October 21, 2005
spinning a sacred circle
I may have committed magic last Saturday.
I needed to get away from my desk and spend some time outdoors on a beautiful day. I got it in my head to go do some spinning outdoors. Not just outdoors, but at some 19th-century setting in the greater Washington area. It's a 19th-century activity, after all, and I wanted to do it in 19th-century space for once.
I decided to head to Georgetown, and from there to the canal tow-path. I had a very 19th-century setting in mind: one of the locks on the canal.
However, once I got there (and went as far on my bike as I wanted to go that day), I found lots of people there. I spun anyway for awhile. The tourists might have thought I was there to help provide 19th-century atmosphere (after all, wasn't that my intention), but I got sick of the tourists and got back on my bike.
I had another, more solitary, place in mind: a bit of woods along the tow-path, where I saw the sun glinting off the Potomac. So I headed there, found the spot, and then bushwacked with my bike into the woods, headed towards the water.
That's when the magic was committed. I found a nice grove in a circle. I thought that's where I should spin. I cast a circle very informally, but I was very intentional about my spinning in a circle of trees, and thought of it as a sacred grove.
After I spun for awhile, I locked my bike to a tree (though it didn't seem there were any people anywhere around) and headed towards the water. The sun was still glinting off the water, and I found a place to meditate, using my jacket as a little pillow.
That's when I noticed a Latino family fishing nearby. I didn't let that stop me. I sat down in the half-lotus position and started to meditate, occasionally startled by a walnut pod falling on the leaves, which sounded a little like the gunfire I hear in my neighborhood occasionally. Soon after, the Latino family came by and I smiled at them and said hello as they passed. They smiled back.
After I meditated I noticed that there was actually a parking lot not far away, where folks go to launch their kayaks. So I guess I didn't have as much solitude as I thought. But it was fine, I had cast a circle, I had made the intention to make this, for the short time I was there, sacred space.
I unlocked my bike, thanked the creatures in the little grove, and bushwacked my way back to civilization.
Posted by jeb at October 21, 2005 6:08 PM | TrackBack