Who is Catching Whom

The premise of who is catching whom is just below the surface every time I set out to be on water.  Whether piercing bait (yes, I still bait fish and consider it an equal chance to be on water), or tying on a fly - from the bank or in the depths - the simple reality comes across loud and clear.  It might not be me who is in charge of this desire to be on water and catch the allusive and elusive prey. It might be the water that is really luring me out and hooking me - no less allusive and elusive.  Or, perhaps the fish.

There is affirmation of this understood yet still unknown truth that lay afoot the passion of the chase in the simple poem, The Hound of Heaven:

“I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;   

  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;   

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways   

    Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears   

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.            5

      Up vistaed hopes I sped;   

      And shot, precipitated,   

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,   

  From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.   

      But with unhurrying chase,” - Francis Thompson, “The Hound of Heaven”

It is the affirmation that that which has us in its passionate grip is somehow the thing which we ourselves hold onto because of our passion toward it.  Caught or catching, who can say.  

Standing chest high in waters, I realized that the trout I had hoped to woo had somehow already started wooing me.  Long before I cast my caddis nymph toward the riffles, I had already been hooked. “One ON.” But more than likely it should have and always still should be yelled, “Tom ON.”  Who is catching whom? River, stream, lake, trout, sunshine, open-air, bass, salmon, nature, fisher, poet, painter? Who, I ask.

This intuited yet underground relationship is really part of the mythic and mystic allure of the craft of yielding to the call.  I mean, come on, would any of us buy half the shit we buy if we were not somehow being reeled in by an unknown mother of a fish or poem or painting - at least in our own minds.  Something greater than just the one simple act of entering a stream, or catching a fish, or writing a poem, or painting a canvas is afoot. There is an energetic pull for convergence.  We long to be wed to something greater.  

Aren’t we all snagged on the great gossamer tippet of eternity.  Don’t we all believe that we will cash in on the big one and join the angelic throng of fisher-folk or artists on high and from all time.  That great heavenly cloud of water-side, or manuscript-side witnesses. That pen-ultimate trip and cast and catch that will allow us to cry atop our lungs’s capacity “I have the biggest catch of my whole damned life.”  Or, “I have just penned my absolute and quintessential poem.” And then, knowingly, tilt our head to the side, don a trickle of blood from the mouth - just along the chin line - and drop over dead. Having performed and been performed upon in the greatest ceremony of life.  We had been caught; we had caught. We wrote, and we were written.

There it is.  This friend, is your ticket out of church.  This is the grand mystic craft and mythic quest that all humans of worth have set and are set upon.  This is the passion of the divine. Surely any minister of worth would gladly sign your docket, stamp your pass, and let you out on such glorious and good behavior.  If you can acknowledge the divine craft of entering a stream, or of writing a poem, then you have given in to the divine pull and merged with a greater-than-you. Is that not the definition of the spiritual?

I think this was the thought amid the penning of my poem “Gentle Falls”.

Gentle Falls

Gentle falls

The silent foot

Upon the stones

Of time;

Wading through

Th'glorious streams

And watching

For a sign;

Of darting forth

Or rolling o’er

How e’er the

Fish will out.

Revealed to

One who holds

The reel and slowly

Moves about.

Who sets the

Hatch one finds

So near upon

The end of line;

Who casts it back

And puts on power

To land for

Fish to find.

Who sets the hook

And who is set

upon by tethered

meal.

Who is reeling

in the catch

And who is

being reeled.

I it is

Upon the line

What end

I cannot say;

Nor know

If I pull in

Or out - just

Pull with no delay.

Who spies the

Fly what gentle

Falls on riffles

Of the stream,

Who chases down

With swiftest speed

And bites upon

Its dream.

Write the words

Upon my heart

Of how to catch

The fish

Or how to flee

From fisher-folk

Far and away

My only wish.

Of how to dress,

And poach it well

And place it on

The dish

But once

It is devoured

And, no more

In space or time

It will be

my eternal Quest

to find Who’s me

or mine.

And sure I am

That oft’ will change

Of who has who

On line.

