After a couple of days in solitude, I began to notice things about my environment. There actually is much more to the desert than sand. In the apparent barrenness of the desert, there is life. A flock of blue-gray birds with which I am unfamiliar made daily stops in front of my hermitage. There must have been a 100 or more of them, and they frolicked and played in the Piñon trees and searched for insects in the sandy ground. Chipmunks and brown squirrels skirted to and fro in front of my window, and the landscape was blooming with varieties of cactus and thistle and wildflowers. Surely our Celtic forbears would have connected the beauty of nature with the presence of God and bless God's goodness in providing a world filled with creatures lovely to behold. "When we love the world that God loves, we love God, because it is God's Spirit that holds all creation in existence" (Fr. Eric Harrar).
I also noticed signs of death-in-life. There were bones of animals either killed or that died naturally in and around the gully in front of my hermitage. I'm pretty sure they were the remains of a large animal--perhaps a deer--since there were several live ones in the area. One evening as I was taking sunset photos, a deer came out from behind my hermitage and walked within ten feet of me. She was not frightened by my being there, and casually strolled over to a bush and began to eat berries from it. Eventually she walked back toward the hermitage--by this time I had been driven inside by the mosquitoes--and she bedded down under a tree right outside my kitchen window. I made a point to do the dishes at 8:30 each evening so that I could watch the sunset over the San Juan Range. Now I had a deer silhouetted in the foreground of the gloriously colored evening sky. Even washing the dishes became a mystical experience.
Part of my meditative practice during the solitude of my retreat was to create a mandala out of natural objects in the area surrounding my hermitage. I went out several mornings to collect these items. I ended up with pebbles, seeds, grasses, pine and pinion cones and nuts, and a feather. I also picked some cactus leaves. I had no ideas what the mandala would look like or what I was trying to say through creating it, but I am very happy with the outcome. Here's a photo:
Janet, I appreciate your sharing a picture of the mandala God provided for you and us. Someone once said a picture is worth a thousand words... let us communicate beyond words.
ReplyDeleteAn observation: I do not always want an artist's words to frame creative works although sometimes these "captions" can be very helpful. I liked that you did not give us words/limits for the madala you created.
Thank you for sharing.