The thermal basins of Yellowstone seem to inhabit a liminal space between solidity and transparency, reality and dream, form and emptiness, words and silence, concepts and non-concepts. Rock and steam, rooted trees and ephemeral porcelain colors, awestruck visitors on misty boardwalks hovering seemingly between reality and unreality - its ALL there! Yellowstone reveals the playful, trickster-like nature of the Divine, dancing back and forth between opposites, encouraging us continually to inhabit the liminal space between settled positions of this or that. Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi puts it so well:
"What images does He play at, what tricks contrive!
If He is present in form, He will flee by the way of spirit.
Seek Him in the sky, and He shines from the water like the moon;
Enter the water, and He flees up to heaven.
Call Him from the placeless and He point you to place;
Seek Him in place and He flees to the placeless."
If a discussion focuses on the importance of words and ideas in knowing the Sacred, then we suddenly find ourselves drawn to the unsayable. However, if we take a correspondingly firm position beyond words and ideas, then the Divine just as suddenly and inexplicably swings the balance back toward the importance of words and ideas as instruments - like a microscope or telescope of the spirit - that seem to be a necessary component in looking through to the Mystery beyond words. Always and forever, there seems to be this back-and-forth dance between form and emptiness, body and spirit, ideas and non-ideas, words and silence. And WE are called to inhabit - and dance - in the liminal space in between!
Photos: Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 5-7, 2015
If He is present in form, He will flee by the way of spirit.
Seek Him in the sky, and He shines from the water like the moon;
Enter the water, and He flees up to heaven.
Call Him from the placeless and He point you to place;
Seek Him in place and He flees to the placeless."
If a discussion focuses on the importance of words and ideas in knowing the Sacred, then we suddenly find ourselves drawn to the unsayable. However, if we take a correspondingly firm position beyond words and ideas, then the Divine just as suddenly and inexplicably swings the balance back toward the importance of words and ideas as instruments - like a microscope or telescope of the spirit - that seem to be a necessary component in looking through to the Mystery beyond words. Always and forever, there seems to be this back-and-forth dance between form and emptiness, body and spirit, ideas and non-ideas, words and silence. And WE are called to inhabit - and dance - in the liminal space in between!
Photos: Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 5-7, 2015
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