#12 Playlist

Call in the Angels. Jane Siberry and k.d.Lang
Shostakovich Quartet, #15 in e flat. Elegy, adagio

Utter Darkness, The Halcyon Days

Dear friends, I am so touched by the growing sincerity in our time together on Mondays. Each of us are in different places, and each of us is welcomed as  we are-- how can we be any other way-- into our  circle of growing presence. We will always be in different places from each other, and from moment to moment. There is no cookie cutter way to presence. Each soul has its own journey, its own struggles and its own expression. That is the grace of presence. All is allowed and all is held. Over the weeks each of you have brought your sincerity, your vulnerability and your practice of presence to this circle. 

These are the Halcyon Days, well not quite. They start seven days before the solstice and end seven days after the solstice. The Halcyon days come from a greek myth. As is so often the case,  a couple of lovers piss of Zeus and he freezes them into oblivion. But some other gods-- thank God for those other ones-- come to the rescue and change this couple into a pair of Kingfishers. They build their nest by the sea. So in order to protect the nest and the delicate eggs, the god of the wind stills the winds for 14 days during the Halcyon Days. Go outside at night and feel the stillness, when the wind has dropped. Let yourself feel the pull of interiority. These are very thin times.

We are journeying into the darkness of this season. Last week we explored the frenzy of filling as we enter this season of emptying. This Monday we welcomed the utter darkness. It awoke childhood fears of monsters hidden away and fears of death, loneliness, abandonment, brokenness. And yet at the same time we discovered our longing to rest in the utter stillness of the darkness, the curious intimacy of this peaceful rest. It is as though for a moment we discover that all the agitation in the mind comes to a stop. The darkness welcomes us into the perfect rest of stillness and silence. (Questions: Tell me a way you fear total darkness; tell me a way you are drawn to darkness. Explore your experience of the movement between stillness and agitation. Apply your practice of presence to this exploration)

Following the poetry of Rilke we turned all the lights off in the chapel and sat together in silence. At the end of the evening we held our dear friend Karl in loving presence as he heads to Maryland to find out the results of his chemotherapy. Our prayers go with him.

Next time we will focus on the light of rebirth. If you have an unscented candle please bring it our next session. This will be our last time until we gather again on January 7th 2013. Love, Alison

…whom should I turn to,
if not the one whose darkness
is darker than night, the only one
who keeps vigil with no candle,
and is not afraid--
the deep one, whose being I trust,
for it breaks through the earth into trees,
and rises,
when I bow my head,
faint as a fragrance,
from the soil     (I 2, p. 32)


You darkness, of whom I am born---
I love you more than the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illumines
and excludes all the rest.

But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations--just as they are.

It let's me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.
I believe in the night.  (I. II p. 63)


…when I lean over the chasm of myself---
it seems
my God is dark
and like a web: a hundred roots
silently drinking.

This is the ferment I grow out of.
More I don't know, because my branches
rest in deep silence, stirring only by the wind.   (I.3   p. 47)

-- 

Playlist #11

Arvo Part. Spiegel im Spiegel for Piano and cello.

#11 Emptying and Filling.

Dear friends. It is curious that as the days get shorter and the nights longer that the shopping, lighting up, eating frenzy increases. So what is going on? Sure capitalism has taken over and appropriated this sacred time of the year. Catalogues arrive daily in the mail and online, with tempting images of good cheer and beauty, and Christmas music accompanies us everywhere. This tradition of gift giving at Christmas began during the Victorian era, when the merchants saw the opportunity to cash in. Nothing wrong with gift giving. It is fun and generous. But something has gotten out of hand. The spirit has been replaced with a kind of compulsive ritual every year. And in January the bills come due and followed by the crash.

We began talking about emptiness on Monday. We all know someplace inside that feels hollow, like something is missing. It feels like a place where we are cut off. We don't know what we are cut off from but there is nagging sense that this hole, at the very center of our being,  must be filled. Mostly we don't get close to the actual emptiness, the nothingness. We experience all kinds of reactions. There may be intense agitation, addictive filling ( spending, shopping, eating, drinking, using drugs, gambling, over working...). Of we withdraw from the possibility of being disappointed, giving up and sinking into despair or a lazy collapse. Netflix is the perfect companion into the couch! Or we may engage in endless social activity fearing being lonely. Or we simply keep ourselves constantly busy. Or we our bodies freeze up in fear. What is your favorite way to reaction to the hole of emptiness.

So what is it about this time of year that seems to exacerbate this agitation, this filling up? The darkness of these long nights invites the soul into a kind of interiority. The darkness pulls the soul into a kind of silence or stillness. And this pull takes us closer to this place that feels like nothing, like a dull deficiency, that feels empty and cutoff. And the closer we get unconsciously we begin to resist this pull and we are off on the hamster wheel. We see what a culture does with this pull. Earlier and earlier each year, the lights go up, the jingles start. "Buy, buy, buy! Busy, busy, busy! Keep filling this hole." This is the implicit and explicit message.

The tragedy is that this nothingness, this place of cutoff-- where we unconsciously, by necessity, and through the normal and healthy development of ego,-- is actually the doorway to our divine nature, our presence. What you may discover as you befriend this emptiness, as you bring your practice of presence to it, that this empty hole, this disconnection is simply a kind of empty spaciousness, an opening, that allows what is deeper and truer to arise. If we are caught up in all the reactions we believe that this emptiness is a kind of annihilation, an intolerable meaningless, a place of terror and we never actually let ourselves land in the nothing to discover that it is simply an opening, a portal. 

Years ago I was in the Southern Hemisphere and Christmas was in the height of summer. Of course Santa on slays in blazing heat was all wrong. But more importantly there was so little darkness. My soul could not find the tug to go inward. Back then I did not understand what this pull was but at some intuitive level I could feel that some kind of deep dark gravity was missing.

So I invite you to go out at night. Let the darkness in. Next time we will focus on the Blackness of these nights.

Blessings to you all, Alison