to be in order for anything to happen!

Fog.

(I am back to blogging. My hiatus was accompanied by lots of journaling - but I'm finding it too tedious to have to copy into my notebook all the poetry and quotations with arthritic hands. We'll see how this goes.)

This morning I took a long walk on Hampton Beach. I almost didn't head there this morning, as there was thick fog and rain was threatening. I am glad I ended up there - as often happens, the weather, the beach, the sea, all spoke in metaphor to my condition today.

The fog was so thick I could not see more than a few feet into the beach - I could not tell if the tide was high or low, and I could barely hear the waves. I was reluctant to venture out into the mist, but I kicked off my flip-flops and headed into the cool, freshly raked sand.

About ten steps in, and I could not see the sidewalk I had just left. I still couldn't see the ocean, and I felt myself in an uncomfortable place between two worlds. Most likely because of the heavy mist around me, the separation felt tangible. I kept on walking, wondering when I would see the water. The sand became smoother, wetter, and soon I saw the stones and heard the waves.

This morning was a very low tide, and I had to walk out even further to the ocean. I turned around, and could not see any sign of the boardwalk, my car, or much of the sand. What surprised me, and made me smile, is what I did find.

At the ocean's edge, there were people - lots of them! We beach walkers are a strange bunch - rising to greet the dawn when others are still sleeping, and there is an unsaid sort of understanding as we nod in greeting to each other as we pass on the beach. Its own kind of community, people joined in their love of the ocean and cool mornings and peace.

Today's reflective moments for me all centered around community, unknowing, risks, and how we find ourselves. I feel right now like I am on some sort of journey, and the next steps, and the meeting of the community, cannot happen unless I am willing to venture out and lose sight of the shore. And there on this misty morning, the community was waiting for me.


In the Fog

It's strange to wander in the fog!
A lonely bush, a lonely stone,
No tree can see the other one,
And one is all alone.

The world was full of friends back then,
As life was light to me;
But now the fog has come,
And no one can I see.

Truly, no one is wise,
Who does not know the dark
Which inevitably and silently
Does from others him part.

It's strange to wander in the fog!
Life is loneliness
No Man knows the other one,
And one is all alone.

- Hermann Hesse

Books, books, books...

I spent this afternoon cleaning and organizing some bookshelves in the worship room at the meetinghouse with some Friends. The result is a neater space, the beginnings of an accessible library, and a realization that we own some of the very books on my "to read" list.

We also had a large pile of Bibles in the meetinghouse, most in pretty poor condition, and probably needing to be disposed of. We saved a few copies of the newer ones, and promptly stored them on a high shelf behind a closed door that might be very noisy if one wanted to open it during meeting for worship, perhaps, let's say, to access one of those Bibles.

I was back there this evening, and as I sat quietly I was overcome by a certain sadness. I tend to end up in that worship room many a morning, and as often as not I tend to grab a pile from the stack-of-bibles-that-used-to-be-there. I instinctively looked at the empty shelf where they used to be, and wasn't sure what to think. I remembered back to this month's query, which had just been read yesterday in this very room:


Spiritual Life
Do you live in thankful awareness of God's constant presence in your life?
Are you sensitive and obedient to leadings of the Holy Spirit?
Do you seek to follow Jesus, who shows us the way?
Do you nurture your spiritual life with prayer and silent waiting and with regular study of the Bible and other devotional literature?

I'm not one to get really picky with these queries, I see them as point for deeper reflection - in fact, I must admit I might not often even remember them specifically the next day. And yet this one stuck with me - the Bible/Jesus parts. I'm just not sure how to process all of this. I'm sure this nagging feeling must mean something - perhaps I'll figure it out tomorrow in filling up the space where the Bibles used to be?

Update: Hey hey hey - Brent Bill's thinking about Bibles too over on his (fantastic) blog - and this post just popped over to me as I was finishing mine. YAY.

The Quest

Rare moments come to us in our journey when the penny drops, the tumblers click, the pieces fall into place, the lights come on, and our breath is taken away. The old paradigm falls away behind us like a port of departure, and we are won over to new possibilities, caught up in a new way of seeing, looking toward a new and wide horizon. The Lord has more light and truth to break forth, we believe, and so we raise our sails. We are embarked on our quest. - Brian McLaren

I've been reading some complementary books this week - Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces and Karen Armstrong's The Case For God. Both have elements of myth, folklore, journeys, and a sense of one's "quest" to find a higher power, meaning in life, making sense of the greater world in which we live.

