I went to a wonderful installation exhibit at a deserted mill in my town. Created by artist Amy Stacey Curtis, it was an interactive collection of 9 parts. The one that impacted me the most was the linear labyrinth.
This is where the confluence began. As you slowly moved from square to square you realize that each represents a stage of life...from birth to death. The revelation is that the end looks exactly like the beginning. It made me think of a wonderful Confucious quote:
Life is simple but we insist on
making it complicated.
Of course, this co-ordinates nicely with my genealogy research that I spoke about yesterday and I suppose that would have been enough but there was one more occurrence to add to this chain. I read a post that Kim Manley Ort had added to her Google+ page and it all clicked...it all fused together into a wonderful moment of revelation.
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| The Poetry of Place: 23 October 2014 |
Kim posted a link to an On Being essay The Autumn of Our Own Existence by Omid Safi.
In it, the author reveals what is really happening with the autumn leaves. They are not changing or turning colors at all. Those colors have always been there. It is when the photosynthesis process ends, and the leaves begin to die, that the colors come out. He goes on to relate this to our spiritual journey, our becoming who we have been all our life....
What beauty there is in letting go and accepting.
What wonder there is in embracing the colors inside.
What loveliness there is in the death of one color, and the shining through of all the divine colors.
How lovely is this human creature when the divine colors of compassion, kindness, mercy, justice, and forgiveness shine on through.
All the pieces of this multi-day experience came together in a meaningful and beautiful way for me. It underscored, yet again, what I've always believed; that we are engaged in a marvelous dance with the divine, even if, at times, we can't hear the music. And with each step, each twirl, we find ourselves becoming more and more who we really are...who we always were...
In it, the author reveals what is really happening with the autumn leaves. They are not changing or turning colors at all. Those colors have always been there. It is when the photosynthesis process ends, and the leaves begin to die, that the colors come out. He goes on to relate this to our spiritual journey, our becoming who we have been all our life....
What beauty there is in letting go and accepting.
What wonder there is in embracing the colors inside.
What loveliness there is in the death of one color, and the shining through of all the divine colors.
How lovely is this human creature when the divine colors of compassion, kindness, mercy, justice, and forgiveness shine on through.
All the pieces of this multi-day experience came together in a meaningful and beautiful way for me. It underscored, yet again, what I've always believed; that we are engaged in a marvelous dance with the divine, even if, at times, we can't hear the music. And with each step, each twirl, we find ourselves becoming more and more who we really are...who we always were...
As I enter this autumn season — and the autumn of my own existence — I
am growing slowly more comfortable with the becoming less and less, so
that more and more can be revealed.
- Omid Safi
6 comments:
Other thank saying this is beautiful, I am speechless...
I so relate to this, Patricia. Life being a becoming of who we really are. If only we knew that our ordinary selves, the person we've always been, is exactly what this world needs.
Oh, my! There is so much here to ponder I think I'll need to bookmark this one and keep coming back to it. Some great thoughts here, Patricia.
Thank you...you are very kind. The whole series of events left me a bit speechless myself!
Thank you, Kim. I agree. It takes us a life time to realize that what we are is enough.
Kind of you to say so, Dotti. It was the sequence of all this that struck me...it was such a flow that built on the prior experience.
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