Seasons of the Soul

New Dawn

I often use the term, “it dawned on me”, and realize that insights I get are often like the dawning of a new day…the wonder of the sun rising again to shine its light on the earth, giving a fresh perspective and new opportunities.

Dawn is a very special time in many religions. It is one of the two times of day that are very potent magnetically (dusk being the other), and if you’ve ever noticed, dawn is when the birds begin to chirp, greeting the coming of the new day.

Something dawning on us also means that there is partnership. There is that which dawns and that which is dawned upon. The I/Thou relationship is strengthened as we have a moment of recognition. We open to receive our daily bread, and the dawning of realization is a powerful metaphor for insights that bring us to new levels of awareness.
 
So, when you find yourself noting that something dawned on you, it’s partially remembrance, but also the newness of a fresh start, idea, or opportunity. And it has all the promise of potential, just as the new day dawns to give us yet another opportunity to engage in life.

Trees In the Wind

Sometimes we have fierce storms in our area. One night I couldn’t sleep because of the high winds. I was worried about our trees. I finally went into one of the rooms in my home where I can look outside to see the mountains and observe the weather. It helps. I do better when I can see what is actually going on rather than just hearing it.
    
As I watched the huge pine tree’s limbs bending and twisting in the swirling wind   outside the window, I recalled what a tree person told me after our last big storm. Wind is good for trees. It strengthens them. Weak trees topple in wind, but the others become more sturdy as they are forced to flex and bend. As I watched the storm, I saw how the trees moved with the wind rather than resisting it. I could see that there is a gift in storms, even though in the moment we don’t see it. Trees are strengthened, dead leaves and branches are swept away, and the air is cleansed. Also, storms do not normally last for long. When they do come, they can have a devastating effect. But I recall all the times after the storm passes, after the cleanup, and appreciate the many days of good weather that prevail.
    
In our lives, the same thing happens. We are all touched by storms, regardless of how much we would prefer not to be. And in the moment, whatever we go through can seem to be overwhelming and “forever”, but in time we see how each storm strengthened us, making us more resilient and sturdy. We learn to flex with the wind, to clear out the dead wood from our psyche, and to feel the freshness of clearing the air so we can begin anew or go forward with deeper perspective and understanding.
   
I don’t like storms. That’s not going to change. But I do see that they have merit, and that they leave gifts in their wake. Nature has her unfailing system, and when we translate what we see in her cycles to our own lives, we can engage in the process of growing through seasons with equanimity and grace.

From Seasons of the Soul print edition, Winter 2003

Cling Free

It came to me as I was pondering something about my own life that earth is a sorrowful planet. Everything that comes into existence here goes through the process of decay and death, and by the very nature of that, we all have something and someone we will lose at one time or another. In fact we will go through the same process ourselves. Age shows us that. Loss of loved ones affirms it. The older we become, the fewer our contemporaries.
    
Unhappiness about life and death comes as we cling to the illusion of immortality in the flesh. Our media bombards us with messages of youth, of defying age, of turning back the clock. It avoids showing people who are elderly and look their age. We shun the harsher realities of life as though they are a plague descending upon us. Yet in all our attempts to outwit and outlive life, we are filled with a stressful attachment to something that cannot be. Once we are able to acknowledge reality, affirming that sorrow is part of life, we are freed from an impossible task of keeping it from being other than it is.
    
Suffering is so often about grasping. Once we adopt an attitude of acceptance to the greater reality of life/death, we are cling free. And then we can begin to enjoy the life that we DO have, rather than work so hard at avoiding the life we are afraid we won’t have. No one knows what life will bring. We can make elaborate plans, but in the end, our days are numbered. Whether we live long or short lives, the amount of time is not important. What is important is the way we live our lives. What we make of what we’ve been given is our declaration of being vibrantly alive on the planet, no matter what our age. We don’t have to hide the wrinkles, or mask the creases on our brow. They are the etchings of our journey, not reminders of mortality, and we’ve earned each character defining moment that we embody.
    
The world is sorrowful. It’s the way of life. But so are breathtaking moments of love and beauty.
From Seasons of the Soul print edition, Winter 2003

He Will Sit As A Refiner and Purifier of Silver

There was a group of women in a Bible study on the book of Malachi. As they were studying Chapter 3, they came across Verse 3 which says: "He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver". 

This verse puzzled the women and they wondered what this statement meant about the character and nature of God. One of the women offered to find out about the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible study. 

That week this woman called up a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn't mention the reason for her interest in silver beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver. As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest so as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot, then she thought again about the verse that says "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver." She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. 

The man answered that yes, he had not only to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. For if the silver was left even a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "How do you know when the silver is fully refined?" He smiled at her and answered "That's the easy part, when I see my image reflected in it."  
-Author unknown

JOSEPH CAMPBELL'S Ten Commandments for Reading Mythology

1. Read myths with the eyes of wonder: the myths transparent to their universal meaning, their meaning transparent to its mysterious source.
2. Read myths in the present tense: Eternity is now.
3. Read myths in the first person plural: the Gods and Goddesses of ancient mythology still live within you.
4. Any myth worth its salt exerts a powerful magnetism. Notice the images and stories that you are drawn to and repelled by. Investigate the field of associated images and stories.
5. Look for patterns; don't get lost in the details. What is needed is not more specialized scholarship, but more interdisciplinary vision. Make connections; break old patterns of parochial thought.
6. Resacralize the secular: even a dollar bill reveals the imprint of Eternity.
7. If God is everywhere, then myths can be generated anywhere, anytime, by anything. Don't let your Romantic aversion to science blind you to the Buddha in the computer chip.
8. Know your tribe! Myths never arise in a vacuum; they are the connective tissue of the social body which enjoys synergistic relations with dreams (private myths) and rituals (the enactment of myth).
9. Expand your horizons! Any mythology worth remembering will be global in scope. The earth is our home and humankind is our family.
10. Read between the lines! Literalism kills; Imagination quickens.
~Joseph Campbell Foundation

