Today is the Solstice: the first day of winter yet marks the beginning of light returning and longer days a burning.
Isn't that just like life?
The first day of the (often) most dreaded season and yet a new beginning for the Light, that fiery glow on the horizon which makes life possible here on earth. "Light," by the way, is the most prominant positive image of the Divine which is shared in spiritual traditions worldwide.
I offer a snippet of conversation heard on the street in NW:
"Isn't it great the sun came out today - I need that light -vitamin D -bring it on! "so tell me, HOW ARE YOU??"What if we said when people asked this common question: "Ah, I am glad you asked. the Light is my ally. When I am feeling myself IN the light, connected to the light (Divine, God, etc.) my whole being is well. I am well, right here and now, thank you."
The ancient Yule, welcoming the light, was a communal practice in the British Isles, a community celebrating for days in just this kind of spirit! Maybe you are like me: I sure like to fill myself with food and glittery trees and presents for the holidays. Yet I wonder: what if I focused my gaze each morning before all this holydays/holi-daze on answering this question:
Who is my ally? What if we thought not of a person, or an image (of God), nor a concept only (Love) but a felt experience...
Another way to ask this might be: What is the primary ally which gives life, (and is not the sun or the earth) but the force behind the light, the Source and essence behind all of life? What might that be, for you?
Any one of us might answer this with a million different responses or descriptions. Today, my answer would be: "the Light or the Force." This, for me, draws and sustains my essence, even when I am not aware. This is my primary relationship, winter and summer, pain of loss or joy of just being alive in a forest. This is what is behind a mass of people across the planet feel moved by films and stories such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter: "The Force," "and magic are just other images for this all-pervading, life-sustaining energy which comes from ... that which made us. "The Force be with you" was director George Lucas just slipping in a different word for the first greeting the catholic priest gives at Mass: "The Lord be with You." It is curious that when the census asks for "religion practiced" hundreds of thousands say "Jedi/the Force." As a teacher of comparative religion this is essentialy the same as saying, in the East, the Tao (Ying Yang), and the West, the (Holy) Spirit. Thus, its not just a silly movie or a new moder myth, its pointing to something people have experienced as real for ten thousand years.
Yoda, the little Jedi master/teacher in Star Wars 6 movies, says it like this :
"For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes." There will always be this movement toward balance: light and dark, emergence and shadow, life and death, ending and new beginning. This is happening to us all, individually and collectively. This is happening to me at present, if I take a moment to sit, settle and notice the movements in my life. Or stop in a church or sacred temple for five minutes. Or "treat" myself to a massage, other treatment such acupuncture/cranial sacred/alternative medicine. All of these "alternative" modalities are about balance; and compliment western medicine beautifully because of this primary focus. Opening myself to these many ways of finding balance have also opened up my image of God -- and allowed the Light -- to show me how the real God works...
A student at the Seattle Institute for Oriental medicine looked at my website and wrote, it seems you are
"Forging a new path in relatively unaddressed field …" Whatever that field might be called, for me, it must always come back to the source -- experience and relationship to deepest connection in life. When i write haiku I notice "the Force" meditates me, that is, flows through me into words on a page. Experience becomes form. Life speaks, through me, as it were. On Christmas day I will post a few of these peaches (or mangoes?). Scroll down to earlier posts for to taste poems ripened on my tree -- from last year in Thailand and this year in the Northwest.
MAY THE LIGHT BE WITH YOU!
