Thursday, March 29, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#32, 33
33. That is, the Golden Spiral around which everything's created.
Odd, I know, but here's the story: Last year, these 40 Ways were created as Twitter posts, and you know all about the 140 characters, right? Well, it doesn't make sense to make two separate devotionals out of these two, so we'll have 39 Lenten devotionals, and one for Easter!
The Fibonacci Series, for those who don't know, is a series of numbers beginning with 0, 1, and from then on each number is the sum of the last two. So: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21. . . etc. It's named after a man named Leonardo of Pisa, who was also known as Fibonacci. He was the one who introduced the concept to western mathematics, in 1202, although it had already been described even earlier than that, in Indian mathematics.
If you plot these numbers on a graph, they create an enlarging spiral that will look very familiar to you. Perhaps you'll know why--"Hey! That looks like a chambered nautilus!" Or perhaps you'll just think vaguely, "That looks familiar. I wonder where I've seen it before?" The answer is, Everywhere! Just now when I put "Fibonacci" into Google, the third website on the list was titled, "The Fibonacci Numbers and Golden Section in Nature," and included hundreds of ways you can see these patterns. www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.htm The Golden Section is also called the Golden Mean, the Golden Ratio, and Divine Proportion. You could call it a visual representation of the Fibonacci Series (or Numbers, or Sequence.) And it's literally found all over the natural world, from the spiral of hairs in your cowlick to the seeds of a sunflower to the end of a pine cone. Put any of the above words into Google Images and you'll see hundreds of astounding things.
I think the Divine Proportion is truly divine. I think it's the fingerprint of the Creator. My labyrinth reminds me of it. And in the midst of all the chaos of seemingly random and senseless events that fill our lives (like alopecia in someone who, therefore, has no cowlick, a diseased sunflower that doesn't produce seeds at all, or a stunted pine cone) it's comforting to think there's some kind of underlying pattern, whether it's always visible or not.
Life, right down to its DNA, seems to move in endless spirals, growing outward, larger and larger, from the spinning of atoms to the spinning of galaxies. So do the seasons roll, and so does my life, and yours, come around again and give us a kind of second chances. In Elizabeth Goudge's book The Scent of Water, a character reassures another that life is like beads on a string, and the loving acts you didn't succeed in performing for someone earlier in your life (and now you live in regret) will come around again, and you'll get a chance to try again, to be loving not to the same person, but to another brother or sister in the circle of life.
But there is a center. There is an end to the path. Today might be the last chance you get to love, so grab it. Add together the amount of love you could give yesterday and the amount you could give today, and give that much tomorrow.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#31
It's a funny thing. I get busy with pruning grape vines and mowing and checking fruit trees (there's some weird white fuzzy stuff in my apple branches! What is that??) and mowing and planting the new American Highbush Cranberries and mowing and everlastingly mulching and mowing. . . It gets to seeming like a busy place. I forget about the quiet center. But it's always there. Quiet. Waiting. The tree never gets upset when I don't visit it. Well, I do visit it. I cut out lower branches, and trim weeds and debate about a circle of stones. . .
And mow! Or put off mowing.
And the quiet center waits.
In life, I get busy with writing and housework and writing (and labyrinth care) and gardening and shopping and laundry and writing. I check on the goats (new twin boys born three days ago as of this writing! Adorable!) I feed the chickens and collect eggs and try to remember to whom I owe this particular dozen. I write deeply moving and insightful blogs! Or I try, anyway. Only, sometimes I have to stop and remind myself to take the insights I'm being given through the words I'm writing (it's one of God's favorite ways to talk to me) and apply them to my own soul.
God is there. Quiet. Waiting.
Always.
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#30
In my labyrinth (and most others, too) there are no walls, so you really could walk straight across all paths to reach the center in seconds, but why would you? The journey is the point! Leaving, it's even more of a temptation--you've had your contemplative journey, pondered insights near the tree in the center, and now you can simply step to the entrance path that leads so near (before its first unexpected left turn--see #4) and walk back out through the trellis.
By so doing, one would miss the entire raison d'etre of a labyrinth, of course. It's meant to be a symbol of a journey we have no power to take shortcuts in--life itself. (We can end it entirely, but we can't take shortcuts in it.) We speak of things such as "wandering from the path," "going the wrong direction," and even "sitting down and crying," but in fact, our life is composed of time, and time moves only in one direction and reigns as absolutely as any despot. No matter what you choose to do with the next minute, at the end of it you'll be exactly one minute older, which is to say, one minute further from the moment of your birth, and one minute nearer to the moment of your death.
So my attempt to avoid certain pitfalls in the Labyrinth of my Life, (meant, with all my heart, to be not denial, but avoidance of evil, let me add!) kept me circling for years around those same pitfalls, never able to get any closer to my goal. Then again, the Labyrinth of Life is more like a spiral, leading in and out from the center over and over, but on a higher (or lower) plane each time. So I also sometimes tried to rush back out to "the world" to share awesome insights God had granted at my latest visit to the center, without taking the time to stew those insights thoroughly into my own soul first.
The journey is the point. The journey is the point. Daily,(at least) as I write these small essays, I visit the center and sit with God awhile. I begin to write my thoughts, and then, following the Holy Spirit's guidance as well as I know how, I delete, and retype, and put words back in and take them out again, and reword, and reword. . . this particular one has had nearly as many paragraphs removed as you see now. . . and eventually hit Publish Post and send out another small insight into the odd world known as Blog, where I hope some are sharing and gaining from it and adding and taking away from it into their own lives' labyrinths. On the days when I rush, and barely edit, it's likely that there's less Truth Germ present.