God's Gardeners

The garden is such a continuing source of education for me. The other day I was out on the patio enjoying a cup of tea, and I heard the sound of busy bees who were buzzing around the fruit trees. This year there were more blossoms than ever before, and the bees were busy doing their part to make sure every one was pollinated.  Later in the day I threw some leftovers on our mulch pile, and as I turned the soil, hundreds of worms appeared in the shovel...all very industriously doing their work along with beetles and other insects whose job it is to take care of the soil.

Yesterday, we had horrible winds, and many of the blossoms were shaken from the fruit trees. Our patio was a vision of snow flaked petals forming a thin blanket over the entire area.  At first I was upset… “Oh, we won’t have any fruit this year!” But on closer inspection I noted that there were still many blossoms, and they were the strongest ones. It dawned on me that too many blossoms would mean a weakened crop. Too much fruit would cause the quality to diminish. Yet, the wind came as part of the garden crew, clearing out the weakest blossoms, dislodging old leaves that had clung through the winter to some of the trees,  and clearing the air.

I started to laugh with appreciation as I saw all these marvelous aspects of nature working in concert as God’s Gardeners. Human gardeners go around pruning and mowing, clearing and bundling, and then what do they do? Out come the blowers, and they swish everything away (or into the street). Nature does all of this without using noisy power tools. She is the master gardener and the great planner and restorer of Herself.

Every time I think I have to figure everything out, all I need to do is walk in nature. There before me is a handiwork that no human mind could ever fully conceive of or execute with the precision and magnitude that nature does. Everything is based on reciprocal utilization and simplicity of action. The trees and plants go through their life cycle. The seasons bring the necessary climate control, and the elements conspire to give a little more at one time, and a little less at another. Sometimes things seem out of balance, but always...always, nature returns in splendor, and the effect is a symphony of beauty that holds us all in awe of the majesty and dignity of something greater than we can ever possibly fully understand.

From Seasons of the Soul print edition, Winter 2002

Food for Thought

 

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
  ~Alexander Pope
                 ~~~~~~~~
There’s a worm addicted to eating grape leaves.
Suddenly, he wakes up, call it grace, whatever,
something wakes him, and he’s no longer a worm.
He’s the entire vineyard,
and the orchard too,
the fruit, the trunks,
a growing wisdom and joy
that doesn’t need to devour.
                          ~Rumi

First Gobble, Then Grace

An interesting fact is that a caterpillar on its way to becoming a butterfly eats voraciously. It devours everything in its path by using powerful jaws and teeth, and is very destructive to certain types of crops.  However, once it goes through the metamorphosis to become a butterfly, it is unable to cause harm to anything because it has no apparatus for chewing. It can only sip.

The butterfly becomes a model citizen, helping in the pollinating process. Pollen from one tree sticks to its underbelly while the butterfly drinks the nectar from its blossoms, and is then deposited on the next tree as it stops to sip. Farmers depend on butterflies for this cross pollinating of fruit trees, and the once crop devouring caterpillar, which is a financial nightmare to farmers, becomes an equally beneficial ally as the socially conscious butterfly.

No wonder butterflies are used as a symbol for spiritual transformation. How often we see a similar process in people we know and even ourselves—the movement from unconsciousness and unkindness to becoming aware of our real opportunity to contribute and make a meaningful difference by being of service.

Rebranding Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day has lost a lot of its original meaning and has become another marketing opportunity. Here is an article that drives us to recognize the true force  behind Valentine's Day and to consider a different way of expressing Love that encompasses everyone.

http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=392

Going Forward Looking Backward

How often we’ve heard that unless we learn from history, we are bound to repeat it. However, there is a problem many of us have which keeps us from moving forward, and that is the tendency to hold on to something from the past that has been a stumbling block, or a failure. We impose the past on the present so that we restrict the flow of what can be for us right now. When we are driving a car, it’s good to check the rear view mirror occasionally to see what is going on behind us. However, if we look in the rear view mirror continuously, we might miss something on the road ahead, or distract ourselves to the point of being dangerous. We know that about driving (or should), but tend to forget that lesson in daily living.

Life is a movable feast. What we experience at 20 or 30 may have a different impact to a similar opportunity at 40 or 50, and by the time we reach 60 or 70 our perspective and insights may be far beyond what we knew in the earlier years when decisions were made with lack of experience. They were our learning curve, and in the process of making right and so-called wrong decisions, we grow and come to see our strengths and limitations as long as we are willing to view ourselves objectively. Realizing that our history can be a tremendous foundation point for the present and future when we make a conscious decision to learn from our experiences, we don’t need to move forward by looking back. We have integrated what we need to know and can keep our eyes steadily on the present goal, trusting that the essence of what we’ve learned previously will help guide our decisions along the way. This keeps us open through faith to new and updated possibilities that will enrich and enhance our lives. Looking in the rearview mirror is good when we have to back up. But in order to move ahead…we must look forward.