This picture was taken along the Blue Ridge Parkway at Craggy Gardens. Ascending, the elevation gradually opened into a fairyland of frost. We quickly pulled off to join a dozen adults with huge grinning faces to explore the wonderland that would only last another hour before temperatures returned the scene to normal.
There are times we don't want to be trapped inside our physical bodies__when we long to move and feel and exist in a more free state where physical laws no longer hold us back. Times when our bodies cannot give us what our souls are longing for no matter what one believes about religion or this natural world.
Art, imagination, spirit
can take us there. And whether you experience this freedom along religious paths or through relating to the natural world, the gift is in moving beyond oneself, transcending physical awareness to allow the heart and mind and soul to let you play in that free space for a while.
The artist, Trent Harmon, featured in this video clip and songwriter, Sia, interpret the sentiment for us not only playing with the idea of physical freedom, but freedom from the boundaries of time.
I get lost in the sound and expression of this performance, and relate to the longing in the lyrics for the joy in simply - being. I recall words my mother wrote a few decades ago:
"It is rare a performer can transcend reality to such a degree the audience is 'transported' to a different place and given even the briefest glimpse of what creativity really is. If lucky we fans have experienced such moments only rarely__on occasion sustained for a single stage performance, or the length of a film, but more often for just a scene, or a few brilliant moments of time."
Meister Eckhart's words can describe what occurs within both the performer and a receptive observer:
"When the Soul wants to experience something, she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it."
Mentally stepping into an image or experience that is in front of us is one method for writing poetry. Many years ago I composed this poem while passing time in the library of UNC-G. It is titled, "The Upper Lobby."
Simulated marble walls entice me upward
along the brass banister introducing
black speckled tile
I will observe for a while,
rent one square tile behind the smoke stand,
inch beneath a table
Natural light bends across the open restroom's angles,
tossing its discarded scraps
into my square
I trade that spot for another__the ceiling's edge by a contoured molding
to hang by my feet and dangle
Stray cigarette smoke circles to its target,
climbing the ends of my hair,
grasping onward
~ ~ ~
We should acknowledge and revel in more than what is observable with eyes and ears alone. We have these words from mythology scholar, Joseph Campbell:
". . . find what is the source of your own life, and what is the relationship of your body, your physical form, to this energy that animates it. The body without the energy isn't alive, is it? So you distinguish in your own life that which is of the body and that which is of energy and consciousness."
Why leave anything out? Reach for all that is possible in any experience. Christian scripture puts it this way:
"So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding; I will sing with my spirit, but also sing with my understanding" 1 Cor 14:15
