Faith, the moon, mandalas and more ...

The other night over a thin crust veggie pizza at Rafferty's in Nisswa, Minnesota my partner began sharing facts about loons. I was fascinated by all she shared. Earlier that day she had immersed herself in a book on loons she had purchased at the local bookstore. And the day before, she found a new love ... mandalas. What emerged from that dinner conversation was a project, a game, a way to connect, a way to make sense of the incredible world around us - both complex and simple - and way to find meaning of our emotions, our life and our universe. What emerged was a joint new adVenture ... a commitment by both of us to write in a new blog: Kaleidoscope Spirits: Two spirits living life like a kaleidoscope. Light, pebbles, reflection. Making sense of arbitrary life patterns.


My partner has also begun  her own project: A mandala a day. Her excitement for mandalas has triggered a curiosity in me to learn more as well. I stumbled across an incredible artist Sally Horne and her website Moonstone Mandala. I found the image above from her website. She shares more about it on her website and says her artwork was inspired by a David Whyte poem: 

Faith


I want to write about faith
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,


faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last and impossible
slither of light before the final darkness.


But I have no faith myself
I refuse it the smallest entry.


Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

This past week I witnessed the most beautiful full moon, and the very next morning the most breathtaking sunrise. I often wonder why I find myself so intrigued by so many things ... a natural curiosity to want to know more. I look up into the skies ... mind boggling to know that a star I am looking at may no longer even exist, because of the distance it has traveled for light and its image to reach my eyes. I look down on the ground and look at a seed ... mind boggling to know that a tiny seed will grow into a majestic tree or a flower ... and then I think about our bodies, our human bodies ... amazing isn't it to know that our bodies know how to heal themselves, how to fight off disease and foreign substances, how scabs form when we cut ourselves.  And tonight i listened to the podcast of Asteroids, Stars and the Love of God on Speaking of Faith. I ponder faith, my relationship to God, the intersection, if any, between science and religion/faith. 

and then I look around me ... 3 beautiful big black dogs and a tuxedo kitty, fast asleep. Ahnung snoring, Mister twitching in his sleep (he must be chasing bunnies!), Missy curled up as close to me as possible, and Henry burrowed in a blanket on the leather chair. Life really is simple. We often try to complicate matters ... maybe even think too much. My partner is using the mandala making process as a way to put the chaos of her mind and/or her life into order, symmetry. For me, I am reminded to how to simply be by our dogs ... and calm and peace come to me in my early mornings with meditation and writing. 

Faith, the moon, mandalas, dogs, cats, trees, God ..... there's a thread that binds us all together, in this life time and in whatever comes after this.