Tales From The Labyrinth

Eleventh Holy Night 2007-2008 ~ Passion & Compassion

Well...

This is one of the twelve polarities that I just could not get under... I get the different meanings of passion and compassion, and I just can not find them as polarities... so that is my dilemma, or polarity of this evening, I can't find the polarity in the prompt! Maybe some of you reading this, might shed light on what you see, different than me!

I did notice that compassion came up for me a lot today... Our power/electricity was out from the middle of last night, and throughout most of the day. I noticed how edgy I was... did I stock up on enough food? Were my parents OK? Do we have enough batteries? What if this goes on longer than 24 hours? What if the freezer food melts? And the icebox, all contents a gonner? Is the river going to flood, with houses destroyed and families displaced? I noticed an old pattern of how hard I am on myself. I also noticed that it had to do with my anxiety... where was my compassion for that anxiety???

I am quick to have compassion for others, but not for myself... it is quite a stretch for me to be compassionate to myself... Yet, I am aware that I am coming to recognize more frequently how hard I am on myself and to just relax into what is... and treat myself as I would another...

And since I'm on a roll with not exactly following this night's prompt... I don't always find passionate actions to be self centered. Just as I don't find compassion to always be about other... I have been involved in many activities, labyrinth building, art-making, graduate school studies, blogging, lovemaking, to name a few... where passion is a sharing between one or large groups of people, like a fine wine, and all involved contribute to something much bigger than the individuals involved, and it is passion with fire, excitement, and with different hearts beating together as one...

Eleventh Holy Night of Inner Christmas
with Lynn Jericho

Lynn's Blog on the Twelve Holy Nights of Inner Christmas

Tenth Holy Night 2007-2008 ~ Leading & Following

Leading...
then following...
We become each other,
five women dancing,
ocean dancing,
earth and sky dancing,
melting into water…
life giving water,
where we emerge from between time
and start life a~new…

Tenth Holy Night of Inner Christmas
with Lynn Jericho

Lynn's Blog on the Twelve Holy Nights of Inner Christmas

Photo: Painting of five women dancing the labyrinth. Unfinished acrylic, natural rock and gem-stones, and mosaic pieces.

 

Ninth Holy Night 2007-2008 ~ Order & Chaos

It's pouring rain today...
the biggest storm of the year, they say,
to hit the West Coast of the Americas...

And day Nine was yesterday...
Order & Chaos...
So... I've had a bit of time to think about these two...

For quite some time after my first marriage and a very solid way of life ended for me in my late twenties, I clung to order like a person who can't swim out in the middle of a vast ocean holding on to a small plank of wood... I needed structure and order in all areas of my life... the slightest whiff of chaos could send me careening over what seemed to be the ocean turned into Niagara Falls... When I entered my forties, I flipped the other way... structure and order made me crazy, I felt as if I would burst from my skin and could not make a commitment to hardly anything...

As I near being on this planet for fifty years, I am finding a balance between order and chaos, and even question my concept of just what chaos might really be...

This was one of the tasks offered by Lynn...

She invited us to make a list of 25 verbs, place them on slips of paper, torn or cut (and to notice how we did those slips!) and place them in a bowl/chalice.

and then pull three and apply them to a routine in our lives... I realized as I did this task that other than sleeping, there are very few routines in my life! So, I changed it a bit. I pulled five verbs (on "torn" pieces of paper!) and will make a poem, right now out of words that seem to have no connection or order at all...

Flap my arms
Float
Turn around
Type
Laugh

This rain pours...
I flap my arms
as if I can fly
when instead I must float
allow myself to turn around
and let this wet,
wet river flowing carry me
even as I type...
and type...
and type as if these words were
a life raft,
I laugh
that I might think I could
hold on to any one of them...

Ninth Holy Night of Inner Christmas
with Lynn Jericho

Lynn's Blog on the Twelve Holy Nights of Inner Christmas

Eighth Holy Night 2007-2008 ~ Gathering & Spreading

This new year,
these new moments
where all possibilities gather
filling the heart
like stars in the sky
spreading forth
into the universe for us to drink
and fill our soul
in the quiet moments
found in opening
to life,
in the space between
breathing in,
and breathing out,
gathering in,
and spreading forth,
this beauty of being,
these new minutes
cherished…

Eighth Holy Night of Inner Christmas
with Lynn Jericho

Lynn's Blog on the Twelve Holy Nights of Inner Christmas