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Into the Woods

2/9/2015

A couple of weeks ago Wendy and I went to the movie Into theWoods. It was a wonderful film, filled with fairytale images, catchy songs and fine acting. Most of all it was a visual and auditory feast for our Jungian archetypal taste. As those of you who have attended one my retreats know, I often use a fairytale or story as the foundation.

All of us must go into the mythic woods during our lifetime, usually more than once. In the opening song of the movie we hear, “Into the woods- It's time, and so I must begin my journey..... Into the woods, and who can tell what's waiting on the journey.” Dante Alighieri understood this when he began his Divine Comedy with the words: “Midway upon the journey of life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.” These are not the woods we walk through on a sunny weekend day at local park for a bit of exercise and to enjoy the beauty of the natural world. These are the dark woods of our fears - the haunted woods, where scary and wild things live. these are the woods where we may encounter “Lions and tigers and bears, Oh my!” These are the woods in which we become a wanderer on a quest.

One of my favorite children’s picture books is The Enchanted Wood by Ruth Sanderson. This new fairytale follows the typical format and has some of the most beautiful artwork I have seen in a children’s book. The queen has died, the king is in grief and the kingdom has become a wasteland. The king’s three sons go on a quest to find the tree at the Heart of the World that can renew the kingdom. The Heart of the World is deep in an Enchanted Wood.

The first son goes on the quest and when he fails to return the second goes. Each prince is greeted by an elderly woman who gives him a warning: “Be true to the quest, at any cost. Stray from the path, and you will be lost.” Each son, in turn, treats the woman rudely and ignores her. The eldest son is enchanted by a magnificent White Stag moving through the forest and follows it becoming lost. The second son sees a knight in all black armor riding slowly through the wood. He follows the Black Knight to challenge him also becoming lost in the Enchanted Wood.

When the first two sons fail to return, the youngest son, begins the quest. When he is greeted by the elderly woman with the same warning: “Be true to the quest, at any cost. Stray from the path, and you will be lost.” he listens politely. The young prince is invited to join the woman and her daughter, Rose, for supper and to rest. The next morning, Rose joins the young prince saying, “I may be able to help you on your quest.”

During the journey, the young prince sees each of his brothers and his first instinct is to go to their rescue. But Rose reminds him, ““Be true to the quest, at any cost. Stray from the path, and you will be lost.” After some time, they come to a clearing and find “a wonderful tree, the like of which they had never seen. They understood that here was the Heart of the World, as old as the earth itself.” Their quest successful, the kingdom is restored to its natural lushness, and of course, the young prince becomes the new king with Rose at his side as queen.

There is great wisdom in this simple fairytale that can help us through our own journey into the woods. The warning of the wise woman is the place to start: ““Be true to the quest, at any cost. Stray from the path, and you will be lost.” The quest is always the same, whether it is symbolized by search for the Heart of the World, the Holy Grail, or the Pearl of Great Price. It is the journey of theosis or individuation. It is the search for the Self, for the Divine within.

In The Enchanted Wood, the four things that take the seekers off of their true path, are things we all deal with on our own quest in the dark wood. The first is pride, manifested in the story by rudeness toward the elderly wisdom figure and arrogance in not feeling any need to heed her warning. For us this appears when we think our religion, or political party, or knowledge, is superior to those who are “other,” and certainly not as good as us.

The second, is chasing the White Stag. The White Stag, according to Emma Jung in The Grail Legend, can be seen as patriarchal spirituality or religion (big horns). It may even be interpreted as the Shadow Christ, in whose name wars, the inquisition, and in the current times, when homophobic laws and laws suppressing women’s rights are passed.

The third thing is the meeting with the Black Knight. The Black Knight represents our shadow, that unconscious ‘‘dark side’’ of our personality. Whatever we deem evil, inferior or unacceptable in ourselves becomes part of this shadow.

The fourth lure away from staying true to the quest was the impulse for the young prince to save his brothers at the expense of the quest. This certainly seems good, but is paradoxical. In the movie, Into the Woods, we hear in song, “Morality is complicated: "Wrong things, right things ... Who can say what's true? ... Do things, fight things ... You decide, but ... You are not alone ... You decide what's right. You decide what's good."

