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Each
month, Dana Reynolds shares her life-transforming
thoughts, ideas, and sacred imagination based around our
"theme of the month." Dana is a visionary Spiritual Midwife, who
devotes herself to helping women birth their creative
gifts into the world.
"Finding Peace in
the Fields of Time"
Time. Time seems to be
a topic of conversation in many circles these days. Lack
of time, the acceleration of time, and the myriad of
ways we keep track of each hour of the day, all of these
issues create interference to finding inner peace. How
do you come to that blissful state of internal stillness
while in the midst of schedules, clock-watching, and the
daily demands of life? Perhaps the ancient Greeks offer
us a possible starting point.
The Greeks had two
ways of expressing time, kairos (pronounced ky-ros) and
kronos. Clock time, the way we measure linear time in
our "real" world is kronos. Kronos is the name
of the Greek God who swallowed his children. This is the
time of the father/masculine world. Father Time departs
at the end of each year as the old bearded man. Kronos
time is time we are aware of, the way anxious children
are aware of the hands of the clock as they move minute
by minute towards 3:30 p.m., the magic hour when the
bell signals the end of the school day. Kronos time is
left-brained, analytical, real time.
Kairos time is the
dimension of time we are absorbed into. This is the time
of the mother/feminine. Whenever you engage in
activities, both passive and active that nourish your
soul, you are in kairos time. Experiencing your passion
for something or someone leads you out of ordinary (kronos)
time into the dimension of expansive or non-time (kairos).
This is where you find yourself when you are engaged in
heart to heart conversation with a dear friend or lost
in the pages of a good book. Time passes without
awareness or concern.
Stepping beyond the
limiting and anxiety producing boundaries of kronos time
into the wide-open expansiveness and freedom of kairos
time is the first step towards finding inner peace. The
engagement with the kairos dimension is paramount to
establishing practices that will ultimately allow you to
make the internal shift, no matter the immediate
circumstances, to the still place within.
The rational world
engages your mind, which keeps you on track. This kind
of linear approach is necessary to accomplish the
multitude of tasks required every day. However, you also
need periods when the mind is stilled from its
clock-watching, detail tending, and schedule making.
There is a need to slip the bounds of kronos into kairos.
The way one crawls over a fence from the speeding
traffic of a highway, to step into a meadow of
wildflowers, and onto a path leading to a quiet
sheltered place for rest.
To signal the mind
that you desire to shift from kronos to kairos time, try
creating visual reminders and rituals to stimulate the
intended physical, mental, and spiritual response. The
quest for inner peace requires places that offer
sanctuary and haven from the whirlwind of everyday life.
Creating a place at home that incorporates beauty and
sacredness, a nurturing and replenishing respite,
provides the setting for inviting inner peace.
Look around your
environment with soft focus, as though you are moving
through the rooms in a dream. What do you see? Are there
dust bunnies playing on the floors, old newspapers piled
on the chair in the corner, or plants dying of thirst on
the kitchen windowsill? Clearing clutter, washing the
windows, sweeping the floors, guarantees an elimination
of visual distraction. "Cleanliness is next to
Godliness," is not an empty platitude. Bringing
order to your surroundings is a way to pave the road to
inner peace.
In her book, Feng Shui
for the Soul, author Denise Linn says, "Because
objects are invested with symbolism, clearing things out
of your home has a direct effect on your psyche. You are
shifting the energy of your environment, which will in
turn have an effect on your life. In other words, sooner
or later you will experience the consequences of
clearing the debris out of your life."
The initial step
towards finding inner peace is the creation of peace in
one’s outer world. When clutter has been cleared and
order has been made from chaos, spaces are transformed
into portals leading to kairos time…….leading to
inner peace. When the kitchen table is cleared of old
bills, newspapers, and empty coffee cups, there’s room
for a small vase of fresh flowers, a basket of
touchstones, and a place for journaling. What was simply
a table moments ago becomes a sacred altar for
creativity. Sweeping the corner of your bedroom and
arranging pillows against the wall, creating an altar
from a box covered with a favorite scarf, adding
candles, incense, and flowers, offers your mind a place
to rest and invites your spirit to refreshment in the
field of kairos. Your bedroom becomes a temple for your
soul.
