The "Power of the Now"

"Form is Empty" from "Prayers for the Dying" series (2008

"The word Personality is derived from the Latin persona, or mask. In ancient Greece the players in the sacred Mystery plays, which formed part of the Dionysiac Mysteries, always wore masks, which were conventional representations of the part they took. We can readily imagine the player, in the course of the play-cycle which formed part of the Mystery celebrations, assuming first one mask and then another as his parts changed with the play that was being performed. Thus we conceive of the immortal soul in the Mysteries; we think of it as assuming first one personality, persona, or mask, after another as it plays its allotted part in the successive Mystery plays which form the changing cycle of spiritual experience."...... Dion Fortune

 As the new decade and year emerges, and the knowledge of life's fragility and privilege is renewed with the sun rising over the familiar Catalina mountains of Tucson today............I feel like a good way to start the day is to thank everyone. For everything.

All the fellow travellers who have shared meals, thoughts, intersections, beds, battles, confidences, conflicts, delusions, divorces, betrayals, childish dreams and mature insights, ideas, shared creation, toys, personae, hopes, disappointments.........all the people who have, directly or indirectly, with good will or not, with profound concern or with utter indifference, from long acquaintance or as a nameless stranger, "resolved", "lost", forgiven or not, "connected" or "not connected"........all have my gratitude for graciously, for the Grace, of engaging me in the dance of life.

Back in Tucson, I have some difficult things to deal with, things I wish I could deny, but I'm finding strength in accepting the situation for what it is.

In a nutshell, my brother had a brain stem stoke over a year ago and is in a vegetative state in a nursing home, with no hope of any recovery. I do not have the power of attorney in this circumstance. Is he conscious? No one knows. I pray that he is not. I pray that he is not in his body, that he is somehow free on other planes of existence, that there are guides or angels or bodhisattvas helping him. I pray to what powers may be, I hope, but I don't know.

I would like to add here that (even though I personally have a "do not resuscitate" living will) I am not opposed to circumstances where life support is provided - obviously there are many unique circumstances where coma victims have recovered, and there are many people who are sustained by extensive life support who nevertheless lead conscious and meaningful lives. I define meaningful not by some cultural standard, but by the ability to experience some form of pleasure, and the ability to interact with the physical environment in some manner. But my brother, like the famous Karen Quinlan case, will never speak, or see, or touch, or taste, or interact with another person, or even breathe again. There are many people like him in that place, people who are artificially kept here by a technology that until very recently did not exist.

In the past people died more swiftly. There are many who would have died much earlier and did not (I'm one - I was a "blue baby"). Equally, death that is terminal and inevitable is now prolonged for months and even years, and occurs in impersonal institutions instead of within the family and community as it once did. I understand the ethical and even spiritual ambiguity here. And the truth is also that science, and ambiguous ethical issues, can now prolong the suffering of those who are dying immeasurably. I'm somewhat reluctant to make this entry, and yet, this is something that preoccupies much of my energy, something I do not know how to come to grips with, but must nevertheless find resources for.

So. Life is fragile. All we really have is the present moment. And some part of awareness has to step aside, even at the most challenging moments, and remember that it has to be savored. That's a choice and power one can develop. There's no great esoteric secret to it, no tantra or yogic discipline - just, reminding oneself of what the truth of our physical existence, here in the field of time, really is.

Then, I find, even if there are no solutions, there is always a rose, or a sunrise, a good cup of coffee, a warm pair of eyes, a idea for a painting, a sweet memory, a sudden insight, something, even everything, to be grateful for.

The Winter Solstice

To day I remember that the Winter Solstice was perhaps the earliest universal holy day, celebrated in different ways in different places throughout the world from the earliest days of human culture. When language was young, when even the gods and goddesses had not yet taken human forms in the human imagination, but ran instead with deer in the forest, flew with the wings of crows, or were glimpsed nameless from the awed depths of every numinous pool........ even then, this was a holy day, a day of celebration.

Long ago ancestors lit fires before cave homes to welcome the shining god who was the sun return from mysterious underworld depths. They built stones or made circles or created doorways to be aligned with the sun's pathway. They left offerings of food to show their gratitude, they invented songs or danced throughout the long cold night, grateful, encouraging, hoping to help the Sun on his difficult journey to the promise of new life.

I remember today that holy days begin among our most ancient, instinctual roots, taproots that reach down, deeply entwined within the visible and invisible web of life. Planet Earth turns her face toward her star again, circling in brilliant orbit, bearing every evolving, responsive, living, infinitely conversant be-ing within her fragile, exquisite azure skin on her long journey.

