July/August 2001
Inebriate of Air-am I-
And Debauchee of Dew-
Reeling-through endless summer days-
From inns of Molten Blue-
Emily Dickinson
An Aitutaki Morning
by Larry Richards, CLF member, Aitutaki, Cook Islands
It all starts somewhere around four AM. The local roosters don't know a
sunrise from a pile of corn. Most of the chickens on the island are feral.
The roosters are mostly dark brown and gold with an occasional splash of
white. I'm not sure how they decide whose turn it is, but some time in the
very early hours, one of them will start crowing. Soon another starts and
then another until it seems they have all joined in. If the crowing starts
at the other end of the island (I am at the southern end), it's like the
Doppler effect of an oncoming train. It seems to get louder and louder as
each rooster joins in turn. If it starts at my end of the island, it drifts
off as it moves away. Sometimes it's like a wave bouncing off a wall, back
and forth from one end of the island to the other. It stops just as suddenly
as it begins. If you are lucky, the roosters won't start again until real
dawn-around six AM.
The roosters are joined by the Myna birds, also called the government birds
by the local people since they were introduced by the New Zealand government
several years ago. No one is sure why. They are a raucous bird but sometimes
you hear them mimicking a bird that I'm sure they have never heard before.
You can pick out the sounds of a robin or a cardinal or maybe a thrush.
Sadly, there are no real songbirds on the island. The Myna birds are
sometimes joined by the local white tern-a very pretty bird but one whose
call sounds like a wood rasp on a piece of timber. These all settle after
awhile and then, if I'm lucky, I will hear the high-pitched chirps of the
Nun birds (lorikeets) in the banana grove behind my house. These are small
birds (about three-to-four inches), dark blue with a small, white bib under
their orange beak-thus the name.
My next-door neighbor is a man in his 80s. Since the morning is the coolest
part of the day, he is usually up early doing chores of some kind. On some
mornings he will be grating coconuts. He sits on a small stool that has a
flat piece of metal attached to it that sticks out parallel to the ground.
The end is rounded and has notches cut in it giving it a serrated edge. He
splits coconuts in half with his bush knife (machete to you) and then rubs
the inside of the coconut along the edge of the metal. A growing mound of
grated coconut forms at his feet as he works. This is then placed in some
fabric and squeezed to release the coconut milk that is used for all kinds
of things.
Around 6:30 to 7:00 AM, what sounds like a strange car horn echoes in the
distance. As it gets closer you realize that it is the bread man in his
small van driving with one hand and blowing a conch shell held in the other.
He is announcing that the bread is ready-come and get it. They are small
loaves, the size of giant hot-dog buns, attached in a series of about six.
The mamas will come out and buy as many as they need for their families for
the day.
The island is beginning to come alive now. An occasional motorbike or small
truck will pass on the road heading for the farmers' market at the wharf. By
7:00 AM, most of the stores are open. Then you hear the children. Many walk
to school and their voices and laughter fill the air. Laughter is something
you hear a lot here. The children are all in uniform of one kind or another.
The primary school girls in my village all wear green dresses and the boys
wear dark blue shorts and white shirts. At other primary schools, the girls
wear blue or yellow or brown. The boys pretty much all wear the same thing.
The high-school (called Araura College) girls all wear bright, red skirts
and the boys wear gray shorts and white shirts. The primary girls all wear
their hair in two plaits with ribbons. The high-school girls wear their hair
in one plait with a red ribbon. Almost all the girls have long hair. With
all those colors, the children look like bunches of flowers blowing down the
road.
By now I have been up and had breakfast, usually a banana or two, some
papaya, and maybe a mango or some pineapple and a piece of toast and cheese.
It's time to hop on my motorbike and head for school. The day on Aitutaki
has begun.
I first came to the Cook Islands (15 islands spread over 850,000 square
miles of ocean, smack in the middle of the South Pacific), as a tourist in
1994 and fell in love with the place-especially Aitutaki. I came back the
same year and when I got off the plane it felt like coming home, so I
decided I had to give the place a serious look. I made contact with the
local high school and discovered that the school was desperate for things I
took for granted like chalk, pencils, tape, etc. I was working at Eastern
Washington University in Spokane, Washington, USA, at the time and went to
the then-president and asked if he had any contacts I could use for
school-supply donations. He put me in touch with the person who handled the
International Field Studies program at EWU who said, "How about setting up a
sister high school program?" So we set one up with East Valley High School
in Spokane in 1995 and have had several teacher and student exchanges. EVHS
has also sent us care packages as well as some computers.
