Spring Bee Hiving Moon
Down the well this morning, tapping into the underground stream. Still searching for an image. Something to coalesce the third lifetime, the third phase of this body/mind’s adventure here on earth.
One came to me. Suddenly. But it feels apt. I’ll have to let it set for awhile. Work with it itself in the imagery extension section of the workbook, but it feels pretty good.
The image is of a lane headed back into a woods where the lane continues but with tree branches creating a leafy roof over it. The time is late twilight, the season late summer. The air is cool but humid. And the lane, where it enters the woods, is lit by thousands of fireflies, blinking on and off, shifting locations, providing a weak but real luminescence so I can follow the path into the woods. Because the fireflies are spread out along the path’s length, they also give the lane a feel of depth, as if it proceeds quite a long way into the woods.
This is not a mind birthed image, but a memory. I saw this lane and these fireflies several years ago during a trip to New Harmony, Indiana. I’ve written here about New Harmony before, but just as a reminder, it was founded by the Rappites who created a very successful religious community there in the mid-19th century. Much of New Harmony’s built environment has its roots it that era.
When they moved to Old Economy Village in Pennsylvania, the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen bought the whole town for his utopian community, a quasi-socialist endeavor. He brought with him from Britain a number of scientists and engineers committed to his scheme on a ship dubbed the Boatload of Knowledge. The community didn’t last long, but the U.S. Geological Survey among other things grew out of the efforts of the people who came to New Harmony.
Since that time, New Harmony has continued to have a religious and intellectual bent. In fact, as I looked down the lane into the firefly lit woods, on my left was an open air Episcopal Church designed by famed architect, Philip Johnson and on my right was a small garden marked by tiny drumlins planted with firs and dotted with boulders carved with quotes by Paul Tillich, the Protestant theologian, whose tomb lies there, too, in Paul Tillich Park.
In fact, this aerial photograph shows the spot where I stood between the open air church on the left and Paul Tillich Park on the right, looking north down the lane into what at night was a tree lined bower over an ancientrail leading into an infinite distance. This feels like a perfect third phase image.