Although I am reading Campbell's book for a spiritual book club, (thus my reading is focused on more "religious" themes of late) I am hearkened back to many of the wise words of Julia Cameron. She, too, speaks of this quest, this journey - in terms of our latent creativity, our blocks in becoming our true selves, the obstacles we find and in many ways, create.

I think if we focused more these days on the universality of the quest itself we might all get by a bit better. When the quest becomes a search for "heaven" - MY heaven, MY God, MY spiritual path - we no longer hold fellowship with each other. And what a rare gift to be able to recognize that quest, that longing in others, regardless of its name. Great artists have tried to show us this path for years, in their own unique interpretation. What makes one painting flow, speak to us, call out to us in a way we instantly connect with? It is that thing that cannot be named. It is that spirit, that connection, that I hope we are able in this world to gain more focus of.

We undertake certain spiritual exercises to achieve alignment with the creative energy of the universe..As a teacher, I often sense the presence of something transcendent -- a spiritual electricity, if you will -- and I have come to rely on it in transcending my own limitations. I take the phrase inspired teacher to be a quite literal compliment. A higher hand than just my own engages us. Christ said, "Wherever two or more are gathered together, there I am in your midst." The god of creativity seems to feel the same way. The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity. Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as the creator but seldom see creator as the literal term for artist. I am suggesting you take the term creator quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. - Julia Cameron

CERTAINTY

CERTAINTY

Certainty undermines one's power, and turns happiness

into a long shot. Certainty confines.

Dears, there is nothing in your life that will

not change - especially your ideas of God.

Look what the insanity of righteous knowledge can do:

crusade and maim thousands

in wanting to convert that which

is already gold

into gold.

Certainty can become an illness

that creates hate and

greed.

God once said to Tuka,

"Even I am ever changing -

I am ever beyond

Myself,

what I may have once put my seal upon,

may no longer be

the greatest

Truth."

~ Tukaram ~

Trying to be flexible. We had a big Peace Center event this week - it went well, it was well attended, we became more informed. However, it left me feeling an absence of a more immediate impact. While I know we cannot ever know the impact of our actions in the long term, the discussion of the evening focused around our country's going to war, while so many other planetary concerns are growing at an alarming rate. How do we also address those concerns, locally, in our own environment, as we seek to create a better future for all of us?

My whole graduate degree, in fact perhaps my whole life since, has been a focus "outside the box". We will need this skill if we are to combat the future problems of the world. I found myself trapped this week in a perception of what "peace" should look like. I felt limited, powerless, unable to help anywhere. But by letting myself be open to the problems as they really are, not just as I perceive them, I may be able to slowly find a new way to solve them. Not all of them, certainly not even the large ones, but at least a small local difference.

Creating Space

Imagine your soul as being like the
Tyne Bridge. There are busy times and
quiet times. The job of the bridge is not
to ask what is in the cars or lorries but
simply to bear their weight for a few
seconds and then allow them to go on
their way. There is no problem when the
flow of traffic is even, but when breakdowns
and bottlenecks occur, the fights
and the impatience begin. Your soul,
too, has to take the weight and let it go.
The suffering becomes prolonged only
when you do no acknowledge its existence
and let it pass on. Then it sits on
your soul like a judgment.

The time to repair the bridge is in the
night when the traffic is light. Your
prayer in quiet times gives you the
strength to cope with the heavy, busy
times. You dig, patch and repair in the
night. As a result, the world can flow
over your soul in the day without congestion.
You must allow the flow of
faith, love, healing, hope, joy and light
to pass through you into the world. You
must allow the flow of hatred, darkness
and sin to flow from the world through
you to God.

All of this is done by prayer, and by
forgiveness of yourself, of others and
perhaps even of God Himself for what
you feel He has done to you. Little by
little, you grow in the power of prayer,
in the ability to bear the weight and
accept the contradictions of the two way
flow between God and the world.

This passage from Aidan Clarke has popped up in a few places for me this week. I feel like I have been trapped recently in that "heavy time" Clarke speaks of. And yet, my efforts to create a quiet space, to meditate and clear my mind of daily troubles, has become a practice for me that has helped me this week. By the end of the week, I was able in visits (with Friends socially, in committee meetings, and in other meetings for worship) to see some new insights, enjoy being in the company of others, and be open to find new similarities of experiences that give me strength. The small moments, the taking time to really look at a painting, read a passage of scripture, visit a friend in need, were actually all the "big moments" I needed.