Showing posts with label Spirit Guidance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spirit Guidance. Show all posts

Sunday, December 19, 2021

Silent Peacocks: Personal Reflections on the Need for Sacred Solitude

Here is another article, this from around this time in 2019, that I just revised for publication submission.  It means a lot to me, that moment, that place.  I think the time is coming to return again.  Perhaps this is where I'll spend the Solstice.........

(December 19, 2019)

I am at the Holy Trinity Monastery in St. David, Arizona.  It is raining, and the only sound is the gentle fall of rain on leafless trees, droplets of water, little shining crystals on the dark branches before my window. 

And on the banister of the terrace before me are 5 peacocks and peahens, their magnificent, extravagant, impossible iridescent tails hanging over the edge.  They are just sitting there, making no sounds. I remember peacocks as noisy creatures, with a piercing cry.  How strange those peacocks are, motionless, silent.  I know that if they become aware of me, they will run off, so I join them in their silence for a moment, unmoving, aware of only peacocks, and the sound of rain. 

The Monastery is so quiet in fact, there are not even sounds of sparrows or ravens, no dogs or coyotes. It is also mostly deserted, probably because it is winter and mid-week.  The land has the familiar peace I have so often found in places of worship, a peace rising through the soil as one walks, an essence of place stepped and pressed into the land itself.  It does not matter what I "believe" in such places.... prayerful or sacred places are not about the intellect.  

There is a striking statue of Saint Benedict by the cloisters; he is holding a book, and there is a raven at his feet with, apparently, a rock in his beak. * I do not know what the raven means, but the white statue is welcoming.  I find myself watching my breath as I walk, clasping my hands behind my back.  Maybe the monks who lived here did that, and I am just picking up a memory in the land. 

The Benedictine Monastery in the small eastern Arizona town of St. David is actually no longer a Monastery, not since 2017 when the Vatican recalled the few monks and Father still living here.  It clearly once had a good-sized population that gradually diminished. As I walk, I try to imagine monks here, tending to the gardens, the shrines, the retreat buildings in the rain, or in the hot summers of this part of the country.   It is still managed by a faithful group of volunteer Oblates.  I notice that they are all elderly……I wonder if they will be able to attract younger people in the future to manage this special place? It seems, as I reflect with the meditative presence of the peacocks before me, that it is a great shame that the monastic life is so little appreciated in our frenetic world.    

Last evening, as the sun went down behind rows of pecan trees, I saw the flock of peacocks, some 20 of them, sitting on a fence before a particularly ancient pecan tree.  I watched as, one by one, they flew without sound into the tree, finding their particular perches.  Each bird seemed to wait patiently for his or her own “take-off”. This was clearly a daily ritual.   I was struck by how orderly this procession of the peacocks to their nightly roost took place. 

Peacocks……… one thinks of them as loud, stupid birds.  Yet at the St. David Monastery, where many generations of peacocks have lived and roamed freely, they are a tribe going about their business.  Just as the Monastery is devoted to silence and prayer, so they also seem to be.  They are wrapped in brilliant shades of quietude.  Beautiful in their other worldly iridescence among the gray and brown of winter leaves.

 

How did I end up here?  Not entirely sure.  By Grace? 

As I was driving without a destination a day ago, I vividly remembered a book I read (while spending the night on a bench in the ultimate liminal zone of Heathrow Airport) called

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye”. ** The central character, Harold, is in his 60’s, living a conservative retired life with his wife.  They do not really speak any more, as they navigate around each other with many years of habitual co-inhabitation.  One day Harold receives a letter from someone he has not seen in over 20 years, someone who is dying of cancer in a hospice far away to the north of the U.K.  She has written to let Harold know she remembers him fondly, and to say goodbye.  In his habitual numbness, but equally habitual English sense of propriety, he decides to write her a simple letter, a card that says something like “thank you for your friendship, best wishes, Harold Frye”.  He does so, and then decides to walk to the post office in order to mail it himself. 

Except when he gets to the post office, he decides to walk on to the next Post Office, one at the north of town, and mail it there.  And yet, when he gets to that post office, on the outskirts of town, he discovers that he still has the letter in his pocket, and he is still walking.  And so, the unplanned and unannounced and even unconscious pilgrimage of Harold Frye commences. 

Perhaps I am like Harold.  I just decided I needed to get away, from the Holidays, from Facebook, from cars, away from all the noise, and the noise incessantly sounding in my own head, right now:  but I had no idea of where to go. None.  

But I have a car, and a credit card.  All the way down 22nd street to the freeway, I still couldn’t decide where I was going…. west, to Phoenix, maybe Sedona? A long way, and Sedona is expensive.  Or south, to Patagonia?  Head to New Mexico, the solace of those wide-open mystical spaces…. even though it is an even longer way than Sedona?  It was only when I got to the freeway underpass that I pulled into the left lane for route 19, heading in the direction of Patagonia, which at least had a bird sanctuary and a coffee shop.  I’d see what happened from there. 

