Liminal

What we hate in ourselves is what we cannot know in ourselves 

 but what is true to the pattern does not need to be explained. 

Inside everyone is a great shout of joy 

waiting to be born 

David Whyte

I have always thought of November, and a certain time of year somewhere in March or early April (depending on where you live) as "liminal times", transitions in the year cycle that are "limons", spaces between winter and spring that are infused with a kind of transformational energy, with "becoming". With "not-yet" and "none-such", immanent with the possibility, the inevitability of change, but not-yet. At these liminal points, it seems all kinds of intersections of dimensions occur, the "veils" between this and that are not so clear, not so "in-formed". The winter snow isn't quite here yet but it's imminent. The World is dying. There is no spring yet, but a trickle of water is heard, the first fragile melt; you feel that deep subterranean humming, the invisible thrust of new life just under your feet. The World is being born. Liminal zones. Borders, edges, cracks in the veneer that offer transformation.

"Dream Weaver"

Sometimes, life really is too much. When that happens you rage, cry, lose friends because you've become dark and bitter and complaining, you don't like yourself, all your ideas of what and who you were and think you are and should be doing blow up and make no sense. Horse Latitudes. When all of that happens, there is nothing left to do except open the heart, by whatever means, and turn to spirit for support, by whatever name. You have to contact that greater life, or you will sink. There is nowhere else to go. I'm not making sense. At this moment, I'm in an airport of souls, changing planes, a waiting room. A liminal zone, where, among other things, things stop making sense. You can be, in a liminal zone, in form-lessness, somewhere between memory and creative potential. Between death and birth, between "Fall"(ing) and "Spring"(ing). I made a series of sculptures in 2009 for my brother I called "Prayers for the Dying", which I show here. I had casts of hands, and stamps with words and letters on them............and it occurred to me that words are what we use to shape our ideas of who and what we are.** Words are also what we use to make blessings, and blessings, even if we don't know what we're doing and even if we don't even believe in it, blessings, like my poem in the previous entry, are winds that fill our sails when we find ourselves marooned in the "horse latitudes". Even when we are saying goodbye.

Perhaps dying is to release form, and the breaking of "word shapes" could represent the breaking of all the ideas we encase our identity in..............the helping hands and the light assist in that process of reaching for a greater being. In the work at the top of this post ("The Heart Sutra") what lies between the child's hand and the aged hand, with it's many layered, written tablet.........is the Heart.

"Form is Empty, Empty is Form"

"Holy Mother Take My Hand"

I don't know where I'm going with this blog entry, but I feel it's so important, especially now, to understand our multi-dimensional being. Perhaps, in learning to not fear death, we can also learn how to more fully live.

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**This reminds me of a wonderful interview with visionary artist David Jeffers I did in 2001, about working with the Goddess Lilith:

"What you believe" is just a shell. (The Goddess) Lilith is about breaking the shell. Sometimes you have to fall apart to be put back together, because that's the only way to be re-integrated. You cannot veneer Lilith’s teachings on top of who you think you are. She’ll change you first.”