When I came back to Aitutaki in 1995, I approached the principal of Araura
and made him an offer. I asked if it would be permitted for me to come and
teach computer classes on a voluntary basis and I would donate a couple of
computers. You cannot even do volunteer work here without permission. He
said he didn't think there would be a problem, especially since, at the
time, his brother was the Minister of Education for the country. So, on my
55th birthday, I quit work, sold everything I owned, paid off all my debts,
packed what little I had left in a 200-cubic-foot box and moved here. When I
arrived I found that some individuals on the island had gone to New Zealand
and Australia (there are over 70,000 Cook Islanders living in those
countries) and raised funds from ex-Araura College students and built me my
own air-conditioned computer room. I was dumbfounded. This is a financially
poor country and what they did represented a great sacrifice. I say
financially poor as the people here are very rich in many other ways.
I have since teamed up with a local couple (she is local, he is a retired
banker from New Zealand) and we have opened a restaurant. As a result, I am
now considered an official investor in the country and have an annual work
permit and resident permit. I am also still teaching computer classes. You
may wonder what the menu is like at our restaurant. My business partner' s
name is Tupuna and thus the name of the restaurant-Café Tupuna. People call
her Puna or Nan (don't ask; I don't know). She is very eclectic in what she
cooks and here is a sample of our menu. Breakfast: A bowl of fresh local
fruits in season, pancakes with fruit, French toast, poached eggs with
tomatoes on toast (popular in New Zealand and Australia), bacon or sausage
and eggs, omelet with various fillings, fresh-baked scones with homemade
guava or mango jam, fresh-brewed coffee -(all the other restaurants on the
island serve instant-including the so-called, four-star
resort)cappuccino -(yes, we have a small machine), tea and fruit juice.
Lunch may include any of the following: Aitutaki sandwich (a house special):
a double-decker sandwich made with thick slices of grilled bread with a
ground-beef patty or fish fillet, fried bananas, a little mango chutney,
lettuce and tomato. The vegetarian version adds cucumbers and green pepper.
Shish kabobs with pasta salad; beef or chicken chow mein; beef, chicken or
fish curry on rice; deep-dish chicken
pie-(another house specialty); lasagna; pizza (I told you she was eclectic);
and maybe something as simple as a grilled cheese, onion, and tomato
sandwich. Dinner may include any of the lunch items except the sandwiches
along with: pan-fried fillet of fresh-caught yellowfin tuna, wahoo, mahi
mahi, barracuda or marlin served with green salad, steamed vegetables and
rice pilaf. Chunks of any of those fish sautéed in coconut cream with
chilies, ginger, and garlic served over rice with vegetables and salad. On
special occasions we will do a suckling pig in an underground oven called an
umu with taro, sweet potatoes, and cooking bananas similar to plantains.
Steak, if we can get it. Roast chicken. And she does a variety of pasta
dishes. For dessert we might have bananas fried in butter and rum served
with a scoop of ice cream or some other "low-calorie" dish.
My job is to be the official schmoozer. I get to sit and have fascinating
conversations with people from all over the world. If you want to sample
Puna's cooking you need to spend a week or two dining with us to see what
other goodies she comes up with.
People have asked me, do I miss anything in the States after moving here. I
tell them one of the things I miss the most is the UU church I was involved
with in Spokane, Wa. There is no UU presence here on Aitutaki so my one
salvation is the Church of the Larger Fellowship, and especially the CLF
on-line list. I don't have direct access to the Internet so having the list
via e-mail is a real lifesaver. I check it out at least twice a day and
especially on Sundays when "Joys and Concerns" are posted. It has become my
church here on the island and I feel very close to the people I have come to
know by their postings. The monthly issue of the Quest is also a welcome
sight in my mailbox. There are regular discussions on the list of articles
from it that I also find valuable and insightful. So, even here in the
remote South Pacific I have a church family-albeit an electronic one. It has
kept me
spiritually grounded.
