I stumbled across the work of Ron C. Moss, a visual artist and poet from Tasmania, Australia who practices the Japanese art form of haiga, where a visual image is combined with a haiku. He is featured on The Awakened Eye website (“a sanctuary where the oft-overlooked relationship between creative expression and the unknown/unknowable can be openly explored and celebrated”) as one of their artisans – and if you are interested in a meeting place between visual art and the ‘intimate unknowable’, there is much to discover here.
I was moved by a number of his haiku’s and images, but this one stood out in its simple but evocative seeming paradox. Lost in the deep mountains, and yet on the road, which much lead from somewhere to somewhere else. I’m familiar with that layeredness of experience: feeling quite lost on some level, while at the same time a deep trust – or maybe you could even call it faith – that this feeling of lostness is included in being on the right path.
This encouragement to trust is also in Teddy Macker’s long and multifaceted ‘Poem for my Daughter‘, where one of the verses reads:
No matter what you do, no matter what happens,
it is impossible to leave the path.Let me say that one more time:
No matter what you do, no matter what happens,
it is impossible to leave the path.
In other words, however lost you may feel, you are still on the path… May that be an encouragement in unsure times, so that we may move through ups and downs, times of feeling lost and found, with steady equanimity.
PS Keeping in touch with trust even when feeling lost, is helped by the powerful quality of equanimity. If you’d like to explore that further, there’s a weekend workshop on just that topic coming up…
For designs by Rob C. Moss, head over to his shop here.