Toward Common Ground

The Hopi Message about Japan

Fear and Reassurance

May we all, tormented in spirit in the face of life’s present mysterious tragedies, hearken now to the inner voices within ourselves that speak to us of a transcendent peace and beauty that can and does sustain us through life and death, reminding us of the precious nature of each moment in space and time that we are privileged to share with all the rest of the vast Beingness of Life, which is ongoing, eternal, profoundly mysterious, and struck through and through with Love. Glenda Taylor

Here are also words from the world’s religions:

The first is from Chung-tzu and Taoism, a tradition in Japan from ancient times: “Life and death, preservation and ruin, success and failure, poverty and riches, honor and disgrace, blame and praise, hunger, thirst, cold and heat—these are changes which take place in the order of things and are the workings of fate. Like day and night they alternate before us, and we know that we are unable to determine their origin. Consequently they are not worth causing a disturbance to our peace. They cannot enter the sanctum of the spirit. Let harmony and delight prevail, and do not lose your contentment. Unceasingly, through day and night, let there be a springtime with all things. In this way you welcome and make a present-time within your own mind. This is called being talented in full measure.”

“It is not always physical bravery that counts. One must have the courage to face life as it is, to go through sorrows and always sacrifice oneself for the sake of others.” African Traditional Religions. Kipsigis Saying, Kenya

“Do you think that you shall enter the Garden without such trials as came to those who passed away before you? They encountered suffering and adversity, and were so shaken in spirit that even the Apostle and those of faith who were with him cried, ‘When will come the help of God?’ Ah! Verily the help of God is always near!” Islam. Qur’an 2.214

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Christianity. Romans 8.35-39

“Holy is the death of heroic men who lay down their lives in an approved cause…[surely those working in the nuclear reactors meet this criteria…] And in the hereafter they suffer not. Such reward they shall obtain if on the Sole Lord they meditate, whose service drives away all fears. They utter not aloud their suffering, they bear all in their minds—the Lord Himself knows all.” Sikhism. Adi Granth, Wadhans, Alahaniyan Dirges, M.1, pp. 579f

“All men are responsible for one another.” [Let us be generous in our prayers as in our financial support for those suffering in the world right now.] Judaism. Talmud, Sanhedrin 27b

“The believer who participates in Human life, exposing himself to its torments and suffering, is worth more than the one who distances himself from its suffering.” Islam. Hadith of Ibn Majah

“The great unborn Self is undecaying, immortal, undying, fearless, infinite.” Hinduism. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.25

“Nothing can ever destroy the Buddha nature. The nature of self is nothing but the undisclosed storehouse of the Tathagata. Such a storehouse can never be broken, put to fire, or plundered. Though it is not possible to destroy or see it, one can know it when one attains the unsurpassed enlightenment” Buddhism. Mahaparinivana Sutra 220

Balance

Every spiritual tradition I know about emphasizes the concept of balance—the Taoist Yin-Yang, the Native American Medicine Wheel, the Judeo-Christian “to every thing there is a season…” and on and on. Today, prayerfully, as in Japan so much destruction and loss of life has happened, here at home I walked out into my garden to experience the opposite—the springtime emergence of life in all its newness and glory. This redbud tree, in full bloom, was, literally, loudly humming with life. There were so many bees blissed out in the blossoms that the whole tree was resonating with a vibrant song of spring. I send it along to help you hold the balance, to stand strongly in the place of life ongoing, even as we bear witness and respect the tragedy in Japan and elsewhere. Blessings on us all, in all conditions.

Love’s Calm

Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the UN in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, kept a journal, published posthumously as Markings. He was faced, personally and professionally, with so many calamities that I looked this morning at his published words for comfort and courage, prayerful as I am after the news of last night’s earthquake and tsunami that have effected so many people and places.

At such a time, I simply sit, in silence, and send Love, Love to all, to everyone and everything.

Then I go to find comfort and guidance in words like Hammarskjold’s. So here are quotes from Markings:

“You wake from dreams of doom and–for a moment–you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love’s calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn.”

“Tired and lonely, so tired the heart aches. Meltwater trickles down the rocks, the fingers are numb, the knees tremble. It is now, now, that you must not give in…”

“…Thou Whom I do not know but Whose I am. Thou Whom I do not comprehend but Who has dedicated me to my fate. Thou–”

“The unheard of–to be in the hands of God.”