Indeed we are not alone. The young prince in The Enchanted Wood is accompanied by Rose. A highly complex symbol, the rose represents both heavenly perfection and earthly passion. In Alchemy, it is wisdom. In the Hebrew Kabbalah, it emerges from the Tree of Life. The rose has always been associated with the goddess, including Isis, Aphrodite, and the Virgin Mary, who is sometimes referred to as the "rosa mystica." For us modern day wanderers on the quest, Rose can be thought of as the anima, the feminine wisdom energy of the psyche or soul.

By deepening our connection to the unconscious anima we will find that we have a great inner friend within us who will guide us through every step in the dark woods and on our path of individuation, theosis, wholeness.
"So into the woods you go again. You have to every now and then. Into the woods, no telling when, be ready for the journey." ~ From Into the Woods

Ruth Sanderson, The Enchanted Wood, Little Brown and Company,1991.

Emma Jung & Marie-Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend, Sigo Press 1986.

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Incarnation "R" Us

12/18/2014

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Sunday is the winter solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere. To add to its darkness this year, only a sliver of the new moon will pass through the sky on this longest night. Even though winter doesn’t officially arrive until then, it feels as though it has fully arrived with early sunsets, late sunrises and snow covered ground. I sit in my comfortable office chair, in our warm house while outside the temperature outside is 14° F, pondering on what wisdom the cold and darkness of winter might share with me as I travel along the Way. I pray that the words of Minnesota singer/songwriter Peter Mayer are trustworthy, as they play in my head, “Maybe peace hides in a storm. Maybe winter’s heart is warm. And maybe light itself is born, in the longest night of the year.”

For me and my fellow Christians, Christmas is the celebration of the Light of Christ being incarnate on Earth in the person of Jesus, a long time ago in a place far, far away.

During late September and early October, Wendy completed a series of oil paintings of pre-dawn and sunrise at Willow River State Park, near our home in Wisconsin, and on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. Each morning we would begin in the extreme dark without the light infiltrating from city or town; I made coffee to bring along. While Wendy painted, I engaged in my qigong and tai chi practice, became more intimate with the changing flora around us, and read or wrote in my journal. Gradually, light illuminated the Eastern sky and the sun’s unhurried appearance on the horizon was a daily encounter with the numinous. On some days I felt palpably drawn into the sunrise.

It was a feeling perhaps expressed in a Christmas Eve Sermon by Fra Giovanni Giocondo in 1513, when he preached, “There is radiance and glory in darkness. And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.”

In the Christmas gospel reading from John, one line usually gets passed over, without much thought, or emphasis in sermons. That line is: “In the Word was life, and that life was the light of people. The light shines in the darkness.” John tells us it is the light of people. Not just of Jesus, but of all people.

Nicholas Motovilov, a 19th century businessman who was imprisoned after the Russian revolution, wrote the following account of his encounter with Russian Orthodox Saint, Father Seraphim of Sarov.

‘Father, I want to understand how we can we can come to be in the Spirit of God and how we can recognize God’s presence in us," I said. Then Father Seraphim took me very firmly by the shoulders and said: "We are both in the Spirit of God now, my son. Why don't you look at me?" I replied: "I cannot look, Father, because your eyes are flashing like lightning. Your face has become brighter than the sun, and my eyes ache with pain." Father Seraphim said: "Don't be alarmed, your Godliness! Now you yourself have become as bright as I am. You are now in the fullness of the Spirit of God yourself; otherwise you would not be able to see me as I am.”

The light is the light of people ~ of you and me.

Thomas Merton wrote of this revelation in his life: "I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun."

I do not wish to detract from the uniqueness of Jesus, but we are all born in the Divine image, and at the very heart of every human being and every creature is the Light that was in the beginning. What the incarnation means is that there is no winter so dark that it can extinguish the Divine Light within and all around us.

Dark blue is increasingly being used in churches as the liturgical color of Advent. It is the color of the earth and sky just before the sun rises. The deep blue of Advent triggers some primordial image as we wait for the promised light of Christ to awaken within, changing night into day, darkness into light, filling our lives and our world. It is an interesting synchronicity that in the wu xing, the Taoist Five Phases Theory, dark blue is also the color associated with winter.

