Release 11/11/21

When you downsize your life there are some things that you aren’t really sure what to do with - so you hold on to them until the timing seems right to let them go.

One of the things that we had been holding onto, was a pile of mandalas from years past, that had been tucked away in my closet.

Every year, on New Year’s Eve, we make a mandala for the coming year. We take large cake rounds and piles of old magazines and page through them, tearing out images and words that we are drawn to for the new year. Then we turn on music, and in silence put our mandala’s together, sharing them at midnight with a glass of champagne.

This tradition started many years ago when our kids were still small. We had been through a really tough year as a family. And after attending a retreat where we made mandala’s I brought the tradition home.

Sitting in my closet were probably ten years worth of mandala’s representing every member of our family.

Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning circle. They are a symbol for wholeness and life and they can be found in one way or another across most cultures and times. Our version is not as beautiful as a Buddhist sand mandala. Or as rugged as a Celtic spiral etched into a stone. But they hold special meaning and dreams for our family unit. Many of them have been accompanied by tears. Most have held our deepest desires.

Because of this, we were not sure what to do with them. It felt odd to just stick them in a storage unit with our extra books and furniture. Yet you couldn’t just dump them into the garbage either. So we put them in the back of the truck and waited.

During my many years in ministry I would often have people write things down on pieces of paper as an offering, or as part of some sort of ritual. At the end of these events I often had to ask myself what I to do with the little slips of paper that had been left behind. I finally settled on the act of burning as a way to release them into the universe.

After any gathering that produced little slips of paper, I would bring them home, put them into a special bowl that I referred to as my prayer bowl, and burn them. Then I would take the ashes from the offerings and sprinkle them in my garden saying a prayer for all that was written on them (I never peeked) and releasing them for the highest good of the person who had written the words. When we left our house in North Bend, one of the things I was sad to leave behind were all those prayer ashes scattered across our yard - over twenty years worth.

Somewhere along the road, we decided we would burn the mandala’s in a similar act of release. But the perfect spot never seemed to materialize to do this until this week.

We have spent the week in a place of such amazing beauty and peace. We have been restored here and given an opportunity to rest. We have even begun tentatively planning the remainder of our travels for the year - something we had been too exhausted to even consider before.

Add in that there was no burn ban in place - along with no wind or rain. And the timing just felt right.

So last night - after we had walked the dogs and done our evening garbage and dirty dishwater dump - we climbed back up the hill under a crescent moon and sparkling stars, and offered our mandalas back to the earth. They had been sitting in the firepit since we arrived, waiting for the perfect evening, and they were brittle and dry - just perfect for a burnt offering.

One by one Jason and I feed them into the flames. Taking one last look at them before giving them over to the fire. The last one to go in was my favorite as it came from a year when everything shifted for me. Tucked into the side of the mandala was a quote I had cut out that said, “I love not having to commute, and that my dogs can wander in and out of my studio all day.”. I remembered cutting that out and longing for what it described. At the time I was commuting every day to work for over an hour each way working way more than forty hour weeks between my work at the university and my work at the church. Jason was traveling almost every week for work and we rarely saw each other - let alone our dogs. The words on that little slip of paper seemed like a dream. Could we even imagine a life where those things could exist.

But something happened when I pasted those words onto my New Years Eve mandala that year. Every morning, as I got ready for work, I would read those words, and offer them up the universe. As a prayer, as a wish, as a unimaginable possibility.

And by the end of that year we had been offered the opportunity to buy my parent’s condo in the desert, downsizing our lives, and allowing me to quit working outside the home and concentrate on my writing.

I am not sure what I believe about miracles - but the fact that our lives now reflect the reality of those words says something to me about their possibility. About setting intentions and letting them free into the universe. About releasing what we think we should be doing, or even have to be doing, and begin imagining what we want to be doing in our short lives.

Last night, as the many mandalas burned, I said a prayer of gratitude for this practice that has become such a cornerstone for our family.

And I said a prayer of gratitude for unexpected miracles that change the course of our lives and allow us to step out in the direction of our dreams.