spirituality

Light

January 5, 2023 By Allison

Balance, beauty, Viriditas, movement

In different seasons of my life, these words have been my aspirational guide posts. At the end of each year a word emerges, announcing a sort of theme for the coming year. I never feel that I choose the word. It inevitably comes to me in a flash and frames my thinking for months to come. For a year or more, the word accompanies and instructs me.

This year my word is light. I can’t guess where it will take me, but I do know where the journey begins. I’m moving into 2023 by tending to my inner light. I have long been aware of the brightness each of us possesses. As a little girl, I would have called it the Holy Spirit, and as a student of reiki, the great bright light. Some call it the soul. Mark Nepo references “the song from within ignited, again and again, that keeps the world going.” Bringing awareness to our inner light brings insight. Yet, I often fail to heed the clear wisdom I already possess. So, I begin the year by examining the hues of my own splendor.

Of course, this expansive and mutable force is not meant to be contained. Our inner selves inevitably move outward, unfolding beyond comprehension as our light connects us to others. In fact, I’ve come to understand that rays of my inner light emerge in this blog. As I compose my 100th post on Creative Sanctuary, it’s fun to take stock of 5 years of writing. The pieces I consider to be my best don’t always receive the most hits, but they still ring true to me. After the fire in Notre Dame de Paris, I wrote about the divine feminine. A few years ago, I wrote about yin energy as I moved into a hectic holiday season. And more recently, I published a piece on burnout versus exhaustion. The gentle play between the inner and outer takes form, and the self shimmers.

Inspiration

The Book of Awakenings, by Mark Nepo

What lasts from generation to generation?

April 20, 2019 By Allison

This week’s flames at Notre-Dame de Paris sunk us into collective grief and then unified us in hope, as we learned that much of the structure and most of the art had been saved. Many Gothic cathedrals have been lost to flames, but in their grace we forget their fragility.

Notre-Dame has stood on Paris’ Île de la Cité for the better part of 1,000 years. Having almost lost her, it is both sobering and gratifying to consider the cultural artifacts that last from generation to generation. So little survives: works of literature (many of them fragments), examples of religious sculpture, a little music, sacred buildings in varying states of disrepair. We hold on to these traces of western cultures, but to what end? Might it be better for us to loosen our grip on these tangible bits of our heritage?

Like many other French cathedrals, Notre-Dame de Paris honors the Virgin Mary. The most venerated feminine figure in the Christian tradition, she symbolizes a compassionate feminine power. Divine figures of other traditions represent this same quality—Guanyin and Tara in Buddhism and the goddess Kali in Hinduism, to name but a few. The sacred spaces we erect in their honor frame and focus the universal energy that we attribute to the divine, feminine figures. Sacred spaces help us to access these figures and the invisible power we’ve given to them.

Their energy is eternal though intangible. Do we even need to honor Mary, Kali, Guanyin, and other feminine figures with special spaces? Of course we do. But let us embrace the constantly changing nature of scared spaces. Cathedrals will crumble or burn. The generative emptiness they leave will make way for new or altered sacred structures.

And let’s remember that although places like Notre-Dame de Paris can change the course of our spiritual lives, the protective power of the Virgin Mary is by no means contained within a building. The knowledge that moves from generation to generation is indiscernible to the eye and revealed in the soul. Having grown up Catholic, I have always felt connected to Mary, but not because of a church. The rose is my most personal, profound reminder of Mary. Her flower is recalled in cathedrals’ rose windows, but for me the rose is entwined with family, with a Catholic upbringing, and with womanhood. I see roses everywhere, and Mary’s flower is always sure to unlock the healing, compassionate energy she embodies.

Inspirations

Another magnificent cathedral: Notre-Dame de Chartres

Clearing Space and evening walks

Rewriting a Symphony in Stone, by Summer Brennan

Recent Reads

March 16, 2019 By Allison

These days, I’m living my best book life. I have short, precarious stacks of books all over the house: travel guides, novels, poetry, cookbooks. I love my books, but I am hard on them. I make copious notations, I stash them in my bag when I’m on the go, and if I sense someone needs my book more than I do, I give it away.

