Perfect Fairy Tale

Sense of the Sacred

                 

The world seen through the windows of my study, even in the muted tones of autumn, abounds in natural beauty. And still, it's a world away from the rainforests and breath-stopping coastlines of Australia where we felt spirited away to a magical place.   

But there, too, like the D.C. suburbs where we resided for many years, the streets outside our airport hotel in Sydney, convenient for the return flight, were of a different world, much more grey and noisy. In order to enter the beauty of nature and especially to commune there with the divine, we may need to realize the different realities or "worlds" around and within. 

            In Religion and the Order of Nature, Nasr contrasts a) the world that can be seen, loved, and nurtured as sacred with z) one targeted for pollution and destruction by humans driven by voracious intentions bent on feeding insatiable appetites. In addition to feeding sensory lust for material possession, the rapacious aggression can result also from a thirst for knowledge stripped of the sense of the sacred. “The environmental crisis requires not simply rhetoric or cosmetic solutions but a death and rebirth of modern man and his worldview.” Humans must be reborn to conceive of “a sacred realm reflecting the divine creative energies” (pp. 6-7).

         It’s almost as if inhabitants of this globe are on different planets using the same words but ruled by hugely different worlds. Certain words reference a person’s dominant values such as “nature,” “money,” “sense,” and perhaps most importantly, “God.” And to boggle the mind, the same word can mean vastly different worlds. Each person serves a master of meaning whether it is his/her own self, a quest for knowledge, the Divine Source, or some other force. 

         A complication arises when the culture surrounding words and worlds pervades the individual so that meaningfulness can scarcely be found--unless consciousness develops and shifts . Nasr elaborates how the meaning of Nature has dramatically transformed so that the presence of God often goes missing due to the “scientific revolution” and the “death of God.” It can happen unless a person is “reborn” (as noted above). Without the reborn consciousness, persons in the “modern” world tend to treat nature (including plants, animals, and “othered” humans) as objects suitable for exploitation. The following passages detail the contrasting worlds and significant consequences.

“… among all the factors distinguishing one type of humanity from all others was the presence of the skeptical vein. It led to many scientific discoveries but also to the loss of sacred knowledge and in some cases the sense of the sacred itself. And it remains to this day a salient feature of that type of human being for whom the desecration of nature is meaningless because there is nothing sacred to start with. . . this type of naturalism involved more the rediscovery of pleasure than of the spiritual significance of the body or nature. . . There thus appeared this other important characteristic of modern man so prevalent to this day, that of being a prisoner of his senses, which he must seek constantly to satiate without limit, and that of a follower of a naturalism that is against the order of nature as a value in itself, a being devoted to the bodily gratification without the least interest in the significance of the body in the religious, metaphysical, and cosmological sense.” (p. 172)

The “rediscovery of pleasure” and the “bodily gratification” especially expresses itself in the “appreciation of the importance of money.”

“The modern world needs nothing more than the so-called world-denying mysticism that is nothing other than its ascetic aspect that seeks to control the passions and to slay the dragon within, without which the greed that drives the current destruction of nature cannot be controlled. Moreover, world-denial is simply one aspect of a single reality whose other dimension is ‘world-confirmation,’ but the soul cannot confirm the world as sacred without first of all denying the ‘world’ that disperses the soul from within and makes it ever more reliant upon the material environment for the satiation of an ever-increasing thirst. One wonders how, in the light of the crucial nature of the problem at hand, a deeper distinction is not made by often well-intentioned eco-theologians between the world as enticement toward passion, greed, and aggression and the world as God’s Creation and ultimately theophany.” pp. 217-18. 

True Signs

        By March of 2018, I’d just about enjoyed enough of my first year of retirement doing nothing. Also we'd had about enough of winter. So we put together a plan, and on the 14th of that month we set out on the adventure to see our good friends who had moved away some three months earlier. In addition to spending time with them in Abiquiu, New Mexico, we’d arranged to see the Grand Canyon (where I took over 100 photos), Monument Valley (400+ photos!), and on the return trip planned to visit with family in Texas and South Carolina. As noted in the video,

we followed the advice of Robert Burns to change plans along the way: “The best laid schemes o' mice and men/ Gang aft agley” (from “To A Mouse”).

