Prayer in the Wild

Wild Shrine

“One of the main casualties of the recent Western ‘development’

has not just been the ecology in the outer world,

but the ecological imagination within.”

– Peter Bishop

Let me share with you a pet peeve of mine. I truly dislike the term “domestic shrine.” This is a common descriptor for shrines that are in the personal places of our lives, the ones outside the temple.  The term “domestic” carries a story within that does not apply to spiritual seeking and contact with the Divine. Think about it, what is the life experience of domesticated any thing? Penned, prodded, tamed, castrated, saddled, leashed –do you see where this story leads?

Soul Yoga is quite contrary to that experience. Soul Yoga through Shrine-tending is a path to the Wild where you commune with the godhead in a carnal and intimate way.  I will also say that I intentionally do not use the term “nature” here either. The word “nature” is scientific and carries the story of Western mind trying to control whatever is not human. It is about measuring, staring at, and dissecting the things around us. Science wants information so it can control.

The Wild follows its own rhythms separate from to human conveneince. The Wild froths, swirls, gallops, licks, sucks, prances, flames, pours, crushes, births, spawns, devours, sings, and echoes.  Generative shrines, those sourced from Old Mind (a.k.a. the Collective Unconscious, the Akashic Records, the Ancestors  etc), with transformative energy  (a.k.a. prana, chi, life force) follow the ways of the Wild not the domesticated.  That which does not change dies. The gods are on the move, always. Psyche, the bringer of the gods’ news for us, is always a spiraling.

I am on the hunt for new language. I need words that carry the story of the Wild to name the experience of shrines birthed from Old Mind. Any Ideas?

Ancestor Shrine

If I were to build an Ancestor Shrine to you, I would start with only one photograph. You would have to be very young. Long before you had the blue Ford pick-up truck that belched sand pellets from its tires as you drove hard on the dirt roads around our house. I asked Aunt Tildy what your favorite food was: carrot cake.

If I were to build an Ancestor Shrine to forgive you, I would buy you a piece of carrot cake from Helen Bernhard’s Bakery on 16th Street. They are still so busy that customers stand in line with tapered tickets in hand. I’d have to wait in line. I’d have to wait for you again.

I would leave the cake offering, still held in its white wax paper, on the shrine. I would leave the cake offering in front of your young portrait that I keep covered with an opalescent scarf so I can choose when to see you. Then I guess I would have to open you up.

If I were to build an Ancestor Shrine, I would open you up. I would close my eyes, breathe deep, feel the red dirt beneath me, spread my arms wide open, and pray for us both: “May you be happy, joyous, and free”. “May I be happy joyous, and free.”

If I did this long enough, I could learn to bake carrot cake.

The Cluttered Shrine: A Time to say Thank You

A cluttered shrine can be a signal that it is time to say “Thank you” and let go. Shrines do have lifetimes. Totems ripen into spiritual guides, and then they will begin to fade. It may be years (Kwan Yin and I go back over 10 years) or it may be moments and days. I once had a pair of Ruby Slippers (“She-Who-Launches”) on a shrine for only two weeks and then it was time to take them off.  I realized I was firmly on my new path and quite organically the icon slippers “evaporated”. I replaced them with a stone stamped with Buddha’s Footprints. For me, being barefoot, like the Buddha, meant I was an indigenous pilgrim deeply implaced on my soul journey.

Set aside “Weed Time” with your crowded shrine. Shrine Tending can be like gardening: every now and then you need to sit in it and touch each object-icon. Is it over grown and leggy? Is its season over? Did something over shadow it and did it get lost down there? If so, who needs to go the sapling or the vine?

Hold each object-icon. Sit quietly and let your hands intimately explore. What do you sense? You may hear a voice, see colors emanating, feel temperature, or have a “gut”reaction. There are 3 possible responses: leave this piece on your shrine; create a new shrine focused on the intent of this icon; or say thank you and let go.

Saying Thank You. Object-icons that have lived in a shrine have given sacred service. They have been dependable spirit bridges transporting prayers and ushering in prana. Here are 5 ritual thank yous. Let your intuition guide you.

1.  Sage icon and give thanks – place it in a special box or shelf ready for another time

2. Leave icon outside overnight (even for a few nights) – let it breathe darkness, let the cool moonlight touch it, immerse it in the dreamtime

3. Give the icon away – gift it to someone in need; be sure to write or tell them your story of healing

4. Write a reflection in your journal – remember the lessons of Spirit received, even make it a love letter of sorts

5. Release the icon into the Wild – leave the icon in a public place and trust that the one meant to find it next will happen upon it – be an Angel of Synchronicity

By weeding,  we re-vitalize our shrine, clarify our intention, and re-commit to our soul’s journey.

