Weaving webs and tapestries

While I posted this on my other blog, I think I want to repost at least part of it here at Merry Dragon.

Vicki, a woman who teaches people about labyrinths writes about meditation with a reference to spiders as weavers. I have long been fascinated with the idea of webs as a metaphor for the connections we all "weave" as we create -- many times, completely unaware -- the "tapestries" of our lives. It's a rich, deep imagery that holds a lot of meaning for me. Here's part of Vicki's thoughts:

Spiders are weavers... their webs can become quite large and intricate. And so very beautiful, especially when they capture the morning dew...

The human part of us sometimes has difficulty quieting the chatter in our mind long enough to hear what our soul is trying to tell us. Meditation is the art of paying attention, of listening to your heart and learning to be present in the moment. Sometimes without being fully conscious of it, we withdraw from the present and live in the past or the future.

We stay in the past by holding on to learned negative behaviors and patterns that no longer serve us. Perhaps we are angry or unhappy about our current circumstances, not realizing that we can untangle ourselves from this web of our own making. Our soul continually creates circumstances so we can learn life lessons, whatever they may be. Until we learn these lessons, we stay caught in the web with only the circumstances changing... more than likely looming larger as the need to learn the lessons grows. Meditation brings us into the present and teaches us to accept the past and let go of these old behaviors.

Some of us are fearful of the future. The human part of us doubts whether we are capable of making correct decisions on our life path. By releasing this tangled web we learn to be in the “now,” transforming these fears and learning to trust our intuition or soul voice. Faith is born of this trust and our lives become more simplified. Meditation can help us live more fully, more effectively, and more peacefully.

Catch some Brain Rain in your life?

I subscribe to BlogLines and get an RSS feed from 43 folders. Here's an article from six weeks ago that I liked.

I'm re-posting it here (among other places) as a gentle reminder to myself:

Keys to catching the brain rain:

• set aside 10 minutes, each and every day
• have pen and paper handy
• allow yourself the freedom to think crazy thoughts
• don’t worry if nothing really productive springs to mind right away
• periodically scan over your notes from these sessions as things may pop into your mind after they have “marinated” for a while
• if no ideas pop into your head pick a fun topic and doodle a bit
• use word association to get things rolling if you feel stuck e.g. thinking -> thoughts -> mind -> brainstorm -> brain rain

The original posting was entitled "Warm, Partly Cloudy, 100% Chance of Brain Rain."

Questions to ponder

So ....

I met with my good friend of twenty-plus years, Carol, last night, somewhat unexpectedly. She lives in another state and was visiting here. We dined at a fashionable, family-friendly restaurant in Royal Oak.

Here's some questions she asked me in the course of our conversation (probably not exactly as she phrased them, but as I remembered them):

-- What are your dreams?

-- Why not take this time for some travel? Open yourself up to other possibilities?

-- Have you thought about searching out a progressive, spiritual community?

-- What makes your heart sing? (Carol was actually speaking of what made her heart sing, but I internalized the question!)

-- Would you consider going to therapy again?

Because of our longstanding friendship and some of the strengths and skills Carol possesses, I value beyond words her listening and questioning and counseling of me.

What are my dreams, indeed?

"...Faced with the ineffable and the indescribable..."

Today, I read an article in Salon called "Going Beyond God" interviewing the author, Karen Armstrong. Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

...You're saying these ancient sages really didn't care about big metaphysical systems. They didn't care about theology.

No, none of them did. And neither did Jesus. Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate. In the Quran, metaphysical speculation is regarded as self-indulgent guesswork. And it makes people, the Quran says, quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian. You can't prove these things one way or the other, so why quarrel about it? The Taoists said this kind of speculation where people pompously hold forth about their opinions was egotism. And when you're faced with the ineffable and the indescribable, they would say it's belittling to cut it down to size. Sometimes, I think the way monotheists talk about God is unreligious.

Unreligious? Like talk about a personal God?

Yes, people very often talk about him as a kind of acquaintance, whom they can second-guess. People will say God loves that, God wills that, and God despises the other. And very often, the opinions of the deity are made to coincide exactly with those of the speaker.

Well, it seems to me you're also saying that to be religious -- truly religious -- is tremendously hard work. It's far harder than just ...

... singing a few hymns.

... or just reading the scriptures literally. You can't live that way.

Religion is hard work. It's an art form. It's a way of finding meaning, like art, like painting, like poetry, in a world that is violent and cruel and often seems meaningless. And art is hard work. You don't just dash off a painting. It takes years of study. I think we expect religious knowledge to be instant. But religious knowledge comes incrementally and slowly. And religion is like any other activity. It's like cooking or sex or science. You have good art, sex and science, and bad art, sex and science. It's not easy to do it well.

So how should we approach the sacred texts? How should we read them?

Sacred texts have traditionally been a bridge to the divine. They're all difficult. They're not a simple manual -- a how-to book that will tell you how to gain enlightenment by next week, like how to lose weight on the Atkins diet. This is a slow process. I think the best image for reading scripture occurs in the story of Jacob, who wrestles with a stranger all night long. And in the morning, the stranger seems to have been his God. That's when Jacob is given the name Israel -- "one who fights with God." And he goes away limping as he walks into the sunrise. Scriptures are a struggle.