Who has not painted a barn on a canvas, or written a few lines of free verse and felt a yielding to some larger thing.  An entrance into a bigger reality. This is the nature of craft. We come along side of another great stream of meaning and we conjoin and confluence takes place.  We become one with the process and get lost in it. Who and whom are essentially lost, hidden, or unimportant. And then we emerge and continue on as if we were one single being and no longer ALL.

Don’t deny it.  Think of your craft.  What is it you lose yourself into and among?  It is there you shall find your spirit. I do not pose a good or ill to where it is we lose ourselves.  That is yours to assess.  

First, find where you have confluence.  Then decide if you will give your life for such a river.  Maybe you know four good streams to be astream amid. So be it.  Know them, though. The craft will be the richer and the confluence all the mightier.  Like it or not, there is, “One ON.” 

Who is catching whom?

A SPRING BLESSING OF THE WATERS

A SPRING BLESSING OF THE WATERS - 

for individuals and congregations alike

Spirit of Light and Life, Giver of All Creation,

We call upon you this day to hallow these waters. These waters rise each Spring to bring new life to the land around them and to the life within - nourishing each strand and fiber and cell of life itself.  May they find a pure and an essential place in our hearts and in our minds as well as in our bodies.

May we tend these waters with the utmost of care, being sure to keep from them any harmful impact from all we do and all we produce.  Countless years and the efforts of countless lives have gone into upgrading the streams of ours to be Exceptional Value Streams. May we honor those years, and may we honor those lives by maintaining the integrity of their exceptional value.

May our waterways be a path for opening our eyes and our hearts to beauty, to radical amazement, to awe, to wonder, and to grandeur.  May they be a path for our minds for opening to the art and artistry of their presence on human landscapes - and to all they cause us to pen and paint.  May they be a path for our bodies and our communities to find respite and recreation - wholesome play in nature - cleansing every aspect of who we are.

We commit to being stewards of these and all our waterways and all our natural resources of land, air, water and climate. 

Bless them all and preserve them - and us also, in their presence.

Amen.

Read Psalm 1: 1 - 3 in closing. 

Psalm 1

1 Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
    whatever they do prospers.

The ETERNAL UNBEKNOWNST

In trout fishing we call it structure.  It is those places in the river or stream or lake or body of water behind which, or under which, or within which a trout or the food that a trout wishes to eat may linger; remaining isolated and undetected. Places just beyond the beyond, out of reach of sight, or sound, of taste, of smell, or of a ripple that would alert the tiniest particles of touch.  Unbeknownst.

Because such places are partially obscured from being fully known, they hold and impart a deep sense of mystery.  In that green, brown,  golden tinge of water, it may be a fish; but, it may also be a plant or a fully submerged branch.

In a game of manhunt, or war, or of kick the can on Georgie Acker’s front lawn we called it a hiding place or a blending-in spot or really secluded.  To be camouflaged.  The ultimate act of invisibility and escape. Beyond all sensory detection. Unbeknownst.

Because these hiding places tuck us away; keeping us from being fully known or known at all, they hold and impart a deep sense of mystery.  In that shadow may be John or Jimmy or Mark, or the mere elusive mottled hues and blotches of faint light and shadow.

It takes some real doing to be unbeknownst or to find a sense of BEING in the unbeknownst. Especially in a universe that seems always to be revealing and unveiling itself - blossoming open; especially in a culture that holds fast its obligation of uncovering works always toward illumination to grow itself out of harmful ways of being and suffering.

It is APOPHATIC to be UNBEKNOWNST.  Wikipedia defines APOPHATIC as: "Apophatic theology, also known as negative theology, is a form of theological thinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God, the Divine, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God."  So this harkens to the teaching of UNKNOWING from either the Mystic of The Cloud of The Unknowing or the Pseudo-Dionysian writings of the early Church.  The Syriac Fathers and Mothers as well as the Hesychastic Fathers and Mothers all enjoin us to find the SILENCE of the GODHEAD and the MYSTERY.

Knowing is good.  But in infinity and endlessness there will always be mystery - a further darkness beyond which our light of awareness has yet to reach.  The structure of a black hole; or the shape of an emotion speaks to this.  Not being able to comprehend a thing much "HUGER" than we, also speaks to this.