So what do we do? Lao Tzu said, “The sage goes about doing nothing.” C. G. Jung understood this when he wrote, “When one stays in darkness long enough, one begins to see.” - Alchemical Studies.

Meditation is an important winter practice of sitting and doing nothing. Meditation can help us tune into the light glowing even in the midst of the dark winter. Imagining being bathed in dark blue light as we meditate can be powerful during winter.

Most of you probably have a Christmas tree, decorated with lights. Take some time this Christmas season, at night, when all is dark and quiet, to sit in front of your Christmas tree with only the tree lights on. Sip a cup of hot mulled wine or hot tea and meditate on the tree. Maybe the Christmas tree will remind you that “In the Word was life, and the life was the light of people.” That the incarnation is not just about Jesus, but about you and me. Incarnation ‘R’ Us.

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Thanksgiving Pondering

11/25/2014

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Happy Thanksgiving! This is the greeting are giving to people for the couple of days. But I wonder how well these two words are really connected? Between grocery shopping at crowded stores, cooking, family getting together and cleaning up after dinner, we don’t really have much time to reflect on giving thanks or on being happy. Of course on Thursday, we will probably say grace before we eat and I’m sure we will feel some happiness as we eat the good food spread out before us and if our football team wins. But then on Friday, Thanksgiving will be mostly forgotten, except for the leftovers, and many people will be out fighting the crowds to take advantage of the Black Friday sales. Most of you probably will not even get around to reading this until sometime after Thanksgiving, when things have settled down. So, how well do Happy and Thanksgiving really go together?

Research in psychology reveals that our happiness level stays remarkably stable over the course of our lives. Of course, receiving a desired gift or going on a romantic date may temporarily raise our happiness level, and an illness or the break-up of a relationship will probably decrease our level of happiness. But after three to six months, according to this research, we will have returned to our usual level of happiness. Is there a way to make our lives more permanently happier?

One possible way comes from research in the psychology of gratitude. It turns out that actually being thankful might just be the key to raising our overall level of happiness. In his book, Thanks: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis, outlines the research he carried out in this area. He asked a group of students to write down five things for which they were grateful each week for ten weeks. A second group was asked to write down five hassles from the week. At the end of the study period, people in the gratitude group felt happier. In addition, they were more optimistic about the future, they felt better about their lives in general and they even exercised more than those in the hassles group.

In a follow-up study, Dr. Emmons recruited adults who had neuromuscular disorders and therefore had good reason to be unhappy with their current lives. In this study a gratitude group was compared to a control group in which participants just wrote about their daily experiences. At the conclusion of the study, participants in the gratitude group were happier with their lives overall, more optimistic about the upcoming week and were even sleeping better.

The blessings of life are always present, but if we are not aware of and thankful for them, they don't do much for our happiness. Brother David Steindl Rast, a Benedictine monk who studied Zen, has an interactive website, gratefulness.org, that helps us to discover and cultivate gratefulness, and by doing so, hopefully to make the world a happier place. His website even includes a twenty-first century ritual of lighting a candle of gratitude in cyberspace. Simply click on the candlewick to light it and it will burn for twenty-four hours and get smaller as it burns. This provides a gratefulness ritual that can be performed sitting at the computer at any time.

Every ritual we participate in: birthday parties, weddings, kissing someone goodnight, and even funerals have something to do with gratefulness. The great ritual of the Christian Church, the Holy Eucharist, literally means gratitude in Greek. Our job is to be aware of our blessings and give thanks. Medieval theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart said, "If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice."

Writer G. K. Chesterton understood this when he wrote, “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, and swimming, fencing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in ink.”

Between now and Christmas, Wendy and I will watch, as we do every year, the 1954 movie “White Christmas” in which Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney sing the advice to count your blessings. We can count our blessings, as Dr. Emmons suggests, by writing down what we are grateful for each week, or each day, in a journal. Or, why not start a Thanksgiving Jar? Get an empty jar, and during the year, fill it with little notes about the good things that happened. Then, on next Thanksgiving, empty the jar and read all the good things, the blessings, that transpired during the year.

If you start one of these practices, I guarantee that on next Thanksgiving, you will be a generally happier person. And don’t forget, If you're worried and you can't sleep, just count your blessings instead of sheep. And you'll fall asleep, counting your blessings.