Perhaps I can regain, for just one instant, that pre-verbal, instinctual animal knowing, found beneath the pages of any book written with five fingered hands, beneath each inscribed layer of words, signs, hieroglyphs, pictures in jet or ochre or sepia, the primal light, luminous beneath the oldest pages. Veneer peels away, revealing a pentimento, an ancient heartbeat, shared again with all beings that keep vigil on the night of the winter Solstice. The light is returning again.

I pledge allegiance

to the soil of Turtle Island,

and to the beings

who thereon dwell

one ecosystem in diversity

under the sun

With joyful

interpenetration for all.

Gary Snyder

"Weavers" sculpture installed at Wesley

I feel very honored that I received an email from a personal heroine, theologian Catherine Keller, who wrote "From a Broken Web - Separation, Sexism, and Self", the passionate, visionary book that has been a source of inspiration for me. I leave grateful on many levels.

"What an honor to be thus woven into your healing web! I love your combination of the themes of Spiderwoman, eyes and hands—vision and action. Interesting how the web metaphor keeps unfurling. I was uncomfortable at first with the WWW, but get its potentiality for transformation too. And these days quantum entanglement rocks me with its cosmic web of instantaneous linkages. I also appreciate the earthiness of your medium. You are truly enacting the oscillation of vision and hands in the content and the process of your work. "

Catherine Keller

Catherine Kapikian's hands, "The Weaver"

"Eventually, I found what I was looking for. Layers of petroglyphs on adjacent rocks.....it was a place that seemed infused with numinous power. And scattered throughout, like a motif or underlying texture, there were hands, painted or incised on the rocks. I wondered, why the hands? Hands among hunters and big horned mountain sheep, near metate holes that once ground mesquite, protecting solarized shamans in their ecstasy, seeming to touch odd shapes and circles. Shadow hands scratched into the rocks, weaving stories as they were being told, touching me now from the prehistoric past.

For one quiet, imaginal, illuminated moment, I saw them become fully fleshed, emerging from beneath the transparent, dreaming surface of the canyon. I realized I was looking at Spider Woman’s many hands.....which are also my hands, our hands, appearing on the canvas of another time. " (2007)

Seeing in the Dark.....

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

~ David Whyte ~

Little conversations with the world

Yesterday, while sitting on a curb, a little whitish spider came walking across the pavement, stopped right in front of me, and raised its front legs several times, which was about the only gesture Spider could have made, definatively, if it wanted to say "hello". Because I noticed, I radiated delight, and we sat thus in companionable mutual observation, until I had to leave. This occured, I have to add, while on a cell phone to a distant friend in California who is one of the few people I know who also is delighted by magical encounters with animals. I note this because, like dreams, all things occur within a context.

I thanked the spider and felt somehow encouraged. I've been troubled of late, and I've been having dreams to ponder, after years of sleeping like a stone, dreamless. I watched her wander off, pursuing whatever it is that spiders pursue after having concluded an appearance as a very small, divine Messenger.

In the worldview of people like, for example, the Sami shamans of Norway and Finland, all life is interconnected and conversant. And symbolic, interpenetrating and in context with the dimension of dreams. Artist Rafael Ortiz called this "paleologic", a holistic form of consciousness shared by many indigenous peoples throughout the world.

Dismissed as "animism" , today these archaic forms of "primitive magical thinking" are being examined by the leading edge of transpersonal psychology and consciousness studies. A spider can be just an insect.....or, an ally that brings encouragement on a wintry pavement....just as an angel in a dream might bring a message of hope. It's all in how your paradigm, personal and collective, allows you to see it.

I remember reading an article by Gloria Feman Orenstein, a writer and professor of women's studies at USC, who apprenticed with a hereditary woman shaman of Sami land in the 1980's . In writing about her experiences, she noted that, when in her home in Los Angeles, if some kind of contact needed to occur with her far distant mentors, mosquitoes would usually turn up.

When we see the world, and our participating within the world, "in a sacred manner", when we can imagine that all dimensions of life are sacred and interpenetrating, then it's possible for all beings to become part of the conversation - even mosquitoes.** Or, friendly little spiders, reminding me that a "webbed vision" is something that has to be continually renewed, in mind, and in heart.

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems as if things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings,
I feel closer to what language can't reach.

Rainer Maria Rilke

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** "One of the main features of summer in Sámi land is that suddenly the marshes become swamped with mosquitoes. The Sami love their mosquitoes, because they realize that "the white man" cannot stand them, and so the mosquitoes have, in some sense, kept their land from being taken by outsiders. Most people cannot bear to live with those mosquitoes. As I mentioned before, Sami Shamans communicate with their mosquitoes, and they understand that they can be messengers, guides, and protectors."

