Ghost Kingdoms and Ghost Cathedrals
I awoke this morning with the thought of change. Change what? Change. Change! It is said, the only thing that is truly constant in life is change. And, sometimes, the hardest task is change. When we resist change, we go against the flow of life.
I took a long walk in the snowy woods yesterday. I mistakenly went without snowshoes. The snow was knee deep mostly and thigh deep in the drifts. The winter laden trees bowed down their branches and at a few places I lost the trail. This was clearly my Church. My sanctuary. My communion with the unseen. Following the dogs was not an ideal plan since their labyrinthine path was better for sleuthing out rabbit burrows and deer dens. A few times I was deeply lost and wondered if my strength would hold out. One laboured step after another. When all was said and done, I ended up with snow in the hood and the neck of my jacket and an overall good winter workout. My cheeks were painted rosy and my fingers and toes numbed with the cold. I came away from my Sunday Service with the realization that the forest is a living, changing, animated being. My Ghost Kingdom, my Ghost Cathedral. Deep in the woods was my Encounter.
We can learn a lot about what the savvy marketers call ‘forest bathing’. I imagine those living in the mazes of concrete and glass called cities would thrill at the idea. I know that the forest that surrounds and holds us here at FoxHaven, shows me myself with more honesty than anything else can. It is both a mirror and a portal. Through this looking glass of sorts, I find the places and spaces in me that hold to the trial, look for the comfort of the orange blazes, and sometimes, oftentimes miss the courtship of life as change itself.
I attended a wonderful conversation on Saturday with the artist Dominic Chambers. (www.jungarchademy.com/store/soft-shadows-dominic-chambers-in-conversation-with-chantal-powell) He shared the work he accomplished during the shutdowns of the pandemic. His work is called, Soft Shadows. It is nothing short of a deep caress of softness. Yet, it was birthed in a hard and harsh time. At one point in the conversation, he said he asked the Shadow, “what can I offer?” Dominic has an endearing sensibility to nurture what comes to him, both the dark and the colour. His work is profound. His integration of Logos and Eros even more so. It was a wonderful afternoon spent in his company. Thank you, Jungarchademy!
Throughout and even after the conversation, I have been thinking about the concept of the Stranger. I am reminded of how the stranger lives on the margins, on the edge of what we claim as identity. How open are we to changing our identity? How does one go about doing this? In the Jungian world we speak often of shadow work. We traffic in the confrontation with those rejected parts of ourselves. Dominic reminded us that the shadow is 90% gold. There is so much energy in the shadow. So much to be learned from the stranger. Both the personal shadow and the collective shadow seek our engagement. So, rather than the ‘confrontation’ with the shadow, I will now adopt the new verbiage of a ‘conversation’ with the shadow. Thank you, Dominic. You changed me. How much can change in an instant with the adoption of a simple word. Perhaps more conversations and fewer confrontations are what are needed in our changing world. Less crisis and more challenge. More encounters.
Dominic also spoke about magic, enchantment, and supernatural encounters. As a lover of this realm, he had my rapt attention. Dominic spoke of his ‘Ghost Kingdom’ and he has erected sculptures to manifest and dwell within this realm.
Ghost Kingdom is Chambers’ sprawling sculpture of a
miniaturized playground fabricated in clear acrylic. What
would it be like to stand in these towers, floating in the
air? Or to sail down its sliding boards? Chambers shares
that in his youth, he encountered a playground that in the
day was rather ordinary; at night though, “something
magical occurred—the shadowy contours of the
playground produced a grand silhouette, transforming
the playset into a castle.” He and his siblings “scaled its
walls and stormed its bridges every chance we got.”
Ghost Kingdom invites all of us to imagine these
possibilities, engaging imagination and wonder.
(https://camstl.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/galleryguide-Dominic-Chambers_web.pdf)
Oh, but aren’t we all the exiled Kings and Queens of our own Ghost Kingdoms. the Priests and Priestesses of our own Ghost Cathedrals? What have we traded for these turrets and buttresses? What flags fly from our hard ego towers? What icons have we carved in marble? We get glimpses of this other dwelling in our dreams, in our reveries, in our walks in the wintry woods. Too often the mundane closes the drawbridge on these castles and cathedrals within. Yet, sometimes, a conversation on a winter afternoon, unexpectedly, changes things for the better. These Ghost Kingdoms and Ghost Cathedrals beckon. They endure. They wait. Time to head out into the forest and have a conversation.