We all in the same weather*
Sewn paper mandala by Stephanie Tadio.
"Don worry," he says, "we all in the same weather." He doesn't mean I will not be late, as I want him to mean, but that there will be others. I like taking taxis. In bad weather, I can do so guiltlessly. The rain becomes a blessing. The traffic becomes a solemn motorcade. The hard-laminated, plexi-cased, screwed through yellow poster of the Passenger's Rights and Responsibilties becomes a mandala.
You read that right, folks, I just implied that, perhaps contrary to thousands of years of research on the connection between God and man, it is the absence of guilt which opens the floor for spiritual experience. I recently learned that my mother reads this blog, and so I will refrain from making a statement such as, "maybe it is this very relief which makes the Jesus story is so appealing." Because, if you are my mother, and love Jesus with all your heart, and believe him to be the living, divine son of the one and only God, it just feels terrible to hear him referenced so casually, as if there were thousands of true-ish mythologies about the most holy, beautiful, powerful thing in all of life. Oh, Mom. I love Jesus, I do. I love the idea that I am, because of him, completely pure and holy, and yet still, because of sin, full of evil and wrong. I love that because I feel that. I am simultaneously evil and holy. But that same sentiment spurs my heart to resonate with this (albeit unexclusively) Jewish idea that :
When the Torah speaks about the olives whose oil is used for the lamp in the Temple, it says that they are -- katita l'maor -- crushed to produce light. The Hasidic rebbes say that often a person has to be crushed to give forth light. (source)
Recently I found myself explaining to a student of mine that I would prefer she did not assume I was undevoted spiritually because I did not embrace a single religious path. "You must try to understand that only an undevout person can see things that way." She seemed to explain that devoted belief means absolute, wholehearted commitment to a world-view which definitively excludes other world-views, to such a degree that it is not regarded as a view at all, but as the truth. Oh, it stings, even writing it: we are fundamentally opposed. I do not believe truth exists. Not in the way we want it to. We agree on some things, and call them "facts," and it helps us live in a world where some rules seem steadfast, but isn't all of this is our construction? I see a red flower, but a color-blind person sees a gray flower and learns to call it red, just to get along with me, the way I might tell my mother that I lead prayer meetings rather than yoga classes. (Also intriguing are those color-resistant people who know full well that they do not see what others see, but insist that when they say "gray," we should translate this and think "red." Should we? I'm not sure we shouldn't.)
Does that flower have a true color? Do colors have true names? Or is this dilemma simply an expression of perspective? It is my belief that to see the world truly, we must shed our own filters - our histories, our mythologies, our personalities, and even our bodies - to embrace the infinite remains. The trouble, or part of it for me personally, is that I do not believe it is possible for humans to do this. (See? Not even a good Buddhist!) Thankfully, it can be very beautiful and helpful to try anyway, to taste very small flashes of clear vision and be guided by that broadening scope. The awareness that my thoughts, my body, my feelings are not ultimately the infinite, clear truth of me is a highly useful tool in everyday life, believe it or no, and if I can find the tiny portal within my now moment to glimpse something even more true, I can find some relief in the tangle I've created out of my illusions. I am so impatient to get beyond this troubled moment into the truth, and so unwilling, unready to leave the safety and pleasure of my fiction. I am in this cab, anxious and on hold, out of the rain, but nowhere I can stay for long.
My concentration on the taxi-provided mandala is broken by the cool and swiftly warming dampness seeping into my pre-mature choice of a cotton jacket, and I remember the hail I'd collected in my pockets, so amused to see rain bouncing on the pavement. I don't like this weather, but it fascinates me enough to savor it, and excuses me to take a cab ride I cross my fingers to be both shorter and longer than it can possibly be... I am deranged. If I can not agree with myself on my perspective, how can I ask anyone to translate my color-blindness into some mothertongue of Truth? And how will they begin, each sighted uniquely, fluent only unto themselves? We must practice. Even if we never arrive, we never see the glory of the absolute, we must move forward, through the rain, through the traffic, and take heart in knowing, "we all in the same weather."
*This entry was sparked yesterday - a dreary, freezing, ugly, wet day. It should be noted that today, Chicago is sunny.
"Don worry," he says, "we all in the same weather." He doesn't mean I will not be late, as I want him to mean, but that there will be others. I like taking taxis. In bad weather, I can do so guiltlessly. The rain becomes a blessing. The traffic becomes a solemn motorcade. The hard-laminated, plexi-cased, screwed through yellow poster of the Passenger's Rights and Responsibilties becomes a mandala.