We do well to measure the distance between something unknown and something ill or bad.  We sometimes confuse the unknown with harm or danger.  Something in darkness cannot be assigned a value until exposed to the light.  We suspend judgement until all may be seen - or at least more of a thing may be seen.  I am not saying that the unknown may not harbor peril, but we should be careful not to throw out the DIVINE with the BATHWATER - as it were.

While playing manhunt, when I thought I saw Scotty laying on the berm of the rhododendron bed just on and in the edging of the mound, I always checked a few different angles and also a few different times to be sure it wasn’t a raccoon or a skunk or a shadow cast from the streetlight through the maples.  There are illusions and misconceptions in the spaces beyond clear light.  There is nuance in that which is unbeknownst.

I find this layering of clarity ever present in knowing the DIVINE ONE.  Always beyond recognition and the strands of perception.  The ALL-WISE hangs often beyond the STRUCTURE of our days.  THE COSMIC IT lay partially knowable, like any sweet poetic truth and sensual sensibility.  Just out of reach.

I feel we have forgotten the wispiness of truth.  Digitally sequestered data and GOOGLING leads us to forget that not everything shall appear in the light of understanding.  And, even when a thing is seen and handled it does not mean we have the ability to integrate its presence into all we know and experience in an all encompassing fashion.  We may not be able to hold FULL TRUTH.  We may need to act in one way because of some other thing we know also to be true.  We may have to COMPROMISE the WHOLE for all we can handle or know at one time of the PART.

Consider the haziness of compassion and mercy.  This sort of thing was at play in the life of king David.  King David who while a man given over to selfish gain repeatedly is also known as a man after God’s own heart.  A mystery to be sure.  Like any good reader, we become willing to SUSPEND OUR DISBELIEF.  This is critical when coming up against THE MYSTERY.  Don't you think?

How do you approach the HIDDENESS of the UNKNOWABLE KNOWN?  A koan to ponder to be sure?  How approach ye the need to know everything?  Can you allow your soul the REST OF THE UNBEKNOWNST?  To ponder ABSENCE and EMPTINESS?  The DIVINE-TROUT or DIVINE-PLAYER-of-HIDE-and-SEEK hides behind the STRUCTURE of life, just beyond the beyond.  Are you willing to let go enough to know the UNBEKNOWNST?

Everything between your eyes of perception and the objects of that perception is invisible and

UNBEKNOWNST to the eye of the body.  So it is with ALL there is and the EYE of the soul.

The Water Flushed The Praying Mantises Up and Out

This post is from my book Cairn-Space and for my friend Susan who carried a pod to her garden and watched them hatch one fine day.

+     +     +

The watering flushed praying mantises up and out of the cover of stalk and stem; onto walls, and branches, and posts. Had I not been paying attention, I would have missed them. I would have never seen what they had to teach.

They climbed up trying to avoid the water I was adding to the garden. As they climbed, they would often spot a bug and settle in for the kill. Patiently they would wait for the “perfect” moment before striking. In their rising, nourishment presented itself. They would stop and dine. They watched and waited—like the Wise Virgins of Jesus’ parable. They were watchful and alert.

I had the good pleasure to encounter their watching and waiting. Slowly focusing on the meal, almost hypnotizing it before the strike, they would become careful, and lose their place in time to a slowed attention.  It was the “Power of the Slowing” that Gerald May wrote about in “The Wisdom of the Wilderness”  HarperCollins Books, NY, 2006). Their slowing to capture food made me pause, pay attention, and enter into the slowing myself.  It taught me about what it takes to discriminate and discern the quality and nature of things in my life. Although all things can move us toward union with God, some things pose potential dangers and threats of entanglement that are just not worth risking. It requires watchfulness and alertness to become  nourished—to grow.

Slowing helps us to focus and become aware. Nature has a tendency to help us enter the slowing, if we watch her examples in other sentient beings. Could my praying become the same? Could I still myself enough to become observant and watch what would arise from my heart as I watered it? Could I become still enough to see the many options for nourishment all around me: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness,

self-control, community, forgiveness?

For many years prior to this experience of the mantises rising, we had hatched mantis pods as a family. We would buy an egg casing from the local garden store and leave it out in the backyard in a covered aquarium. As the weeks wore on, we would almost forget it was there, until one day someone would notice hundreds of mantises on the walls of glass. It was hard to believe that so many mantises could be in one casing. They were a shifting mass of life and limb covering the aquarium walls. We would take off the lid and watch them scurry throughout the yard.