Kia Orana (may you live) everyone.
Quest July/August 2001 Contents
Proceed As the Way Opens
by Patrick T. O'Neill, senior
minister, First Unitarian Church of Wilmington, Delaware
From the time that I got my first driver's license at age 17-I'm 53 now-one
of my favorite things to do, on a nice day with time on my hands, is to go
for a drive. And one of my favorite ways to do this is just to pick a road
that I'm not familiar with, and see where it leads for an hour or so. This
is always more fun, I have found, when I do not consult a map ahead of time.
My wife, ever a more practical person than I, has always been somewhat
mystified by this practice of mine. She could never understand why I wouldn'
t at least look at a map first to see where the road would lead. To me, this
would be taking away all the surprise and much of the purpose of the
adventure.
I tell her what I have learned over years of taking these rides: one road
usually leads on to another; that dead-ends are usually marked; and that the
experience of following some new road only to find that eventually it
connects with some old familiar road or crosses a major highway somewhere
down the line is a fun discovery.
My wife is not convinced of these truths, for some reason. To this day,
before she will get in a car with me on a sunny afternoon, I have to promise
her that I'm not going to kidnap her for one of my drives. When our children
were growing up and before they got old enough to have their own licenses, I
could usually convince one of them to come along for the company, but these
days I'm usually a solo pilot on these drives of mine.
The truth is I do some of my best thinking on these drives without any
destination. I keep a notepad next to me on the seat to collect any
brilliant thoughts I might have, and many a sermon has been born-or
finished, or forever abandoned-while I've traced the blue highways of
Delaware or Pennsylvania or
New Jersey.
Knowing this about me now, you'll understand better my utter enjoyment of a
recent best-seller called River-Horse, in which the Native American writer
William Least Heat Moon recounts his adventures with a friend as they
attempted to travel across America in a unique fashion, in a small boat.
Starting out on the Atlantic in New York harbor, and bound for the Pacific
at the mouth of the Columbia River, they struggled to cover some five
thousand watery miles on the country's rivers, lakes, canals-often following
in the wakes of famous explorers like Henry Hudson and Lewis and Clark.
En route, the voyagers confront massive floods, submerged rocks, dangerous
weather, and their own doubts about whether they can complete the trip.
Because of the particulars of the American landscape and the vagaries of
sometimes-dangerous geography, their trip could only occur within very
prescribed time limits. If you are too late in the year or too early, the
flood levels or snowmelts of the various rivers will not allow such an
itinerary.
Moon planned and charted his trip for years before undertaking it, and
completing it took a combination of great good luck, skill, courage, and
calculated risk. Like life itself, you might say.
Over the helm of the boat, Moon posted an old Quaker proverb, Proceed as the
Way Opens. Over the course of 5,000 miles on rivers large and small, time
and again, what Moon called this "precept of last resort" proved to be
wisdom. Of course, the hitch in such advice is that, much of the time, we
have to proceed first to learn whether the way is indeed open. Proceed as
the Way Opens.
One of my favorite writers, a teacher whom I've long admired, is Parker
Palmer. A number of years ago, when he was a successful but very unhappy
professor at Berkeley, Palmer found himself in a vocational crisis. A Quaker
himself, Palmer went on a sabbatical retreat at Pendle Hill, the Quaker
community and study center in
Pennsylvania.
He recounts how, whenever he would admit to anyone there at the center, his
personal sense of panic about where his life was going next they would tell
him not to worry, that the "the way will open" if he would just be patient
with himself and trust what his life was telling him.
Try as he might, however, after several weeks of Quaker silence, prayer, and
listening for his calling, "the way" was not opening for him. It was an
elder Quaker woman who finally gave him the perspective he
needed when she said, "I'm a birthright Friend, and in 60-plus years of
living, the Way has never opened in front of me." After a pause she added
with a grin, "But a lot of way has closed behind me, and that's had the same
guiding effect."
Proceed as the Way Opens. In his book, Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer
writes that "some journeys are direct, and some journeys are circuitous;
some are heroic and some are fearful and muddled. But every journey,
honestly undertaken, stands a chance of taking us where we belong.. We can
learn as much about our nature by running into our limits as by experiencing
our potential." We learn as much from our failures as from our victories. We
learn as much from our "stuck" places and occasional unexpected "dead ends"
as from those times when the flow of life is free and easy. Jonathan Kozol
refers to our "ordinary resurrections" -what he calls those commonplace and
frequently unnoticed ways that people rise above their loneliness and fear.