         Returning home, remembering the experiences, reviewing photos taken on the trip, and reading more about O’Keeffe, my reflections seemed to spiral around the Beloved, the soul, and b/Beauty. The capacity to enter the imaginal world happens as our soul takes form in the canyon beauties: the stone and earth formations, the trees and plants, as well as the creatures like the Evening Grosbeak that appeared in Bandelier National Monument Park. 

     Beauty in a dry, seemingly hostile environment, offers insight; perhaps more than thought, the experience and presence there feed more feeling for the fusion of jamal/jalal, the gentle inseparable from the hard, lovely interwoven with severe, both familiar and mystical, the One. It’s the rose, the lily, the cactus blooming that glows because it celebrates the union with the thorn, the skull, the dark mystery. Love draws the human into the divine. 

     Some changes we made to the planned itinerary can be attributed to the influence of an emerging fascination with the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. We found ourselves following the O’Keeffe track around Abiquiu, into Ghost Ranch, the White Place, Santa Fe, and Palo Duro Canyon. Back home, her art continued flowing from books such as: 

* Georgia O’Keeffe by Charles C. Eldredge  

“O’Keeffe’s work had, from her earliest days as a professional artist, elicited comments like ‘revelation.’ When Alfred Stieglitz first encountered her abstract drawings in 1916, he responded immediately to their power. As recalled by one witness to the moment, ‘They were a revelation to him.’ . . . William Fisher, for example, praised the ‘mystic and musical drawings,’ which he likened to religious ‘revelations’ in their ‘cosmic grandeur.’” (p. 13)

* Lovingly Georgia: The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O’Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer edited by Clive Giboire. 

“Not only is [O’Keeffe’s painting] a piece of consummate craftsmanship, but it likewise possesses that mysterious force, that hold upon the hidden soul which distinguishes important communications from the casual reports of the eye.” (quoting Lewis Mumford, p. 295)

* Georgia O’Keeffe by Georgia O’Keeffe

“It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint” (p. 88).

     I wonder how those of us who do not paint or dance or play music deal with clarifying “the intangible thing.” The feeling for that marks a true sign, doesn’t it? I believe it’s the guiding inspiration that draws each person to participate in his and her life as an artist.

     Perhaps for me it’s doing photography especially when further expressed in digital media to play out a theme. “True Signs” swirls together art, photography, music, and words to explore the way I reach for and into relationship with the divine.  In producing the digital media project, I found myself wondering if the purpose of an artist, at least for me in this moment, points toward revelation; an artist aims at developing consciousness that is increasingly sensitive to and responsive to signs of God. How might our knowing, our evolving consciousness, attune more poignantly into the inner and outer presence of the divine? 

     Tracking signs of God is scarcely a new thing. About a thousand years ago, Hamid al-Ghazali opens The Alchemy of Happiness: 

“Knowledge of self is the key to the knowledge of God, according to the saying: ‘He who knows himself knows God,’ and, as it is Written in the Koran [41:53], ‘We will show them Our signs in the world and in themselves, that the truth may be manifest to them’” (Trans. Claud Field, p. 17). 

The Study Quran links this passage with Q 51:20-21 “And upon the earth are signs for those possessing certainty, and within your souls…”

As happens often with the Qur’an, we hear echoes of other religious texts: 

* Psalm 19 on the handiwork of God: “day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge…”

* Isaiah 7:11, “Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; make it deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”

* John 2:11, “This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.”

* Matthew 16:3, “And in the morning, 'There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?’”

The mystic Rabia expressed her relationship with the divine presence:

 “O Lord, I have never listened to the sound of animals, or the movement of trees, or the murmur of water, or the song of birds, or the sitting in the shadows, or the sound of the wind, or the echo of thunder, but I have seen them as a sign of Your Oneness showing me that there is nothing like You.”   The Knower of Allah,  Rabia al-Adawiyya

Contemporary historian of religion, Diana Butler Bass, elaborates the importance of persons today shifting consciousness in order to realize the presence of the divine. 

