material life

Basket as Metaphor

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Eastertide, a period of baskets filled with colored eggs, chocolate bunnies, and jellybeans. These baskets are vibrant. But some baskets are cracked, dull, or unfinished.

Baskets are the Indian woman’s poems:

the shaping of them her sculpture. 

They wove into them the story of their life and love.

 Navajo School of Indian Basketry, Los Angeles

I pondered how a basket could represent a life. I considered the parts which  include a base, staves (side sticks), and the weaving. A basket’s base may be fragile or sturdy, brilliant or dull. Like the baskets, we start with a base given to us at birth. What was your base?

The sides are formed around spokes or staves. The more spokes the stronger it will be. The staves can represent the influences on our lives: parents and relatives, education, religion or spiritual beliefs, hobbies, jobs, mates, environment.  Our shapes are diverse. Some are strong. Some fragile. Our staves indicate the direction we’ve grown and changed.

Unlike the basket, life doesn’t come with directions, standard materials, and the same teacher for all. As a result our staves get twisted, bent, broken, squeezed, or pushed out of alignment. The pattern of our basket is irregular. Each person’s basket portrays his experiences. What kind of basket does your life resemble?

 

 My spiritual journey has led to a belief that divinity exists in all of us. This poem is the result.

 

 

Divinity

My basket appears to grow as I sleep.

Magical threads of charcoal, magenta, and chartreuse

weave their way to the top, or disappear

within its walls as stars hide by day.

Patterns like music dance round

until returning to their beginning.

No hurry. No procrastination.

Notice how it blends within itself.

Creation parading majestically across time.

Translucent, each happening clear and precise,

Divinity shines within us.

It gallops and saunters the path

of our staves. Hush. Hush.

Feel God alive in your frame.

Two Halves of Life

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“…there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong ‘container’ or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold.” (Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, p.xiii)

          I image my life in the form of a basket. This basket exhibits the goals of my life: identity, accomplishments, status, and separateness from others. For many decades I’ve woven my actions and beliefs into it. The base is my birth potential (intelligence, coloring, athletic ability, etc.). The sides, made up of staves, represent the influences in my life (parents and relatives, education, religion or culture, hobbies, jobs, mates, and environment). In and out, around the staves, I wove my choices. Over time these staves have become twisted, bent, broken, squeezed, or pushed out of alignment. The pattern of my basket is irregular.

         That weaving now nears the top. As I gaze at my basket, I realize it is empty. How will I fill it? My stomach clutches. The center has nothing to hold on to. I will no longer have the support of the staves. Will I adventure into this openness or cling to the staves, leaving the center empty until I die? Working on the weaving and repairing the staves would be much easier than free floating in the emptiness. Despair announces its presence in thoughts of death. Where was my life going? I have a home. My career is over; I’m retired. I’m finished?

         Reading Rohr’s book, I realize my life isn’t over. Though frightening, I am releasing my grip on basket sides, one finger at a time and venturing into open space, where the second half of my life begins. There I’ll find true spirituality.

 

 

A Divided Life

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Do you live a divided life?

Balancing job, home, family, and hobbies is one form of division.

The division I’m referring to is between material and spiritual. There was no room for the spiritual in my life. Of course, when I thought of spiritual, I thought religion. Today I recognize a difference.

My materialistic life equaled excavating a gravel pit. My focus was on protecting myself from the stones and equipment. My life seemed empty and meaningless.

Once I began my journey through therapy and Twelve Step groups, I discovered a Spirit, which was always present. I was just incapable of contacting It. Years later my focus changed. I could look up and SEE. At dawn the western pit wall shimmered in clear icy light. At evening, the eastern rocks held a rosy hue, a gift of the setting sun.

My eyes followed the spiral pit path past solid and loose stone displaying shades of gray, yellow and brown. A small buttery bloom nestled on the road’s edge. I climbed until I stood over it, then plucked it and observed it closely. Hundreds maybe thousands of thin golden petals spread in layers from the center. Each petal had a central vein reaching out to a v-shaped brown-edged notch. The blossom’s middle held a myriad of stamen like lemon lollypops. The flower was awesome. My view of a dandelion would never be the same. I now refer to a dandelion infested lawn as “happy grass”.

A gravel pit wasn’t where I really discovered the exquisiteness of a dandelion. My point is the lesson. When spirituality touches every aspect of daily, personal, and business life, our existence is deeply enriched.