Moonstone Mandala

Faith

I want to write about faith
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last and impossible
slither of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

—David Whyte

Twenty-nine stones each painted with a phase of the moon unite to form the Moonstone Mandala. Glinting in the sunlight that falls through the trees, there is a preciousness to the stones, a sense that they hold something dear. They are softly gleaming jewels, shiny dewdrops amidst Nature’s coarse patterns and earthy tones. The moonstones are nestled amidst black volcanic rock — the night sky, the darkness that holds the light.

The Moonstone Mandala, inspired by the David Whyte poem above, is a symbol of faith. Faith for some people resides in a god. My faith is a shadow of knowingness, a faint sense or tenuous trust that all life in its naked purity is an embodiment of virtue and benevolence. Perhaps ultimate goodness is not a seed that needs cultivating, or a choice that needs to be made, but is a concealed yet innate state of being, a wholesome nature hidden within everything in existence.

The higher the climb, the greater the fall. Likewise, the stronger faith is, the deeper the doubt. Even faith seems to have its consequences. Yet somehow in its demise, perhaps faith finds new life. In that tension of tearing away as the pendulum swings into the darkness of doubt, isn’t this emptying of faith already its birth into fullness? Just as the moon is most lucid against the darkest sky, maybe it is the waning embers of faith and not it’s fullest flames that radiate the strongest.

Guardian of the night sky, the moon is an ever-present entity even as it moves between fullness and emptiness, devotion and dependability are expressed in its unfailing rhythmic ascent and retreat; as is faith.

Behold the glow of the moon
illumine the world’s four quarters
perfect light in perfect space
a radiance that purifies
people say it waxes and wanes
but I don’t see it fade
just like a magic pearl
it shines both night and day

—Red Pine

Moonwater

The mandala began to evolve on the fifth anniversary of the eternal peace-fire. The Moonstone Mandala is a sister to the peace-fire – a symbol of hope and regeneration. Faith and hope are from the same gene pool. They walk hand in hand, collaborative and inter-reliant, each an anchor and pillar for the other.

Wind and fire are potent masculine forces here at Windgrove: fiery, robust, ephemeral, assertive, insistent, drying, transformative. However, both the stones and the moon of the Moonstone Mandala unite with the ocean and resonate with feminine yin energy; cold, deep, dark, weighty, lasting, persistent, nourishing, rhythmic, receptive.

The elements here have been imbalanced -the land in drought for years; ponds and gullies dry, soil parched and the vegetation thirsty. The Moonstone Mandala is an offering to the land, an offering of rich feminine energy, of rhythm and regularity, of quiet power and nurturing stillness.

The Moonstone Mandala will eventually dwell in a small temple in a moist gully of Blackwood trees along the peace-walk here at Windgrove; an offering to the land, a symbol of faith, and a shrine that honours the Goddess of Windgrove.

… And the rains have barely ceased this winter!