“Roiling around the planet is a shifting conception of God…unmediated and local, animating the natural world and human activity in profoundly intimate ways…the personal, mystical, immediate, and intimate is emerging as the dominant way of engaging the divine. What was once reserved for a few saints has now become the quest of millions around the planet—to be able to touch, feel, and know God for one’s self.” (Grounded, p. 9)

“Where is God? . . . The grounded God is a God in relationship with space and time as the love that connects and creates all things, known in and with the world. . . . God is not above or beyond, but integral to the whole of creation, entwined with the sacred ecology of the universe.” (Grounded, pp. 10, 25)

     In reading Grounded, in reflecting on O’Keeffe’s art, through meditating on sacred text, and while remembering the experiences of our journey, I’m wondering about the application of soil quality (ranging from fertile to depleted to rebuilt) in relation to the stuff a human has that is comparable to the soil, the earth. Is it helpful to consider our “ground” for consciousness in this sense? In addition to the purification process, there is also the rebuilding. Consciousness, like earth, has been decimated by erosion and poor management; but it’s reassuring to experience rebuilding it. Purified and rebuilt consciousness provides the ground for discerning the signs of God. Upon this fertile ground, God-consciousness can be built.

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Blog entries referenced in the video include:

* Love Memories in the Imaginal World  (Feb 19, 2018)

* Tracking on the Path of the Heart (Feb 10, 2018)

* Divine Intoxication   (Jan 18, 2018)

* Foggy Steps in the Path of the Heart  (Nov 8, 2017)

* The Cipher of a Mystery  (Sept 18, 2017)

* Truth: Sacred-Text/Lived-Experience  (Jun 22, 2017)

* The Infinite in One Step  (Feb 2, 2015)

* The Sense You Were Born With  (July 7, 2012)

Divine Intoxication

Our Tavern of Woods, Jan 17, 2018

In comic-strip pith, “Word” signals “That’s it!” as in “Truth!” But in real life, words only approximate and often miss the mark, frequently crafted with intention to deceive, witnessed poignantly in the discipline of rhetoric. Her cousin, Religion, focuses on guiding discernment into truth, plumbing the eternal word becoming flesh, tuning the human voice toward resonance with its Source. Both rhetoric and religion testify that not all, not even most, scratching on surfaces  approaches the sanctity of “Word.” And yet this writing and reading, this employment of words sometimes corrects a false step, sometimes allows a a scent or taste of the water of life, the "mystical intoxication."

   Concerning taste, this preoccupation with “word” came about, perhaps, due to the trouble stirred up by Hafiz choosing to feature “tavern” when “temple” is meant—isn’t it? Franklin Lewis, in his chapter in Hafiz and the Religion of Love (Ed. Leonard Lewisohn), comments:

“Thus the wine tavern becomes the locus—the ruins on the outskirts of town, where the non-Muslims drink clandestinely so as not to offend public morality, the liminal space outside society—while the dawn becomes the poetic moment when divine intervention arrives, allowing wine and relief, or mystical intoxication. [Lewis illustrates with the first line of Ghazal 479] ‘At dawn a call from the wine tavern, wishing good fortune/ It said come back, for you are an old haunter of this court.’” (pp. 274-5)

The next line from the ghazal extends the purpose of Hafiz playing the word “tavern.” In Peter Avery’s translation:

“A draught from us drink like Jamshid, so that of both worlds’ mystery/ The beam of light from the world-seeing cup might inform you.” (p. 580, Collected Lyrics of Hafiz of Shiraz)

Of course, in the spirit of good mythopoesis, Hafiz wants to shake us, to wake us, in order that we might search out hypocrisy, alert for hidden idols, finding the ones that continue to separate us from the Love of God; that we might come back to the source of inspiration, walking in the mystery of both worlds. 

God invites us every moment to do this, to purify in order to live more cleanly. To help me enter the invitations, as explained earlier, I’m intending a year-long project that connects (A) David George Haskell’s study (The Forest Unseen) of his forest mandela with 

~14 cardinals

(B) the woods that illumine our windows. We’re now on his second entry, the one for January 17. On this date, his woods like ours are filled with snow. We wonder how the snowflake reaches its essential uniqueness, turning through the spirit wind, glistening in the illuminating light.

Haskell’s meditation (pp. 8-11) flows back to Johannes Kepler (1611) who “wrote that snowflakes are showing us the spirit of the earth and God, the ‘formative soul’ that inhabits all being.” Yet Kepler was frustrated in not showing “a material explanation” and still his “musings on the snowflake…contributed to the development of our modern understanding of atoms.” Haskell brings our contemporary X-ray analysis to the design of matter: our woods, water, and us.

