Leo New Moon Meditation for 2004:

The Radiant Presence of Divine Youth
By Jean Hinson Lall

As the young athletes of over two hundred nations converge in Athens for the 2004 Olympic Games, Sun and Moon come together in the Sun’s own heroic sign, Leo. In the course of the Games, each competitor will strive to approximate the golden perfection of the solar god Apollo, who was often depicted as a flawless youth. The Leonian spirit is augmented this week by Venus and Saturn in Cancer, showing the nourishing support the athletes receive from home and the love and sense of duty they feel toward their countries, and also by Mars, Mercury and Jupiter in Virgo, representing the strength, technique, competitive drive, hard work, and self-control essential to success. Uranus in Pisces is opposite Mercury and Mars, infusing the proceedings with a universal perspective and exalted idealism that balances personal ambition and technical achievement (and also possibly introducing some surprises).

As we noted back in May, the rest of this year’s New Moons will fall in the late degrees of their respective signs, so that by the time we reach this archetypal moment of rebirth each month we have already journeyed with the Sun through the greater part of the sign and absorbed its lessons, including that of the Full Moon polarity. We have a lot to reflect back on, as well as a new lunar cycle to look forward to. Moreover, Mercury is retrograde until September 2, amplifying the retrospective quality of this time, so fitting for the return of the Olympic flame to the land where the Games began.

In our personal New Moon reflections, we may find it fruitful to reflect on the symbolism of the divine youth, to reconnect with our own youthful selves, and to remember and appreciate the gifts life gave us when we were young.

Recovering one’s inner child has become a cultural fad, at times carried to such self-indulgent lengths that one longs for a counter-movement to search for the inner adult! Behind the fad, though, is a deep psychological and spiritual insight. Throughout the world we find the deity appearing in the form of a child or youth, as for example Krishna, Apollo, Artemis, Persephone, Hermes or Christ. Childhood itself thus seems to have a divine aspect, or to be a doorway to the source. Our personal childhood has divine backing and resonance, yet the figure of the holy child is not personal.

At the risk of oversimplifying we could say that symbolically the child is the source of creativity, the possibility of change and renewal, and the carrier of the future. Apparently the child is also essential to spiritual life, for according to Jesus we must become as little children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Our Baltimore neighbor Rudy Strukoff, a blues musician, tells me that he never had to reconnect with the inner child because he never got disconnected in the first place. The door to the source was never slammed shut. That’s the secret of his artistic success (and no doubt also one of the reasons why he is such a delightful friend and neighbor). Somehow Rudy lucked out in school, getting introduced to finger-painting at a critical point in his development. The way he described this first experience of painting, I could tell that it had served to inoculate him against the dissociation from the creative source that most children suffer in the course of their schooling.

The interesting thing is how much mileage we can get out of just a few experiences of that kind. Lately I’ve been feeling grateful for some of the lucky breaks I got in my own schooling. I was a brainy, serious child who made the most of the academic offerings at the various schools I attended, but those were the glory days of North American public education when there was no perceived shortage of funds to pay for art, music and practical life skills as well as academics. Sewing, choral singing, ballroom and folk dancing brought me joy, but it was above all a handful of theatrical experiences – drama classes and plays -- that sustained my soul life and kept open the door to the world of magic and the sacred.

I was fortunate in my religious upbringing too, nourished on stories, music, and a felt sense of the nearness of a loving Creator (something not at all difficult to imagine under the Rocky Mountain sky!), rather than on doctrine. In the summers we often went to vacation Bible school, where there was plenty of time to draw, paint, sing, learn Bible verses and stories, and make things with our hands. One summer I built a model of the house with the upper room where Jesus had the last Passover meal with his disciples. Though the model itself is long gone, the house remains with me still as an inner abode, a sanctuary always in readiness for the Lord and his friends. Years later when I went to live in India I stayed in houses just like it, made of mud brick and whitewashed, with little upper rooms perched up top and space on the flat roof to sit outside and talk late into the night or fall asleep under the stars. I felt right at home. The tangible Indian houses reinforced the reality of my imaginal Galilean house, just as the dusty Indian roads (where Mahatma Gandhi had only recently walked with his disciples) brought to life for me the Galilean countryside long ago trodden by Jesus and his followers.

Gather to your heart the treasures of your childhood and youth, the saving graces that kept your soul alive in imperfect circumstances, and celebrate them at this New Moon. Give thanks to and for your parents and teachers. Practice and enjoy the skills you learned from them, and think of how you might pass them on. Embrace the perfect, radiant image of youth within you, which is not your personal inner child but an eternal presence through which the world can be healed and the future born.

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