I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Wisdom Council member Melissa Layer‘s reflection on making nature mandalas.
I became aware of how the extraordinary is exquisitely entangled within the everyday ordinary, and how I met Spirit there when I was a little girl. I was raised in a remote corner of northeastern Washington. My bedroom shelves held altars of bird nests, pieces of bark and stones, pushing aside the collection of dolls my grandmother lavished upon me. When mom sent me to weed the flower border as a form of chastisement, I remember my delight in the sweet fragrance of Lily of the Valley blossoms and how I arranged their tiny white cups in designs on the moist soil, sometimes along the body of a wiggling worm I had unearthed.
I wasn’t a girl who believed in fairies, but there was something magical and mysterious in the tiny minutiae of the flora and fauna of the forest floor, and along the banks of the river and creek where I spent hours. Mary Jo Hoffman writes in her beautiful book entitled Still: The Art of Noticing about “deep play” and how “This was a way of being I had sensed was right for me.” She references the qualities of surprise, wonder and joy, quoting artist Jenny Odell, who invites us even deeper: “Placefulness = a state of peaceful and attentive engagement.”
As an adult, I began creating outdoor mandalas when I moved to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. My easy access to miles of forest, meadows and sea-washed beaches offered a rich palette of nature’s abundant art materials. I recall the first intricate mandala I made on a sun warmed beach. When I gaze at a photo of it (included here), I recall the hum of bees and the sweet scent of the blossoms of yellow and purple lupine and wild rose that I collected. Evergreen tips sporting new growth and their pollen laden cones wove their way through this emergent creation. Thin sticks of bleached driftwood provided structure and definition. I remember how focused and present I became in this creation. My breathing slowed. I flowed.
I was aware of beginning to know and appreciate my home place in deepened ways. In his gorgeous book entitled Morning Altars, Day Schildkret writes “This practice was weaving me and the place I called home into a deeply purposeful and generous relationship… binding my heart, hands and home more closely together.”
One might think there is precision and even perfectionism in creating these intricate mandalas, but Spirit has surprised me in what I sometimes witness when I look at the photos. I remember my surprise (and frustration!) when I gazed at a photo of this first detailed mandala and noticed there were 2 wild rose blossoms “missing” from the inner circle. But were they, really? I recalled what Sue Bender had written in her little book Plain and Simple about how Amish quilts often have a tiny corner that is purposefully left unstitched. When she inquired, she was told “That’s where Spirit can come and go!”
My outdoor mandalas have been a spiritual companion for me over the last 25 years. They are an intimate expression of the unfolding tapestry that is uniquely mine. When I review the photos, I can recall what the inner and outer landscapes of my life entailed at those times. Pema Chodron writes “But wherever we are right now, whatever our lives are like in the moment, this is our mandala, our working basis for awakening.”
When the rigor of 8 years of caring for and midwifing both of my parents and then my husband across their death thresholds arrived, I discovered that mandala creations would meet me in the loss and grief that was too deep and tender for words.
I remember when I fled to my favorite campground in the woods, high on a bluff above the sea. Closed for the winter, I welcomed the solitude as I anticipated revisiting my favorite site, where I had solo tent camped during brief respites in my rigorous journey as a caregiver.
Stunned, I saw that the road had been re-routed and “my” campsite had been bulldozed and reconfigured. Gone were the 2 trees where I had hung my hammock. No picnic table remained that had held my blue bowl of hot soup; my thick journal of handwritten pages; the mason jar of wildflowers picked enroute as I fled the city; and the Coleman gas stove with its percolating pot of early morning coffee.
But there was the sea below, so familiar in its ancient tidal flow. The gray clouds were scudding thick in the wind; raindrops spattering and spreading across my tear stained cheeks. I had walked down to the beach; and the stones, shells, evergreen tips and cones generously offered themselves on the breast of smooth sand. Here! Choose us! Day Schildkret writes about his practice of mandala altar creations during a period of personal grief: “I felt like I was placing my grief on an altar and letting it go… an altar’s purpose is to sanctify something and offer it up to a higher source.”
I had bowed down in a consent of breath and receptivity, allowing myself to be a conduit for Mystery’s emergent design. Even as this mandala was birthed and shaped, I was aware of the rhythmic curling waves behind me, the tide slowly and relentlessly advancing. Schildkret writes “…impermanence arrives to teach us to deliciously, unabashedly, brokenheartedly fall in love with what is here right now, because that’s all we have.” How grateful I am for Nature’s generous contribution to this spiritual practice of outdoor mandala creations!
Melissa Layer, MA, LMHC honors the unfolding journeys of our wild and precious lives as compelling invitations for creative, integrative meaning-making in BodyMindSpirit. Her sacred calling and formal training as a psychospiritual therapist, hospice grief counselor, and spiritual director have taught her about the potency of thin places in thresholds and dark nights of the soul. Cultivating curiosity, Melissa offers expressive exploration of the Great Mystery through journaling, collaging, poem-making, dreamwork, visio and lectio divina, creation of rituals and altars, and engaged encounters with nature. Like the honeybee for which she is named, she claims her role as “a bee of the invisible…passionately plundering the honey of the visible in order to gather it in the great golden hive of the invisible” (Rilke). Melissa offers a compassionate, attuned presence and deep listening with the ear of her heart from the Pacific Northwest in Washington, where the Salish sea meets the evergreen forest.
Visit Melissa’s website here. Melissa is available for spiritual companioning through online platforms, phone and written correspondence. Contact her to inquire.