“Without our being aware of it, our fingers are so guided that a pattern is created when the thread gets caught in the web.”

Such words as these remind me that, many times over, the precious Earth has shuddered and risen up and flooded over our illusions of reality.

We live by grace and in grace, and, may it be, we ARE grace! Living and dying, transcending and transforming, we are, without doubt, only and always, Love and Loved. May we all be part of “Love’s unwavering flame” in this time of stress and disaster. May we do all that we can, including keeping a place of calm and beauty and peace, sending it out to all, everywhere, in humility and humanity, to balance the otherwise overwhelming disturbances occurring daily in the world.

My love and prayers to all.

Glenda Taylor

These Days

Take heart! Although the news each day seems more and more alarming, the political divisions and unrest, at home and abroad, seem more and more severe, do not think that hope is lost. Consider how many times those who came before us had to struggle through overwhelming situations. The conditions of the world have always been uncertain and ambiguous, challenging and fearful, beautiful and amazing. Throughout the cycles of history, there have been periods when we moved backward and forgot our better natures, and also times when we were able to step forward with clarity and courage for the betterment of all humanity. Most often, both of these have seemed to be happening at once.

Think, for example, of conditions during the American Revolution. Think of the men in Philadelphia, in 1776, after having bravely declared the independence of thirteen separate and very distinct American colonies from the most powerful empire in the world at the time, Great Britain. Consider that those men in Philadelphia, delegates to something they were brashly calling a Continental Congress, weren’t even able to remain in Philadelphia; imagine working feverishly day and night, trying to create a nation, while a massive invasion by a professional, well trained British army forced them to evacuate several times, and Philadelphia was actually captured and occupied by the British. Consider that these delegates received, repeatedly, word from their newly appointed and quite inexperienced general, George Washington, that his army was starving, freezing, without shoes or proper clothing or shelter, and was almost broken. And consider the impasse that these delegates faced in discussions between themselves as they tried to patch together a plan for union of such disparate colonies into one nation.

There were enormous differences between the colonies in religion and culture, in climate and geography, in commerce and laws. With the people of the separate colonies sharing neither a common history nor a common vision of the future, how was there to be union?

There were even differences within each colony as they struggled to come up with that colony’s own statement of governance. The Pennsylvania colony had begun to draft a new state constitution, and conservatives worried that its terms wouldn’t allow enough protection for property and that the state would succumb to a demagogue. People transferred their fear of the King’s misuse of power onto other colonial patriots. Rumor had it that some of the Pennsylvanians were even discussing the assassination of Samuel Adams from Massachusetts, whom they considered too radical. But Samuel Adams soldiered on, talking and talking and talking to every delegate from every colony, urging in the strongest terms the necessity for union.

The Virginia colony rejected many of Thomas Jefferson’s suggestions for their new state constitution. Many of his proposals had concerned civil rights. He wanted to extend the right to vote, guarantee decent treatment for Indians, reform the inheritance laws, and provide for civilian control of the military. As one historian has said, “Jefferson’s Virginia would have been a freer, fairer, more humane society, with full religious freedom and no capital punishment.” But Jefferson watched helplessly from Philadelphia while his fellow Virginians back home turned away from his suggestions and created a constitution less humane. So what did Jefferson then do? He labored on, wrote the first draft of the statement of the declaration of independence of all the colonies. But then, once again, he watched as delegates from South Carolina and Georgia expunged his lines against slavery and, as other delegates, from all sides of the political spectrum, changed many of his strongest sentiments. But compromise the delegates finally did, and the revered Declaration of Independence as we now know it was approved. (A cartoon in a paper in England shortly afterward showed an American reading the Declaration to a public gathering, while a black slave protected the reader, the patriot, the rebel from the sun by holding a huge palm leaf overhead.)

