Symbols
“This
is the proper use of symbols, not to coldly represent ideas, but to call into
being all that lives in us and about us. They help us to bear witness to the
painful mystery of living, and whether a crucifix, a small weeping Buddha, or a
broken shell from a long-forgotten sea, they help us bear the days.”
Mark
Nepo (The Book of Awakening, p.90; Conari Press, 2000)
Do you
collect things from your trips (back when we actually took trips) as souvenirs?
Do you find it impossible to part with items that belonged to someone you
loved, even though they have no intrinsic value? Sometimes the simplest thing
can bring us joy. I have a baking dish that belonged to my
grandmother, then to my mother, and then, after Mother died, to me. I think of Mother
and Mama every time I pull out this small, square casserole dish. That’s what
symbols do—they point us to deeper connections. Mark Nepo describes them this
way: “Symbols are living mirrors of the deepest understandings that have no
words.”
I have
always been a symbol gatherer. Not store-bought t-shirs with logos or coffee
mugs with beach scenes, but a stone, or a shell, or a piece of driftwood picked
up off a beach where my toes were covered with sand. Once, I came out of the
desert with a backpack full of cactus skeletons, and gnarled sticks. Someone in
the airport asked, “Do you always carry your firewood with you?”
Some of
us place particular importance on certain animals. We might wear the symbol as
a necklace, or a bracelet. My friend, Isie, for instance, wears a silver bear on
a chain around her neck. When we feel a little lost, we may put on our “good
luck charm” to give us courage.
I have my father’s official
handpress used to mark his maps with his name and license number. I can’t use
it, of course, but I also can’t bear to part with it. It connects me to him,
and sometimes I need that. As Nepo says, “This isn’t illusion or escapism…” Instead,
it calls into the present moment the memory of my dad and I feel the same love
and respect I felt for him.
In every culture, human
beings mark their lives with symbols—whether a taking a simple photograph, drawing
an antelope on the wall of a cave, leaving a stone at the wailing wall, touching
an ancient monolith in the UK, or marking a bridge overpass with a graffiti
signature—we are creatures who speak the language of symbols.
I wonder whether you are
a collector of artifacts, gathered items, that mean something to you alone. I
once visited a seafood shack in Mexico Beach in which every single wall and even
the ceiling were covered in dollar bills, signed, and dated by the person who
left each one. Like throwing pennies into a fountain, they are good luck wishes
and symbols that say, “I was here. This is who I am.”
Symbols that hold meaning for you speak your name, identify you, and at the same time, connect
you with something older and deeper. Tattoos are modern examples—not unlike the
cave paintings a Lascaux. They mean something to the person wearing them that
cannot be expressed in words. What are your sacred symbols? How do you honor
them?
In the Spirit,
Jane
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