(Tuesday, August 21, 2018) waxing gibbous moon Capricorn/ tarot King of Cups
It is evening. I am at a craft store, talking to the famous art critic Lucy Lippard. She has so much to say, yet I can keep up. She speaks rapidly, energetically and deeply about art. Theories, techniques, philosophies, politics. She is warm and friendly. I have the intellect to follow her complex threads, but I bring up the difficulty of being born a creative into a family of farmers. Peasants. She as a native New Yorker may not grasp that, although Lucy has lived “off the grid” in Gallisteo, New Mexico for many decades.
Finally I tell dear Lucy that I need to leave and get to work on my art project.
I walk through the golden dusk, arriving at a moat that surrounds a round, single-story temple. A mandala. A labyrinth. I cross a stone bridge over the water and insert a skeleton key into the wooden front door.
A man in his early forties greets me. He says he is my soulmate, but I don’t feel that kind of connection. Even so, he has my back. He wraps one arm around me as we walk towards the center of the temple, which is a circular chamber of glass. No other physical presence is in the chamber or in the rest of the building. I sense invisible spirits. I think this temple may belong to a religious cult. Why do I feel that way about a building with such an obviously sacred design?
Day notes:
A lovely man in our Paradise Valley morning group belonged to Eckankar, and other IASD Canadian members belong as well. They have always seemed kind to me, but organized religion is not what I can do. That is how I felt at my aunt’s Catholic funeral. Four men at the altar, not a single woman. Not for me.
My friend Anne and I did not get accepted into the MCBA show. Rejection made us sad, but it is a national show with only 9 contributors. It would have been a miracle if we had been juried in.
My friend Jana just moved back to Montana from California, next to the Red Sun Labyrinth. “To enter a labyrinth is to choose to walk a spiritual path.”
There is a contrast between being with Lucy and connecting verse your “soulmate” and being in the sacred space that feels like it belongs to a cult. I can identify with what you are saying. It is like my body just reacts when someone says something like, “The Lord told me to do it!” And yes, the Catholic religion is very patriarchal. I asked the priest for my mom’s funeral if he would say “Mother/Father, God. You can imagine how that went over!!