But how was a constitution for a common union to be drawn up? Some of the delegates in Philadelphia detested any central power of government. Some wanted each state to be completely sovereign. Others believed that a strong central government was absolutely necessary to repel foreign attacks and would help to subdue uprisings at home. Some believed in complete democracy, some in an aristocracy, and others in representative government. Men who had previously controlled their colonies were fighting to perpetuate that control. Would there be one representative from each state, even though some states were tiny and others huge? Would representation be by population, with the big cities thus having total control over the rural areas? Even those in favor of union, such as John Adams, had the practical view that it would be difficult to unite an enormous continent, most of it unexplored, under one rule.

There were some apparently irreconcilable differences of opinion. For example, the delegates debated for days about how to count slaves in the census to determine how many representatives each state might or might not have in a new government, and also how slaves would count as property in determining taxation. In the end it was decided in a compromise that for representation purposes, it took two slaves to equal one free man—a compromise that would not be made “more perfect” for nearly a hundred years.

Meanwhile, General Washington and his ragged, starving, suffering troops fought, withdrew, fought, withdrew, suffered many defeats and a few minor victories. Ragged men’s bare feet froze in the snow and ice and had to be amputated. Starving men boiled their belts to try to get nourishment. Prominent citizens were suddenly discovered to be spies for the British. Weather helped or did not help the cause. Flukes of nature or luck or ignorance determined whole battles. Strategies came unraveled. Pride, vanity, and ambition led many to challenge and debase George Washington publicly. But the Continental Army somehow carried on.

And the members of the Continental Congress carried on. Until at last the mighty, unbeatable British army was forced to surrender and the Americans actually became the United States.

Even then, even afterward, and even unto this day, there has been continuous debate, dissension, compromise, and conflict. Benjamin Franklin was heard to say, “We have a democracy, if we can keep it.”

Yes, we have conflict and dissension today, at home and abroad. But the very value of our country is the freedom to carry on these extraordinary debates, preferably with civility, but certainly without violence.

America is not the only, not the first, country in the world to desire and struggle toward freedom, or to try to improve while still being imperfect. Wherever one may look, in any tradition, political or religious, there are courageous and also outrageous records of human actions and of the capricious fluidity of history. Wisdom and madness.

In this current time, this amazing current time, we will see change and renewal and inspiration and disappointment, all of it. Let us take heart and do our part, each in our own way, consoled by our awareness of the long trajectory of history, of the always present good emerging out of the irony.

Consider the following quotations. Consider the perplexing contradictions. Consider a prominent Jewish man in 1925 proclaiming the rights of Palestinians to a Zionist congress. Consider Karl Marx, the father of Communism, advising that a state should confine itself to “formal and negative activities.” Consider a man whose life work helped to create the atomic bomb warning about its dangers. Consider the Nazi general spelling out how to get any people to follow along by the use of fear. Consider how nation after nation, person after person, has been in various and often conflicting relationships to “truth.”

Then go outside, please, and look at the moon, or at a flower, or at a child at play. Sit down on the Earth and feel her ongoing, pulsating life, beneath and all around you. Exercise your smile muscles, just for fun. Sing a song you learned when you were ten, or fourteen, before you figured things out. Plant a radish; it grows faster than anything else. Take heart. Hope is not lost. It all may be, it all is confusing, disturbing, fearful, perhaps even disastrous. But, as an old black man said to me once when I was little, when I asked him how he could endure the unfairness of things, he said, “Honey, it ain’t over, it ain’t ever over, things always get along to better some day.” Amen.

Quotations:

“Palestine must be built up without violating the legitimate interests of the Arabs…600,000 Arabs live there, who before the sense of justice of the world have exactly the same rights to their homes as we have to our National Home.” Chaim Weizmann, addressing the Fourteenth Zionist Congress in Vienna, 1925, quoted in Tessler, Mark, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1994 p. 181

“The state is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities.” Karl Marx, Critical Notes on the Article ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian’ (1844)

“The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.” Albert Einstein, “Atomic War or Peace,” Atlantic Monthly, November 1945

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953

England’s Bill of Rights in 1689 granted freedom of speech in Parliament. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted during the French Revolution in 1789, specifically affirmed freedom of speech as an inalienable right.

“Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” Plutarch (born 46 AD, died 120 AD) (Socrates was executed by the state for corrupting the youth.)

