Spiritual Affiliation: LIFE

Thanks to a conversation of comments on my last blog post (comments that were posted on Facebook--feel free to find and "friend" me there!), I've made changes to my profile for the Spiritual Directors International directory known as the "Seek and Find Guide". Among the comments that helped to convince me to go back and choose that "Other" option that I had paused over before were these:

"Go with Other...so much more space there. One of my favorite definitions of enlightenment: 'lots of space...nothing holy.'"

This time, when the profile form asked for my Spiritual Affiliation, I chose "Other" which led me to the opportunity to say something further in thirty-three characters or less. In the box provided I wrote:

LIFE: gratitude, amazement, art

That pretty well used up my thirty-three characters (if you include spaces)!

In addition to the comments on Facebook, I received a very thoughtful email from someone who wondered aloud: "Can we think about a sense of self-defined spirituality? Is it possible to consider spirituality as not always related to a particular set of religious beliefs?"

And I would add, knowing that religions are about more than beliefs--is it possible to consider spirituality as not necessarily related to the whole collection of customs and practices (as well as beliefs) that make up a religious tradition?

I do know that it was sometimes a source of great distress for me when I was ordained even to acknowledge at first and then to honor and feel OK about (feeling at least OK would have been the first step on the road toward eventually celebrating!) the fact that my spirituality seemed to be quite different from and other than and apart from the tradition I was representing in my preaching, teaching, and  ministry. More and more I wondered if it even made sense to consider myself a "Christian."

In fact, as I've written before elsewhere in this blog, I never felt entirely free to acknowledge even to myself and then to explore what it would mean to say my spirituality had next to nothing to do with Christianity! And yet I longed for that freedom. My soul was pleading, prodding, and pulling me toward the freedom to discover what would "be there" if I scrapped the whole God-in-religion thing and started from scratch. Started from my own embodied, earth-bound, earth-delighting experience.

I suppose I may have imagined the question was whether I would arrive at some sort of "faith," or not. Not a recognizable, fit in an existing label sort of faith, but an outlook, an orientation, a "spiritual affiliation" that I could articulate to others.

And even though I remain reluctant to do too much articulating and defining, most days it seems I've arrived enough to be able to declare that my spiritual affiliation is with Life, via gratitude, amazement, and art. I can live with that!

Seven Inches Before Breakfast

"Trees in Snow" c. Sukie Curtis, 2/3/09, graphite pencil

We woke to seven inches of snow--more than the predicted overnight fall--and it's still snowing thickly. I have to say I'm delighted. Just when everyone (store clerks, bank tellers, neighbors, and so on) was beginning to mumble and to speculate about a nearly snowless winter, or about whether we'd be slammed in February and March, we've got a real "snow event" on our hands.

And it's quite beautiful. I say that of course from a position of shelter, warmth, and not needing anything beyond my own house today. And for that I'm grateful.

I wasn't so totally grateful when the plow woke me up around 2:30 a.m. with its engine roaring, plow scraping on roadway, lights flashing through our meager curtains, and back-up alert beeping away as it backed at the nearby corner. And I wasn't so totally grateful when I stayed awake until close to 5 a.m. mulling over the events of the previous day and various other topics.

But images I have seen of bulldozers removing dead bodies from the streets of Port au Prince, Haiti have a way of putting things in perspective. I can even feel grateful for the loud plow in the wee hours, part of a well-oiled infrastructure that most Haitians have surely never experienced even in the best of times. I sent my best thoughts Haiti-ward when that came to my mind.

I rather enjoyed shoveling snow this morning before breakfast--not in any hurry, enjoying the relative lightness of even all that snow, just kind of getting into the rhythm of shoveling and shoving, remembering Haiti now and then, and savoring all the space that I had cleared before it seemed time to quit. I even cleared Digory a small loop of a path in the backyard, since seven inches is a few inches longer than the length of his legs.

A lovely way to start the day.

Inspiring Art Mentors

Recently I've found great inspiration and encouragement from visiting two local art galleries that highlight the art of adults with disabilities. The two galleries are Spindleworks in Brunswick and YES Art Works at Creative Work Systems in Portland.

I step into these galleries (or stop to look in the windows of Yes Art Works on Congress Street as I walk from my car to the Farmers' Market on Wednesday mornings), and my heart soars! I smile, I feel liberated and affirmed and pump my fists to return  some affirmation; I cheer, I bow in gratitude, and sometimes I cry, too.

I want to paint and draw as these artists do--without pretense, boldly expressing themselves in the style that emerges from them with paint, pen, paper, wood, cloth, yarn, whatever the material may be. I consider them my mentors and a source of inspiration, and I am deeply grateful that they choose to share their work with the world.

Matter of fact, I am going to stop right now and write a note to thank one of these artists at Spindleworks, Caroline Boylston, one of whose works is hanging on my wall. (Click on her name here and the link will take you to a list of Spindleworks artists; click on her name there and you will see her and some of her work. Then you can sample others' work as well!) Maybe some day soon I will ask her if she'd like to join me for a cup of tea or coffee. I think I'd like that very much.

Snow on Snow

"Snow had fallen snow on snow, snow on snow..." the words from the carol "In the bleak mid-winter" are kind of stuck in my head these days. Fifteen inches on top of four inches on top of an ice coating on top of a dusting, or something like that. That's where things stand in our neighborhood. Yesterday I had to laugh at the car I had left in our driveway half cleared; it looked as if it were sporting a high mohawk when I returned.

I hate to admit it, but some days I forget to admire the beauty of the snow, when figuring out what to do with it all moves up on the priority list. The birds, meanwhile, seem grateful for our feeders and our bird bath heater, and we are rewarded with a large flock of juncos, lots of gold finches in their duller winter feathers, and the many black, white and grey (in various patterns and combinations) birds: chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and such. Today three blue jays dwarfed them all. 

And I am grateful for the wood stove: there's nothing like that radiant warmth. Add a cup of tea, a favorite Christmas CD, and maybe even the length of the sofa...a perfect way to spend an hour.

In memoriam

We buried a beloved friend and teacher this morning, just as the rain was starting to fall. Relatively small of stature, weighing in  at twelve or thirteen pounds, Calvin was nonetheless a big presence in our household. I often referred to him as my Zen teacher, since his example was often of that kind of single-minded attention to the present moment at which cats, and most other non-human mammals, excel. I loved watching him wash, methodically and thoroughly, never in a hurry, as if just this endeavor at just this moment (and string of moments) was the only one that mattered. Until something better caught his attention, that is. 

Calllie, as we called him, was a lover of cozy places--under the wood stove, on an open lap, and especially on the best, most comfortable chair nearest the heat. I will miss his company in my lap and even his way of stealing my  body-warmed seat that I would often have vacated for only a matter of seconds, to find it occupied on my return.

To be honest, Callie did have some annoying habits, but it's amazing how quickly those fade with a sudden loss (sadly, he was mortally injured by a car). When we buried him this morning, we remembered his ready purr; his playfulness; his leaping several feet off the ground to try to catch the leaves on low-hanging maple branches; his way of walking with us around the block, his bell jingling as he darted onto and around the stone wall near the Ferlands' house, and often racing with an impressive homeward sprint through the Cloughs' yard, across the Porters' yard, and straight to our back door. I liked to think he was an honorable descendant of the fastest big cats of the African plains.

So, with thanksgiving for a small and relatively short life, that reached farther than we ever knew (as we learn from neighbors their own enjoyment of his antics), we bid Calvin good bye. Next spring we'll plant some catmint over his burial place in the garden.