There was another time we had watched the mantises. Glinda and I had just begun dating. We hiked the woods and collected scraps of nature to weave into a wreath. We started with grapevine. We wrapped it into a circle. We tucked dried garlic-mustard fronds into the hoop. We tucked in some mullein leaves and sassafras roots. We also wove in a mantis pod. We had no idea what it was.

One night, when we returned to her room, the walls were covered in moving spots. At first we thought our eyes were deceiving us. We thought we saw shifting movement. As we stepped closer, we were assured that we did. Hundreds of young mantises covered the wall. This was an accidental hatching. The hatchings in the aquarium were not.

I am glad that we took the time to hatch them. They gave me pause in their hatching, and a renewed sense of stillness in watching them rise while watering the gardens. For years, we had more praying mantises in our gardens than anyone around. For years, I had a new way of seeing prayer. Their presence has been a cycle of routine. I have seen their daily morphs and the slow changes that happen to them over time. I have seen how their colors change as summer lengthens and draws to a close. From green to brown they fade. Their numbers decrease throughout the browning, until they leave the yard altogether. Gone.

from Chapter One of Cairn-Space

click HERE for ordering

“I Dreamed A Dream: the Place of Dreams in Spiritual Formation and Direction”

“I Dreamed A Dream: the Place of Dreams in Spiritual Formation and Direction”

by, Father Dn. N. Thomas Johnson-Medland, CSJ, OSL

The hidden nature of dreams and dreaming in our lives is esoteric – for the most part – because we fail to take the time to sit with them and listen to the value of their content.  Whether it is a lifelong dream and ambition we have or a nighttime visitor to our sleeping consciousness, dreams are vital in revealing our current identity, situation, and our longings for something other.

Countless hours of our lives are spent upon waking trying to remember just beyond the fragment of a notion that we still hold onto from our nighttime visit from a dream. Equal number of hours are spent in our lives trying to remember our lifelong ambitions or hopes and why we feel as if we are no longer on their path. Both of these things have to do with what we call dreams.  Whether they are the sleeping kind or the goal setting kind, I do not believe the path to their integration into our lives is any different. We must sit with our dreams and listen for their content to reveal itself and empower and engage us.

I think everyone has that one dream they are trying to figure out.  What does it mean?  Where did it come from?  Is there something I am missing?  And then, in an instant, we move beyond the notion of discovery and realization by going on to the next thing.  We go and make the coffee or wake the kids.  Leaving our dream in mid-air, like the gossamer wisp it is.  Never to think about it much longer in the future.

There are a couple of ways we can give voice to these dreams that will move us closer to hearing what they are really all about – what they are trying to say.  They are simple pathways that do not take up much time.  But, they do – as with all aspects of formation and direction – require attention and focus.

First, we can simply go through a chronology of the dream in our head and look at all of the pieces of the drama.  Start at the beginning and move through it sequentially.  Think about each of the elements as you pass through the content the first time.  On the second pass through the story, start to ask yourself these questions:

Does any of this make something else in my life more clear?
Do these snapshots of drama mean anything to me?
Are there symbols for my feelings, beliefs, and hopes laid out in front of me here?
How does this make me feel?
Does this feeling speak to where I am in life right now?
What great teachings do I see in the content?

Once you have begun this dialogue you will begin to engage with the content of the dream and even gain access to some of its empowerment to move on.  Some of the content may be disturbing and you do not want to look at it.  But, regardless there is something to be said.  Listen.

At some point it helps the process if instead of thinking about these things, you actually take the time and space to talk out loud to yourself about the process.  Speak the answers to yourself.  It will feel odd at first.  But, it is a dialogue, after all.

Second, you may want to do the same sort of process, but in a journaling format.  Use the same process of sequential review and the same set of questions to write down the components of your dreams and the responses to the dream interview questions.  It will yield a content you can come back to later if you choose to review or reengage the dream.

In either case there will be a listening that goes on that will take the dream into the next phase of consciousness.  It will begin to unpack itself more because you focus your attention on it and it meaning and importance.

