The Widening Gyre

Colour Circle, August Macke (1887-1914).

◯

A few posts ago, I shared that my word of the year is "Center". I want to examine how I'm experiencing current events through the lens of Center.

What does that mean, anyway? It's open ended, not meant to be restrictive. It's a launching point. So pardon me if I end up with metaphor soup.

When I chose it, I felt that I had been spread too thin and lacked focus. I meant to choose the most important things, put those at the center of my mind, and live towards them. Among other things, Jonathan and I had been developing big plans ("big" is relative) to start a spaghetti night inspired by Ellen, known as common_earth on Instagram. Her family has been hosting Spaghetti Night on Fridays to have friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc., in their home to share a meal. Jonathan has been studying "the good life" while on his renewal leave, and we've been wanting to implement practices that build that, hence the spaghetti nights for informal fellowship and building relationships. We were going to start our first one shortly after he resumed normal work after his leave. BUT GUESS WHAT!!!!

Spaghetti night is off the table. And any other thoughts I'd had about getting people together, like mending parties and craft nights.

But there is more. There are other things I can build in my center while I wait for the time we can gather again. I'm still working on what that is, but it includes using technology to keep in touch, reading good books, making things, spending time outdoors, and nurturing plants, which nurture me in return.

◐

Why do "center", centering, circles, spirals, and such like have such an appeal anyway? I'm not sure but it's something innate and intuitive. Look at all the examples we have. The rotation of the Earth and the orbit around the Sun. Circular calendars, including the Liturgical calendar of the Christian church, the modern Pagan Wheel of the Year, and the Zodiac. Labyrinths. Mandalas. The Medicine Wheel of Indigenous North American peoples. Stonehenge. "The Circle of Life." Et cetera. The circle is a universal archetype representing eternity with no end and no beginning. Wholeness. The circular nature of time. God.

Here in the Western world, we see time as linear. Our existence as linear. But there are many cultures, including indigenous North American and Asian cultures, that see time as a cycle. As a Westerner, it can be hard to wrap my brain around, but as they say on Battlestar Galactica (and Peter Pan), "All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again." Or if you prefer a Biblical source: "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9 NRSV) Read one way, it's depressing, but in another, encouraging because we can learn from how those who came before us persisted through troubling times.

God the Geometer, 13th century illumination.

⬤

In the last few days, the words that are coming to my mind are "the widening gyre," from the W.B. Yeats poem "The Second Coming". I understand these words to reference Yeats' vision of time and periods of history. You may be familiar with these lines:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

(Excuse me for "pillaging" the poem, as The Paris Review article "No Slouch" writes.)

It feels a little bit like a storm, an invisible, silent one. Can the center hold? What about our lives now are the most important things? What do we hang on to, desperately as if it might be yanked out of our hands by chaos? What do we let go of? What have we lost that we will try to replace? To what do we say, "good riddance"? I don't just mean in our personal lives, but what about how our churches operate? Or workplaces. Our medical system. The government. The responses to COVID-19 by each of these entities (and individuals) reveals our flaws, our values (good and bad), and what's essential (certain jobs, and toilet paper evidently). Will we change our lives in response, to act against that which is unjust? To care for the vulnerable? Or will we look out only for ourselves or those like us?

When I chose "Center", I had no idea it would mean this much. I will continue to ponder and observe, and attempt to discern my answers to the above questions.

For you, reader, I have questions. One, what values have been revealed to you by COVID-19 and the responses to it? Two, if you have a word of the year, how has it interacted for you with the current situation?

◑

Tree of Knowledge No. 2 Series W, Hilma af Klint, 1913.