January New England Style

Deep Patterns of Connection

I amble into the kitchen for my flavored coffee, with the aroma drawing me in, on a frosty winter day. I clean the glass on the fireplace door, move the still hot ashes from the night before around a bit, and add a fresh, splintery log that looks like it’s ready to feed the fire. It ignites quickly. As I throw out some cracked corn for all the winter critters, the police gang of ravens loudly chase a huge hawk from the neighborhood. Bird feeder filled, fire blazing, could be the remnants of many a winter day gone by.

These acts are what Thomas Moore calls ‘archetypal experiences’ that have deep ancestral roots running through our human lineage. Humans have been cleaning the hearth, lighting the fires, experiencing the deep warmth of companionship, creating art, and gathering together around food for thousands of years. These are things that draw us, that move us into certain emotions and actions, patterns that seem familiar as though buried deep in our DNA. We all experience love, loss, acceptance, rejection, joy, guilt, fear, awe, confusion, and grief, where an emotion takes us over and we act a certain way. It’s a deep connection that runs through all of us like a river. We are all far more alike in the deepest part of our soul, than we are different.

Art and images, especially the Doing of art personally, take us to that deeper level where the connections lie, and we gain insights into ourselves and others. New finds put cave art and small carvings as far back as 40,000 years ago. This physical reality is just lying on the surface, a superficial wave that carries us along, and humans have always sought something deeper. Art pauses us, allows us to slip beneath the surface, and discover or re-member the roots of our identity. Rituals that involve all our senses, art making that immerses us in a timeless space, music that carries our bodies to dancing, huge forests, mountains and ocean beaches that put us in a state of awe, are all deeply moving experiences that hit us collectively at our roots. We are touching a universal consciousness, the something else that we are made of, an alternative view of life. This is where the Magic lives.