Cymbal

So many things I might share from the very rich conversations shared at last week's Retirees' Retreat!

Thanks to Red Butler for suggesting the link between "symbols" and "cymbals." Our discussion had done some spiraling around the notion of sybolism and sacrament. How important is the physical or material stuff we employ in our sacramental rituals? What is the function of this piece of bread, this drop of oil, this pool or lake or river we immerse in? How essential is this symbol? And how to understand its significance?

Then Red raised his arms holding up a grand set of imagined cymbals and brought his hands together with such a flourish we could almost hear the crash.

"It's the coming together of the Divine and the Human, the spirit and the matter. That's the symbol's job. Just like these cymbals." From that point in our week's conversations, whenever we would dig out the kernal of meaning and finally grasp what we'd been seeking, someone would raise their cymbals and we'd hear that Crash! of the Divine smashing into our human minds.

It was a great week!