As I drove, I felt better.  I turned my phone off.  In Patagonia I had a coffee, discovered that the only hotel (cleverly cowboy vintage)      was ridiculously expensive, then thought what the heck, I’ll head to New Mexico, why not. The mood I’m in I could drive all night anyway.   The road from Patagonia to I-10 is scenic, with a snow-covered mountain range in the distance.  In Saint David, a little town on the way to Benson, I remembered there was a Benedictine Monastery. Always curious about it, I stopped, inquired about retreats, and here I am.  Ask and ye shall receive, truly. 

Lately I’ve been having those winter-born (what a wonderful word, “winterborne”) …… “dark nights of the soul” ………. which look, practically speaking, more like being overwhelmed, brittle, snappish, and exhausted and increasingly disturbed by it. I am running a successful AIRBNB “enclave”, still working thus in the “service industry” at the age of 70. 

I have to work and know few who can afford not to these days. I am glad sometimes that no one much notices me, or my current inner landscape. To me, of late, everything sounds like “yap yap yap”.  Sometimes I feel like contemporary life is a bit like being endlessly barked at by a chihuahua.  Our modern world - an entire fleet of chihuahuas. A demanding litany of inconsequential complaint, vented commentary, monologue for the sake of attention, appeals for money, offers for deals, electronic voices, irritated drivers……exhausting. And, as I am an empath, all the human pain in there too, all the loneliness and fear and despair and grief and human pain I can’t help, and increasingly feel too frayed to listen to.  

When I’m not “in service” changing sheets or scrubbing floors, I am an artist.  (Yes, one can be an “emerged” artist and not wealthy.  In fact, most artists have to find other means of support.) The artifacts of that 50-year career surround my property.  I have to say, running an AIRBNB has been somewhat deflating, as I have noticed that most people don’t think about art unless it is in a museum or a gallery.  Or now, I suppose, on Instagram.  Instant art for an increasingly microscopic attention span! 

For myself, art is a language, albeit an often-archaic language, one that one has to be educated in, like learning to speak Latin. Certainly, it requires what our lives increasingly lack ......contemplation. Patience.  Without that introduction, and time, artworks are just a backdrop that ‘specialists’ understand, dismissed as irrelevant.  

Or a colorful passing tidbit to consume like a candy. 

People do not see that a painting is a conversation, a window into another world……in this case, my world.  For me, the works have numinous names and places in the landscape of my life.   The bodies of work on my property are the best of me, my personal shrines and devotions, and now I just want to protect them from the infidels, so to speak. 

If they don’t see it, it is safe, and those visionary depths the paintings and sculptures arose from (in me) are also underground.  Even if they are in plain sight.   

How do I feel about all of this?  I often question my discontent; I am often despairing of contemporary life.  Yet here, in a monastery where many came to seek God........it doesn’t matter whether I am “right” or “wrong” in my discontent.  It doesn’t matter what I think at all. 

I sit on a bench and listen to the melancholy voice of Saturn.  Wise and winter-borne Saturn. 

I contemplate a cast-off, brightly turquoise, feather on the ground, gleaming as it catches a bit of sun.  Here I am, enjoying this pentimento under the surface of time, given the grace and simplicity to turn under, within, below the fallen leaves, into the dark.  It occurs to me that it does not matter at all what I “think” I should do once I rejoin the noise and distractions of life.  Here is refuge, here is the power of silence.  Silence enough to listen, and my soul, for lack of a better word, is speaking. 

 

“When we are living in accord with our inner reality while simultaneously suffering the depredations of this discordant, dis-eased world, we nonetheless have supportive energy, clarifying affects, and a sense of purpose.  When we get off track, these same manifestations turn against us.  While the world rushes to pharmacology to numb the inner discord, the question remaining is simply and obviously this:  What does the soul want, as opposed to our protective but regressive complexes?  This simple question is intimidating because such an agenda can very quickly lead to the larger rather than the smaller in our lives, necessarily re-framing our sense of what our life journey is about.” 

James Hollis PhD.  “Living an Examined Life” 

As the Winter Solstice approaches, I bless the Dark, the nourishment that comes from this time of incubational dormancy, from quietude.  I am grateful to have stumbled into welcoming refuge for a few days.  To sit listening to the rain and privileged to join the silent, watchful witness of a great iridescent beauty that sits on a fence before me, waiting to be noticed, listening to the rain.  

