Three Prayers for the Dying

 I thought of this series, and even this post, when I woke up this morning.  I have a good friend whose father is dying, and I strongly felt that I was meant to pass this on to her.  But also............. I feel this is among the work I've done over the years that is most personally meaningful to me, that says what I want to say or rather, sense.   

Form is Empty, Empty is Form

I did these 3 pieces in 2009 as "prayers" for my brother. He had been in a coma for three years before he died.   He was a great admirer of Buddhism, and I wanted to honor that when I made them. 

They speak much better to me than words. I had all of these wonderful casts of hands, and also tiles I made that I imprinted words and letters into..........words, syllables, sentences are what we create the stories of our lives with......

But before the words, are the feelings, the belonging, the empathy, the response, the one who sees and experiences. Perhaps dying is shattering all those "vessels" of words and ideas and constructs (and terra cotta pottery shards imprinted with words seems like a good medium for that concept) that we have allowed to define who we are are. Perhaps, leaving all the words and vessels behind, at last, we fly.

"Form is empty, emptiness is form.
Likewise, sensation, discrimination,
conditioning, and awareness are empty.
In this way, Shariputra, all things are emptiness;
they are without defining characteristics;
they are not born, they do not cease"

The Heart Sutra

Somewhere within the "hoop" of who we are, within the space between the child and the old man or woman, the beginning place and the ending place.........in the middle is the heart. I think that above all is where our "soul making" has gone on.

Holy Mother Take My Hand 

I think this is my favorite. The Mother's Hand takes ours, and regardless of what artifice and awards and self-hate we have accumulated, as it dissolves in the greater being, the River,  of Her compassion, we see that we are all just children. From that perspective, from the banks of the "Rio Grande", it is hard to conceive of not forgiving, and cherishing, everyone.

Dream Weaver 

Somehow this image is very important to me. We ourselves are the great work of art in progress, and we ourselves are all connected to the Web of being. These are hands of the Dream Weaver, weaving a new dream in the silence, the dark, the depths of our innermost being.

Here are some verses from the Weaver Song performed every year at the Spiral Dance Ritual in San Francisco, which I used to participate in when I lived there.

No one knows why we are born

A web is made, a web is torn

But love is the home that we come from

and at the core we all are one

Of life's Spring may we drink deep

and awake to dream and die to sleep

and dreaming weave another form

a shining thread of life reborn

Weaver, Weaver, weave our thread

whole and strong into your Web

Healer, Healer, heal our pain

in love may we return again

~~~Starhawk