“The basic hexagonal shape of snowflakes is elaborated in varied ways as the ice crystal grows, with the temperature and humidity of the air determining the final shape… Other combinations of temperature and humidity cause the growth of hollow prisms, needles, or furrowed plates. As snowflakes fall, the wind tosses them through the air’s innumerable slight variations of temperature and humidity. No two flakes experience exactly the same sequence, and the particularities of these divergent histories are reflected in the uniqueness of the ice crystals that make up each snowflake.” pp. 9-10

As a side note, Kepler has also received recent attention in relation to his role in enlightening dark consciousness evident in witch hunts, including the one involving his own mother.* 

The human defines the authenticity of word as the individual resonates uniquely back into the original promise, the timeless covenant between God and human, the affirmation of sovereignty. Humans also revolve through cultural drafts and shadows that challenge each of us to sound the authentic word that is true to the Source. Thus, again, the purpose of religion. 

        Sufis talk of this walking as the Path of Attraction. But life abounds with attractions, and so many are bewitchments from the impurities picked up in the currents of culture. The true calling is to discern, to follow, and to voice the Word. God is Everywhere. The purification back to the Source leads to and follows from entering more deeply into Beauty, Truth, Love, and the array of qualities endowed uniquely in each individual.

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* Ulinka Rublack, The Astronomer and the Witch, Oxford, 2015.

James A. Conner, Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother. Harper, 2005.

From Garden Dark to Beautiful Beasts

Karen Armstrong opens her consideration of Genesis not with the Garden but with an exploration of Jacob’s wrestling because that’s the model for our engagement with divine revelation. We have to yield to the struggle of imagination and surrender our craving for arrogant certainty. The window into that which surpasses, that which includes love and hope, opens of necessity by parable, by likeness; how else can we see into that which is greater than immature sight? And it’s in narrative, in good stories, that we practice the work/play of parable. Armstrong says:

“The biblical authors force us to make an imaginative effort. They imply that it is a hard struggle to discern a sacred reality in the flawed and tragic conditions in which we live and that our experience will often be disconcerting or contradictory. Like Jacob, we will have to wrestle in the dark, denied the consolations of final certitude and experiencing, at best only transient, elusive blessing” (In the Beginning, p. 6).   

As noted in the previous blog, Martin Buber urges us to re-see the biblical narratives so that we experience continuing revelation. It’s like learning to see in the dark, in what has become dark due to repeated looking without seeing further. Without the active searching advocated by Armstrong and Buber, the light goes out; or perhaps our doorway, our capacity to see, closes when we fail to exercise the gift. 

Christian teachings call for maturity: “put away childish things” (I Corinthians 13); and the teacher demands that we advance in understanding of parable (e.g., Matthew 15). Maturity in understanding shows up in “steadfast love, justice, and righteousness” (Jeremiah 9:24). If sacred text such as the Qur’an contains multiple layers of meaning, and it does, how do we learn to see further? 

I believe that our work/play with good stories builds capacity. For example, our literary inheritance offers many fabulous tales on the beauty-and-beast theme. A first level of experiencing these stories usually has a magical transformation in which the beast changes form, as when a kiss breaks an enchantment and the frog turns into a prince charming. In the “Marriage of Gawaine and Dame Ragnell,” upon the knight’s kiss the hideous woman is then seen as the most beautiful maiden.

But if we learn to penetrate to a deeper understanding, we might begin to glean from the texture of relationship shown in the tale. When might realize that in true allegiance between knight and ruler as well as between beloveds, only when persons incarnate sovereignty is the vision gained to perceive the higher level of beauty. We recite easily the bromide about “only skin deep,” but do our footsteps follow the divine when they beckon beyond our comfortable materialism? Can we attract leaders with vision of compassion? We might begin to see as ugly  instead of attractive our own desires as well as other persuaders who value appearance, riches, and worldly fame. 

Our spiritual and literary inheritance tries to guide us. After Nasrudin is shunned at the banquet when wearing shabby clothing and then honored when he returns fashionably attired, he puts the food in his jacket pockets while saying, “Eat, coat, eat!” In response to his shocked host, the teacher replies, “It’s my coat you welcomed to the feast, not me.”

