Category Archives: reflections

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another journey

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This is the Church at Black Mesa.  On the satellite maps it’s labelled the cemetery at Black Mesa.  The first time I saw it was in a black and white framed work of art hanging in a little gallery in Los Alamos.  The stark white crosses in the sweep of grayscale struck something deep in me.  We left Los Alamos and wandered the roads towards Taos in our typical fashion of “shun-piking.”  Back in the early days of turnpike fees, wanderers would take the back roads to avoid paying tolls.  Frank and I took this up as our weekend adventures, following blue highways and dirt trails for no reason other than to do so.  Somewhere outside Los Alamos, we turned left into the landscape and the mesa loomed dark and threatening ahead of us.   On that day, it was threatening in many ways as a thunderstorm gather around it; apparently mesas are not the safest places when storms hit.  This time, it was a day with a brilliant blue sky backdrop to the mountains beyond.  Black Mesa however continued to live up to its name, dark and forbidding.

I got a bit closer to the church this time and it was easier to set up the shots because I wasn’t busy dodging lightning streaks.  Whatever the reason, this is a treasured pilgrimage.  I’ve learned since that there is a road leading to the cemetery.  Another time.  For now this picture inspires me with the enormous presence of the mesa and the soft punctuation of the crosses that mark the graves.

I’m on another journey this week.  Tomorrow, my colleagues and I present a workshop at the Center for Mindfulness, Health and Science on holding the integrity and fidelity of adaptations.  In the aftermath of chaplaincy training, it is a good time to explore that topic.

See you the other side!

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a topography of mud settling

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We were talking, in sangha, about the things that surface unbidden during meditation.  We explored whether the (hopefully) increasing ability to settle the mud of the mind was giving us glimpses of what lay just below awareness.  Or perhaps, I suggested, the mud simply settled in new configurations, forming a different topography.  That, of course, implies that the pesky self is nothing more than mud – stirring up, obscuring our clarity, and generally making a mess of things.

The picture to the left is from Bandeliers National Monument in New Mexico.  It, along with a photo shoot of the church at Black Mesa, has become one of my favourite places to be.  We discovered the Bandeliers in August 2010 when I had some unexpected free time to wander while my chaplaincy colleagues were frantically learning how to sew their rakusu.  Last summer, the area was ravaged by fire and floods leaving almost 50% of the park closed to the public.

This is a region composed of volcanic tuff – the mud-like material left from a volcanic eruption.  I visited an exhibition about the way gas pockets formed leaving underground caves that became shelters for pre-historic dwellers.  Mud settles and refuge emerges.

In the Bandeliers, the dwellings were carved out of the volcanic tuff or built using bricks made of the mud and mortared together with a mud mixture.  (The tuff stuff’s tough; it was embedded in the tracks of my hiking boots and didn’t look like it would budge without some serious sandblasting!)  Natural openings dotted the canyon walls too and the texture and formations along the cliffs seemed to transform into familiar figures which leaped out at me.

It’s an interesting process of seeing and creating.  The mud settles differently every time.   And a new awareness emerges.