Happy Full Moon Everyone!
Today the full Moon falls across the Pisces/Virgo axis, also engaging Jupiter in Virgo and Neptune in Pisces. An overall very positive, faithful, inspired, romantic, visionary, imaginative, and religious feeling full Moon at this otherwise very “down to earth” time of year.
The Jupiter/Neptune opposition often enhances everything from colors and sounds, to feelings and the five senses. With Jupiter in Virgo we have something like the image of a very careful and meticulous foreman, priest or priestess, or overseer, and with Neptune and the Moon in Pisces we have something like the poet, tortured artist, wandering mystic, or raving lunatic. Put the two together, perhaps somewhat at odds with each other, and you have any of the following themes:
* Organizational chaos
* Romantic busyness
* Artistic or aesthetic organization or management
* Inspired or manic attention to details
* Small sensations becoming the gateway to heavenly realms
* Reasons to doubt give way to overwhelming reasons to believe and back and forth
* Artistic reverie or fugue states
* Transmissions
* Dream killers versus inspired believers
* Madness, obsession, worry, fussiness, irritation, psychosomatic manifestations
The idea of religious or spiritual innovation or creativity is something we take for granted. We tend to cling to the past like the various religious technologies of old are without their own genesis stories. We forget that Buddhism and Christianity and Taoism and so many other religions were inspired by eras of history, prophetic teachers and creative waves of inspiration. Why should religious insight be terminal? Why should spiritual truth be written and read on stone tablets? Even if the stone tablets look pretty sexy…isn’t it also true that religious revelation is happening all around us, all the time, gradually washing smooth the carvings of old…smoothing down the rocks of ages?
This weekend maybe we’re getting a glimpse of not only the restoration of faith, order, or hope in some area of our lives, but maybe we’re also seeing something like a brand new vision of what the divine looks and feels like. Maybe the divine itself is changing just as much as we love to think it always remains the same.
What is prayer? What if it’s nothing more than the way things organize, as if by the extension of unseen hands and feet, until in some moment we become aware of the mover moving, and we recall the words, “it is good.” What if prayer is nothing more than this process, made conscious like following the train of a song that is only ever one note in front of us.
Even when by moving with the music we find ourselves in death, disease, or suffering…when we see the movement clearly leading the way, and we reflect honestly…remembering that everything dies in its own way too…it becomes natural to say, “it is good.”
The old meaning of the word good meant something like, “whole and suitable.”
The idea of “better,” doesn’t have to be part of the word “good,” just like the word “virtuous” once meant something as simple as the quality of force or vigor inherent in a thing.
Prayer: remind us of the power of the words and names gifted to us, available at anytime by steady heart and steady mind, saying again and again: “it is good.”
Today the full Moon falls across the Pisces/Virgo axis, also engaging Jupiter in Virgo and Neptune in Pisces. An overall very positive, faithful, inspired, romantic, visionary, imaginative, and religious feeling full Moon at this otherwise very “down to earth” time of year.
The Jupiter/Neptune opposition often enhances everything from colors and sounds, to feelings and the five senses. With Jupiter in Virgo we have something like the image of a very careful and meticulous foreman, priest or priestess, or overseer, and with Neptune and the Moon in Pisces we have something like the poet, tortured artist, wandering mystic, or raving lunatic. Put the two together, perhaps somewhat at odds with each other, and you have any of the following themes:
* Organizational chaos
* Romantic busyness
* Artistic or aesthetic organization or management
* Inspired or manic attention to details
* Small sensations becoming the gateway to heavenly realms
* Reasons to doubt give way to overwhelming reasons to believe and back and forth
* Artistic reverie or fugue states
* Transmissions
* Dream killers versus inspired believers
* Madness, obsession, worry, fussiness, irritation, psychosomatic manifestations
The idea of religious or spiritual innovation or creativity is something we take for granted. We tend to cling to the past like the various religious technologies of old are without their own genesis stories. We forget that Buddhism and Christianity and Taoism and so many other religions were inspired by eras of history, prophetic teachers and creative waves of inspiration. Why should religious insight be terminal? Why should spiritual truth be written and read on stone tablets? Even if the stone tablets look pretty sexy…isn’t it also true that religious revelation is happening all around us, all the time, gradually washing smooth the carvings of old…smoothing down the rocks of ages?
This weekend maybe we’re getting a glimpse of not only the restoration of faith, order, or hope in some area of our lives, but maybe we’re also seeing something like a brand new vision of what the divine looks and feels like. Maybe the divine itself is changing just as much as we love to think it always remains the same.
What is prayer? What if it’s nothing more than the way things organize, as if by the extension of unseen hands and feet, until in some moment we become aware of the mover moving, and we recall the words, “it is good.” What if prayer is nothing more than this process, made conscious like following the train of a song that is only ever one note in front of us.
Even when by moving with the music we find ourselves in death, disease, or suffering…when we see the movement clearly leading the way, and we reflect honestly…remembering that everything dies in its own way too…it becomes natural to say, “it is good.”
The old meaning of the word good meant something like, “whole and suitable.”
The idea of “better,” doesn’t have to be part of the word “good,” just like the word “virtuous” once meant something as simple as the quality of force or vigor inherent in a thing.
Prayer: remind us of the power of the words and names gifted to us, available at anytime by steady heart and steady mind, saying again and again: “it is good.”
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