Of Sinners and Saints..........

There is an empty white cup right under my nose at my desk right now. I rapidly gulped two cups of coffee already and am buzzed with organic brown sugar and caffeine.

While looking in the mirror this morning I looked at the crystal around my neck. I wear this quartz crystal as a reminder to listen to my inner wisdom. I used to have a silver cross that I bought when I was baptized at nineteen while a student at Oxford University, Worcester college.

At that time I defined Faith as Christian. In time I found that the religion itself mattered less then the spiritual path it revealed. I found myself at a cross roads of the soul. Am I Augustinian and be in mind and of spirit, or am I Dionysian and be of the heart and body. I am both 'sinner' and 'saint'. I could not be one without the other. I am an artist, I am body, I am mind, I am love, but mostly I am creative.

This passage from  Herman Hesse's novel, "Narcissus and Goldman", defines my journey better then I could. In it, Hesse ponders the idea that those who are in flesh, who do not fear life and who create out of this world of flux and hardship something of beauty, might be closer to God then those that fear life and remain in mind.:

"I have long since understood it. Our thinking is a constant process of converting things to abstractions, a looking away from the sensory, an attempt to construct a purely spiritual world. Whereas you take the least constant, the most mortal things to your heart, and in their very mortality show the meaning of the world. You don't look away from the world; you give yourself to it, and by your sacrifice to it raise it to the highest , a parable of eternity. We thinkers try to come closer to God by pulling the mask of the world away from His face. You come closer to Him by loving His creation and re-creating it. Both are human endeavors, and necessarily imperfect, but art is more innocent".

I do not believe crystals have intrinsic power, neither do I think wearing a cross brings you closer to God. When I am at the gym and I see my self pumping iron. I see several things, my muscles, my heart, my mind and my 'self'. They must be in balance. As this crystal catches the light it reminds me to keep all these elements in their right perspective in my life. It reminds me to listen to my 'inner voice', and to be fearless as I traverse that path. That path was revealed to me many years ago in Sussex on a late August afternoon in the corn fields of Southern England by the sea. But, that is another story.

To be without fear is key to remaining open to that path. To have faith in your inner voice and to have the strength to live your life from that place, like working out, takes time and discipline. After all it is your truth. Sometimes you must go where angels fear to tread and that place might well lie in your heart.

I recall a line from the film "Out Of Africa" that Robert Redfords character said to Meryl Streep's character Karen Blixen. He said,

" I do not want to wake up at the end my life and realize I lived someone else's".

I am both sinner and saint. I embrace both, I am whole. If I choose to fear what others think, I forfeit that freedom. It is within my power to choose. That power is not in my crystal, nor in my silver cross. It is within me. I am no ones, nor life's 'victim' as a result. And, I do not need to be saved.

peace