I'm a Phoenix - are you??

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.

Ferdinand Foch

Resurrection

http://www.lianneschneiderart.com/Art/Digital-PaintingPhotoArt/i-wgSkwMx/A

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. 

Kindred spirits - the art and virtue of communion

“The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion.

It is wordless ... beyond speech ... beyond concept.”

Thomas Merton

Seeking the Last Light

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/seeking-the-last-light-lianne-schneider.html

Communion. I’ve always loved this word…not because of its religious connotation but because of its derivation and primary meaning as “the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, esp. when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level.” Wiktionary.com explains the etymology of the word as “from Old French comunion, from Latin commūniō (“communion”), from cum (“with”) + mūnus (“gift”). Used as a noun to mean, “a joining together of minds or spirits.” We’ve probably all used the verb form “to commune” in reference to our being outside trying to stay in touch with nature. So it makes perfect sense that a hero should need such a virtue to complete his/her sacred quest – for what good is the first part of the journey to self-awareness, coming to that deep knowing of self, if we never know how to share that gift of self with another. That is the whole point of the second half of the quest.

Communion, says Sam Keen, is the medicine that cures us of the feeling that we are alone in our struggles or that if people knew us deeply, they would not like us. Loneliness is one of the worst “dis-eases” of contemporary society because we are so caught up with getting, spending, entertaining ourselves that we “inevitably feel alienated when we do not live within a circle of friends, within the arms of the family, within the conversation of a community.” That “communion” is more and more difficult to achieve it seems. As I mentioned yesterday, the internet, social media like Facebook and Twitter, allows us to pretend to intimacy we may not feel. Our instincts tell us that friendships take time but we are so hungry for connection, we may ignore our own caution lights. Families are scattered, fractured and often dysfunctional so not enough of us find our communion there. [For those who do, get down on your knees or raise a cheer of gratitude…you are blessed]. Work and family obligations may keep us from finding or creating communities in which we can have those lasting, bonding, revealing conversations.

Perhaps that’s why we blog. And very likely it is why as artists and writers, we seek out others engaged in the same creative arts and rather than just post and run, we join “groups” and get involved in the “community” aspect of the internet sites to which we belong.

Paul Martin, author of The Teacher’s View blog (http://plmartinwrite.blogspot.com), expresses the deep connection – the communion - between the artist/writer and the viewer/reader this way, “…art requires three things: the artist, the object, and the viewer. It is only through the communion of these three that the art is fully realized.” He goes on to say that “Writers write to be read and anyone who would say otherwise is a liar.” That reminded me of the little Samuel Johnson quote on my Nook reader cover – “A writer only begins a book – a reader finishes it.”  Unread poems, unread stories  are dead poems and dead stories and the paper on which they are written might as well be burned up in a conflagration like Fahrenheit 451. But, in truth, I think exactly the same thing is true of visual arts. Each of us only begins the art work we present – it is incomplete and virtually meaningless unless someone sees it and responds to it in some kind of dialectical communion of minds and hearts. Through my art and writing, I am asking to be known, accepted and liked…and cherished. I’ve shared myself – left myself vulnerable to rejection, attack or condemnation as much as to praise. I’ve offered the only gift that is truly mine to offer – myself – and I’m asking you…the reader or the viewer of my poems or paintings, to welcome me in to a communion of the minds and perhaps hearts too.

Art or writing may be, as I said in an earlier post, a solitary endeavor in the doing. But without communion, the art is meaningless and the sacred quest is too lonely to be borne.

References:

Keen, Sam. (1992, April). Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man. Bantam Books, New York, NY.

Martin, Paul. (2012) The Teacher's View. [Blogpost] http://plmartinwrite.blogspot.com