 

Dec. 2019

*I learn later that the Raven was a friend of Saint Benedict who helped him by removing bread that had been poisoned by a jealous rival.  http://communio.stblogs.org/index.php/2011/07/saint-benedict-and-his-friend/

** The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye by Rachel Joyce (https://www.rachel-joyce.co.uk/)

I love where we live. I love the stretch of sky from east to west. I work in a shepherd’s hut in a field, looking over the valley. It’s a place that feels alive with light and water and stories. My own view. My own silence.”

 …. Rachel Joyce

POSTSCRIPT

Shortly after I posted this article in my Blog (www.threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com) I found this earring by the trash can in front of my house.  It looks a great deal like a peacock feather to me!   I have no idea where it came from, but I will take it as a bit of guidance and affirmation.  The world is always speaking to us, I reflect, if we can only pause long enough to listen.

Saturday, June 29, 2019

"The Scarlet Bird of Paradise"........a Syncronicity


I have turned my home and property into an AIRBNB, which has made it possible for me to keep my home and studio, and also provides me with many interesting encounters with people who are  travelling.  The past month I've enjoyed early  morning coffee and illuminating conversations in the garden with Barbara.  Barbara is a retired hospice nurse, and also a Buddhist.  She is a wise woman who has deep insight into many things, a long life's experience to draw from, and has worked for most of her career with those who are leaving this plane of life and moving into the other worlds.  I've learned a great deal from her in the  course of these morning  conversations about death, consciousness, and spirit.

With the closing of the Masks of the Goddess Project, and the advent of my 70th birthday, I've found I have many questions about what to do now, as an artist, a human being living in such a troubled time, and as I enter old age, the limitations of old age,  and my final years.  Many images come to me now of possible art pieces and art projects - I always say "thank you!" when the Muse offers them to me!.  Conversations with Barbara have often engaged these questions, and I have spoken of how I long to be of service in some way, perhaps to find outlets to teach, to find ways to help people access their inner selves through art and self-expression.  And I often spoke of my longing to devote my art to the Earth.


It was just such a discussion we were having about a week ago, and I believe I was talking about how grateful I feel for the privileged life I have led, and also how I wish I could share more with others about the transformative powers of art making, particularly what I have learned by working with masks.  My garden has several bird feeders not far from where we were sitting, and suddenly a red cardinal appeared!  To those living in points east and north, this may not seem unusual, but in southern Arizona, in the hottest month of June, it is astounding! Songbirds migrate here in the winter, but what on earth is a songbird, a red cardinal,  doing in my garden in June? I've seen sparrows, the desert dove, woodpeckers, and finches in the summer, but never a cardinal.  


The beautiful creature lingered for a while.  When I woke up from a nap later that day, I saw and heard him singing sweetly and very distinctly on top of a tree in the garden.  When he appeared the following morning Barbara said that he was a message for both of us.  We haven't seen him since, but in the course of contemplating this "visitation",  I remembered a poem I wrote a long time ago.  It was about .......... love, the experience of love, and also the gifts of experience and knowledge that come from a lifetime.  I called it "Bird of Paradise",  and one of the lines was:  

"A scarlet bird flashes among the trees.  Fly free,  Bird of Paradise, fly into the morning from the other side of forever."  
It seems to me that  synchronicities, visions, dreams and spirit contact are outside of time, time being a function of embodied existence.  That poem, and that Cardinal,  carried an answer.........

But it doesn't stop there!  I thought I would write about it in my Blog, and so I searched for a photograph on Google Images of a red Cardinal for a post.  Amazingly when I found a photo I wanted, as I was getting ready to download it, I noticed the website and words beside the image - it said:  "What It Means When You See a Red Cardinal" !  The website is something called Psychic 2 Tarot, a psychic site I was not familiar with.  But their article about what it might mean spiritually when a Cardinal appears was perfect, just perfect.  So I share the poem I wrote some 20 years ago, and also take the liberty of copying from that very synchronistic website.  And I apologize to the author, because I could not find his or her name when I searched the website.





BIRD OF PARADISE

I pause at the door, key in hand
Breathing in the last of you
Pleasure that pierces heart and reason:
All I can give
is to give it back.

Back to the World 
to the dreaming earth, the singing waters,
dancing flames, to the open sky.
To the Circle at the center of all things.

World, here is my heart's unspoken delight:
I offer it back to you, with gratitude.
To play among the leaves,
to light my dappled path.
I ask no more than this.

I open my hand
A scarlet bird
flashes among the trees.
Fly free, Bird of Paradise,
fly into the morning
from the other side of forever.

1999


What It Means When You See a Red Cardinal

Psychic 2 Tarot (author unknown)

Signs and messages are all around us. Many of them come in forms that are subtle and are often difficult to spot or interpret, but receiving a visit from a red cardinal is almost always a noticeable event. With their soothing song and bright, vibrant red plumage, red cardinals are impossible to miss — and there may be a good reason for that indeed.  In fact, these beautiful songbirds may be delivering a very important message, one that’s just for you. If you want to learn more about the secrets behind what it means when you see a red cardinal, read on below. Prepare to have your mind blown.