Some people will naturally bring up reasons dreams are less important and transient.  They will say that, “I must have eaten something that caused this”.  Or, “I must be getting sick”.  In either case, we must remember that the contents from our dreams come from within us.  They come up and out of us because they are in there to begin with.  They have “something” to say.  We must be bold enough to listen and hear.

Just the last night I had a dream I was out walking with my family in the woods.  Not uncommon since we live in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.  Both our home and the property we own ten minutes away are in wooded spaces.

At some point we saw three bear cubs (grizzlies – which we do not have here in the Poconos, so their place must have had some metaphoric content to it) playing along the side of the path.  Almost immediately, someone shouted, “There must be a mother.  Run.”  And, we all ran to some makeshift shelter that was just around the bend – one that we all knew was there.

Once inside, I slammed the door shut and held my hands against it with great force as there was no latch or hasp to keep us safe.  The mother grizzly appeared through the crack between the door and the frame.  She was huge and menacing.  Oddly, although she was a grizzly, she and her cubs were as black; black as the night.

I held the door in place with my full weight. The mother grizzly began snorting and sniffing.  She began smelling my hand through the crack.  She stayed there for smelling for some time. 

The room was filled with a great tension and stillness.  It was then that I could begin to smell the strong aroma of garlic and remembered that my hands were coated with the aroma as I had been cracking the paper shells off of garlic cloves and crushing them for our meal just before we left for the walk.

I held my breath.  She then decided to move on and we were no longer in danger.  We gathered ourselves and waited before we left.

The waking life truth is that I had been shelling cloves before I went to bed and my hands did in fact smell of garlic.  But, not for a minute do I believe that that dream was not telling me something. 
Our family has been going through some tough discussions about or black lab Eli these last few days.  Eli, who was not anywhere in the dream at all. 

It did not take me long to realize the connection to the dread decisions we were trying to make about Eli and his ensuing death from cancer.  It was a large and menacing darkness that took us by surprise.

We were clearly grieving and sensing what it would be like without him in our lives.  The garlic became the bridge to the everyday reality.

After years and years of paying attention to dreams and dreaming, I began to notice a shift in my life.  I felt more settled.  I felt more homeostatic in my world.  I noticed that my writing took on more solidity and I began to write poetry.  I found myself more connected to the deeper recesses of my being.

In the craft of dreaming and sitting with the dream, we will find an opening to our identity and the meaning for who we are.  This is particularly critical during times of illness and great transition in our lives.  It is worth the investment to unpack the meaning of the gifts we receive from our inner self – the gift of dreams.

 "If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you."
The Gospel of Thomas, verse 70

http://tomspublications.blogspot.com/

A selection from Chapter 2 of "Cairn-Space"

Uncovering growth and nurturance from the routine practices of daily life has long been a reality passed on from generation to generation. It is responsible for the development of “tradition” in faith, philosophy, art, politics, and the sciences. It is how we learn what it is passed on. Repetition builds continuity. It is a neural thing. It also helps us open to greater things. Laws are fashioned by it, and organizations are developed because of it. Routine practices keep us moored to the safety of the dock of life.

The notion of routine practice has its bearing on our individual daily lives. We live each day enacting patterns or habits that we have allowed ourselves to accept as meaningful. We go as far as to say that a day has been worthless because we have not checked off one of the habits we hold dear. But, are these habits all necessary? Are they all nourishing? Discernment would tell us, “No”.

We get up everyday and have a cigarette with our coffee. The pattern, over years, weaves itself into the meaning of what we call “morning”. The need for the nicotine is wrapped around the need to repeat familiar events and we are hooked on a habit that we cannot shake. We watch the news before we go to bed. The pattern, over years, weaves itself into the meaning of what we call “bedtime”. The need for tantalizing headlines is wrapped around the need to repeat familiar events and we are hooked on a habit we cannot shake. We know these things are not healthy for us, but we have woven them into our expectations.

We must develop patterns that feed us and strengthen us. We must look for the things we need as divine creatures and build them into habitual routine. This way (just like returning to the prayer practice when distracting thoughts arise) we can return to our core and avert building unhealthy routines. These habits entangle themselves in both our bio-chemical make-up and our cultural patterns of living. They can be at once a physical driving need and an emotional attachment. Habits and routines can ride the crest between the body and mind continuum.

