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The Art of Letting Go…

Cycles, like the rise and fall of ocean tides, come and go.  Obvious as this is, we’re prone to resent the fact, in favorable circumstances, to the point of illusion.  Things and situations that reach to us through intention and struggle often become “objects” of devotion; we give them the possessive pronoun, while in moments of clarity, we might see them as barriers to growth––limitations on creative evolution.   DSC07565

In the archer’s praxis, we spend effortful time with the draw––to “get it right.”  Focused so, we may forget that the draw’s resolution is found only in the release.  More often than not, there’s residual fear as the new archer “stands” on the precipice of “letting go.”  The archer might “freeze,” which is entirely reasonable considering the tactile sensation of the bow’s resistance––a wonderful potency in held potential.  The fear has an inverted twin which triggers haste, and the arrow launches from a careless hand.

The whirlwind of tension that rises with the draw, is tethered at anchor-point––eye of the storm.  For the attentive archer, a dynamic stillness can be here found.  Its a fortunate encounter, an actionless instant––bud to bloom––when an arrow flies with kinetic vibrancy, with breath, with life; its profound to notice.  On the Archer’s Green “there” becomes “here” again, when intention’s arrow meets destiny’s Mark.

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Arrows and Rain

Rain can spoil an archer’s day, while conspiring with a writer’s muse.  Such was tournament day.  Decisions taken, plans made, grounds prepared, practice and practice on the Archer’s Green, as our intentions, like raised flags, came into sharp relief.  But rhythms more comprehensive than these prevail––sometimes dramatically––and so the geometry of one possibility, with all the effort to bring it forth, dissolves.  Disappointed, we’re humbly dismissed from the stage, hopefully with a measure of gratitude.

In dreamtime last night, I was with an archery student beside a stream pool.  I began to remove egg-blue stones from my quiver, preparing to place them into the water.  I paused while we considered how she could take them home to incubate, but it seemed untimely.  So into the pool the blue egg-stones returned.

“Not only is there an alchemy of sacrifice,                                                                           there’s also an alchemy of gratitude.”

LettingGo

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Dragon Time

astronomicum_caesareum_(1540).f18Our vigil nearly done; the fire embers drowning in ash. We watched the full moon go new, then suddenly wax again––a month coiled into 5 hours. We fed our fire on pine knots and burned our way through the dragon, arriving safely on another shore––the moon shared a few secrets along the way. I was worried about her, cut off from the light of her beloved sun, but in her red-pearl fullness, she was blushing with another light––one entirely her own. Somewhere near the heart of the dragon, I found that prayer is light.

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Watery Heart of Winter

December in Montana gave me a chance to renew a brotherhood and walk some remarkable country.  The snowfall was significant and taught me new ways of walking. Returning to Georgia in January, the rivers run high and the land saturated from frequent rains; its a different sort of cold here.

Water, encountered in so many forms, has dominated my Winter, seeping even into imagination––into dreamtime.

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Silk Ice

In stillness reflecting light, in motion reflecting the creatures of light, water seems warmly engaged in a grand affair.  With whom I cannot say, but an intimate devotion carries it through every conceivable state of being, or perhaps better said, that for this intimacy water conceives every state of being. Tomorrow I’ll bring this up with our Yellow-Bellied Alchemist, if he can spare the time, busy as he is, tapping the giant athanors we’ve been calling trees.

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Winter Sweet

Wild Persimmons bring our solar year to a sweet conclusion.  A young fruitful tree on the point of a small island at Hunnicutt Lake, drew me to paddle over.

MyChristmasTreeUnder a grey December sky and before a crowd of slumbering trees, the fruit was glowing like amber-lit ornaments. Under the spell of a sentiment, I declared it my holiday tree.

From ancient American Lore comes a story of a destitute Orphan, who’d lost his wealth to the schemes of Rabbit. Wandering alone, the youth finds a Persimmon tree full of berries. He climbs to nourish himself, then makes a paste from the fruit to smear over his body.  As the paste dries, it contracts his skin, giving the boy the appearance of an old man. Disguised in this way, the Orphan travels safely into unknown country.

