Awaken to the center

There is a depth dimension to each of us. We just don’t know what to call it

...because each name we try might sound too polemical (or circumscribed) for one or more of us.

But this doesn’t mean the reality’s not true.

We tried the word sacred for awhile

…even though that sounds like there’s something holy within an enclosure of incense and prayer flags

…while the rest of reality waits outside.

There is truth in our sense of alienation

…but it isn’t our whole truth

…because nothing lies outside the pale of some great love.

Perhaps sacred is not the quality of a thing. Perhaps it’s the quality of our being – the quality of how well we have learned to see.

And perhaps what appears to lie outside the pale of the sacred is only what we haven’t learn how to see and love well enough.

Sacred might be a great adventure.

It might be a relationship we cultivate.

Art is a great adventure, too.

We go spiraling inwardly like a shaman

…but our eyes and other senses are wide-open to this world, too.

You can even speak to us – and we might even make a little sense.

But it is the thread, or connection, that the artist returns with that awakens us.

Red Egg began when Debi began writing icons.

She discovered the meditative practice in such an art

…and realized that each tradition cultivates its own practice in order to drum steadily into the heart of what is real.

Maybe there are a thousand ways to pray or meditate.

Or maybe there’s only one.

We’ve lost count.

But even the artist who breaks out in hives at a word like sacred has already discovered his or her own means.

You can hear it in music, can’t you?

It’s a refuge.

And you can live here.
But it’s also not an accident that many of us are travelers

…because if you travel well enough, you can’t help traveling within yourself.

Then you aren’t a tourist any more. Then you aren’t just visiting your own life.

But this can’t be navel-gazing. You aren’t going down to the same place twice.

You are moving – and the world is moving, too.

And the world is weeping. Even when it’s laughing, a corner of its eye is weeping, too.

And certainly we’ve heard.

There is a map within us that mirrors the map of the world,

…and wherever we descend, another corner of our soul awakens, too.

In this sense, we aren’t going anywhere else at all.

And certainly we’re not visiting exotic people who live far away from us.

Instead we’re awakening to a connection that has always been.

So let’s roll up our sleeves again.

There’s real work to be done.

And not out of any sense of privilege or pity.

It’s like Thomas Merton said: my brothers and sisters,

…we are already one.

We just imagine that we’re not.

Attributions...

While many of the images above are Debi's, others are from...

Melissa Lofton – Big Sur.

Tsering Pasang – Kathmandu.

Frances Law – Perthshire, Scotland

Joseph Cartoon – Nairobi

Mark Tuschman – Palo Alto

Cape Dorset Cooperative – Kinngait, Nunavut

Maria Simonds-Gooding – Dingle Peninsula, Ireland

Brian Taylor – Los Gatos

Claudia Bernardi – Berkeley, Argentina, El Salvador

Everest Thanka Gallery – Kathmandu (who will host our next gathering in January)