A Festival Imagination
The Mood of the Annunciation
2014
I had a woman client who asked me if it was possible to be both strong and soft. What a wonderful question about the mysteries of the feminine.
I told her to think of a curve. A straight line has a rigidity that feels fragile to me unless it is connected to other straight lines as in a square. A curve seems to me to be able to dance alone with what comes because it can be fluid like a strong wave or a soft ripple. It’s a curving line that forms the symbol of infinity…not a straight line.
Hearing my client’s question, the curve that appeared in my imagination was the curving gesture of the Virgin in the many paintings of the Annunciation. It is a curve of surrender, not submission. In my lexicon, when surrendering we sustain our own consciousness, filled with creative and loving thought, feeling and will. I surrender to be of elegant service. Submitting in my language is the the turning over of one’s soul, to be dominated and reduced. When I submit, I lose myself.
In my soul, I find both wisdom and innocence in the gesture of surrender which awakens the image of the Virgin Sophia for me. The Virgin Sophia, the two curves of surrender, the Vescia Pisces. I cannot imagine the mother of God not being both innocent and wise even at the Annunciation.
Today, March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation, I invite you to explore the strength and softness of surrender as it lives in the form and function of the womb.
i have been pregnant twice. I surrendered my womb to the new life of another. It was an experience of grace and blessedness. My surrendering womb needed to be both strong and soft to nurture what was growing into life within my being. (And to surrender my soul to the deed of mothering I had to be both innocent and wise.)
If I were to think of strength it would be the womb and it’s capacity to receive, grow, support, contain, and release. And the womb’s power to contract and push is breath-taking.
Yet, the womb is supple, flexible, responsive, tender, embracing, forgiving and soft.
Strength and softness live in the invitation of the curving womb. I can imagine each of my senses as a womb eager to conceive a new sensation and birth new perspective on the world . Or my thinking opening to a new thought that will grow into a living, truth-bearing imagination. It is all surrender. It is with a curving gesture in my innocent and wise soul that I surrender to living truth, or beauty, or goodness.
In the mood of the Annunciation, surrender to new life today, tomorrow, now, forever. Know your strength and your softness. Be blessed and full of grace. Be innocent and wise.
Suggested Exercises
Write in your journal about your own thoughts and experiences of surrender…of strength and softness, innocence and wisdom. Maybe write a poem.
If you paint or sketch, sink into images of the vescia pisces and feel the two curves creating the entry to conception of the new and the necessary. I just did a search for images of vescia pisces and found these sketches which give an example of exploring the two curves: http://janeadamsart.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/3-vesica-pisces.jpg
Share your thoughts in a comment below.
And here are links to previous posts I’ve written in the mood of Annunciation.
https://imagineself.com/2011/03/feeling-blessed-and-full-of-grace-2/
https://imagineself.com/2013/03/what-do-you-bear-within/
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About Festival Imaginations: I look to the New Testament and the Christian Festivals, for models and imaginations, inspiration and wisdom, secrets and strategies for the universal mystery and personal challenge of finding, knowing and becoming self as a divine being incarnating into a human being. I do not rely on the New Testament for external doctrine or definition of belief. If I am to give myself a religious label or category or orientation, I am an Esoteric Christian who does not see my personal experience of Christianity as related to a “religion” or “church.” Learn more.