Parker Palmer has a concept of vocation in life that I like very much. He
says that too often, when young people in particular are searching for what
their lifework is to be, they ask the wrong questions. They ask, "What
should I be doing with my life?" And really, says Parker Palmer, what they
should be asking themselves is: "What is the life that wants to live in
me?"
If we could learn to listen to our lives, to ask ourselves what it is that
is waiting to be born into our lives, then our true vocations in life would
emerge. Those vocations will re-emerge with time. We all of us have multiple
vocations-callings-in life that keep changing as we change with the years.
If we keep listening to our lives, if we keep examining our lives, keep
paying attention to what is in our hearts and minds, the "Way" keeps opening
before us.
Proceed as the Way Opens.
Quest July/August 2001 Contents
A Warm thank you
to everyone who sent photos and postcards (including many creative and funny
ones) to display in our booth at GA--they were wonderful!!!
Quest July/August 2001 Contents
From your Intern Minister
by Kathy Reis, intern minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship
One of the most gratifying aspects of my time as the Church of the
Larger Fellowship's intern minister has been the opportunity to correspond
with our 60-plus imprisoned
members.
It's been an invitation, a challenge, and a gift, all rolled into one. I've
been invited to hear these members' life stories and hopes for the future; I
've been challenged to re-think my assumptions about incarcerated people;
and I've been given the great gift of sharing with them the Unitarian
Universalist message of worth and dignity.
They've taught me about ministry, and I know that, in one form or another,
chaplaincy to prisoners will be a part of my future ministry.
These are some of the thoughts CLF's incarcerated members have shared with
me:
- "Ministering to prisoners makes a difference, makes a unique and
significant contribution to the lives of prisoners, and to their spiritual
needs. People who care about prisoners share their conviction that even the
most harshly judged members of society have value and worth, and can be
salvaged and turned around; can be redeemed."
- "One of my dreams is to be a part of a large family or church, to feel
connected, to finally do something good and positive in the world."
- "Really, a pen pal is what most of us want, especially those of us who
have lost touch with our families."
- "Inmates need just as much fellowship and instruction for growth as anyone
else. How else are we to be spiritually fed in here? ...I'm encouraged to
know that some of you are working to make improvements, both through CLF and
on the larger scale. Thank you, from all of us! There are times when people
come together, doors open, and there is a surge of progress. I believe that
time is at hand..."
I invite you to become a part of the growing UU presence behind prison walls
by becoming a pen pal with one of our imprisoned members. Write or email CLF
for details of
the pen pal program and a list of
guidelines for correspondents.
You can make a difference.
Quest July/August 2001 Contents
I Quilt
by Christine Robinson, senior minister, First Unitarian Church of
Albuquerque, New Mexico
I quilt. It's interesting and creative to plan patterns and select colors,
and I enjoy that. Mostly, though, I love the work of careful cutting,
precise seaming, and the mindless, repetitive, hand sewing of the lines of
stitches that connect the quilt top to the quilt back and make the patterns
of quilting.
It is exactly the sort of work we humans were supposed to be freed from by
the industrial revolution, and there's an irony here. We use machines to
free us from the "drudgery" of repetitive work, but that work-in moderation
or when self-directed and creative-gave us something we don't have any more
unless we make it: psychic space to work on our lives. The repetitive,
outwardly dull work of ironing, darning, mending, (and woodworking,
gardening, and tinkering) gave our spirits a space they don't have any
more-the space to smooth the wrinkles and mend the worn spots and sand the
rough edges of our
inner selves.
I'm not knocking the industrial revolution. I'm glad to be quilting
beautiful placemats rather than darning black socks. I'm even gladder to be
spending most of my working time in ministry rather than housework. But I
think that the reduction in repetitive, mindless tasks, both at home and at
work, has left us feeling more harried and scattered than ever. I don't like
feeling harried and scattered.
So, I quilt. It's a kind of meditation. It's easier for me to quiet my mind
when my hands are moving. And it's easier for me to justify my ruminations
on my life when I'm also "producing" something.
