Our challenge, both collectively and individually, as we begin 2008 is to look courageously at both order and chaos.

Tonight I am challenged to bring order to my chaotic thoughts, feelings and intentions. I gather them together with a sense of lawfulness. I make intimate connections for the desired horizontal movement to reflect and warm the destiny of my unfolding life.

Tonight I am challenged to create chaos in my soul. Can I meet that chaos from a place of cooling solitary stillness? Can I sink down the vertical pole of my life into the dark sea of freedom not knowing what to anticipate. … but spreading my dreams of being on wings of fulfillment?

Both of tonight’s poles – Order and Chaos bring necessary blessings. They are the parents of fecundity – the fertile being/essence of our souls. It is only in the meeting/mating of the two that we birth new ideas, new feelings and new deeds.

Order requires a disciplined will. A disciplined will follows a clear thought. Order likes to be maintained - but can fall into habit, convention or routine and the absence of any thought. Order without thought becomes meaningless.

Human behavior has two classical forms of order –religious order and military order. Both of these two orders exist to determine and maintain organization and boundaries. Religious order determines spiritual organization and boundaries. Military order determines earthly orders. People whose boundaries were abused as children desire religious (religious-like) and/or military (military-like) order to create a sense of spiritual and earthly safety.

Chaos can be the formless void fostering visions for the future through imaginative thought. There are black chaos and white chaos. Black chaos is the cauldron of earthly possibility and white chaos is the cauldron of spiritual possibility. Both are without order and have no determined boundaries or limitations to creative outcome. If we are afraid of one, or both, of these cauldrons of chaos, we suffer a rigid, inflexible existence.

For the evolution of consciousness in the collective or the individual we need order and chaos to alternate as womb. Each can conceive, gestate and birth the new. Yet, if they are isolated from each other for too long they lose the beauty of the womb and become tomb-like. The womb/tomb polarity is a secondary polarity to order/chaos.

Questions to Contemplate…

Many questions emerge from the order/chaos polarity. One of my challenges in writing the messages is to keep my imagination ordered. I love diving into these cauldrons and swimming around from one creative possibility to another. I just found this next exercise bubbling up in my consciousness.

First order. Imagine yourself a general giving yourself orders regarding setting and maintaining boundaries for a difficult area of your earthly life. Write those orders. Salute!

Next, you are an abbess or an abbot, with years of monastic living. Design for yourself a list of spiritual orders of a day or a week. Bow!

Now for chaos. Take 25 small pieces of paper. Notice if you cut them up equally or just tear them randomly. On each piece write a wildly creative verb; e.g., laugh, wiggle, color, fish, burp, float, recite. Fold up the papers and place them in a container/cauldron. Determine an area of your life that is very routine. Now draw out 3 slips of paper. Allow each verb to stimulate a new possibility for your routine.

Enjoy this exercise. I hope you find yourself seriously chaotically laughing about the ordered possibilities.