Prayer is needful. Silence is needful. Compassion is needful. Rest is needful. The practices we develop around these needful things should reflect nourishment, health, and wholeness. If we do not routinely make room for the needful things in life, they will not just happen upon us. We do this by wrapping them in the myelin sheaths of repetition.

The same sort of practices should also be present in our lives together – as the body of Christ. Fashioning sacred space and filling it with the heart and essence of prayer is not a journey for the individual alone, it is a corporate practice as well. Having prayer space and prayer time is good for the one; it is also good for the many.

In a day and age when people would like to lose any connection to a daily routine and be set free to experience one new event after another (at least in our own estimation), the need for a nourishing daily routine is great. Having a heart center and a routine visit to that heart center is vital to an emerging stability and health. It is something we can practice together and apart. It is something we can build into the positive associations of what it means to be the Body of Christ.

 Although people may verbally acknowledge that routine is not necessary or a healthy requirement in daily life, they do enact the need for routine on a daily basis. People often enact things they need even if they cannot make a verbal or cognitive assent to the importance of the task.

 They may not turn each day to the sacred routines of old – prayer and or liturgy, but they do turn to the routine of reading email, checking social media, and watching the news. We find comfort in routines. Unbeknownst to most, we crave routine and create it whether we know it or not. Routine finds a way in our lives until we are able to recognize and give voice to the need. It is a myelin sheath sort of thing.

Routine is a cairn. Routine is a marker in time and space that helps us to know where we are, remember where we have been, and gain a sense of identity as we visit it again and again over time. Routine digs down deep below the structure of past, present, and future; into the reality of the eternal sense of NOW. Routine is a bridge that unites the dimensions of time and space.

We transmit the signal from axon, to dendrite, through a neural pathway wrapped in fat. We pile the rocks – stone on stone – leaving a visible mark in space and time. Have we discerned the soundness of the stones? Why were they placed? What do they sign?

 Liturgy, tradition, and prayer are cairns. They help us gain perspective in landscape of life. They mark how far and how close we come and go as we journey. They are a gauge. And, by their nature they are seen as repeatable events. We do them over and over again, wrapping them in meaning and depth. We can do these things as individuals and as a corporate body.

Click HERE for Cairn-Space

King Solomon and the Mystic Space of the Cosmos

King Solomon and the mystic space of the cosmos. A section from CAIRN-SPACE, Chapter 4:

There is a tradition of stories told about King Solomon that speak of his spiritual practice of prayer. The stories tell that Solomon carved out a prayer-space around himself with his words, his feelings, and his desires. The stories come from the Sufi tradition. Rumi (Jelaluddin Rumi, AD 1207) is the teller of many of these tales. These tales are about King Solomon’s cairn-space.

It is said that Solomon cleared a space around himself and filled it with the escaping power of his intention and love. He cleared a space to make a palace of prayer: words and sighs offered up to the Father.  He found a way to convert time and space into an encountering and wrestling with God. He connected with the Source of All from within his own personal projections. He fashioned the air into a tabernacle of meeting.

It is hard for we modern-folk to recognize that things exist in the “invisibility” of space between objects. Fields exist in these places. Energy exists in these places. Despite our being surrounded by thousands of science fiction stories containing force-fields and energy waves, we are slow to realize that there is something between the electrons of an atom. There is something in the nothingness of space.

There is something present in the nothingness we behold. There is something between particles of matter. There is something between the earth and the moon. We may not see it, but there is something there. Perhaps the “something” that is there has myelin sheaths wrapped around it so information can be passed from one point to another. Perhaps the invisible holds millions of axons and dendrites passing neural data back and forth. Perhaps this whole universe is hardwired with the neural pathways of God; energy moving across the surface of the deep, in matter and in space.

This same field, this same energy surrounds us and permeates us as individuals. It is easy to perceive it on a day when someone is riled up and angry. The air around them is palpable. You can feel the anger. It is the same with mirth. When someone is exuberant with joy, you can feel the joy. We radiate feeling out into the “space” of our own lives; out into our immediate environment. The tenor of the space around us reflects the tenor of the heart.

