Tales From The Labyrinth

Epiphany ~ of the Twelve Holy Nights 2007-2008

Lotus blossom blooms...
outside, the rain and wind howl...
one ripple ignites...

Today is Epiphany... the thirteenth day that follows the twelve holy nights... it is a day of reflection, insight, and gratitude ignited by contemplating the preceding days...

I am grateful to Lynn Jericho for creating these exercises for the Twelve Holy Nights of Inner Christmas... and thank you for joining me in these contemplations!

A Closing Note & Epiphany of the Twelve Holy Nights
with Lynn Jericho

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

Twelfth Holy Night 2007-2008 ~ Certainty & Doubt

For this final twelfth night, Lynn invited us to see how we could marry certainty and doubt in our souls…

When I looked, I was surprised to find that Certainty and Doubt had been married for a very long time! And they have many children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren!

Their first born is Self Esteem… the twins followed soon after, Confidence and Laughter… then there was a whole string of dancers, artists, and mathematicians, followed by Comfort, Compassion, Wildness… and the youngest Passion, but she was born almost full grown and ready to meet the world with her first breath!!!

Certainty and Doubt have been retired for a long time now and delight in watching the grandchildren and great grandchildren grow… But every once in awhile, Doubt gets a little cranky and winds up the old tapes (you heard some of them playing yesterday!!!) That’s when Certainty moves her hips in just that special way and before you know it, Certainty and Doubt have changed the cassette player to a well-worn familiar waltz and they dance and dance, until you would never be able to guess their age or prior occupations…

They are well loved... and bring balance and freedom in their union... and they make life a little more easy to navigate, especially around those bends in the road that you don't always know are coming... Theirs was a marriage made in heaven, on earth...

Twelfth Holy Night of Inner Christmas
with Lynn Jericho

 

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

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

Seventh Holy Night 2007 ~ Reflection and Anticipation

In less than an hour...
2007 will be a year in the past...

I am grateful
for all the journeys I took this past year...

Inward journeys that brought me more here...
outward journeys that connected me with more of the world...

I am more at ease in being human than I ever thought possible...

I see all that happened this past year,
and await the unknown with anticipation of knowing that it will be a discovery,
and wonder where the days to unfold will take me...

I ask that my life get bigger
and at the same time,
more simple...

That open even more to the possibility of joy,
of contentment, and compassion...

I am grateful for all of you that I've met, some only in word, but for the ways you've expanded my world and helped me to see more of the beauty that is so easily found, if we but look...

The last few hours of 2007 were spent feasting with good friends this evening...

I keep attempting to recreate my Provence experience of Corey's French Husband's mussels... and tonight... I came close...

a little bubbly...
how I love French Champagne...

and a Turkish desert, Irmik Helvasi,
made by Emily to sweeten the end of the evening...

Thank you
for spending this year with me!
I look forward to the new year to come...

Seventh Holy Night of Inner Christmas
with Lynn Jericho

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

 

Sixth Holy Night 2007 ~ Warming and Cooling

This morning...
in my dance practice
I noticed how I move in and out
of warming and cooling...

Emotions flare, flame, and ignite...
as I move my body,
following my breath,
a cooling happens
and the fire of my passion
begins to meld into the shape of my feet,
my hands
and the beat of my heart...

And then...
the music changes...
I am frozen,
numb,
nothing moves in this land of ice...
frigid,
I reach for the next breath
and the heat of my heart
begins a slow thaw...
a warming
as muscle fibers stretch
and begin to twirl,
leap,
and cascade into a melting steam
of self and other
moving as one...
we begin again...

Sixth Holy Night of Inner Christmas
with Lynn Jericho

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

Photo: beginning art piece of warming and cooling... watercolor, sea salt, acrylic, and pearlescence, so far...

Fifth Holy Night 2007 ~ Freedom and Lawfulness

Oh the freedom
that breathed through my being
the day I left the rigid rules and regulations
I’d imposed upon my body and psyche
along the road,
way back there where the bend
happens near the dark wood…

You will still find structure,
organic and bendable
allowing my spirit to move
in and around,
feeling the limits and places to stretch
into potentials hereto unknown…

My body delights
in all the ways we now can dance,
move and rest,
find silence,
sing,
create in all ways becoming known,
seeking
the divine in each breath
taken
then released,
stepping between
and through the pillars
of freedom and lawfulness…

Fifth Holy Night of Inner Christmas
with Lynn Jericho

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

Photo: Steps to the mansion of imagination...
Longcross Hotel, Trelights, Port Isaac, Cornwall, England.

Fourth Holy Night 2007 ~ Vertical and Horizontal

Above me,
below me,
to the right of me
and to the left of me...
My heart,
the sacred center point of all crossing...

The root meaning of the world "sacred" is to consecrate, dedicate to a divinity, or revere as holy, secured against violations. Geometry means the measure of the earth. Thus sacred geometry is the consecrated, holy measuring of the earth, of architecture, and of our bodies; it is about right relationship~the golden mean. The golden mean is about parts being in relationship to each other and to the whole.

When the source of all that is looked out in all directions...

intersecting and connecting with the mirror image of itself...

a portal was opened,
revealing the shared space of self and other...

on the horizontal plane...

and on the vertical plane...

and through this opening, the vesica,
the almond shaped all seeing eye,
this mandorla of all new beginnings...
makes way for the Christ Consciousness
to emerge...

spirit into matter,
matter a vessel for spirit....

and beauty is born,
in all directions...

Fourth Holy Night of Inner Christmas
with Lynn Jericho

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

Photos: Sacred Geometrical proportions, the vesica above the main-West entrance at Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France depicting the emergence of the Christ consciousness, dogwood blossom in our garden.