The Messengers of the Spirit World

Cardinals have been considered messengers sent by the spirit world for quite literally thousands of years. This notion spreads across a number of different cultures — wherever these beautiful red songbirds are found, the legend arises. It’s therefore not too surprising to see the word “cardinal” used to signify an important or meaningful object or relationship. Whether it’s cardinal angels, cardinal directions, or cardinal colors, the use of the word denotes something big and noteworthy.  This makes it especially appropriate that the word itself contains the Latin root word cardo, which means either an axis or a hinge — a point which everything revolves around or holds all moving parts together. Cardinals are, resultantly, viewed as the revolving point between our world and the spirit world, acting as messengers between the two.

Old Traditions, Sacred Meanings

Many indigenous people have old and sacred traditions and meanings associated with the cardinal. In many Native American languages, cardinals are simply known as “red birds”, and there are a number of indigenous creation myths where they feature prominently. Cherokee myth says that the Sun gives birth to the first red bird, making the cardinal her daughter. Meanwhile, the Choctaw feel that cardinals are associated with relationships and are often associated with changing relationship status — and sometimes as a warning for rough times ahead.

Many indigenous traditions hold that cardinals are associated with other sorts of change, such as the weather. Others still feel that cardinals are guardians or sentinels, that their red coloration provides protection from illness and from harm, and that cardinals can point you in the right direction while traveling. Whatever the specific tradition is, it’s universal that red cardinals play an integral role in many Native American belief systems.  This extends to shamanic approaches as well. Indigenous shamans use tools that include the medicine wheel; this specific tool incorporates the four cardinal compass points and cardinal color choices. Red, the color of the cardinal, is associated with the East compass point, the beginning of spring, and birds like the cardinal that can take messages to and from the spirit world. Speak your message to the East, the legend goes, and cardinals will take flight to deliver your words.

The Western Traditions: Cardinal Angels

There are seven Archangels, four of which are known as the Cardinal Angels. These four are Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, and Michael, and they have dominion over much in the Western Abrahamic traditions. Whole nations and cultures often fall under the sway of these Cardinal Angels, who are thought to provide support in the form of divine inspiration and protection.  This thought, of course, echoes much of Native American shamanic thought, which uses Cardinal compass points and colors.

Visitations from the Spirit World

Many feel that cardinals represent visitors from the Spirit World, or at least messengers sent by those that have come before us. Particularly insistent cardinals that sing to you or even approach you are especially thought to be bringing personal messages to us, perhaps in response to a request for guidance or because you’re hunting for the answer to a particular question.  In such a situation, it’s important to stop and think about what you’ve been struggling with and what this visitation may be trying to tell you. A visit can show you that you are not alone and that you are receiving the spiritual support you feel you need so desperately at the moment, and this brings many people comfort. Feelings of gratitude for the visit, both from the cardinal and from whatever force sent them, are quite appropriate in such situations, as are feelings of peace and reassurance that you’re on the right track.

Those Brightly Colored Spirit Guides

In many cases, a visit from a cardinal can be the delivery of a message from our loved ones that have departed. Cardinals can be signs that the ones we miss are still here with us, watching over us and protecting us. Cardinals may not be the only messenger our loved ones send us, though — anything that can catch our eye is a common and welcome choice. This includes any small, rare, or colorful animal or insect.  Winged creatures are especially good at getting our attention and are quite special when they make themselves known to us. From butterflies to dragonflies to hummingbirds and, yes, especially cardinals, whenever we’re visited by one it can be an indication that our dearly departed family, friends, and ancestors are showing us they still love us and care for us. In your own time of need, when you’re searching your soul for answers, our loved ones can often send us a cardinal in an effort to help us make up our mind or find the right course of action going forward.

Paying Attention to the World Around Us, Both Seen and Unseen

Finally, cardinals are a reminder to pay attention to the world around us and all of its many forms. The gorgeous red plumage of a cardinal against the white snow of winter is a reminder that even in a season where all seems cold and dead there is still life and beauty. There are things to care about, value, and be in awe of at all times in life, things that are special. This includes the people in our lives right now and those that may no longer be with us.

It’s this capability that lets the cardinal bridge the gap between our world and the Spirit World, acting as the axis that turns the two. Messengers on crimson wings, the special missives cardinals bring to us from the beyond should never be ignored but always considered with great importance — and great joy. Whether it’s a message about the relationships we have with others outside our family, those we have within it, or those we have with our blessed ancestors, heed the call of the cardinal and you will receive the wisdom of the ages as a result.

This article also appears on Psychic 2 Tarot 

(https://www.psychic2tarot.com/blog/spirituality/what-it-means-when-you-see-a-red-cardinal/)