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Finding Meaning

11/26/2021

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“The success of a dinner party depends less upon what you put on the table than on what you put on the chairs.” –Miss Manners

A lot of people come for a Tarot reading telling me, “I just want to see what the cards say about” this or that. Finally, I began replying, “The cards don’t say anything; they are pieces of cardboard with pictures on them.” You—the client--and I, I explained, are going to answer your question; we’re going to read it in the book of your soul. The cards are just the illustrations. Or, if you prefer, miniature Rohrschach ink blots with slightly less baffling images.

One young man wanted insight into a long string of tragedies that had befallen his family over the years. After hearing my description of the personality type it represented, he identified the Page of Wands as his father. Much later in the spread, I described the King of Swords, and he again saw his father—but he quickly backpedaled as he realized how different the youthful, energetic, eager Page, full of what Sunryu Suzuki called “beginner’s mind,” was from the stern, logical, unswerving King of Swords. “I guess they can’t both be my dad,” he said.

I am naturally bookish, and good at memorization, and it took me a while to trust my intuition enough to loosen my grip on what the cards “meant,” and how their positions in the spread focused each card’s spectrum of possibility, and to remember that they are only useful aids in the search for significance. And when this client disclaimed his own intuition about his father, Miss Manners’ advice dropped into my head, and I immediately knew what to do. “Whatever meaning is present here,” I told myself, “is not on the table; it is on the chair.”

“No,” I assured him, “You are right. This,”—indicating the Page, “is the father you grew up with. This,” pointing out the King of Swords, “is the father you have now.”
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Watching his face in the next few seconds was like seeing a high-speed game of Tetris, all the losses and hardships his family had suffered falling into place, transforming the open-hearted, pliable young father of his childhood into the disillusioned, dryly rational man of his latter years.
In retrospect, this conclusion seems obvious—but I would have sought it in vain by staring at the cards as though they themselves had anything to say. Because the meaning is in the client, not the cards. The cards are the extraction tools of meaning.
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Healing Fire

11/26/2021

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So I had this vision.

I was praying for a sick friend the other day, using a prayer-meditation called the St. Anne Chaplet. (Chaplets are strings of beads in various configurations, each associated with short, memorized prayers; I love them, and they are my preferred sitting practice. Buddhists and Yogis, think japa; Muslims, think dhikr. These are not exact equivalents, but they are analogous.)
I am usually careful not to project my prayers “out there” to some distant God or saint “in heaven,” but to be aware of the presence of the prayed-to with me as I pray. In particular, I make an effort to pray the Hail, Mary directly into my own heart, because it, like the “Virgin’s womb,” is where God is born.

But I have lapses, and often catch myself going through the exercise somewhat mechanically. This time, though, I noticed my straying attention, and redirected my prayer into my heart—and immediately began to tremble violently all over. As I continued to pray, I saw myself in my mind’s eye burst into flame—harmless fire that did not consume whereon it burned. And I saw my sick friend, saw myself reaching out to her as the flames leaped from my arms to her, and as we embraced we were both engulfed in Holy Fire. I finished the meditation, sat in rapt silence a while, and went to bed.

Edit: I mention all this because, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I am not a pure person. I am impatient, bad tempered, conflicted, sensual to the point of concupiscence, and I have so little faith that I would be hard pressed to defend against an accusation of functional atheism. But the unseen is so close to all of us—“closer to you than your jugular vein”(Qur’an 50:16)—and we never know how near at hand the grace of God is.

Within thy circling power I stand;
On every side I find thy hand;
Awake, asleep, at home, abroad,
I am surrounded still with God
—Isaac Watts

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    Scott Robinson is an interfaith minister, musician, and spiritual director in Philadelphia. Hear his music at www.mandalaband.net.

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