“When a white army battles Indians and wins, it is called a great victory, but if they lose it is called a massacre.” – Chiksika, Shawnee

“In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions. Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope of God’s mercy and grace, their lives lose all value.” Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

“Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.” Martin Luther King Jr

“We believe that to err is human. To blame it on someone else is politics. “ Hubert H. Humphrey

“The Supreme Court has made its ruling; now let’s see them enforce it,” President Andrew Jackson, speaking of the court’s ruling against the expulsion of Native Americans from their homeland.

“We are now about to take our leave and kind farewell to our native land, the country the Great Spirit gave our Fathers. We are on the eve of leaving that country that gave us birth, it is with sorrow we are forced by white man to quit the scenes of our childhood…we bid farewell to it and all we hold dear.” Charles Hicks, Tsalagi (Cherokee) Vice Chief speaking of the Trail of Tears, November 4, 1838

“The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.” Winston Churchill

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. “ Hermann Göering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief, (born: 1893, died: 1946 age: 53)

“Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them. “ Alexander Solzhenitsyn (author and political prisoner in Communist Russia, born: 1918, died: 2008 at age 89)

“I was once asked why I don’t participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I’ll be there.” Mother Teresa

“A terrace nine stories high rises from a handful of earth; a journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath one’s feet.” Lao Tzu

“Plant a radish; it grows fast.” Glenda Taylor, age 71. Well, actually, 72 in six weeks.

For Ourselves, Our Nation

One becomes, perhaps, and correctly so, speechless in the face of such enormous events as occurred in Arizona this weekend. After the stillness, though, I look to the words of wise ones from my memory and from my library to fill my thoughts and guide my own speech and actions. Here are some of them:

From “The Evil One,” a talk given by Jeffery Russell at a conference Facing Evil: “First, to avoid doing evil, we should avoid being allured by abstractions. Democracy, socialism, national security, women’s liberation, free enterprise, Christianity, right to life, communism, Zionism: the list of causes is endless. The question here is not whether one or another of these causes may be good or bad. The point is that to allow any cause (however good its intent or appearance) to encourage us to hurt individuals or to fail to help individuals, is the greatest cause of evil in the world.”

From Barbara Jordan, former Congresswoman from Texas: “We must be ever vigilant in our actions, for fear we may perpetrate an act of cruelty or an evil notwithstanding our intent.”

From Eugene C. Kennedy, The Pain of Being Human,: “Suppose, as can happen so often, the situation is completely out of your hands; there is nothing you could do even if you wanted to. For example,there are heart-rending moments of waiting in hospital corridors and doctors’ offices while somebody you love is beyond your words or your touch; they exist for the moment in that hazy atmosphere of unnecessary sickness or uncertain diagnosis where you cannot go yourself no matter how much you ache to do so. There are times when all we can do is wait with those we love, wait for the words we are afraid to hear, or for the decisions we wish did not have to be made. These are the times when we are laid bare as persons, when our interior substance or lack of it beomes plain in the charged space where all distractions fail, when we must face the unknown–with someone we love–as best we can. In these moments we have to tame our restlessness and let our pride die…This is precisely the time when our loved ones need us; not what we can do or say, but just us, as we are, with them through the long hours when it may take effort to keep our courage from collapsing with the next deep breath. This is the time when we learn to pray again, when we dig deep inside ourselves for the sincerity we might have forgotten. This is the moment of truth–when we learn whether we have guts, or character, or if we have ever learned anything about love. We only appear to be doing nothing. We are really doing the most important thing of all.”

From “That Which Lives After Us,” a talk given by Maya Angelou at a conference Facing Evil: “Each person in this room has gone to bed with fear or loss or pain or distress–grief–at some night or another. And yet each of us has awakened, arisen, made whatever ablutions we chose to make or could make. Then, seeing other human beings, we said, “Good morning, how are ya?” “Fine thanks, and you?” Now wherever that lives in us–whether it’s in the bend of the elbow, behind the kneecap–wherever that lives, there dwells the nobleness in the human spirit. Not nobility. I don’t trust the word. It think it’s pompous. But the nobleness is in the human spirit. It is seen in the fact that we rise to good, we do rise..”

