Mandala
In my garden there is a sacred place. It lies under red purple grasses and deep orange zinnias. If you push away the leaves you will find it. You may have even passed it by. There, in that spot overlooking the creek, is my mandala. I made it this summer. I needed it, a place to hold yet more grief and pain. It held memories of old desire and the pain of empty spaces. It seemed to hold a lifetime of friendship and other long faded dreams. Sometimes when we loose people there has to be a space beyond ourselves to absorb the overflow of emotion. I built if of plastic hearts and an old birds nest and flowers from the garden. I added thistle, cause that just seemed right. I stirred in all my feelings. I was certainly unable to hold so much. I let the petals and plastic hearts absorb the overflow. In the morning when I’d wake I would walk outside, coffee in hand, and wander to my garden. I would stop at this spot and cry. I let the emotion flow from me to this small nest in the earth.
“Please hold this for me I can’t anymore. Please hold this for me, I have too much.”
Soon enough I would pass by and leave my thoughts. Thoughts I could not process or did not have room for in my heart. Things I had to step away from in the day.
“Please hold this feeling until I return.”
But the thing is, I have not returned to pick it up. I am happy that it’s there. It is the perfect spot to hold or bury that which I can not carry.
It’s fall now and the flowers are fading and I wonder how my mandala will handle the coming winter. Will it be there in the spring or will it have been absorbed back into earth as if to say, “ Not any more. You can move forward now. I will hold your yesterdays.”
I wonder, as the election approaches in this coming day, if we all might need a mandala of our own. Some place to put the inevitable chaos and emotion of whatever the outcome. As I read the news and watch our behavior I don’t see an indivisible nation. One with liberty or justice for all. I wonder if it has become too much to carry. Do we need an overflow, a place to hold our pain as we move forward and fix our nation, fix ourselves? Do we need a sin eater to begin again?
For me, I plan on foraging more flowers to redress the mandala as I focus my thoughts on what I can be for the people and community that I love. I will leave my fear there, and listen to my heart. I will draw upon my own created ancestral memory for the love to offer all. I will stand strong and free knowing there is a place that I can leave that which I do not understand. A place where nothing is forgotten or diminished, but held tenderly in earth under the long red purple grasses and deep orange zinnias of my garden by the creek.