Cynthia Winton-Henry: Mystic Tech

Journey with the Elements
Aug 10, 9:30-3 pst

I love being in my art studio! I also love gentle “one step removed” support not unlike being with higher guidance. That’s why Saturday, August 10th I’m offering a retreat day to write, move, draw, reflect and dance with the elements. Want to join me from the comfort of your own home via a cost-free Go2Meeting platform? Just bring a cup of tea and your supplies. We’ll check in, warm-up, loosen up, discern, spaciously create, share and get support. This is a pay what you can retreat. You can even pay after you play. (suggested donation 30-60).  Any hey we don’t have to rent space. Sign up at cynthia@interplay.org

I hear amazing stories of energy exchange between people and people, people and animals, people and trees, people and those in the imaginal realm.

On a body level when a profound gaze happens I believe we are gaining much more than “meaning” in the transference. There is an energetic calling forth into power. We bond, connect, and organize in ways we do and don’t like. For those of us who witness and gaze professionally, we need to be aware of the power of gazing.

Remember Spock’s mind meld? A deep gaze is a mysterious transfer process. Are we ready to meet the gaze of the holy? Are we getting confused as the Holy?

The mind likes to think that everything can be sorted out with words. But the body knows better. Physical experience tells us that every gaze, every ritual image has more than one reality in it, both presence and absence.

“According to liturgical scholar Nathan Mitchell, the human need to be seen is fundamental to the nature of symbols. Basing his understanding on the psychology of Erik Erikson, he speaks of the primal urge to gaze and be gazed upon by the parent. Humans develop “rituals of recognition” to insure the presence of the gazing other, but this presence always implies a threatened separation, as the child grows and separates from the parent. Thus ritual symbols may signify a presence, but their shadows simultaneously signify an absence, and the symbol’s double effect can put together realities that appear to be contradictory. “A symbol,” Mitchell says, “is thus a kind of pivot, a point of exchange that permits people to confront an enormous range of ambiguous experiences: presence and absence, belonging and separation, acceptance and abandonment, and ultimately life and death.”Nathan Mitchell, O.S.B. Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass (New York: Pueblo Publishing Company, 1982), 377-382.

The most reliable gaze I have found is the unconditional neutral regard of divinity. It holds steady and this helps steady me. I feel it as a presence so that when I gaze on it I see nothing at all, and yet it is there.

Technology is like technique. You get what you put in. Techno-wise I need help, help, help. That’s why I’m creating a computer users prayer.

I found Saint Joseph remarkably helpful when I’ve tried to sell or hold onto property. So when the Vatican named St Isodore the Patron Saint of Computers I thought a “people’s prayer could be handy. He got the job because in the 6^th century Isidore wrote ‘Etymologies,’ a type of dictionary with structure akin to a database. He also began a system of thought known today as ‘flashes.

Tell me what you like or might add to this prayer. I might edit it and make a sticker for my devices!!! Seriously folks. We pray for everything else, don’t we?

Blessed Saint Isidore, Bishop and Scholar
who lifts body, mind, heart, and soul
bless and protect me online
in love, learning, joy, and service.
Fill my inboxes with good news and
Lead me to do the same for others.
Grant me patience in inconvenience.
Keep me from posting in anger.
Support the synchronizing, updating
and deliverance of my devices from
viruses, evildoers and crashes.
When systems slow me down
let me drink this life so freely given
that I may be ever grateful
for the breath, beauty, and
creative spirit that connects us all.