Your Great Charm

“Just trust Life:
Life will bring you high,
if only you are careful in selecting
in the maze of events, those influences or those paths
which can bring you each time
a little more upward.”

Pierre Teihard De Chardin
scientist-philosopher-poet-priest

I’m an easy touch for anybody who has a labyrinth for sale. We’re talking necklaces, earrings, one small enough to hold in my hand and follow with a stylus, a larger wooden one I can trace with my finger. I have an entire basket of books on using this symbolic sacred path, and I can’t go to a new town without finding out whether there’s an 11 circuit one I can walk. Best day ever when I discovered one only 45 minutes from where I live. Item #1 on my bucket list: experiencing the labyrinth in the Cathedral in Chartres, France.  

          I could go on ad nauseam about this ancient Christian tradition. Ask me only if you don’t have to be somewhere in a hurry. For us, today, I mention it (okay, I did more than “mention” …) because this sacred symbol is my visual for the journey I continue to take.

Why We Need a Thing

          If you could visit the inside of my mind, you would find monkeys dangling from tree to tree and me trying to feed them all bananas as they swing by. You seriously do not want to go there. The noise is deafening. Hence the need for a concept of the journey I want to stay on that is not just something I can see but also a tangible item I can hold and navigate – and, as often as possible, one I can participate in with my entire body. (Which is also why I practice yoga, but that’s another monkey with a different banana).

 There are no monkeys on the labyrinth.

Even the mystics needed (and still need) concrete images in order to know what was/is theirs to do in this world. Teresa of Avila had her interior castle. Hildegard of Bingen practically rolled around in the natural world. And de Chardin, our scientist-philosopher-poet-priest (he, like us, refused to be labeled as one thing, obviously), pictured a “maze of events” bringing us upward.

Imagine If You Will …

Based on my experience, I suggest that we each discover – if you haven’t already – that “thing” that embodies what this journey before us is for you. In our previous posts, you’ve determined what has started you on this new part of your life path and you’ve honored it by giving it a name. Now can you discover what that all looks like to you?

You’re an amazing, creative group of fellow travelers so I don’t think this will be difficult, but some examples might help in case you haven’t had your coffee yet (in which case, why on earth would you be reading a blog post before caffeine?):

• Poet SC Lourie sees it as turning the pages of her soul, even though some are hard to read, and honoring the story those pages reveal even as she writes a new one.
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling, saw herself as a cauliflower that needs to be uprooted and replanted every five years in order to thrive. (Who knew that was the cauliflower’s M.O.?)
• My favorite spiritual author, Richard Rohr, pictures an immortal diamond which is placed in each of us by God. The journey involves going down into ourselves to find it. Diamond mining, anyone?

Along the way I’ve heard less famous but equally as wise and wonderful

people envision:

• an unwinding ball of string
• Lombard Street in San Francisco (said to be the crookedest street in the world)
• a dance whose choreography is always changing
• following footprints in the snow

Whatever comes to you, it signifies what De Chardin calls “a great charm”: the discovering of life, built step by step.

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:

         What tangible, visual, maybe even participatory “thing” represents your journey? I’m practically salivating to know.

         And if you need inspiration, contact me. We can brainstorm together. Over coffee. Monkeys are welcome, if they’re quiet.