The Woman Shaman and Shamanism,
GLORIA FEMAN ORENSTEIN

Another Circle of Hands

While surfing for "environmental art", I found another Circle of Hands, this beautiful photograph created by participants in an environmental arts festival in Iran, in 2007. For information, visit the story by Iranian Radio. The story and images are also to be found at the Green Museum. I found this image so striking I wanted to share it, and the story of these students creating this festival against the desert (kavir) landscape. That it took place in Iran, all the more so. I take the liberty of copying text and images from the post here.

For information on environmental art, also visit the Green Museum's Blog. Below, I list more great links to Earth Arts websites and blogs.

Nov 16, 2007

Color, Leaf, and Kavir:
Environmental Art Festival of Kerman unveiled the freshness of Kavir

KERMAN, Iran

"The festival began in Vahdat Hall at Shahid Bahonar University in Kerman, with speeches and discussions on the concept of environmental arts.


On the third day of the festival artists gathered in Shahdad Kavir and presented their works in a kavir (desert) background. This area is one of the most attractive outlooks of Kavir because of its statue-like walls called "clot." 200 young artists and art teachers of Kerman Province joined the festival.
On th e last day of the festival the art works were reviewed and discussed. The participants were mainly from Kerman province coming from various universities. The initiative was taken by the scientific association of the painting course of the Saba Arts and Architecture School of Shahid Bahonar University. Environmental art festivals have been held during the last few years in various parts of the country. The Pardiss international center has created seven festivals. " (www.iranianradio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=380)

Other environmental arts related sites :

ecologicalart.org (http://www.ecologicalart.org/)
ecoartspace blog
Environmental arts (Orion Magazine) http://arts.envirolink.org/

Networks:

Art + Environment
CSPA Connect
Deep Craft
Ear to the Earth
Earth Artists NetworkSEEDS
The Art of Engagement

"As if to help us change our perspective on war, discoveries within quantum physics suggest the belief that we can achieve a position of dominance in relation to nature, life or each other is, ultimately, an illusion. Each of us is an expression of a vast sea or field of consciousness - invisible, and as yet barely recognised by us. We are all connected to each other through our participation in a great living web of life. It would seem that we are, literally, "our brother's keeper".

Anne Baring, "The Web of Life"

Daniel Dancer's Circles

"If we surrendered to Earth's Intelligence,

We could rise up rooted like trees."
....Rainier Maria Rilke

I felt like sharing the environmental art of Daniel Dancer, who has organized thousands of people with his "Zero" circles, and "sky art" projects. His primary medium is human beings. I've seen clear cut forests: it is something you never forget. For more information visit his website, or read his important article on the Interspecies Arts website. I'm delighted to discover this site.......it's so good to read about so many "conversations with the Earth".

"Bear Witness Circle , by Daniel Dancer:

"Twelve Children and eight adults gathered in an immense clear cut near Homer to complete this circle. At the center of the circle was a life-size bear mounded from living moss and lichen. Clear cuts, like this one near Homer, take an exceptionally long time to heal.

"

Catalog Circle

Dancer's comments about the logging of forests to produce paper pulp to fund schools in Washington state was an especially poignant irony. How can we educate the future with the proceeds of wasted forests, destroyed landscapes, ravaged soil, by cutting down the very breath of the planet?

"This circle was constructed from catalogs sent to one home in the holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Years. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources manage thousands of acres of forest trust lands with a mandate to fund the construction of schools. The time has come to question this practice. Does it really make sense to log valuable forest habitats to fund schools? ............Does it really make sense to log nearly half of America's forest to make paper pulp? Direct mailers gobble sixty-eight million trees per year. Half the received envelopes are never opened. "

I also appreciated the simplicity of his comment about "art", from the "Zero Circles" project site, wherein he invites participants to become co-creative artists. As a professional artist, I'm always amazed by the ways people are intimidated by the notion of "art".

"First of all, don't be intimidated by the word "artist." In an earlier time, art was not something others did for us to view, or purchase to display on the walls and tables of our homes. Instead, doing art was a part of life. It empowered us. It gave meaning to our lives and connected us to the whole. Rediscover the connection art once provided and build a circle in a national forest near you."

"Raising the Dove" --- Portland, Oregon peace advocates demonstrate support for a U.S. Department of Peace. (Photo and artwork concept by Danial Dancer)

Circles are many things, but most of all, Circles are inclusive. They contain, like the spherical shape of our Revered Earth, the whole of life. Circles have no end.

Resources:

http://arts.envirolink.org/visual_arts/Daniel_Dancer/bio.html

http://www.interspecies.com/pages/ZERO.html