The Symbolic World Summit

I climbed toward the summit of all I knew and leaned into reclaiming the cosmic image. Quite an undertaking. Bold? Hell yes! At The Symbolic World Summit in Tarpon Springs, Florida, I was met, inspired, and transformed. The sacrifice of time and energy clothed me anew in a garment of grace. This substack will be the first fruits of the harvest. Some of my take-a ways. Some of what lingers after the gathering. Some of what whispers in the silence. Coming to this page, as I wait at the departure gate for my flight home, is my first attempt to articulate what is emergent in me. My hope is that something of what I express will be interesting or helpful to you, dear reader.

I will start when all mythic things in the West start. In the beginning… From the garden of paradise, to the Fall, to the toil of Exile, through slavery and Exodus, wandering in the desert, ascending Mt. Sinai, and finally, condensed to a humble stable, and a promise of a new revelation. This is the mythic pattern. The foundational pattern of our Western culture that expresses and orients, and even directs our endeavours. Let that sink in. Is this just a religious pattern? The opiate of the masses? No. It is the structure and pattern of reality. This is the a priori that C. G. Jung references when he speaks of archetypal fields. When learn to see this pattern, see reality through this lens, the turmoil and despair of our times enfolds into a deeper story. The deepest story. It is not projection. It is recollection. Hope is reborn in this cosmic enfolding.

Esteemed, accomplished, and yes, controversial presenters gathered in Tarpon Springs, Florida under the steams of Logos-Centric Art, Universal History, and Hearth and Hospitality. And, all streams, all tributaries, all currents flowed beautifully into the great mythic ocean. I experienced such depth, honest grappling, mental intensity, ardent wondering, and if truth be told, exponential joy at discovering The Lost Tribe I have been tracking most of my adult life. The Lost Tribe that has been tracking me.

One of the questions asked over and over by the 500 participants, as we first exchanged our names and the places we call home, was some version of ‘What or who opened this portal into The Symbolic World?’ Podcasts are surely portals. For me it was a carving class in Connecticut about 6 years ago. The fruit of this recent gathering had its seeding there. Jonathan Pageau offered an icon carving class and over 6 days of creation, I discovered ideas, skills, questions, and patterns that continue to cleanse the lens of perception I employ to look, to see, and to be seen. I had no idea then where this beauty making would lead. I should have known. My first carving was an icon of the Christ. What I found at this recent summit, what found me, is so much more than a Jungian lens. This is so much more than psychology. This is where my Jungian psychology has been pointing toward all along. Behind the stable, through the desert, to the verdant moss at the very base of the Tree of Life.

So, here are some of the seeds that have found fertile soil in my heart. “Aesthetic Arrest”. A phrase first coined by Irish writer, James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In a lively conversation with Dr. Martin Shaw, he offered up the phrase again. He offered me a key to the dilemma of discernment. ‘When beauty stops you in your tracks, when your forward egoic trajectory is arrested by such an apperception, know that this is one of the moments when Grace descends.’ Stop. Pay attention. Offer your ChiGit. Fall on your knees. It might be the turn of a phrase in a piece of poetry, the glistening of a rain drop on a leaf, the laughter of a child, the tender caress of a homeless person’s hand on the ears of a beloved dog, the welling up of tears when a deep story is shared, the taste of good wine, the relief felt when a loved one makes it through. These moments are ripe and ever-present for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Aesthetic arrest is one of the keys to living a symbolic life. The key that opens the doors of perception and multiplies if given attention. And how to give it attention? Dr. Shaw continued in his offering of wisdom. He told me to find a brooding place. Find a place when the sadness that runs through you can meet with hospitality. Go to this place at dusk. At the “time between dog and wolf” as Dr. Shaw explains. At the time that is too often sullied by cocktail hour or happy hour. Meet it. Don’t self medicate yourself away from it. In the heaviness of the waning day, in the mysterious glow of a full red sun yielding to darkness, feel the full weight of your burdens. See their colour. Breathe in their fragrance. Taste their spice. Hear their lament. Then, as tenderly as a mother tucks in her child for the night, lay them down. Look softly at them, and pray. Each time you come to your brooding place, lay down the heavy stone of your burden slightly higher up than you did the last time. This is a deep ritual. It is not a gimmick. All confusion, all chaos, all sorrow is a call for ritual. This will be so much more than a catharsis, this will be a miracle of healing. What is crippled in you will learn to walk. What is blind will see. What is thought dead will stir.

“Do not get stuck in the borderlands”, so warns artist Vesper Stamper. We are so sick to death of activist art. We are sated with expressions of the darkness, the decay, the decline. The headlines tell us nothing new. We too often forget that the political has always flowed downstream from the artistic. Don’t confuse the direction of the current. Surely in the last ten years or so we have passed through much of the rubble and seen into the abyss. In the CoVid years we sat in the belly of the beast. But, as in all journeys of the heart, we need to return. We need to pass back into life. Into hope. Into beauty. This is the promise of the stable. The promise of the stone rolled back. The promise of the olive branch in the beak of a dove. Civilizations have fallen, we are not that unique. The artist is born for times such as these. We need their prophesy, their vision, their covenantal vision. And here is the rub, we are all called to be prophetic. To create, to express, to articulate toward the new, the emergent, the redeemed. Be it a meal, a beautiful cord of stacked wood, a poem, a tender conversation with a neighbour, or an Instagram post, let your expression remind us all that we can, we have, we will pass through the darkness. Light can and must be born in each of us, again and again. This is eternal life everlasting. Whether Christian or not, be gospel people. Announce the good news for a change.

And finally, at least finally for now as the pre-boarding of my flight home beckons, know this, life is grounded in sacrifice. Not slaughter. Sacrifice. Making sacred. Our scars and our wounds will not erased by our redemption, our transformation, our resurrection. They are purified, they are sanctified. Every wound calls for baptism. Baptism is a ritual of sacrifice. I had never considered that before. Baptism is the willing sacrifice to the chaos, the dissolution, the purification, and the reconstitution. As the broken hero is summoned by his fate toward the cauldron of death, he is given counsel: to go magnificently. Do not cling to what must be surrendered. Do not ask others to make the descent for you. Do not mock or miss the opportunity. Go magnificently! And, know this, the cauldrons of death bubble up many times a day. Perhpas anxiety is a failure to willingly make a sacrifice. Fear is human. Anxiety is what happens when fear gets co-opted by the illusion of control. Embrace the fear and go magnificently! Thy Will be done. I am a handmaid of the Lord. This is now my prayer.

I will be unpacking this summit long after my carry-on bag is restored to the attic. I will be asking the learning to have its way with me. I will be guarding the 20 secret names for Vasilisa. I will be whispering the name that was given me before I was born to the quickening light. I will be going to my brooding place and asking the dusk what it wants of me. I will pray. I will pray for the courage to meet each sacrifice magnificently, to be arrested by the aesthetic, and to the best of my ability, to make each action in each day prophetic and covenantal. And, as always, I will be praying for you.