The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
Ferdinand Foch
Resurrection
We've probably all seen those insidious commercials on TV for the University of Phoenix, which offers online degree programs with a number of physical campuses around the country. The spokespersons all proudly proclaim the reason for their present success - "I am a Phoenix." And more power to them - I applaud anyone with the determination and the self-discipline to undertake a degree program alone, without the camaraderie of classroom time, group study sessions and interaction with other students. But I wonder if they realize how much more powerful the story of the Phoenix really is...and whether you have thought about your own Phoenix experiences as I have.
The Phoenix, of course, is a mythical bird, and the myth itself is generally thought to have its origins in ancient Greece. There are, however, analogs to the Greek myth in many cultures - the Persian anka, the Hindu garuda, the Russian firebird, the Chinese fenghuang among others. There are even suggestions that a passage in the Hebrew Scriptures, appropriately in the book of Job, refers to the Phoenix as well.
"And I said, I will perish with my nest, and I will multiply days as the phoenix (chol)" - Job 29:18. In Jewish folklore, chol refers to a supernatural bird, often glossed as, or identified with the Greek Phoenix.
According to the myth, a phoenix is a fire spirit with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends). It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again. But it is the Egyptian interpretation of the myth I find most applicable to our own personal quest for identity, awakening and joy. The Egyptians believed that this 500 year cycle represented the bird's ongoing quest to discover his true self and "knowing that a new way could be found only with the death of his worn-out habits, defenses and beliefs, the Phoenix built a pyre of cinnamon and myrrh, sat in the flames, and burned to death. Then he rose from the ashes as a new being - a fusion of who he had been before and who he had become" (Lesser, 2004, p. 55).
Elizabeth Lesser, in her book "Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow," contends that we each have to go through the "phoenix process." We are each incinerated in the painful fires of life and have the ability to rise again, to be renewed and reborn if we are only willing to throw the old self - the past, the fears, the angers, the failures - onto the fire. "Our lives," she says, "ask us to die and to be reborn every time we confront change." We can, as I mentioned in an earlier blog on brokenness, recreate ourselves as something new and more beautiful out of the shattered pieces that are all that seems to be left after a painful and difficult time in our lives - heartbreak, loss, grief, failure. Those are the ashes from which we are called to rise again. Then we, too, can proudly proclaim, "I am a Phoenix."
Long before I read Ms. Lesser's book, the promise of my ability to bounce back from heartache, defeat, sadness and grief led me to write this poem and to create the artwork you see above.
THE MOMENTS IN BETWEEN
The miracles happen
in the moments in between –
between life and death,
between breathing in
and breathing out,
between beginning and end,
between one light burst,
one photon, and the next…
in that in between space
where there is nothing…
and there is everything -
where all potential,
all possibility exists.
In that waiting space,
in the now of resurrection
all is transformed.
In that moment in between
all illusion falls away.
Death, the great delusion,
dies a final time and
new and sacred truth is born.
I am pierced with my knowing
that all is one, that seeming
opposites make me whole.
In the crucible of awakening,
in the cremation of ego,
I discover what has been
inside me all along –
within my fear…joy,
within my loss…gain,
within my darkness…light,
within my grief…grace.
Rising from the ashes,
the smoke of my resurrection
stirs the trees, becomes a breeze
lifting into the Cosmos.
Then it is that I am your song,
the song of the Universe –
a song of Love, pure Love,
an energy that creates,
a new music that inspires,
a melody in which I’m
a necessary harmonic note.
O Spirit of the spheres,
in this moment in between,
sing your song in me.
©Lianne Schneider July 2012
* Lesser, Elizabeth. (2004). Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow. Villard Books (a division
of Random House), New York, New York.
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