I quilt.
I think. I feel. I remember.
There have been changes, losses,
disappointments in my life.
I need to stop and notice, so I quilt.
Careful stitches. Strong knots. Back and forth.
I quilt. I think. I feel. I remember.
And there are so many blessings:
Life itself,
Good friends, satisfying work, loving family.
Strong knots. Careful stitches. Back and forth.
I quilt.
Quest July/August 2001 Contents
Differentiation
by Sally White, a recent graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry in
Berkeley, Calif. She was a biologist before studying for the Unitarian
Universalist ministry.
In the rich soil of the forest floor-or of a garden, or lawn, or field-live
billions of organisms, most too small to be seen by the unaided human eye.
Among these are the unremarkable cells of an organism known as the cellular
slime mold.
Each amoeba-like cell moves around by itself, feeding on bacteria, growing,
dividing, self-sufficient. Unless and until the food supply runs out.
Then hungry slime mold cells begin to hear the beat of an entirely
different drummer.
When there is no ready food for them to eat, these individual cells begin to
produce a new chemical, one that signals and attracts other slime-mold
amoebae, just like themselves. Millions and billions of cells begin to
gather, moving toward one another, congregating, responding to the chemical
distress signal, and propagating it themselves.
And then comes the most amazing thing. Clumps of cells begin to form, and
they organize themselves into minute, shimmering, slug-like aggregates.
These aggregates begin to move, migrating in search of a new supply of food.
If they encounter a rich, new food supply, the aggregate disbands, and the
cells resume their independent existence, eating, growing, dividing. But if
they do not find food, then a further transformation occurs, and this one is
not reversible. Migration stops, and the cells of the slug, functioning now
not as independent amoebae but as interdependent parts of a greater whole,
begin to take on new and different identities. The slug begins a slow and
beautiful sort of headstand, and different groups of cells take on different
functions. Those at the very tip anchor the group to the soil, or to the
surface of a leaf. Those in the middle produce cellulose, and form a hollow
stalk, no longer capable of eating or reproducing. And those cells that were
at the end of the slug become tiny, colored spores, gathered into a glisteni
ng and fragrant ball on the top of the stalk, dormant until a drop of rain
should knock them down again to the forest floor, where they can germinate
and resume the self-sufficient life of an independent amoeba.
In times of plenty, slime mold cells are free-living, independent,
self-sufficient. But faced with deprivation they transform, from
independence to interdependence, from self-sufficiency to specialization.
Only a few will become spores. Only a few of these will germinate. And from
these few, lifted and supported on the bodies of their neighbors, will come
a new generation, the living legacy of each, and of all.
Quest July/August 2001 Contents
 From Your Minister
by Rev. Jane Ranney Rzepka, minister, CLF
I played first-string basketball in high school. To be fair, it was a very
small high school. And it was "Girls' Rules," that is to say, six on a team,
and I was the sixth person chosen.
I am short, too, a definite drawback in basketball, and I wasn't a very good
guard-probably more a pest than a deterrent to scoring. The coach made me a
"rover," the position (at our school anyway) that's more or less relegated
to running, without evident reason, back and forth from one end of the court
to the other. I was given this position because, not only was I short and
below average at guarding the opponent, I wasn't all that good at shooting
baskets either, my third main drawback.
I shot a lot of "air balls," a term I don't actually recall from my
basketball career, but a phenomenon I can easily remember: after executing
the maximum number of dribbles allowed (three, in Girls' Rules), I would
position myself-well, just about anywhere-and hurl the basketball in the
general direction of the hoop. No swish came next, nor was there a pinging
sound off the rim, nor a thud off the backboard. There was complete silence
as the ball came in contact with nothing but air. An air ball.
I mention all this as explanation for why in the world I would give a hoot
about an article titled, "Air Ball: Spontaneous Large-Group Precision
Chanting," by Cherrill P. Heaton. I began reading the article thinking of
basketball; I ended by thinking of you.