Since Adam and Eve left the Garden, we’ve been destined to journey in the shadows of the tree of knowing good from bad. When Psyche left the castle garden to go in search of Love, she had to develop capacity to see in the dark. Her naïveté prevented her from seeing the treachery of those she presumed to love her. Her footsteps led her over and again past her failures to see. She had to learn to look with the vision of belief and to trust the resources coming from the divine source. That’s the stuff of sovereignty. It’s developed step by step, task by bigger task. And often enough, we’ll feel defeated, especially as Rilke translates Jacob’s wrestling into our choosing to engage “constantly greater beings."

Back to the “Marriage” story, Gawaine also models the progression. He proved the nature of service, trusting the leadership of the authentic rule, looking beyond the superficial that was labeled “ugly” by material, habitual, conventional sight. He leaned into the divine relationship, and on into the kiss that is made when one acts not for worldly praise but for the Word. Then the eyes open to see further into truth and beauty.

When we grow stronger in translating good stories and parables, when the Word lives in our politics, our work, and our inner being, then we gain capacity to see further in the dark, step by step into the light.

Mining the Resonant Field with Mantras & Story Moments

https://youtu.be/02XryXoC2fs

Shakespeare’s Hamlet succinctly tells “the time is out of joint” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5). I’ve never had a dislocated shoulder, but it looks really painful.  In a way, our stories are even more disturbing because the dislocation, the misplacement, might go uncorrected. When the warning signs are subtle, like life’s signals often are, who notices? And when we’re distracted, so busy, playing fantasy football of whatever sort, we’re out of touch with the caution to keep watch for the day and the hour. Like Hamlet, our good stories warn us: Take heed in order to judge clearly between the essential and the superficial, between true and false, right and wrong.

In the Kuan Yin story, the village was characterized by racing on swift horses and shooting with bows and arrows. We considered this situation as a life preoccupied with activities at a certain level while missing a quality more significant. When the luminous beauty entered their marketplace, they became aware of what had been missing. The story invites us to wonder if we might be missing the most important value or purpose of our lives.

As Kuan Yin guided the village to return to the quality of compassion, in a similar way, The Odyssey reminds us of the importance of xenia, hospitality, especially for the stranger. We noted that most, if not all, major religions place much importance on caring for the other, the one fallen in the ditch. Our Statue of Liberty beckons: "Give me your tired, your poor. . . Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”  As we saw in the Kuan Yin story, saying the words does not necessarily mean understanding them and much less does it approximate living them. To walk the talk takes a high level of heedfulness. Good stories push us to ask: What is the sacred text that guides my life?

This question was pushed even more sharply in “The Visit” when the youth was graced by the true love, but then fell asleep, repeatedly, and thus lost the close connection with the beloved. In this story, the condition of being separated from true purpose and vitality was represented through the image of a false parent and a traitor-tutor. In “Kuan Yin,” the people did not remember the sacred text; in “The Visit,” it appears that the teaching is oppressive and has to be cut away—if the beloved is to be embraced.

The phrase “out of joint” reminds me of a time working with a carpenter with the frequent reminder: “true up that joist!” Joists and beams are vital foundational structures and when not in proper alignment the integrity of the building is at risk. One way for persons to true up is to follow the guidance of good stories. What is the sacred text that takes root inside? When memorized, it blossoms for the wind that returns in Machado’s lines: 

Llamó a mi corazón, un claro día,

con un perfume de jazmín, el viento.  

Because this poem is rooted, memorized, in mi corazón, in my heart, my soul (to borrow Robert Bly’s translation), I’m reminded to tend my garden, to watch for the inspiration, to care for the llantos de las fuentes, the water of life. 

The instructional video (shown at the top) discusses how we are tending our resonant field with good stories by searching for the holy text and connecting with story memories. In the video, I also recite the Machado poem and talk about its guidance. May the good stories give us direction and courage to true up.

