Chapter 7: Resolution

My favorite part of making stained glass windows is the beginning of a new project. I go to the client's location and see where the window is to be placed and how it will interact with the influences of light, both natural and artificial. Then I start thinking about colors and shapes and how they will relate to the light and the space.

The creative process begins the same way New Year's resolutions begin: with a fresh start.

The daily grind presses on. All our time seems spent in work and working out our troubles. Days and nights continue to bleed us.

A new year arrives and we start planning resolutions--relief from the grind. We set new goals and get geared up to make changes in our lives that will ostensibly make us happier.

A few months go by and then we wind down, start back into our old bad habits, and repeat the cycle. We push that rock up the hill, only to watch it roll back down yet again.

Our relationship to life exists primarily in doing, less than in allowing. It's less scary to just stay busy. Staying busy occupies our minds and calms our emotions. The days go by and we get things done. Allowing feels too passive. We like to be proactive, incite change, move forward. Doing makes us feel in control.

But doing is actually something of a trap.

At the end of every task, we often feel let down. Even if we met our expectations, there is this “What's next” feeling. What will be the next thing that temporarily fills the void until we are done with it and feel the trap closing in on us again.

Allowing is more like watching dust particles or steam interacting with a shaft of sunlight coming through a window. The shaft of light creates what looks like a contained space, a solid structure within which the particles or vapors morph. But then the shaft of light moves to a new angle and the entire dynamic changes.

Our lives are very much like that shaft of light. We impose certain structures on our living, but they are only temporary. We morph inside and beyond the edges of what we consider to be a contained space. And then that source of containment turns into something else entirely and the dynamics change again.

The image on the Shroud is no different. When you look at the image on the cloth and then the photographic negative, for example, you see that the eye is being fooled. The cloth allows the mystery.

Is a resolution just another task on your to do list of all the doing for the new year?

If the course of action you decide on is to allow, that does not mean you just sit around all day waiting for things to happen. You still do all you set out to to do, but your relationship to doing changes. You become less expectation-oriented. You relinquish some of the control. You put forth your best efforts and intentions and then let go.

You allow the mystery of your life.