These days, in the presence of a shot that doesn't make any contact, fans
chant, "Air ball, air ball." The article points out that, "As any director
of a church choir or secular chorus knows, getting a mere 20 or 30 trained
singers to sing together and in tune is not always easy. Yet without
direction or instruction, without a conductor or a pitch pipe, thousands of
strangers massed in indoor stadiums are able-if stimulated by an air ball-to
chant, 'Air ball, air ball,' in complete tonal and rhythmic unison.
"I did not check the rhythm of the air-ball chants with a metronome," the
author continues, "but my own rhythmic sense suggested that collegiate fans
chant 'air ball' at about the same speed all over the nation. The chanters
at all stadiums spent about a second chanting 'air' and about a second
chanting 'ball'."
"Remarkable as this is, it pales in the face of this further phenomenon:
college air-ball chants nationwide all start on the musical note F above
middle C plus or minus one piano key. The two notes of 'air ball' are almost
always F-D, or extremely close to it."
By now, instead of imagining strangers in gymnasiums, I am, as I said,
imagining you. How is it that so many members of the Church of the Larger
Fellowship, people located all over the world, in large part strangers to
one another, can sing the song of Unitarian Universalism together, in the
same rhythm and key? How is it that we can come together with one tune?
What do we have to say? Surely more astounding than the air-ball chant is
our religious voice.
For one thing, we know who we are and who's in charge of our theology: we
are. Historically, that's no small declaration, and even today it's rare. As
individuals, to be able to intuit our own god, to feel at ease with no god
at all, to freely locate a satisfying spiritual center that grounds us in
our own place and time, all in accordance with a religion that encourages
and challenges us, is
central to our experience.
For another, we understand ourselves to be of this world, a world that
matters above all, a world that we can and must influence for the good. We
are a religion that goes beyond conventional spirituality and is invested in
what we see
before us.
Finally, we enjoy a non-linear history and identity that includes the
thinking of ancients like Origen and Arius of Alexandria, and Akhenaton of
Egypt. We feel a theological kinship with people from centuries ago: Jan Hus
in 14th century Prague; in the 16th century, with Michael Servetus in Spain
and Francis David in Transylvania; and in the 18th century with Englishmen
Joseph Priestley and John Murray, as well as with movers and shakers, female
and male, whose names were never recorded. Generations of Universalists and
Unitarians have tended our religion in more recent times, kept it
up-to-date, and left a religion for us to voice.
Which brings me back to air ball.
As the author says, "...Without a conductor or a pitch pipe, thousands of
strangers ...are able ...to chant ...in complete tonal and rhythmic
unison." ...That's us!
Jane Rzepka
Minister
Quest July/August 2001 Contents
REsources for Living
by Laura Cavicchio, co-religious educator, Church of the Larger Fellowship
In my other life as an art teacher I heard this cliché a little too often:
"I can't even draw a straight line!" And my usual response was something
like, "So, don't draw a straight line-just draw!" Today, my response would
most certainly be, "Okay, so draw a circle."
If you can make a circle, you can create a mandala. The Sanskrit word
mandala, means circle. The circle is a basic unit of the universe, of living
organisms, and of the human psyche. It is one of the first motifs to be
drawn by young children, and one of the oldest forms to be found in human
carvings and to shape human dwellings. The magic circle of the mandala is so
universal to our common creative and religious impulse that no single
people or tradition can claim it. That is its magic.
When I first began to use the mandala in my Unitarian Universalist spiritual
practice, I discovered something. I looked at one familiar design of the
flaming chalice held within a double circle, the symbol that most of us
accept as one representation of our collective liberal religious identity,
and I saw what I had not seen before: a mandala. Our circle and chalice
symbol has many variations. We often place the chalice off to the side,
leaving the center open. Whether you adopt the symbol for personal use or
not, it can be a powerful, nonverbal statement that combines three ancient
and eternal motifs-the cup, the flame, and the circle. The mandala form is
available to us, and it is authentic to us, as Unitarian Universalists. I
think of it as a universal template for truth.
In ancient traditions, including those still practiced today, mandala
creation is a sacred, ritual act, using particular methods, materials, and
motifs. The traditional mandala is generally symmetrical and represents, in
a hierarchical order, a kind of cosmological map, with the most sacred and
highest value in the center. The Navajo create sand mandalas for rites of
healing, while in Tibet, Buddhist monks use colored threads or rice powder
to make mandalas for initiation practices. In Hindu and Taoist traditions,
the purpose of the mandala is to facilitate a very disciplined and sacred
journey to higher consciousness. For some examples of traditional mandalas,
I recommend the book Mandala, by Jose and Miriam
Arguelles.