Amplification Leads to the Secret Pearl

The Hidden Pearl

Having focused on image and the technique related to its representation/production in Week 2, a rebalancing back into the experience of story felt right for our third week of Good Stories.  In order to deepen the oral-story-experience beyond attending to the surface story line, we’ve also brought in an emphasis on amplification

We returned to a theme from our first day, buried treasure, and now in week 3 we’re amplifying this archetypal image with stories on “the water of life,” a wonderful variation on the theme. In order to connect X (a treasure box hidden underground) with Y (a healing tonic: water of life), our minds are pushed toward abstraction where broadened terms like “treasure,” "talent," and “grace” provide gateways for illumination and vision, where the gifts from the ocean of the unconscious flow bringing vitality and insight, as well as a healing touch for the world. While we don’t want to risk inflation (for example, by presuming to have the healing power to fix anybody or anything), we might, by amplifying the archetypal images for treasure, open our intentions toward accepting each of our talents and taking on the concomitant responsibility to know and develop these gifts, not just for personal gain but to contribute to peace and justice.

          The story we call “Golden Water” (which amplifies the Grimms’ tale, “Water of Life”) launches with three sisters playing a wishing game. Consistent with the treasury of wish-fulfillment stories ranging from King Midas to “The Monkey’s Paw” and including “The Fisherman and His Wife” (from Shaw’s World Tales), we’re cautioned about attempts to shortcut the maturation of destiny. When the youngest sister in “Golden Water” makes a flippant wish to marry the new Shah, her dream amazingly comes true; but she was scarcely prepared to handle the demands of being a co-ruler, particularly the jealousy of her sisters. In addition to stories, a sampling of persons considered to have had great success and who died young also brings a sobering reflection on the wish-making enterprise. So what might we glean from our amplification that guides the path of destiny and avoids tragic consequences from making a wish?

          Fairytales concentrate character into extreme forms and fast-forward time so that we’re offered a glimpse of what might otherwise elude us when we're walking in the more subtle and slow-moving pace of everyday life. For example, while we might underestimate the danger of presumption in “real life,” presentation of the two older brothers in “Water of Life” magnifies the effects of greed and arrogance so we can hardly miss the warning. Each brother scorns the small voice that asks “Where are you going so fast on your high horse?” Soon enough each is stuck, wedged in by canyon walls; it happens in real life when a person fails to heed the warning signs of hangovers, smoker’s cough, overwork fatigue, on and on. Even when rescued by their compassionate, though naïve, younger brother, the arrogant ones immediately betray him and steal the treasure.

When we amplify with “Golden Water,” we’re warned that it’s not only brothers who betray; sisters or anyone else can do it, too. The amplification helps us shift from just making applications to our external social life and include interpretations into the inner level. For example, we might recognize that we have internalized older voices that dominate more fragile possibilities. Our imagination can be chilled by the scorn of status quo so that the adaptations needed to change our environment are left in the fantasy heap. C.G. Jung’s discussion of the need to attend to the inferior function connects with this bit of guidance from the stories.

          In the closing discussion of our third-week classes, I observed and commented on a student’s amplification of the archetypal treasure. Among the many possible applications of treasure, she selected the treasure of knowledge. As she brought the images from “Golden Water” to her exploration, I saw that she was pointing us to the SECRET!  “Golden Water” paved the way for opening a vital distinction of knowledge worth knowing. With all the volumes of information flooding our intake valves, how do we discern the bit really worth knowing?

The wisdom to penetrate to essence was being offered through our amplification of the archetype of treasure. “Golden Water” helps by giving not one but three images for the treasure. When the sister climbed the pinnacle of the quest, she found an unusual representative for treasure, a talking bird. We recognize its value when we see it doesn’t just talk but it reveals secret knowledge. In the story, the bird knows and tells the true but hidden identity, and the bird constructs a scenario where the person who has been most blinded from seeing what should have been obvious finally “gets it.” The essence of the way to know comes in the pearl, another fabulous image with the rich associations of being formed through coping with and transforming an irritant, a bit of grit. 

Another view of this secret knowing must involve a person’s perception of his or her destiny. As elaborated in a previous blog, James Hillman tells us about the secret and our destiny:

“So the ‘lot’ [from Plato’s Republic] is the image that is your inheritance, your soul’s portion in the world order, and your place on earth, all compacted into a pattern that has been selected by your soul before you ever got here—or, better said, that is always and continually being selected by your soul, because time does not enter the equations of myth. . . Unpacking the image takes a lifetime” (The Soul’s Code, p. 45).