This is just a tiny picture. In much larger and more important ways, there have been life-threatening quests to the Center, dazzling insights there, and much more time steeping than seems necessary to me, in my hurry to share these awesome things (awesome to me because they fit me--I get that).
Take your time. In the light of eternity, you have plenty.
Monday, March 26, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#29
Of course, it depends on how you define Perfect. Take today, for instance. It was about 60something degrees and cloudy, but the high, bright kind of clouds that I don't mind at all. The grass is high and I'm so far behind on path maintenance that I'm worried about getting the labyrinth ready in time for Holy Week. (Next week! Aack!!) The roses at the trellis entry are reaching for your hair, and the grapes and kiwis are cheerfully reaching for everything! But the little cherry bushes are in bloom, and even one of the plums has some cute little pinky blossoms. The berry vines are all leafed out, and the grass, high though it may be, is green. Such a nice color after a gray winter!
Just Perfect!
Defining perfection. I'd say that's one of the very most essential actions of life. It makes all the difference in the world to how you value yourself, your surroundings, the people you love (or don't), your work, your faith, even God. The only thing worse than a nit-picky perfectionist, after all, would have to be an all-powerful nit-picky perfectionist! Good heavens! Or rather, bad heavens, because they would be, if they were reigned over by the kind of God famously described by colonial preacher, Jonathan Edwards--just waiting for you to make a mistake so he could throw you in the fire.
On the other hand, if you see God as a kind of wishy-washy, kind-hearted coach who gives the You're Perfect! trophy to everyone for every action, no matter whether it was good, bad, or indifferent, someone's best or someone's lazy attempt to get by with the least effort, then why even have the word "perfect" to begin with? It kind of kills motivation to learn to do anything better or grow into a new way of being.
All kinds of people have all kinds of opinions on this topic, so I prefer to see how Jesus defined perfection. In Matthew 5:48, he says, "Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Scary. Less scary when you see the context, which is loving everyone, even your enemies, but still! Who can do that perfectly? However, Luke 6 contains a less-famous copy of this same part of what we often call the Sermon on the Mount. And the corresponding verse, which is 6:36, says, "Be merciful, even as your Father in heaven is merciful."
Wait--you mean Jesus defined perfection as mercy? But why would you need mercy unless you. . . Oh, I get it! The grass is long and the path is partly obliterated and the pruning didn't get done in time, but the cherry bushes are blooming, and the grapes are cheerfully reaching out in all directions, and the roses grab your hair on the way by. Perfect!
Sunday, March 25, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#28
Friday, March 23, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#27
Thursday, March 22, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#26
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#25
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#24
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#23
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
'Twas on a tree they slew Him -- last
When out of the woods He came.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#22
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#21
Saturday, March 17, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#20
Friday, March 16, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#19
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#18
Monday, March 12, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#17
Sunday, March 11, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#16
Friday, March 9, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#15
Thursday, March 8, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#14
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#13
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#12
12. It took a lot of help to build it.
Monday, March 5, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#11
Sunday, March 4, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#10
Saturday, March 3, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#9
Friday, March 2, 2012
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#8
40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#7
7. It requires endless maintenance, much of it on my knees!
This is one of the Facts of Life as well as of labyrinth care, which is often fun, but sometimes. . . not so much. The labyrinth, particularly as I’ve chosen to have it, neat, stone-lined paths with grass and fruit trees and berry vines in between, is a lot of work! It involves wheelbarrows and diggers and bags and bags of “Mountain Pebbles” and bending and kneeling and lawnmowers and string trimmers and muscles and sweat and tears and yes, sometimes some blood. And, for me, lots of prayer, too. And after a long stretch of all of the above, the neatness lasts about ten minutes!
As a Fact of Life, this endless maintenance means that I must bear in mind that I am a four-fold (at least!) being, and care for all those facets of myself. My body is, in many ways, easiest to care for because it’s visible. So it needs good food, good water inside and out, fresh air and sunshine, exercise, rest, and so on.
However, different people have trouble with different facets of self-maintenance, so for some, care of the body may be the hardest. Part of the reason for this is intrinsic to the four-fold self. We also have minds, hearts, and spirits. This is really not good wording, because these are, of course anything but separate parts. Facets is a little better, but we are one in a way we really can’t quite define, much as the various faces of Godhood are One in ways we can’t define or understand.
So take one of those physical necessities—food, let’s say. The body needs xyz nutrients, and if we knew enough about nutrition, which we do not, they could be just as well taken in pill form. But the heart (which I’m using to denote feelings, emotions, soul, personality) needs those nutrients to taste delicious and look colorful and inviting. The mind wants to know that they are well-balanced, cooked just enough, the right amount, and eaten at the right times. The spirit (which is not a separate facet at all, really, but is the whole self at one with itself) is happiest when It considers how and where the food was grown, who grew it, prepared it, and got it here, Who gave it to the world and to all of us, and honors all of those in the best way it knows. The spirit is even happier when it can share the food with some friends and maybe someone who needs good food and can’t get it, though a healthy spirit also loves to eat alone and can do so mindfully.
None of this can be well accomplished without spending a lot of time in communion with the Maker. In fact, the goal is constant, unbroken communion. My labyrinth can help with that and re-center me when I need it.