We went out to the Golden Gate Recreational reserve and visited a few historic sites. I am reminded how much I love old abandoned buildings. I can feel the energy of people and events passed. It's a blessing sometimes to be removed from my present and transported into the energy of the past; filled with people with their own sorrows and joys- so many the same as us living today.
I start the journey with this picture I took from an old Battery location on the Coast. This is a location built in 1905 to protect the SF Bay Area from warships and to fire cannons from which could reach as far as 8 miles out to see. I was transfixed by this door. What's inside? Who passed through these doors over 100 years ago? What conversations were had by these doors? I imagined the smell of cannon powder, perhaps cigarette smoke. How long ago were these doors shut to the world? And who was the person who finally shut them - forever...? Did he know he was shutting these doors forever?
Do we know when we have shut doors forever by our actions; the things we say, the things we do? Will someone someday be standing at those big heavy steel doors that we shut- wondering... what happened to you? What is inside?
Ohhh...how I loved this next one. A narrow stairway up led me to this small room with several of these windows. This obviously faces the Golden Gate bridge. There is the same space to the right of this picture and two more behind, all facing out to see and north, up the coast. This small room must have been for armed fire by soldiers. This particular window reminded me so much of myself. Look through the window. See the perfect beauty outside- the picturesque hillside, the bridge, the lush trees. Then look at the jagged and ruined edges through which you are viewing such beauty. Like this window, I often view beauty in the outside world through a jagged edge; my perceptions, my bad experiences, my prejudices, my judgments...simply, my mankind. My own constructs. And those constructs can be confined to a small room where I only have windows to look out to the beauty. Have your perceptions of the beauty around you ever been confined to a small space in your mind and viewed through your jagged perceptions of life? The beauty is out there. No matter how, or from where, we look at it.
Point Bonita Lighthouse. I took this picture off of the rail of a small bridge and after about .5 mile from the parking lot. Point Bonita Lighthouse came to this location in 1877. It is still a functioning and maintained lighthouse. The suspension bridge does not allow for tourists and needs to be reinforced. This was about as close as we could get. Straight down is steep and intimidating cliff side. I have always loved me a good lighthouse. I think they are so romantic. Weird, right? They do hold some lore in American culture: the lonely wife pacing the lighthouse waiting for its' beam to guide her sailor husband home. Never knowing if he will come home from sea or if in fact he is still alive. It's the welcome warmth and refuge for men and women who have been away too long and a signal of protection from the dangerous cliffs of the coast. It is both a warmth and a protection. It is masculine in this way yet also feminine in it's longing. It is, as it's name says, beautiful.
To get to the lighthouse, part of the walk involves this tunnel. Yeeeesh, huh? Very dark (somehow I caught some good light in this picture), wet and dripping from the top throughout. Very eery. Not a place to chill at night in my book. But through this tunnel, the incredible beauty in this picture above. Ah- now isn't that a not-so-hard-to-figure-out parallel to life? Through the dark, dank, damp, dreary, scary, places of our minds we can be transformed to see the light, the beauty, the warmth and the welcoming of love and of sheltered protection. What is your light house? And what dark and looming tunnels will you need to traverse to get there...?
And finally, this. My new best statue sea lion friend. Hope s/he liked blond hair for lunch :-).
Where do your large iron doors lead? What are they keeping locked in- or...locked out? How do you look at life: all of its' beauty through a jagged window? Or face-to-face, ready for what it has to bring and outside of the small rooms of your mind? Do you have a beautiful light and warmth emanating from you to the people you love, as the lighthouse above? Are you a place of protection, warmth and refuge?
And finally, what tunnels do you need to pass through to reach any of these things? Tunnels of the mind, the body or the spirit? I encourage you to think about starting to walk through them. They are looming, foreboding, intense, dark. They are scary and unknown, full of twists and turns.
But one step leads to the next. And before you know it, you are walking through- perhaps even sprinting.
In the end and on the other side...transformation awaits.
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