To Long for the Apprehension of Wonder

Life at the edge of wonder opens wordlessly in the poetry of images, in awe, having to remember to breathe.

         And then words come in, in this shimmering veil of thin apprehension, fearing the magical immediacy slip away. The words I wish to return then: “Fear not. For I am with you.”

         Love is always present. But how to know it in sadness, even in grief, depression? There the wished-for security, the holding-still power of language, fails. How can the word love contain ecstasy and despair the way deep inarticulate knowing does? So we’re released from words back to the dance, the just-enough, the unquenched longing.

         Perhaps that’s why I love the fog, once in awhile.

         Teaching, like learning, at least as I aspire to move within them, long for this apprehension of wonder. That’s where my search belongs: how do we move so fully prepared to risk the presence. How to hunger for the taste of words unashamed of being fragile, of disappearing like the fog, and to be left wrapped in silent warmth.

         Not many educators mumble around like this, distrusting the adequacy of the published word. Rarely I feel companionship, but I do with Robin Wall Kimmerer. She bravely and beautifully writes in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants:

“To have agency in the world, ceremonies should be reciprocal co-creations, organic in nature, in which the community creates ceremony and the ceremony creates communities. They should not be cultural appropriations from Native peoples. But generating new ceremony in today’s world is hard to do. . . [especially when we] lack an active, reciprocal relationship with the more-than-human world.” (Pages 250-1)Earlier she summarized: “The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart. My job was just to lead them into the presence and ready them to hear.” (Page 221)

         Robin’s writings help me articulate my focus in teaching. It’s on gift, on giving back. To discern the advent of life, authentic flow of gusto, the joyful embrace that affirms the connection with the source, love. “I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known” (e.g., Chittick, Sufism, 77-). Love is the presence of the beloved, the eye of the creative force looking back into the Source of Love, the life-giving gift, the indwelling presence, spirit in matter, the voice of gratitude. My intention in Good Stories, echoing Robin: that we enter the presence, ready for giving.

Riding from Passion to Compassion

Taken this morning, about 6:30AM, Sunday, March 6, 2016  

“In winter, when the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, 

this is the time for storytelling.” 

first line of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kemmerer

         A story opens, “Long ago on the Yellow River, the people loved racing on swift horses . . .” Not surprisingly, DocHorseTales gets captured by these lines. In the way of true stories, it is my own, our own story. Yet to realize how this tale translates into our lives takes some diligent imagination. This past week when telling Kuan Yin, I wanted to bridge the long-ago with the contemporary.

         Our world, the one along the Potomac River, not far from our classroom, and the world of our campus culture, like most of our country, risks falling off the fast horse in our compulsive chase to claim “We’re #1.” This craze is obvious in sports, but it’s also the insidious power-drive radiating from Capitol Hill. It’s the power-drive that endangers the potential goodness of politics, business, and academia. The craziness gets mirrored in the barely conscious, racecar madness, experienced everyday, especially when driving on the Beltway.

         That’s how I see the Yellow River’s obsession with swift horses reflected in our Potomac River culture as well as in this wider land we call our country. I still love us, and for the most part I’m impressed by our athletes who serve as ambassadors for our university. But too often I hear of Heisman winners who are charged with domestic violence and “heroes” who model dependence on performance-enhancing drugs or alcoholism instead of authentic heroism. Then my hopes turn to the Yellow-River Kuan-Yin story for a cure.

         The positive side of this dangerous racing probably adheres in the value given to passion, strange as it may seem. As developed in the Kuan Yin story, even though this compulsive activity exposes the culture’s “darkness of the heart,” it also invokes the god/dess of compassion. Might compassion only be reached through the fires of passion? Remember the scripture says, “Be hot or cold—not lukewarm!” Yet, keeping with the nature of redemption, we should expect that the visitation demands evolutionary change. To develop a compassionate heart looks likely to require a life-changing experience.

         Why should we expect guidance into the deeper levels of love to come from a story? Both ibn `Arabī and Rumi assert that the discourse of definition doesn’t know love; instead, look to the tales for the phenomenal. William Chittick (Sufism, p. 77) translates the guides this way:

Those who define love have not known it, those who have not tasted it by drinking it down have not known it, and those who say they have been quenched by it have not known it, for love is drinking without quenching. (ibn `Arabī)

          Someone asked, “What is loverhood?”