An excerpt from “A Prayer for Our Country,” from The Book of Common Prayer: “Almighty God…Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home…”

From Rilke’s Book of Hours: “I thank you, deep power that works me very more lightly in ways I can’t make out…”

Kindling Fire, A Midwinter Message

I am told that in a few weeks, on the evening of the winter solstice, there will be a full eclipse of the full moon. That the winter solstice—that time of the changing of seasons from the darkening to the increasing of light—coincides this year with the darkening eclipse and the re-illumination of the full moon seems especially powerful to me. The ancient meanings surrounding the solstice will be dramatically presented to us at a time when the world so much needs a turning toward the light.

The winter solstice is, of course, the time of maximum seasonal darkness, when days are shortest, when the earth is at its farthest point away from the sun. Throughout the world, peoples have always held ritual ceremonies at this time to “bring back the light.”

Of course, many modern people, with electric lights and central heat, have lost much of the sense of seasonal process that our forebears understood. Perhaps most people today, wrapped in “holiday cheer,” see no connection to this being a time of conscious sacrifice, of disciplined and rigorous ritual. Many do not connect the winter solstice to the new year ceremonies, or recognize that the placement of Jesus’ birth at the season of the winter solstice profoundly echoes what peoples had long understood about darkness and light, about nature’s cyclical process, and about their own important place in that process.

At this time of year, after autumn, when the trees have let go of leaves and the plants have let go of blossoms and seeds, and when animal families let go of their older family members, losing them to cold or to hungry predators, darkness descends. For the ancients it was a time of struggle, often of suffering, sometimes of near starvation.

This is a time when not only dried leaves and dead limbs but everything in nature seems to free fall wildly, helter skelter, downward and backward, blindly, into the moist living darkness, under accumulated layers of leaf mold and snow. Everything seems to “go to seed.” Winter comes with an apparent end to everything that is growing and blooming and fruiting. Winter can seem to be a time of dying back, and this winter even in our culture, it seems especially a time of hardship and loss.

However, winter has her own wisdom and profit. It is, yes, the time when Mother Nature does her strenuous winter housekeeping, clearing out the dead wood, blowing away dried leaves and decaying limbs, along with all else that is, perhaps, too old or frail or weak to survive her purging winter weather. But in this way, she clears a space for newness, for the maturing of the healthy and strong, and, at the same time, all those dried leaves and mulch create rich compost to nourish the new growth that will emerge in the next seasonal cycle of spring.

We, as a part of nature ourselves, can know that by entering consciously into the wintering process, into the psychological process of letting go and pruning back, by giving up certain personal excesses, we can prepare ourselves for new life too. During winter, because of the weather, we are more often inside our homes, with opportunity for quieting ourselves, letting the cleansing psychic winds blow through our souls, clearing out internal dead wood, making space for hearty and vital new life processes, and letting die back all those overgrown thickets of our normal conscious life. When we do so, we can know that spring will soon return for each of us, after the long winter, with new growth and new life.

Once, native peoples spent this time of year close together around their campfires, listening to the elders retell the tribal myths and stories, coming together in a special closeness that did not occur during the spring and summer, when the way opened for individual hunting and gathering, for traveling and being alone and abroad in the world. The time of winter tribal sharing was a time of special bonding and of the inculcation and fostering of spiritual ideas and values. Thus, despite the harshness of the weather, the winter had its powerful place.

Some of the ancient rituals at the winter solstice are powerfully meaningful. Here are a few quotes, among many I could recount:

