Each child is born a unique face of the divine. Watch a toddler move and you’ll see an easiness and grace that speak of unity between body and spirit. There is no past or future, just total presence in the wiggling of toes in wet sand and absorption in the sound of acorns crunching under foot. Whatever occurs is a celebration of the preciousness of life, even if it’s tantrums or tears.
Gradually, self-consciousness fragments our experience into shards of acceptable and non-acceptable, and the luxurious awareness of our selves as spirits-hosted-in-bodies is lost. This is when we start to toy with masks. Our faces become like front doors to our houses. Whom do we allow in? Whose knock do we elude? Yet the paradox is that we cannot hide. As John O’Donohue affirms in his book, Anem Cara, A Book of Celtic Wisdom: “The face always reveals the soul; it is where the divinity of the inner life finds an echo and an image.” (1) The question is how we stay open to the allowing and surrender that lead us back to our soul identity.
One path is through creative expression. Again, John O’Donohue: “Imagination is the most reverent mirror of the inner world.” (2)
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Recently at SpiritWorks Studio in Raleigh, North Carolina, workshop participants experimented with mask-making as a means of reconnecting with childhood knowing. Working in pairs, they started by applying a thick layer of lotion to each other’s faces and greasing eyebrows and facial hair with non-petroleum jelly.
Immediately, normal boundaries began to dissolve. The body responds to touch in a way that short circuits the mind’s barriers. With the addition of plastic wrap to cover the hair, any remaining reserve melted away. They were children again—vulnerable, curious, and free from self-judgment.
For many, the layering on of plaster strips shadowed memories of losing first their voices, and then their unique ways of seeing. Some participants reported feeling “a small death” as they became encased in hardened plaster. Others appreciated playing silent witness to what was going on around and inside themselves.
After a period of silence during which the plaster set, each person breathed deeply and then, with the out breath, gently pulled their mask loose. This was a moment of seeing themselves as a stranger might view them for the first time. All familiarity was gone.
“Familiarity enables us to tame, control, and ultimately
forget the mystery. We make our peace with the surface
as image, and we stay away from Otherness and
the fecund turbulence of the unknown that it masks.”
John O’Donohue (3)
Next, with the holding of face in hands came the possibility of decorating. Color and design became a prayer.
“Dear Spirit, allow me to connect again with the ancient landscape that expresses through me. Help me to embrace and fully inhabit my purpose for taking on skin at this time. Give me courage to be who I am meant to be.”
Each person applied paper, paint, feathers, and stones onto their mask without pausing to plan or think. With each artist discovering what wanted to take form, the masks became a ground in which each could again move toes in sand. Color by color, the sacredness of being—outrageous and sillily profound—was restored. Crab shells became crowns, and cones became beards. Spirals of sparkles expressed galaxies, and false eyelashes winked humor at this hobbled existence where Spirit yearns to free us from the constraints of our fears.
When the opportunity comes to reflect on what has arisen, smiles start to break out. No one notices at first, but as each person holds their mask and describes their process, it’s evident that the face they hold is an extension of what they’re already wearing. What has appeared to involve some degree of choice and discovery is simply an acknowledgment of what is already present.
We cannot NOT be ourselves. Our only determination comes in selecting how we feel about what is. We come to realize that there is no acceptable and non-acceptable.
“The negative is one of the closest friends of your destiny.
It contains the essential energies that you need and that
you cannot find elsewhere.” (4)
What has started with some degree of anxiety ends with a giggle, relief. There is indeed no hiding. We celebrate all that we are, each in our one-of-a-kind ways. With paint under our fingernails and glue still stuck to our knuckles, we carry home our treasures.
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A Blessing of Solitude
John O’Donohue
May you recognize in your life
the presence, power and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone,
that your soul in its brightness and belonging
connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect
for your own individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique,
that you have a special destiny here,
that behind the façade of your life
there is something beautiful, good and eternal happening.
May you learn to see yourself
with the same delight, pride and expectation
with which God sees you in every moment. (5)
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NOTES
(1) Anam Cara, a Book of Celtic Wisdom. New York: Harper Perennial, 1997.
(2) Ibid, p. 95.
(3) Ibid, p. 91.
(4) Ibid, p. 116.
(5) Ibid, p. 125.