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Pondering On the Way

10/25/2014

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I have always enjoyed wandering. As a child I loved to explore and play in the three acres of palmetto and pine trees on which we lived in Pinellas County Florida. In my early teen years, my wanderings became broader as I stretched out to discover new creeks and ponds and “secret places” near our home. Today, some fifty years later, I still love to wander and explore. Now it is the trails of the Wisconsin and Minnesota Parks and North Shore of Lake Superior. One of my favorite memories of last year’s trip to Germany is hiking from the town of Moselkern on the Mosel River, up through an ancient forest along a small river to Burg Eltz (Eltz Castle), a beautiful memory I will never forget.

In my wandering I have always enjoyed pausing to rest. As a child, I loved to sit in the hollow of the base of an old fallen tree, pondering on the animals and vegetation around me and letting my imagination soar. On our hikes, while Wendy is taking photos, I just pause and look at the beauty around us: a vista view, a moss covered rock, or a single flower. I ponder the beauty of this bit of nature or simply observe in silent enjoyment, as Jesus recommended when he said, “Consider the wild flowers...” and “Consider the birds of the air...”

On my wandering through life, I have tried to follow the Christian Way. I was brought up in the Catholic tradition and attended Catholic schools. I am constantly reading books on spirituality and am now a professed and ordained member of The Lindisfarne Community. I have also spent many years following the Way of the Tao, reading and through a daily qigong and tai chi practice. Tao, in Chinese, means "the way," "the path," or "the method." It refers especially to "the path of life" or "the way of nature.” The Tao is described as an experience rather than a thing.

In my younger years, I interpreted Christianity as a thing, a doctrine. The Jesus story was a theological truth to be understood and set of rules to be obeyed. But now it seems that since the earliest followers of Jesus were called Followers of the Way, the Way of Jesus is also meant to be a journey, an experience, and not a thing.

Author and minister, Brian McLaren agrees. In his newly released book, “We Make The Road By Walking”, he writes, “Faith was never intended to be a destination..... it was to be a road or way, it is always being extended into the future.... To be a living tradition, a way of living, it must forever open itself forward and forever remain unfinished - even as it forever cherishes and learns from the growing treasury of its past.”

Nineteenth century Celtic teacher, Alexander John Scott, taught that there are two avenues for walking the Way of Jesus as a living tradition. He wrote “The Spirit of God is impregnated throughout the whole of creation. Hold the Bible in one hand but also study God in that other volume, the great and holy book of creation.” Just as in the Bible, we hear words of human goodness and evil, so in nature we see suffering and cruelty at one level, but also the ongoing creativity, beauty and joy of God.

On one of our anniversaries, Wendy and I decided to drive to the North Shore of Lake Superior and hike the Superior Hiking Trail from the top of Moose Mountain down to its bottom and across the Poplar River to Lutsen Mountain Resort. Somehow, not long after beginning, we lost the marked trail and eventually found ourselves precariously clinging to a rock wall edge. Below us was a steep and frightening drop through the woods. After some time feeling my heart pump wildly with fear and anxiety, we made it to a clearing that we later discovered was a black diamond ski hill during winter. We were relieved and took some time to sit and regain our composure. Looking around we were awed by the beauty of the spectacular view from this spot. It was a spiritual moment for us. We slowly made a sliding descent on our bottoms, using our feet as brakes and steering rudders until we again found the actual trail far below.

Reflecting on this unplanned adventure somehow brings to mind Jesus’ saying, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8). I have come to see the Way of Jesus as a way of adventure, like our hike on Moose Mountain. It is not always one of safety and comfort, but one that filled of challenges. It is also one of beauty, joy and awe. On that hike, we had seen, and engaged with, the “great and holy book of creation.”

In the movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the young hero, Sonny explains, “There is a saying in India: Everything will be alright in the end. If it is not alright, then it is not yet the end.” I, God willing, still have many years to walk the Way, and while everything is not alright with my aging body, the Earth, or her people and creatures, I have faith that everything will be alright in the end, or it is not yet the end. The Medieval English mystic, Julian of Norwich, shared Sonny’s view as she assured us, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Meanwhile, I’ ll just keep walking and pondering on the Way and I hope that this blog will somehow help you in your wandering.

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