“…No one knows for certain the year of the Nativity of Christ, or the month or the day. In the early days of Christianity some Christians kept Christmas on January 1 and some on January 6; others celebrated it on March 29, the time of the Jewish Passover…But in the old Roman Empire December 25 was the winter solstice and was regarded as the birthday of the sun, since on or about that day the days begin to get longer and the sun seems to get more powerful after its winter decline…The ancient Egyptians, we are told, used to represent the newborn sun by the image of an infant, which on his birthday they brought forth from the temples and exposed for all to see, saying at the same time, “the Virgin”—that is Isis, the “Queen of Heaven”—has brought forth! The light is waxing!”…Mithra, the sun-god of the ancient Persians, was supposed to have been born on December 25; so, too, according to some, was Buddha, and likewise Freya, one of the old Scandinavian gods. The Druids made the day their annual fire festival…and the mistletoe played a great part in the worship of the Druids. …At the winter solstice the old Norsemen used to kindle huge bonfires in honor of the great god Thor. …a magical rite intended to encourage and assist the sun in that time of his annual career when he was obviously feeling very ‘low.” …In England, and in many parts of Germany and France and other countries, the Yule-log used to be cut with care, dragged home, and placed on the hearth with loud rejoicings. When it was all burnt, its ashes were carefully collected to be strewn on the fields on every night up to Twelfth Night or kept as a charm and useful medicine. …And they had an old practice of keeping a half-consumed piece of the old log with which to light the new one the following Christmas. “ (Pike, Round the Year with the World’s Religions).
“…In the Sudanese kingdom of Wadai all the fires in the villages are put out and the ashes removed from the houses on the day which precedes the new year festival. At the beginning of the new year a new fire is lit by the friction of wood in the great straw hut where the village elders lounge away the winter hours together, and every man takes thence a burning brand with which he rekindles the fire on his domestic hearth…The Egyptians in antiquity celebrated the winter solstice as the birthday of the sun, and festal lights or fires were kindled on this joyous occasion.” (Frazer. Golden Bough)
…“At a festival held in the last month of the old Mexican year, all the fires both in the temples and in the houses were extinguished, and the priest kindled a new fire by rubbing two sticks against each other before the image of the god….Among the Esquimaux of Iglulik, when the sun first rises above the horizon after the long night of the Artic winter, the children who have watched for its reappearance run into the houses and blow out the lamps. Then they receive from their mothers presents of pieces of wick….” (Frazer. Golden Bough)

Somewhere also I remember reading that the ancient Mesoamerican peoples extinguished their home fires before the solstice fire was rekindled, and cleaned their houses and swept the dust and debris and all the “bad feelings” out into the street, and then some holy person came through and swept all of this clear out of the village, symbolically and literally, in preparation of the new year. And for the solstice feast, after the new fires were lit, cakes were eaten that contained a pin prick of blood, signifying the sacrifice needed by each person to make possible the on-going fires of life.

All of these rituals speak to the precarious nature of life at the edge of darkness, of the miracle of the light and new life, and of the attention, discipline, and sacrifice necessary to keep the whole thing going properly. The ability to create fire at will is one of the seminal skills of the human race, and the extinguishing of all fire is an awesome thought. The keeper of the light, of the fire, had at all times an awesome responsibility, keeping the coals alive or having the skills and means of making fire for the people was important. So this extinguishing of the fire during the solstice time was an act both of honoring the darkness and of faith in the ability to kindle, to create new fire. It was, and still is, no small thing to take up responsibility for the light and lightness.

Do we trust, I wonder, our own personal “kindling” process? Do we have ritual and ceremony to help us remember the sacredness and the many dimensions of meaning that the solstice had for ancient people? Do we have our own gift of “wicks” handed down to us?

How is light rekindled in your spiritual life when you are plunged into inner darkness? Does the light seem to come completely from outside yourself, accidentally, like chance fire created by lightening in a dead tree? In these dark days in the world around us, do you feel powerless, so that you can only wait and hope for light miraculously to reemerge?

Or have you, perhaps, evolved to the point where you have some insights and skills in the inner “fire-making” process? Have you discovered your own inner equivalent to rubbing two sticks together methodically and creating a new blaze of energy and light? The ability to kindle light in the midst of inner darkness is an essential psychological and spiritual skill.

How can we do this? By prayer? By a talk with a loving friend or counselor? By inspirational reading? By paying attention to dreams? By cultivating Chi? By yoga? By calling upon “All My Relations,” as the native peoples say to all the powers that be? What is your trusted technique for the recreation of light in the dark times of your life?

So many people today experience themselves as powerless. Our search for soul, as well as our search for meaning in a power-mad society, leads many back to an awareness that real power, real light, is actually available to us. Where? Well, name your term. Hebrews, Christians, Muslims all call the source of real power God. Native Americans call it the Great Mystery or Great Spirit of All That Is. Sufis call it the Beloved. Carl Jung called it the Self, with a capital S. Some physicists refer to it as an overarching field of energy. Some philosophers call it Great Mind. Ecologists call it the web of life. Maybe some people just call it Love, Compassion, Kindness. But, to be sure, spiritual teachers everywhere encourage us to cultivate spiritual power.

