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TWO WOMEN OF SIGNIFICANCE
by Yao Xiang Shakya
This morning as most mornings, as it is my practiced habit, I sit at the kitchen counter and drink a cup of tea. The dogs curl themselves on the ceramic tile underneath my dangling legs for it is their habit to be nearby. I read some noteworthy teaching from the sages of the world and feel the dark morning brighten this interior room.
This morning I read from the Letters of Saint Catherine of Sienna, a medieval woman who, as a tertiary member or the Dominican Order, lived the life of a contemplative in her family home. A theologian and philosopher, her voice carried strong and expansively to both her cloistered sisters and to the clerics of her time, including two popes.
Her insight, cast in words, led my contemplation: ÒHonour to God, toil to man.Ó I read it and felt the words coincide with what I know to be true. As is my habit, I changed the words as someone tunes a string on a personal instrument. The tuning is necessary since it allows me to hear the words as a song within, and I sing them silently.
ÒThe Good for you is to honor the holy ones and to work and offer goodwill to man.Ó
Yes, I thought, it is exactly so. And it is indeed the singing which is the means to humility. I did not set it down there but continued to reflect on this clear measure; and slowly its melody opened scrolls of leaves and the buds of instructive truths that grew from it. The first was Òpurify the mind.Ó And slowly it unfolded that it is "strain" that brings purity. The "heat" of our labor burns off the dross. ÒWashing, straining and caringÓ purify.
Impurities are natural and as continuous as the dust that gathers and appears on windowsills. It is a natural occurrence. It is natureÕs calling card to remind us where we are and what is going on here.
When I neglect the strain, the heat, or forget the washing and care, I am covered with the dust of the world. When I turn towards these ordinary means right here in this ordinary house little dust collects, and the window and its sill are cleaner. And clarity if not all is the better half of the effect.
Sickness, aging and death cannot be skipped. No one skips the crucifixion or the maggot covered carcass. The desire to honor God and to toil for man is a workable means to traverse the human dilemma. Nothing is held against anyone except by the eternal desire to find the Way. Everything conspires to awaken the glory and honor to the holy ones and the work and goodwill to man.
Hollis Sigler, an American artist who died from breast cancer in 2001 exemplifies this truth in her painting, To Kiss the Spirits: Now This is What It is Really Like, 1993.
It is hard to say whether the opening begins where the woman stands on the ordinary street or from the star-filled angel sky. The stairway to heaven reaches into heaven from the street below while the stairway descends downward to the earth. The feminine figure appears to begin on the ground and to travel upward to disappear into the angelic starry night. ÒHonour to God, toil to manÓ expressed as a lighted stairway upward where the figure is transformed into a radiantly feminine messenger of god.
Images such as this one are useful means to help us remember Catherine of SiennaÕs medieval proclamation on what is good for you and me. Using a short combination of words, Catherine makes sense of the world and tells us what belongs where. Hollis Sigler shows us how it is visually in her rendering To Kiss the Spirits.