5 Candle Tips

1. An easy way to remove wax from a candleholder is to place it in the freezer for an hour. This allows the wax to shrink and easily pop out with the handle of a spoon.

2. Keep wicks trimmed to 1/4 inch. This prevents the wick from bending over and looping back into the wax base. Nail scissors are a handy size to use.

3. Altar candles are an investment well worth the cost if you can prevent tunneling. Burn candles 1 hour per diameter inch so that the wax melts evenly. For example, if the candle is three inches in diameter you need to burn it for a full three hours.  After extinguishing the flame, bend any exterior wax walls towards the center. Use a gentle downward motion to re-shape the wax and assure continued even melting in the next burn session.

4. To remove wax from wood or floors soften wax with a hairdryer on low to medium heat. It can then be easily wiped away with a cloth. If any greasy mark remains just wipe area with a mild vinegar solution.

5. To remove wax from an altar cloth place brown paper over the stain. Gently run a warm iron over the paper. As the wax melts it will absorb into the paper.

Fire Offering

Fire is one of the oldest shrine offerings. Indeed Fire is life force itself. Archeologists tell us the first hearths appeared 400,000 years ago.  Ever since fire has lengthened the days, cooked food, provided heat, and forged tools. It is no wonder all spiritual cultures associate light and fire with the gods – flaming heart of Jesus, the plenum, chi, prana, Chanukah candles.

Fire lives in Ceremony – out of time, containing both the universal and the personal, defying the rules of usual life, and transmitting an unexplained gift of transformation. Fire is timeless, flame today writhes just as it did in caves, on pyres, in catacombs, and in sweat lodges. Fire spans the realms of being–it rides high in the breathless part of the sky as it glows in a regiment of tea lights at a gravestone. It may be one of our most accessible archetypes.

Maybe Fire was the first icon –the first thing to hold a sacred story.  There is a place in between where our imaginal capacity touches the soul-of-a-thing. Our language still holds the aboriginal story of Fire-as-being. Fire licks, roars, eats, and jumps. There is a drama played out in the burning embers – first a sun, maybe the crocodile’s back, sometimes a kiln. But like a true ritual-performance it is never the same twice. Perhaps Fire was our first storyteller opening us up to what it means to be human.

A candle on an altar is a bending back through time, a re-membering of a gift given 400,000 years ago.

Tending Transformation

Soul — “our deep story”

Yoga — “a deep practice”

Our spiritual transformations require tending. Soul-Yoga is a practice that kneads our new story of transformation into our new way of being in the world. Shrines are a way to chart ourselves in relation to our ever emerging story of our soul journey.

I have sought transformative initiations (psychotherapy, recovery, soul-retrieval, spirit quest, sweat lodges). I have had transformation “thrust upon me” (death of a child, divorce, getting fired, brain injury). Much to my surprise none of these life altering events stayed alive in me by sheer willpower or promise.

I was only able to keep the gifts each brought when I tended them on a daily basis. Then I began living my new story, the re-membered pieces of soul returned to me through wounds and ecstatic experience. I made shrines.

Now I have made shrines for decades. I have made intentional shrines and I have had shrines “thrust upon me.” After my first daughter Lusi died I could not bring myself to move anything in her room. For greater than a  year I left her feeding-tube syringe laying on the nursery table; the home nurses’ logbook lay open to the July date she died as if another entry could be made; her pink comb lay casually astride her binkie. I admit I even left the rumpled bedding on her wheelchair (nicknamed her “buggy”) as if I had just picked Lusi up.

I now understand this was a shrine. It was a shrine that marked an invisible  passage way to the Otherside: here is where one crosses-over through death to Beyond. I  did not know it at the time. All I knew was that I was unable to move even one object and that I needed to cry in that place. It was a place of ferocious miracle that needed deep honor–as was my grief. That place and I fed each other.

Intuitively, I walked the path of pilgrim in my own home and I followed a 40.000yr organic pattern of human experience: I made and tended a shrine.

I see shrines as maps. They map the unseeable places in between.  Sometimes shrines are intentional, hand-crafted spiritual geographies. Those shrines lead us forward towards deep integration of a new transformation like the still inner place found on silent retreat.

And sometimes shrines choose us to stand in the inconceivable and ask us make meaning. These shrines are made by synchronicity and the haphazard. In this sacred place the feeding-tube merges into the accidental icon to feed all who dare draw near.