Our winter wasn’t as cold and snowy as some, but it was grey and damp. I spent those months dabbling, skipping from book to book, and rereading a few favorites. If I begin reading a book and I’m not hooked after a few chapters, I set it aside. I spent ten years as a student of literature, and I always read what I was instructed to read. Now I’m more reckless. Sometimes I purchase a book simply because it has a pretty cover. I read more in English. Unfinished books linger. It’s glorious to flit between subjects and genres and to touch so many different books in one sitting.

For this post, I gathered a selection of some recent and favorite reads that might lead you to your next book. Dainin Katagiri’s The Light That Shines Through Infinity has been a steady, insightful spiritual companion that I have already gifted to a friend and that I will reread multiple times. Michelin’s guide to Brittany has had me dreaming about France’s rugged coasts, and Alexandre Maral’s Versailles: côté ville, côté jardin has furthered my research on the Royal City. My cookbook collection is unmanageable, but Emeril Lagasse’s review of Bottom of the Pot made Naz Deravian’s new book on Persian cuisine irresistible.

A few months ago, I embarked on a poetry project with a friend. Each month, we read one poem by Irish poet Eavan Boland. We stay with that poem for a whole month, and then we each compose our own poem that is inspired by and seems to grow from the month’s poem. Writing and sharing poetry terrifies me, but our Eavan Boland project has helped me to go deeper with poetry and to feel brave enough to write my own poems.

If English is my first and most comfortable language, French is my chosen and beloved language. My French winter reads were delightful. I’ve been enjoying random selections of François Cheng’s De l’âme (About the Soul). He unfailingly brings me beauty as he bridges philosophies of the East and the West. In Le camélia de ma mère (My Mother’s Camellia), Alain Baraton, the head gardener at the Château de Versailles, sings the beauty of his mother’s favorite flower. And after teaching L’Elégance du hérisson (The Elegance of the Hedgehog), last spring, I am treating myself to a third or fourth reading of Muriel Barbery’s novel on the beauty of friendship.

Inspirations

Discovering Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca

Thoughts on beauty and grief

Nana Ding: Lessons of Tea

October 2, 2018 By Allison

…le mouvement de la vie est pris dans un réseau de constants échanges et d’entrecroisements
…the movement of life exists in a network of continual exchanges and intertwinements
François Cheng, Cinq méditations sur la beauté

Nana Ding’s tea shop is on a quaint street in Strasbourg, France. Quiet and elegant, the rue des Charpentiers winds behind the Gothic cathedral. When I was visiting in March, her toasty shop was a welcome escape from Strasbourg’s damp and chilly weather. When you step into Nana Ding Thés d’Exception, you enter a tea haven. Delicate Chinese tea objects occupy every shelf and corner—tiny Yixing tea pots, painted gaiwans, fragile tea bowls, all selected by Nana Ding during her trips to China. Behind the counter reside rare and special teas that she sources from China. Puerhs, oolongs, rock teas, green teas, red teas, white teas… how to choose?!

Madame Ding and I spent two lovely mornings together, infusing, sipping, and observing. Our encounter felt hushed and sacred. The teas she shared with me were ethereal. A green tea from Sichuan Province that we steeped six times and a red tea from Yunnan Province harvested from uncultivated tea trees that are more than 2,000 years old. I found both teas to be otherworldly and subtle.

I often sip exceptional teas with tea-loving friends. Over tea, we learn from one another. Nana Ding taught me that the tea itself speaks to us. Each infusion seemed to unlock and share a lesson—lessons that I continue to unravel, many months after our tea mornings.

Since those blustery March moments, I have taken to honoring the tea leaf. I sip more slowly, I infuse more respectfully, and I attune myself to the messages that each tiny cup of tea offers me.

…the movement of life exists in a network of continual exchanges and intertwinements

Nana Ding Thés d’Exception
13 rue des Charpentiers
67000 Strasbourg