            I replied, “Don’t ask me about these meanings—

         When you become like me, you’ll know;

            When it calls you, you’ll tell its tale.” (Rumi)

                                    

         The gift of story suspends around listening, not semi-present attention, but full-fledged engagement with receptors tuned to resonance. Reception of the gift, of the present that is brought in that immediacy, depends on the teller’s attunement as much as on that of the other participants during the story experience.

         While I was telling the Kuan Yin story this past Tuesday, my receptors picked up a disturbance near the opening. It happened when I was trying to bridge the long-ago with the now. I offered an aside suggesting a connection between Yellow River racing on swift horses and our chasing after balls with clubs and sticks. When saying this, my glance focused on student athletes from our golf and lacrosse teams.

         In the next days, I returned to consider the disturbance that I’d felt and began worrying that my brief comment might have been taken as an unintended devaluation of our student athletes. So in the moments before the next class, I checked with persons I thought might have been offended and found that my reference to their sports had not been taken negatively.

         I wondered, instead then, if the vibration I picked up was a direction telling me to return to the dangers attending collegiate sports. I followed this lead and developed a sample plan for a digital media production as a model for an upcoming assignment. The next major project for our class organizes around a “big question” that consolidates points of resonance each person has felt in the stories. The digital media production then amplifies and translates the big question into personal and social applications. The big question I shaped was:

How do we make a positive balance in our culture so that the lavish attention on sports enriches the world?

         I don’t know if any of these college students might go somewhere with that question. It will be interesting to see if any of them pursue it in their individual digital media productions. As I’m about fifty years older than them, my perspective on the question perhaps involves looking backwards more than they will and should. But I still value this question, and I feel very strongly that the advance most needed in my life and in that of our culture, the advance for our individual and our collective consciousness, centers on the movement from passion to compassion.

         Looking back, I sense that my mid-life crisis, at least one of them, had a passionate experience that was attenuated by riding fast on swift horses and ducking under low-hanging branches over the woodland trail. Fortunately, before serious injury, this craze was translated into safer riding through the discipline of dressage.  Embodied knowing, or perhaps it’s knowing through the body, recalibrated passion into compassion. I realized that I really cared about the health of the horse, not just about getting a rider’s high.

         With the help of patient horses and coaches, I accepted that those mad dashes were really bad riding and poor horsemanship, and yet I acknowledge that they did serve to hook me on horses. Perhaps in a rough analogy to the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin’s visit, Rhiannon worked through horses turning wild passion into natural horsemanship, balanced riding, and care.

         As just suggested, in addition to experiences with horses, my work/play with teaching-stories also guides the translation of passion into compassion. In amplifying the swift-horse riding of the Kuan Yin story, I took in Rhiannon from the Maginobion as well as Luis in “Buried Treasure” and the “Water of Life” stories. In the Grimms version, the arrogance and presumption of control shown by the two older brothers is sharply contrasted with the humility of the youngest who listens to the small voice.  By the end of the story, he is able to ride the gold road because he’s not distracted by self-centered desires but rides with clear focus on the beloved.

Another amplification comes in the Arabian Nights variation on the Water of Life showing the youngest sister’s ability to propose a strategy to deal with the “voices” that overpower anyone not connected with the authentic ruler.

         When I translate my question into the local level looking for applications in history, I’m drawn to one of the earliest sports involving horses. Rumi says “Kings play polo” to show the people their military prowess. It's “like an astrolabe for the serious business of fighting” (Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, p. 326). The astrolabe represents the connection with “inmost consciousness” and reminds me of the youngest brother’s “small voice.” The “inmost consciousness” guides the path of love, the way of compassion.

         The local-level example of playing polo informs my big question by suggesting that in order to rebalance our contemporary passions (such as the sports culture) we need a dedicated attention to developing the inmost consciousness. How do our sports direct us to our “serious” business? Once again, I believe that the vital need for our culture and consciousness points to the development of compassion.

         And to develop that, yes, we need Kuan Yin, Rhiannon—we need increased devotion to our higher powers, like the stories teach. In our telling of Good Stories, we’re asking for their help as we braid together the strands of our passions with the traditional tales, weaving with and toward our inmost consciousness.