Scratch Where it Itches

Making scratch drawings is easy.  I did it often as a kid.  First you take crayons and using many different colors you entirely cover a piece of paper.  I normally swirled the colors but you could do blocks as well.  Then you cover the crayon with a layer of black tempura paint.  When it dries, you make an image by scratching through the black revealing some of the colors below.  Simple process but beautiful and interesting results.  It occurred to me during a retreat this weekend, that is what our lives are like.  We start in heaven or whatever your personal idea of the "beforelife" is.  When in this place outside of time our soul essences are gorgeous swirling masses of color.  We are then covered in darkness.  We forget everything.  On the surface we appear to be a blank slate.  Then the itches begin and we scratch them.

We itch to learn, and when we scratch that itch we reveal a part of ourselves.  We itch to love, we itch travel, and we itch to grow.  More of the blank blackness is scratched away and our true form is revealed.  You may be tired of reading the word "itch" and trust me--no one wants to forget about itching more than I do since I'm currently covered in red itchy welts.  Courtesy of Maine woods black flies.  As uncomfortable as I am, I'm not really complaining because I was biten for a good cause.  I was in a ceremony designed to be a challenge and was expected to keep on task.  Everyone in my group had a different experience because everyone needs different challenges for their own personal growth.  The spirits of the universe apparently thought that assaulting me with black flies was just the distraction I needed.  It was hard ignoring them and moving past the uncomfortableness, but in the end I felt that I had passed a test--even if no one but myself was grading my performance.  Sitting here scratching at my bites, I can see the image of the person I'm striving to be start to take form. 

The Power in Mystery

It was a difficult time in my life and I needed distractions so even though he was taken, the younger guy at work was fun to look at.  It was also fun to walk by his office and wonder what his odd object was.  There was a bowl filled with water sitting on a small desk in the center of the room.  And it wasn't empty.  But what the heck was that thing.  Every day for weeks, maybe even a few months, whenvever I was on break I would peek in his office to try to figure out what it was.  One day my curiousity got the best of me and besides I thought it would be an easy way to meet the cute guy.  So this time I didn't walk by, I stopped and asked him what the thing was in the bowl of water.  The answer was  anti-climatic...it was a "Grow-a-Nerd."  A little plastic nerd toy had been the object of my intense curiousity.  It was dissapointing that it didn't turn out to be something more worthy of my interest, but the worst part of all was the loss of the mystery.  I realized that even though I did want an excuse to talk to the guy, the mystery of the random bowl was the true distraction.

Sometimes when I notice something remarkable in nature, or see a constellation that I wish I knew the story behind, I can just get on my iPhone and look up the details.  Which is really cool--I don't take that access to information for granted.  But I also think about primitive people and wonder what they thought of when looking at the same wonders that I do, and they didn't have Google to fill in the details for them.  How it is natural to see how the early people thought that Gods and Goddesses walked amoung them, creating these miracles.  They still had the mystery.  So while we've gained knowlege we've lost a corresponding amount of wonder. It may be wishful thinking but truth be told I still believe we share this world with "mythological" beings.