You read that right, folks, I just implied that, perhaps contrary to thousands of years of research on the connection between God and man, it is the absence of guilt which opens the floor for spiritual experience. I recently learned that my mother reads this blog, and so I will refrain from making a statement such as, "maybe it is this very relief which makes the Jesus story is so appealing." Because, if you are my mother, and love Jesus with all your heart, and believe him to be the living, divine son of the one and only God, it just feels terrible to hear him referenced so casually, as if there were thousands of true-ish mythologies about the most holy, beautiful, powerful thing in all of life. Oh, Mom. I love Jesus, I do. I love the idea that I am, because of him, completely pure and holy, and yet still, because of sin, full of evil and wrong. I love that because I feel that. I am simultaneously evil and holy. But that same sentiment spurs my heart to resonate with this (albeit unexclusively) Jewish idea that :
When the Torah speaks about the olives whose oil is used for the lamp in the Temple, it says that they are -- katita l'maor -- crushed to produce light. The Hasidic rebbes say that often a person has to be crushed to give forth light. (source)
Recently I found myself explaining to a student of mine that I would prefer she did not assume I was undevoted spiritually because I did not embrace a single religious path. "You must try to understand that only an undevout person can see things that way." She seemed to explain that devoted belief means absolute, wholehearted commitment to a world-view which definitively excludes other world-views, to such a degree that it is not regarded as a view at all, but as the truth. Oh, it stings, even writing it: we are fundamentally opposed. I do not believe truth exists. Not in the way we want it to. We agree on some things, and call them "facts," and it helps us live in a world where some rules seem steadfast, but isn't all of this is our construction? I see a red flower, but a color-blind person sees a gray flower and learns to call it red, just to get along with me, the way I might tell my mother that I lead prayer meetings rather than yoga classes. (Also intriguing are those color-resistant people who know full well that they do not see what others see, but insist that when they say "gray," we should translate this and think "red." Should we? I'm not sure we shouldn't.)
Does that flower have a true color? Do colors have true names? Or is this dilemma simply an expression of perspective? It is my belief that to see the world truly, we must shed our own filters - our histories, our mythologies, our personalities, and even our bodies - to embrace the infinite remains. The trouble, or part of it for me personally, is that I do not believe it is possible for humans to do this. (See? Not even a good Buddhist!) Thankfully, it can be very beautiful and helpful to try anyway, to taste very small flashes of clear vision and be guided by that broadening scope. The awareness that my thoughts, my body, my feelings are not ultimately the infinite, clear truth of me is a highly useful tool in everyday life, believe it or no, and if I can find the tiny portal within my now moment to glimpse something even more true, I can find some relief in the tangle I've created out of my illusions. I am so impatient to get beyond this troubled moment into the truth, and so unwilling, unready to leave the safety and pleasure of my fiction. I am in this cab, anxious and on hold, out of the rain, but nowhere I can stay for long.
My concentration on the taxi-provided mandala is broken by the cool and swiftly warming dampness seeping into my pre-mature choice of a cotton jacket, and I remember the hail I'd collected in my pockets, so amused to see rain bouncing on the pavement. I don't like this weather, but it fascinates me enough to savor it, and excuses me to take a cab ride I cross my fingers to be both shorter and longer than it can possibly be... I am deranged. If I can not agree with myself on my perspective, how can I ask anyone to translate my color-blindness into some mothertongue of Truth? And how will they begin, each sighted uniquely, fluent only unto themselves? We must practice. Even if we never arrive, we never see the glory of the absolute, we must move forward, through the rain, through the traffic, and take heart in knowing, "we all in the same weather."
*This entry was sparked yesterday - a dreary, freezing, ugly, wet day. It should be noted that today, Chicago is sunny.
When I was a kid there was a bull lived down the road. I was maybe ten and I got this red something or other, climbed over the fence and shook in the direction of the bull, who was a good ways a way. I was scared I think, but the bull had absolutely (as far as I could tell) no interest in seeing red.
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When Adonis was impaled by the wild boar and lay crushed and bleeding on the forest floor, Venus came down from the heavens and mixed her tears, blood from where she tore at her own breast and divine nectar with his seething remains. From this spot grew a flower with so fragile an existence, a gentle breeze can dislodge its petals. It is called "windflower" and is commonly known as an Anemone.
http://k43.pbase.com/u30/jsb/upload/18584215.windflower.jpg
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i really loved your artwork, its really magnificent.
http://airbrushactioncom/airbrush-getaway-workshops/vegas-february-20-24-2012
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