Ultimately, of course, all power is mystery, and our humility is our recognition of the small step we have taken on the path of spiritual power and insight. But how important it is to our spiritual and psychological health that we retain a sense of our connection to the Light, to God, to All Our Relatives, to Divine Love—however we choose to express the mystery.

Jesus said, “Ask, and ye shall receive.” Perhaps asking, speaking forth with integrity and intent, correctly, is part of the kindling process. As someone has remarked, the Buddhist rainmaker does not create the rain, he only allows the rain to fall. This powerful and essential act of choosing, consciously, to allow the cosmic energy to flow creatively into human affairs is illustrated at this time of year too, in the Christian mythos in the person of Mary, who does not create the Christ child, but creates the sort of life into which it can emerge, and chooses, moreover, to receive it and nourish it when it comes.

We can each, in our own way, with our own practices, create lives into which power and light can emerge, we can experience power for our own lives that helps us to be “kindlers” of light for the world.

So, in the days before this winter solstice this year, perhaps some of us may choose to spend some time honoring the darkening time, the wintering process, and the re-kindling of the light in our own lives. Whatever form this may take—fasting, increased meditation time, more active journal work, thoroughly cleaning home or office, extinguishing all lights and heat mindfully and giving praise for their return, or whatever—our experience of the winter solstice will be enhanced if we have prepared for it in depth.

For many years people once gathered at Earthsprings on the evening of the winter solstice. Even prisoners from the minimum security prison in Bryan, where I visited on a monthly basis, were brought to Earthsprings by the chaplain. Here we built a fire, just as ancients did all over the world as the darkness deepened. Sometimes we put out all the fires and lights and one of our number “made fire” in the old fashioned way, while the rest of us watched breathlessly this feat that was so essential to the lives of ancient people, but also so fraught with chance. Because my own personal life got swallowed up by circumstances, we have not had an official midwinter ceremony at Earthsprings for several years, but I always honor this sacred time, for I believe that the balancing of the dark and light is a powerful metaphor for my own inner life as I pray for light for the world’s soul.

So, today, I challenge us all to consider, how much confidence we have in this whole light and dark balancing process, and to think seriously about how we handle darkness, where we find sources of new light, how much we may wish to commit to acquiring more and more of this skill in the year ahead, and, of course, how we protect ourselves from inflation and “power madness,” and how we survive and thrive even in a dark time in our culture.

And finally, please know that while I sit quietly outside, watching, on the night of the eclipse of the moon on the winter solstice, saying my prayers and doing my own ceremony, you will be in my heart. My intentions will, as always, include the hope that your life is and will be in the coming year rich and full and blessed with abundant meaning, love, and opportunity for fulfillment of your own unique soul’s purpose.

Glenda Taylor
Earthsprings, 2010

All Paths

A quote from Vivekananda in 1893 at his address to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago:

“…I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: ‘As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee…’
The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: ‘Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.’
Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair…I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.”

Perrenial Wisdom

Late season blooming,
the camellia, even after frost,
while I, at 71, giddy this glorious day,
on the wind, with golden leaves
hawk-tossed, wildly alive,
oh yes, always, again.

On Contentment

“The first sign of your becoming religious,” says Vivekananda,”is that you are becoming cheerful.”

Christopher Isherwood writes, in his commentary on the Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali:

“It is well worth analyzing the circumstances of those occasions on which we have been truly happy. For as John Masefield says, ‘The days that make us happy make us wise.’ When we review them, we shall almost certainly find that they had one characteristic in common. They were times when, for this or that reason, we had temporarily ceased to feel anxious; when we lived–as we so seldom do–in the depths of the present moment, without regretting the past or worrying about the future. This is what Patanjali means by contentment…

“Logically there is no reason why contentment should cause happiness. One might–if one had never experienced it–reasonably suppose that an absence of desire would merely produce a dull, neutral mood, equally joyless and sorrowless. That fact that this is not so is a striking proof that intense happiness, the joy of the Atman, is always within us; that it can be released at any time by breaking down the barriers of desire and fear which we have built around it. How, otherwise, could we be so happy without any apparent reason?”