Brave New World

"Parzival's Quest is not one of perfection but rather to forming a right relationship to our imperfections." - Linda Sussman, from Speech of the Grail

Beginnings are out of our hands, poet John O'Donohue writes. They decide themselves, like our heartbeat and our breathing. It precedes us, creates us, and constantly takes us to new levels and places and people. There can be no growth unless we remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. Martha Beck says, "everything is changing and that's ok" quite simply.

And the universe opens up to us concepts that seem to be coming from everywhere sometimes all at once. This is one I keep bumping into. In my books, in my 12 step meetings, online. Having the right relationship to my imperfections. All of my painting for years was about relationship. Carl Jung believed that spiritual growth was essentially tied to relationship. Joseph Campbell taught that where we stumble there will be our treasure.

The tale of the search for the Grail in Parzival and the amazing book by Sussman that I have studied over the winter, is a blueprint for the ages, particularly for we Westerners, whose task now in our age, is to discern what real truth is within ourselves. We cannot really rely on the church or the President for our truth. Our task, like the one we humans have been assigned from the beginning, is to grasp wisdom.

Here is to brave new beginnings.

Duende

To log on to your own blog to find comfort is serendipidous and as crazy as it gets. Reading Mary Oliver's poem Love Sorrow was a soothing surprise.

For two days I have been experiencing waves of the deepest kind of oxygen sucking pain, deep in my chest where my breath starts. My world of photographs and music and letters and writing got lost this week, in a freak wipe out by the gods at Apple. I had no idea I would fall so hard and feel so powerfully shaken.

The power has visited me before: duende is the word that comes to mind. The Spanish say tener duende, having duende - the emotion associated with "irrationality and earthiness, one which includes a heightened awareness of death, and a dash of the diabolical".

According to Wikipedia:

"The duende is a demonic earth spirit who helps the artist see the limitations of intelligence, reminding him that "ants could eat him or that a great arsenic lobster could fall suddenly on his head"; who brings the artist face-to-face with death, and who helps him create and communicate memorable, spine-chilling art.

The duende is seen, according to Federico Garcia Lorca, as an alternative to style, to mere virtuosity, to God-given grace and charm (what Spaniards call "angel"), and to the classical, artistic norms dictated by the muse. Not that the artist simply surrenders to the duende; he or she has to battle it skillfully, "on the rim of the well", in "hand-to-hand combat".

In some strange way, writing this, re-writing what some good writer posted for me on Wikipedia, helps me see a little, feel a little, like this visitor will leave. And perhaps will leave me richer, stronger and maybe, just maybe, on the sunny side of death.