Finding inner peace is
a journey. Creating order and harmony in your
surroundings illumines the path. Having a sacred space,
a special place in your environment for quieting the
mind, for journaling, meditation, reading sacred texts,
or just being still, is an important provision as you
seek inner peace. Naturally, you can’t sit on a futon
all day or never leave the confines of where you live.
How then is it possible to find peace within during the
endless distractions of work, carpools, phone calls, and
e-mail?
Visual reminders
serving as prompts and cues to call you back to your
center, to kairos time, to inner peace, are needed
throughout the day to help maintain the calm interior
you experience in your haven/sanctuary at home. Everyday
objects and seemingly numerous interruptions can be
transformed into planks, that one by one create a bridge
from the world of kronos to kairos.
On my computer in my
workspace I have created an altar of images and
touchstones representing various saints who inspire my
writing and other creative endeavors. Each time my eyes
fall on these sacred icons, I am reminded to STOP and b
r e a t h e and to go within to the deep resources of my
soul for renewed energy, creativity, and guidance for my
work.
Photographs of family
and friends are carefully arranged on my desk. As I
shuffle papers and turn to my calendar the faces of
these loved ones remind me to STOP and b r e a t h e,
and to dive into my heart to embrace gratitude for the
precious people in my life. Peace washes over me. I have
slipped the confining bounds from kronos to the open
potentiality of kairos for an instant. That singular
moment expands to encompass another dimension just a
breath away from the world of ringing phones and
unopened mail. Each time I embrace one of these
interludes, I return to the task at hand, renewed,
energized, and centered.
Finding inner peace is
a journey and the vehicle is time….kairos time. I
invite you this month to STOP and b r e a t h e in order
to recognize how it feels to your body, mind, and spirit
when you shift from kronos to kairos time. Remember this
is only a starting place. Reach beyond habitual limiting
boundaries, breathe, and contemplate the countless
creative ways you can begin to embrace the peace within
your own soul.
You are
invited to submit your story and accompanying
photos to be considered as a feature for the Sacred
Imagination column. E-mail me at dana@sacredimagination.com
for details.
Copyright© 2000 Dana
Reynolds.
Read
Dana's Soulful Living Feature Articles:
Visual
Prayers
Intuition
and the Sacred Imagination: The Dance of Co-creation
Read
Dana's Past "Sacred Imagination" Columns:
November
2000 "Cultivating Gratitude: Heart-Hugs and Prayer
Leaves"
October
2000 "Journey to the Center - The Sacred Mystery of
the Labyrinth"
September
2000 "The Heart and Craft of Healing"
August
2000 "Transforming Life’s Challenges into Beauty and Story"
July
2000 "Sacred Spaces Invite the
Muses of the Soul"
For ten years, Dana Reynolds has
been facilitating women’s spiritual presentations and
retreats nationwide. Her work as a Spiritual Midwife,
one who assists women as they birth their creative gifts
into the world, is the foundation of all her endeavors.
Her background as a visual artist and writer enriches
her Spiritual Midwifery: Birthing the Feminine Soul
workshops.
As the creator of an art making
process known as visual prayer, Dana teaches
women how to combine ritual with sacred intention to
create altars, collages, spirit dolls, and other
touchstones. The creation of sacred spaces is also
paramount to the Spiritual Midwifery experience. Her
web-site http://www.sacredimagination.com
offers samplings of her visual prayer collages, poetry,
and a workshop catalogue.
Dana is the author of the
whimsical and colorfully illustrated book, Be An
Angel, a co-creation with illustrator and graphic
designer, Karen Blessen, (Simon & Schuster). Her
essay, Visual Prayers is included in the
anthology, Our Turn, Our Time: Women Coming of Age, edited
by Cynthia Black, (Beyond Words Publishing).
A trained labyrinth
facilitator, Dana incorporates the labyrinth and other
spiritual wisdom into her retreats and workshops. She
recently traveled to Chartres and Vezelay Cathedrals in
France to gather information pertaining to ancient
sacred mystical traditions. She currently lectures on
such topics as spiritual midwifery, sacred journal
keeping, feminine spiritual wisdom, and the early
Christian women saints and mystics.
Dana’s life follows the
spiral path from rim to center and back again. She looks
for the sacred in forgotten places and openly embraces
the great Mystery of life. Guiding women to the
discovery of their creative inner gifts is the passion
that fuels her soul.
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