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The Praxis of Intension or Danny’s Dilemma

In a manner of speaking, and from a certain angle, body leads in archery.  Discipline of form carries the student through the usual awkwardness to a wonderful sense of rhythm and ease.  The archer’s body gradually awakens, pivots from reaction to response––wasting tensions dissolve into the joy of holding a purposeful draw. Engaged with its own sensuous knowledge, the body savors a new kind of tension––the range simply an extension of the archer, as the web is of a centered spider. 

Here, at point-anchor, where vertical and horizontal, spacial and temporal, where stillness and movement meet, the patient moment can ripen into the deeper praxis of surrender.  To what?  What does such an archer be-hold and see?  “Look before you leap,” so the old trope goes.  On re-cognizing the Mark, its established in the devoted eye––a visual Anchorpoint to compliment the body’s harmonic twin.  Twinship is only resolved in unity’s mirror.

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William Blake’s Archer

A beloved teacher of mine once concluded the story of an old archer who’d been invited to share his art:  Students were assembled alongside a long range giving the old man the sublime support of silent regard.  When the archer’s deliberate arrow––his only one––flew and struck ‘Bullseye!’ my teacher was not the only witness who suddenly broke into tears.  “He’d shot himself!”    

In the Platonic mysteries, its said that “the fruit is the cause of the tree.”  What then, dear one, is the archer’s intension?

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Rivertime

A new breach in an old long-forsaken dam uncoils a distortion foisted upon the Oconee river.  Another chord reemerges from a river-time rhythm––intelligible, but entirely too subtle for the loud and crude to notice.  The river clears her throat, preparing new disclosures from an ancient song. 

Flow still burdened, sure enough––distortions upriver and down, skinned basin slopes losing ground with every torrent from a thunderous sky––but river-time prevails over our impatience; the river knows.  Every dam is a pretense to be overcome; every exploitative abuse of the river’s earthy frame heals beneath living bonds of an unstoppable green, but this––bittersweet for us––is the creative work of a time mercifully beyond our destructive own.  Listen deeply, you’ll hear the river’s oddly familiar melody, perhaps for the very first time; observe diligently, you’ll catch glimmers of Oconee’s own flowing glory.

RiverFreeBlessingBelow the breach on the river’s muddy edge, a storm-gray feather quivers gently in an imperceptible wind.  Heron, that old river guardian, strolled here before I arrived.  Considering his mythic lineage, I suspect he’s conspiring new beginnings for this beloved river. 

  

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BerryMore

The sweetness of this past lunar cycle is unmistakeable, evinced by the crowd of birds that return each morning to pick dark ripe berries of the old Mulberry tree; her’s an abundant generosity extended new-moon to new––a marathon runner in the world of fruitful Georgia trees.

There’s a strong alchemy operating through the brief, Lightening-Bug-Nights of May and June, which enchant bitter ‘n red to sweet ‘n black––its a taste of gold (but for taste) in the early moons of summer.  O, to know the spell!  But this particular grade of knowledge is privileged to an understood rectitude in the patience of rhythm and in the ripening of need.  Accolades to you, fine Mulberry tree!  When your fruiting is finally done, you’ll return to the brooding posture of your own deep mystery.

MulberryPower

Speaking of sweet abundance in peculiar & prickly places, an eruption of applause greets the Blackberry Moon now ascending our stage; she’s got a tough act to follow.     

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Winter’s Elixir

SugarMapleAn amphibic chorus has erupted from our slumbering wetland borders––Spring Peepers at night, and Chorus Frogs at day; their cold waterbeds a-tremble like mercury beneath the generous light of this high lunar cycle.  Daffodils verge on early golden detonations, while our Yellow-bellied Sapsucker flashes between big trees, busy keeping springheads open for a share winter’s Elixir.

Barren as our forests may seem to the casual eye, there remains an uncanny and powerful sense of the unseen.

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Interstellar Conversation

By day we scan our landscapes and cityscapes stepping along a horizontal axis somewhere between hope and fear.  Step outside on a cold and clear winter night, and you can’t help but go vertical.  Some of our elders spoke of these night lights as campfires, where beings of the stellar domain gather to tell their stories. If you if ever get close enough to listen in, that’s a story I’d love to hear.