The Fathers called these fields and energies that surround us and permeate us “logosmoi” (pronounced lo yose mee). Logosmoi are thought-forms. They are our thoughts, emotions, and desires taking shape and form as they dwell within us and as they leave us and enter into the world around us. They are very real.

Perhaps these logosmoi are the angels and demons the desert solitaires wrote about and did battle with in the deserts of Nitria, Scetis, and Kellia. Perhaps these logosmoi are the forces that we battle with in Church when someone leans over and says, “She hasn’t been to church since her husband had that affair.” Perhaps the logosmoi are what distract us from silent stillness in our prayer-spaces.

We weave a shelter around us with the fields of thought, emotion, and desire we generate from within and project out onto the world. These fields we are weaving create the “me” of our lives. They become what we consider to be the personality. In a real sense they precede us and are still around when we leave. If we fail to cut down an inappropriate logosmoi by returning to our practice, it enters the neural field of our communications about prayer.

Think of the affect certain people have when they walk into a room: some liven things up, while others shut down conversation. Some people exude an atmosphere of love and union, while others exude an atmosphere of distraction and chaos.

Scientists have discovered a whole “mirror” system within us. The mirroring begins with the “mirror neuron” which assumes the behavior and emotion in the immediate environment and then reflects it. Individuals mirror “the other” as if it were themselves. It is how we pick up feelings of conflict and dis-continuity. If someone is saying something with their mouth that they are in conflict with in their heart, their body language will relay that information to us and our mirror neurons will pick up the disconnect. It is that feeling that something does not ring true or is just a bit off.

If we are presenting ill-health and darkened logosmoi, we are setting the tone for the people around us. We are leading them into the valley of the shadow of distraction and separation.

It is believed that the use of language is somehow related to this notion of mirror neurons. Language carries mirroring information and that language is a part of the mirroring process. Emotions are clearly perceived in the mirroring process. Someone walks into the room who is depressed and you can feel the gloom affecting you.

We are not talking about magic. We are talking about the freedom of personal choice. We chose what we will project, but we can also just simply reflect what is all around us. We have control over the things we create in us and project out into the world around us, or we can relinquish control and mirror the world. People can affect the tenor of their own lives. There is a giving and taking in our lives and mirroring neurons are a part of the equation.

Perhaps the greatest wrong we commit on a daily basis is not recognizing that we have the freedom to create – today - the things we choose. We are bound only by what we choose to bind us. We can also choose what we mirror. This day, this moment do not have to mirror every other day or moment, or even the people around us. We can slow down enough to retrain our neural communications and develop sound and healthy habits and routines.

The process of purification at the outset of monastic therapy (purification, enlightenment, and union) is about purifying the inner man (the human nature) by destroying negative logosmoi and creating positive logosmoi. Spiritual practices help us to remove negative strands from the weaving of our personality and replace them with positive strands. Prayer, fasting, vigils, charity, scriptures, hymns, creeds, prostrations are all tools that work on the purification of the heart of man.

Rumi let us know that daily, Solomon would build a space at dawn made of mystical conversation, intention, and tender compassion: a place within which he could work with his own logosmoi. Rumi called it “The Far Mosque”. Solomon created a holy place around him where he could weave heaven and earth together into the fabric of his own personality. He built a prayer-space within which he could meet God through his spiritual practice and then enter into the stillness of the presence of the Most High. He kept within the scope of this ideal by always returning to praise, adoration, wonder, and awe before the Creative Father. He built in positive logosmoi; positive routines.

Solomon is one of the holy ones (in what will become a long tradition from Merkabah mysticism through the Hassidic movement) that sought to conjoin heaven and earth within himself. The “Far Mosque” – this prayer-space that King Solomon created daily -was Solomon’s place to flee to; his place to hide and be still.

It is said that all of his wisdom was given to him in this “Far Mosque”. His constructive prayer gave him a place within which to give and receive. He gave to the All-Wise his adoration and praise. He received back the wisdom of the ages. Because he made a place to give, he was given to, in return.

Among the wealth of wisdom he received, Rumi teaches that Solomon was taught the mystic use of all of the plants of the earth during this time. He was shown which plants healed which diseases. Solomon emptied himself to God in this space and God filled him back up. 

He mirrored the wisdom of the Wise Father.

Click HERE for Cairn-Space