What about an afterlife?

It's a red herring as far as I'm concerned.

But you must have thought about that question. Does everything end once we die?

I don't know. I prefer to be agnostic on that matter, as do most of the world's religions. It's really only Christianity and Islam that are obsessed with afterlife in this way. It was not a concern in the Axial Age, not for any of them. I think the old scenarios of heaven and hell can be unreligious. People can perform their good deeds in the spirit of putting their installments in their retirement annuities. And there's nothing religious about that. Religion is supposed to be about the loss of the ego, not about its eternal survival.

And is there an endpoint? From the cosmological perspective, was the universe designed specifically for life? Are those important questions?

Yeah, I think they can be wonderful questions. But they don't occupy me very much. I believe that what we have is now. The religions say you can experience eternity in this life, here and now, by getting those moments of ecstasy where time ceases to be a constraint. And you do it by the exercise of the Golden Rule and by compassion. And just endless speculation about the next world is depriving you of a great experience in this one.

an email prayer

I get these occasionally in the mail. Usually I don't read them, send them on or spend enough energy to delete them.

But this one touched me. I'm wondering if there really was a Saint Theresa?

Saint Theresa is known as the Saint of the Little Ways . . . meaning she believed in doing the little things in life well and with great love. She is also the patron Saint of flower growers and florists. She is represented by roses.

St. Theresa's Prayer:
May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you . . .
May you be content knowing you are a child of God . . .
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

being: word-happy

Is having four, yes, FOUR, blogs a tip-off that I like writing and words and writing words?

In a word: Yes. I do.

I enjoy reading great prose and reading well-thought-out thoughts and wish, wish, WISH I could write like those so gifted.

So, I write in my blogs. This is the fourth of four.

I love words!

Every once in a while, several of us "get going," creating a thread of emails that usually is spontaneous, light-hearted and downright funny. Here's one that just happened today. Makes me smile. MAKES ME SMILE BIG.

I love words. I am word-happy.

being: thankful

I just wrote a posting on one of my other blogs about my sister, Ruth, and giving thanks for her presence in my life.

I guess my friend, Carol, and my conversation is still swirling around in my head about life as a gift. I can embrace that completely and, ... as a corollary to that, acknowledge my sister as a gift as well.

As the recipient of a profoundly generous gift, I want to acknowledge the gift, celebrate not only the gift but the gift-giver too, and thank the gift-giver for the generosity of the gift.

Being: theology and a small, insistent voice

A small, insistent voice told me to call my pastor friend, Carol, today. So I did.

Carol and I have known one another since 1984, the year that she came to East Lansing to serve as a campus pastor at the church I attended.

She gave me the names of two books which I may ask Santa for; both are by the esteemed theologian, Douglas John Hall.

The first title is Bound and Free; A Theologian's Journey which talks about life as a gift. We were talking about life as something to be "consumed" and how unappealing a verb that is. Carol mentioned that Hall speaks of being good stewards of that which is a gift, life. I'm intrigued.

The second title is Why Christian? People on the Edge of Faith (or something close to that) which, I presume, was her gentle nudging of me to seek and find a spiritual community with which I can participate.

As more than just a few people have told me, I probably should have studied theology. I positively LOVE reading theology.

And that is a "being" part of me, not a "doing" part.

Doing: busyness

One of the things that I suspect may impede my spiritual journey is my busyness. I tend to engage in more busyness than may be good for me. Yes. Truly.

For example, spending time on the computer. Blogging. Sometimes ... many times, computer time feels like something fun to do, something I want to do, but it also has an element of busyness to it. What is that all about?

Is spending time surfing on the internet, reading blogs, even blogging myself -- is that akin to (sharp intake of breath) watching TV???!?

Let's observe this, you and me, shall we?

Being: spiritual, part I

I believe that I am a spiritual being. I believe that we are all spiritual beings. Some of us have more awareness of that, some of us have less.

I believe in a Divine Creator. I also like the paradigm of a Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer although I have more of a problem with the word, Redeemer. That implies that somehow we are broken and need God to "repair" us and make us whole again.

I definitely believe that God creates us and everything around us.

I definitely believe that God sustains us, whether it is the oxygen-rich atmosphere that blankets our little world, the sun rising every morning or the involuntary pumping of our hearts, enabling our every breath and movement. Who but God could do such miraculous and marvelous sustaining activities?

I'll write more later.

Doing: piano playing (second post of Merry Dragon)

Good morning, world! It's Saturday morning, probably my favorite morning of the week, I'm home among the pine trees and with my sweetheart. All is well with my world!

I played the piano this morning. That is definitely an important part of who I am.

I'm working on the Second Prelude of the Bach's English Suites. I think it's in the key of G-minor(?)

And ... I am writing this post from Writely once again, testing out the software. I think I might like this.

Who am I?

I happened to catch Oprah earlier this week. The theme of her show was recovering your true inner self.

I've created this blog (my fourth!) as a stealth blog so that I can post about this who-am-I stuff.

We'll see how it goes.

By the way, Merry Dragon used to be the name of my blog over at Squarespace. While I wasn't crazy about Sq~~~~, I was crazy about the name. I felt compelled to recover it!