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Painting By Meinrad Craighead 1983, Wisdom

 

Lodestone: Heart of the Pilgrim Soul

 
 
“When I reach through the hole at my center the gift eludes my grasp. Whatever it may be,
I can possess it only as that mystery which beckons from the greatest distance and draws
my heart deeper into the quest.

The journey waxes full and then wanes dark, again and again. I stare into my hole focusing
on a single point, waiting for her to dart wildly through my landscape.”

Meinrad Craighead artist (1936 – 2019)1

 

There is something that pulls us ever-forward to the heart of our own mystery. In an unending pilgrimage our life journey orients homeward, centered in a world that we know and one in which we cannot fully know. As unseen forces guide us over each threshold, the inner muse arouses the creative impulse allowing life to continuously be revealed to itself. But never completely.

Lodestone means ‘leading stone’ or ‘way stone’. It is a magnetic stone use by ancient sages, seers, and alchemists for divination and then later in compasses because of its ability to orient toward to the north star. It is found near the surface of the earth and is thought to be magnetized by lightning strikes. From the invisible realm the heavens touch the earth, impregnating it with a polarized force stable enough to guide us through the endless cycles of birth and death so that we may discover something enduring.

The heart of the pilgrim lives in the overlapping space between surrender and discipline, compelled by mystery. Following the path of water between heaven and earth we travel embedded within the dream time of natural and preternatural realms. Through the labyrinthine caverns of physical reality, human and other-than-human beings offer nourishment and clues. Within this sacred communion, medicines are shared. Continue reading “Lodestone: Heart of the Pilgrim Soul” →

 

 

The Other Kind of Fire: Soul of the Wounded Healer

 

Fire calls us forth to intermingle, laugh, love, and enjoy, yet so many are feeling lonely, exhausted, isolated, and bewildered even as we come out to socialize after the Great Loneliness of these past three years.

Summer is the season of the fire element bringing warmth, connection, intimacy, ripening, expansion, circulation. Fire also purifies, clearing out the what is no longer useful to be recycled into nutrients for soil and new growth. Indigenous peoples teach that there are ways to help the earth by setting contained fires to prevent the build up of understories that have become congested with overgrowth or that have lost their vitality. The nutrients from the ash feeds the earth and creates fertile soil while preventing natural fires from burning out of control.

I can see how this is also a metaphor for our own psycho-spiritual health internally.

As multitudes of fires burn out of control across the body of Gaia each summer, I can feel how she struggles to nourish all her children, even as we continue to harm her. I wonder about how our own bodies are responding as I take off my sandals and step into the salty water. What happens to the earth happens also in our bodies. Continue reading “The Other Kind of Fire: Soul of the Wounded Healer” →

gitanabarby:

farruquito y familia

 

Fire: The Dance of Intimacy

 

Something is happening, like a slow simmer tenderizing the border of things. At the boundary of the flesh and at the interface between my heart and the world, I can feel how the correct amount of heat invites what is hidden or held apart to come forth, open, show itself, soften, vibrate, delineate, copulate, expand, intertwine, define, wonder, touch, feel, love. At this sacred edge, self and other become doorway and door.

Fire moves and circulates life from the edges toward a centering principle. In humans it is our heart that holds the fire, encouraging engagement, relatedness, kinship, belonging. Over time, fire is capable of creating something completely new from a multitude of complex parts without losing the wholeness of each part. Even if each separateness dissolves in the process, it paradoxically can never lose its integrity completely when rooted in the spirit of the heart.

The firing process is about the inner work necessary for transformation. It is the inner fire we tend deep within the cauldron of the heart that steadily warms the inner journey. Continue reading “Fire: The Dance of Intimacy” →