MOON XVIII: THE SEPARATION

        How to describe that which cannot be described. Our psychologies are not one. They are manifold. The sun & the moon. The dog & the wolf. The sky & the earth. The male & the female.  The Creator & the Created. Two polarities rend us into separate halves. The fertilized ovum splits in two & starts the cascade of binary divisions that unfolds into a being whole & complete for but one moment. The cord is cut & we are separate once again. 

         Intolerable! 

        Yet here we are, incomplete - yearning for union.  It is in the reaching, in the desire to be whole once again that the awakening begins. Without that suffering I would stay asleep forever like the vastness of the eternal emptiness, oblivious,  endlessly awaiting the stirring of the Maestro’s rousing breath.

"JUST RIGHT!"

Physicists talk about the Goldilocks theory of life on this, the third rock orbiting a small sun on the outskirts of a giant spiral of stars. Through all the perturbations of time & the movement of the far-flung galaxies, a unique situation occurred. Not too hot like Venus or too cold like Mars: "Just Right".  The axis  happened to tilt to the exact angle needed to create seasons. A perfectly proportioned moon pulled at the seas. Proto-life formed in tidal pools. 

Are we humanoids with the bright eyes just the  random result of a series of propitious conditions that had to be 'just so' if we were to be at all? 

So curious - the moon's circumference fits perfectly into the circle of our sun Sol. When the two discs overlap day turns into night. There is a merging. There is a mystery. There is a majesty. Call it Goldilocks. Call it chance. I call it the Necessity.

HOWL

The dog barks. The wolf howls. 

We are tamed. We remain wild.

Two natures in one.

The world of the known; the unknown - infinitely more vast. 

 The moon lies over the sun in eclipse. 

Day becomes night. 

We can only see clearly when we stop focussing on what's in front of us. 

Perhaps words are not even a beginning. 

The howl that rises upward from the source. 

Now that's a song the wolf in my heart of hearts knows.

Crustacean

The waters of the deep. They lie dark, mysterious. Unknowable. A creature rises to the surface. Stirs the ripples. A being from a dream? A messenger? The eyes are wide awake, knowing. The gaze meets my gaze. The interface between two worlds. I must go forth now. I have been called out. No turning back.

GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

The dark night of the soul. A time of dissociation and suffering that promises to overwhelm all in a plunge into absolute despair. Have you been there? I have been tested by that darkness. I will be tested again. How do we find the courage, the faith, to hold on when all seems lost?

Last year, I could not paint for a long time. I could barely put two thoughts together. I started this painting for a friend who also was going through a profound tragedy. His suffering was beyond belief. In the attempt to understand that darkness I sought with my paint brush an aperture to let the light in once more. I discovered the light had remained constant  even through my despair.

 To see clearly  without a trace of fear…. to know certainty without the least lingering doubt we must first face the possibility of the deepest darkness. Against the light that sits at the centre of this mysterious, beautiful  Creation darkness cannot abide. 

I know that now.

RAVENS CIRCLING IN THE NIGHT

The black birds turn silent around the axis of the moon.  There is a place in the depth of the heart darker than the depth of deep space.  The void itself.   An infinite possibility not yet defined.   A yearning towards.  Creation evolves from the purity of the clean slate to the infinitesimal encompassment of the Divine. A paradox. Both are true at once. A reminder to embody the shadow depth of the emptiness we are moving away from… and always toward. Ravens circling in the night.