A Meditation on Time
Laurie Doctor Laurie Doctor

A Meditation on Time

This week my friend led a meditation on time... She began: "Close your eyes for a few minutes and contemplate time. (Pause) What do you feel when you hear the word time?  What energy does that word have for you? Where in the body do you feel it?"

How you experience time can be the difference between feeling stressed or relaxed. Another friend told a story this week of being stranded at a McDonald's in a poor neighborhood, where his sister had car trouble. He waited at the restaurant for four hours for help to come. There was a security man at the entrance to Mc Donald's. My friend became fully engaged in watching this man greet with friendliness each and every person who walked through the door . This attitude of openness was contagious, and my friend, who forgot about checking the time, was changed by the experience.

What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Burnt Norton I   – T S Eliot
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The Pilgrimage of Makers
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The Pilgrimage of Makers

Art is that which despite all gives hope. – Frederick Franck, Art As A Way

In the midst of uncertainty we have a culture that insists on everyone becoming an "artist". In the art world, as well as politics, it is disconcerting to see the confusion between what is false and what is trueIt is difficult to distinguish between show-offs, pretenders and authenticity. Even being an artist today often seems more about the openings, exhibits, galleries and critics than the work itself.

What happens to the artist when the goal becomes how to make a splash? For this aspect of the art world my husband coined the word celebritrosity.

The pilgrimage of the maker is not about how you appear to the crowd, about fame or fortune, but rather the process of finding your place in the family of things. As Mary Oliver in Wild Geese said:

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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The eyes are the scouts of love  –J Campbell
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The eyes are the scouts of love  –J Campbell

Valerio, who is a PhD student in the philosophy of art, took us to the town where he lives in his grandmother's house, and where he was born. Collestatte is bulit inside the walls of a medieval castle. There is one grocery, a small post office and a "bar" which is where everyone in town, including the town dog, gathers in the morning for espresso and the evening for aperitivo. The contrast of a place that is built from eleventh century Roman walls and churches– with the most elaborate, immaculate espresso machine I have ever seen, is keen–and really magnificent for a coffee lover. 

 

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"My attention is always very fugitive." – Flannery O'Connor
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"My attention is always very fugitive." – Flannery O'Connor

I have Flannery O'Connor with me for my travels in Europe. I haven't read her before. I resonate with her fierce earnestness in wanting to clear her mind, to find her place in the world, to be able to do her work. But not just any work– the work that belongs to her, and connects her with spirit.

One of the paradoxes is that to find your place in the world you have to set down your fears and ambitions, at least for the moment. She writes in A Prayer Journal: 

Please help me to push myself aside.

I have the opportunity in teaching, at moments, to forget about myself and find the presence in the room. This would not be possible without the students who show up– willing to give full attention a try, to see what arises in an atmosphere of creativity and silence.

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The Path of Totality
Laurie Doctor Laurie Doctor

The Path of Totality

All across the country there is an opportunity to pause together, and be united by watching the solar eclipse on August 21. The scientists have named the trail where the complete eclipse can be seen–spanning from Oregon to South Carolina– the path of totality.

We are sustained by the bigger picture, by a source that is invisible to us. When this presence becomes felt in any way, our reaching is touched by what is timeless. Looking upward, seeing the vastness of sky, takes us out of our small world and into the unknown. Seeing a shooting star flame across the vast desert sky puts my achievements, and my losses in perspective.

In the case of the coming eclipse, being on the path of totality refers to being able to observe the full event, to be enveloped in darkness in the middle of the day. We get to witness a profound image of the dark being circled by light: the corona appears as a golden halo around the black sun. What an image of wonder this evokes– and the inevitable force of the necessity of both the darkness and the light. 

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"Ask the way to the spring..." – Rilke
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"Ask the way to the spring..." – Rilke

Don't insist on going
where you think you want to go

Ask the way to the spring.

– Rumi

Every now and then you enter the river, experience effortlessness, and what you make seems to come from some place other. This creation has nothing to do with right or wrong, good or bad, popular or forgotten. It has nothing to do with impressing others, or winning prizes. What you have made is your song, and that is enough.

Isn't this sense of belonging at the root of all yearning to create? There is no formula for getting there. Yet every now and then there is someone who seems to live there a lot of the time, like the poets, Rumi and Rilke. Poetry can mirror your yearning, remind you how you want to be. It's important to have people and things in your life that recall, not intentionally, but just by their presence, an image of what your are reaching for.

How do you shape your life to invite more of this experience?

Being a doer myself, I am continuously trying to make more time for being. Is it possible that being, doing nothing, is an essential ingredient in the generation of your work? 

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On Abandoning Perfection
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On Abandoning Perfection

If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why is
could be muted, and the neighbor’s laughter,
and the static my senses make–
if all of it didn’t keep me from coming awake–

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives,
in gladness.

The Book of Hours, I,7 – Rilke

To be creative, the not quite right voice must be muted. The critical voice paralyzes experimentation. The perfectionist mind forbids stumbling– and stumbling is necessary for discovery. If you want your work to be alive, to be authentic, to come from the seed that is yours–the dragon of perfectionism must be slain. As makers, the key is to participate fully, to lose ourselves in the act of creating. There is bravery, and perhaps even faith, in being willing to fail. 

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