Receiving
Dedication by Bumsita
IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL
When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, thou hath taught me to say
“It is well—It is well with my soul!”
Horatio G. Spafford wrote the lyrics of this hymn in 1873. They came to him as he stood on the deck of a ship staring into the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. He was on his way to reunite with his wife. She had just survived a tragic shipwreck that had taken the lives of their four daughters. As the vessel passed through the water where his children had died, Spafford immortalized his complete trust in God, writing: “whatever my lot…it is well with my soul”.
Our intention for this edition was to celebrate the yin of the creative cycle, the period of receiving that naturally follows periods of generating. I was drawn to the binary of the I Ching—to the first and second hexagrams, Qián and Kún, which represent the Creative Heaven and the Receptive Earth. They are the building blocks on which all other hexagrams are made. It is poetic, then, that this season has stripped me to the studs.
We create art to work things out. To work things out, we must integrate. We often hold our consciousness in the glossy airspace around our temples, where it can hide behind the safety of intellect. To express ourselves artistically, we must pull that spider’s silk back down through our bodies, where it is met with true sensation. Thinking ceases and feeling begins. This is frequently uncomfortable. Our intellect revolts and parades as doubt; we find it hard to trust ourselves. Nobody cares—we say—and if they did, they would laugh. Very well, then. Let them laugh.
Trust is the heart of art. It is also the heart of life. We want very badly to understand why the things in our life are happening—mostly, the bad things. If we can assign it logic, we posit, our pain will ease. But control never brings the relief we expect it to. Only trust can do that.
This edition is dedicated to trust. It is dedicated to the mysteries of life, those things I will never control, but can only let wash over me. This edition is dedicated to the salt and the sea. This edition is dedicated to being held while you cry in public. It is dedicated to the love that is always there at the end of every day. It is well, it is well with my soul!