In mandala-making, we can uncover and make visible the great and small
truths of the soul that cannot be expressed in words, or in any other way.
As a personal or shared creative activity for anyone old enough to draw,
mandala-making can involve a sacred and ritual dimension, but there is
nothing prescribed about it. It can be fun and playful, and almost always
enlightening. It uses the movement of the eye and hand, but with intention
and imagination, the process is really more about listening. Some believe
the mandala taps into the uncharted, beyond-verbal maps of truth and meaning
within ourselves to show us things we do not know that we know.
This is Laura Cavicchio's last column in Quest. We wish her well as she
leaves us to continue her seminary studies at Andover Newton Theological
School and to pursue a ministerial internship in Lexington, Mass.-it has
been a joy to have Laura with us. We welcome Betsy Williams back to the
September Quest.
Making a Mandala
If you would like to explore mandala-making as a personal or small-group
activity, I recommend my two favorite books on the subject: Creating
Mandalas for Insight, Healing, and Self-Expression by Susanne F. Fincher,
and Mandala by Judith Cornell. Here are some suggestions:
- Gather materials: Quality markers, colored pencils (prismacolor, if possible) or pastels. Water-soluble crayons or paints, with brushes. Good paper in white, black, or colors. Paper plates or other circular templates, compass, ruler.
- Gather the spirit: On the floor or at a table, set materials around you. You may want to light candles or a chalice; get centered with silence, music, or reading; invoke a divine or creative presence; or bless materials, yourself, and companions as the sacred carriers of truth.
- Gather focus or intention: Some ideas-close your eyes, and in silence, focus on a word such as peace, or an intention, "I want a healing image for this time of loss." Write your intention in a journal or on the back of your paper. Then, focus your attention inside yourself and ask what color and image you find there. Ask for a symbol that expresses your intention.
- Gather creativity and the created: Draw your circle. Using as little thought as possible, use your art materials to respond to what you are experiencing. See your mandala as a vessel to 'hold' what you 'see' or 'hear' within yourself. Do not censor what happens. Experiment by using your non-dominant hand. To finish, choose a title suggested by the work and write it below the circle, with your name and the date.
Mandalas are fun to do with children. If you want to try to use guided
meditation while creating them, a good resource is Earthlight: New
Meditations for Children, by Maureen Garth. You can help children to focus
by asking a question for them to answer inside the circle, or by asking them
to draw three wishes, or three thank yous. Or, start with a squiggle: ask
them to close their eyes and draw a squiggle inside the circle; then ask
them to open their eyes and look at what the squiggle suggests. Then ask
them to complete the drawing and tell a story about it. Do this together by
drawing on the same squiggle and telling a shared story. Another way to
begin is to have the children choose a color that represents the way they
are right now, and then, ask them to use that color to draw a shape inside
the circle that represents them. They could also take another color and add
more lines to represent what is going on for them today. Ask them what
feelings and meanings their mandala has to tell.
Quest July/August 2001 Contents
Crab Grass
by Rev. Lynn Ungar, director of religious education at Starr King UU Church
in Hayward, CA
We've all admired it
even as we've cursed
the matted roots, white fingers
pointing toward new frontiers,
the tangled tapestry stubbornly
weaving the world in place.
Imagine living that way.
Imagine knowing from the ground up
that you are tied to the whole,
that you are undefeatable,
that below the surface
undefinable discoveries
are always taking place.
Don't you think there are
things worth holding on to
with a thousand arms,
ten thousand gripping toes?
Aren't the undaunted
particularly blessed?
Before you deride the faithful
consider carefully
where you will put your roots.
"Crab Grass" is excerpted from Lynn Ungar's Blessing the Bread-a UU meditation manual published by Skinner House. Though it is out of print, CLF members may borrow it from the CLF library by calling Giovanna Spadaro at 617-948-6150, by emailing her at gspadaro@uua.org, or by writing your request and mailing it to her in the Quest envelope enclosed in this issue.
Quest July/August 2001 Contents
Last updated June 12, 2005
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