I’ve been thinking about the burning bush.
Not for the first time. I’ve known the story for a long time. Moses sees a bush that is burning, but the bush is not being consumed. He turns aside to look.
There is something about that image that I’m seeing differently now.
Maybe the interesting thing isn’t that the bush is burning.
Maybe it is that the bush is not being consumed.
I keep coming back to the idea that the light is already here.
I don’t have to create it.
I don’t have to make it stronger.
Maybe what I have to do is notice what is in the way of seeing it.
This is beginning to make sense to me through Sketch Stretching.
I sit down with a pencil and start somewhere. I follow a connection. Then another connection. I notice a feeling and follow that. Sometimes I run into something that feels like a blockage.
But instead of trying to get past it, I can stay with it.
The blockage becomes a door.
And the strange thing about a door is that you don’t have to destroy it to get through it.
You open it.
Then there is another room.
And sometimes another door.
I think the sketches have been showing me this for years without my really understanding it. What seems to be getting in the way can become the very thing that leads me somewhere else.
Maybe that is why I’ve been thinking about approaching things with more ease.
Sukha-pūrvaka is a name I came across for something I may already have been doing. The practice came first. The name came later.
It reminds me of the Karate Kid. Wax on, wax off. You can be practicing something before you know what you are practicing.
And perhaps that is what has been happening with Sketch Stretching.
The practice opens doors.
And the more doors that open, the more I begin to notice the light.
Which brings me back to the lighthouse.
A lighthouse doesn’t create the light when the fog rolls in.
The light is already there.
The fog may make it difficult to see. The rocks may make it important to see. But the lighthouse isn’t waiting for the fog to disappear before it shines.
Maybe I am more like the fog than the lighthouse.
Sometimes I get caught up in thoughts, feelings, plans, problems, things I need to fix. I become busy being me.
And then I forget the light.
But forgetting it doesn’t make it go away.
Maybe meditation is partly the experience of remembering.
And Sketch Stretching gives me something to do with that remembering. I follow the pencil. I follow the feeling. I open a door.
And then another.
Maybe eventually I don’t need to open so many doors.
Maybe I begin to see that the light was never confined to one room.
This is where the old phrase Adonai ori has begun to take on a different meaning for me.
The Lord is my light.
I used to hear that as something I was supposed to believe.
Now I’m more interested in what happens when I sit with it.
What if the light isn’t something I have to find?
What if it is something I gradually become aware of?
The burning bush seems to say something similar.
The bush is burning.
But it isn’t being consumed.
The fire is not destroying what is there.
And maybe what I call a blockage isn’t necessarily something that has to be destroyed either.
Maybe it is a door.
Maybe I can approach it with a little more ease.
Open it.
Look.
And see what is on the other side.
Then perhaps I notice that the light isn’t only on the other side.
It is here too.
It may have been here all along.
The old story hasn’t changed.
But somehow I am seeing something new in it.
Spiritual Gravity 