Grief and Praise

“Grief is gratitude for Life.”

                                                           Martine Prechtel  

I first learned about the single Mayan word that meant grief and/or praise several years ago. I was smitten. It seemed to bring together two experiences of human expression that were both precious. They meant more to me when merged. I extoled this form of expression with the Elder Salon. I even wrote a Slow Lane about it. Now, because I have been grieving a lot lately, grief and praise have come back into my mind. It is deeply reassuring to me, and so inspiring, to recall that love’s intensity comes pouring out with my tears.

I need to remember, as the world careens so wildly, that my fear and anxiety, which feed my uncertainty, which finds expression through my heartache and sadness, have love at their core. I don’t like the inhumane violence I have been witnessing lately. It buffets my heart, and causes dark dreams. But it also reminds me of what is important. Life is precious, and I know it is coursing through everything. Even the impact of the gore, whether deadening, or heaven forbid freeing, raises life’s signature. I can feel evolution beating my heart, and directing my attention. I know, because I have experienced the oneness of grief and praise, that love, mine or otherwise, is directing the moment.

The experience of the oneness of grief and praise resides in the dark waves of seeming loss. One is carried away when the loss is great enough. Everything loses its meaning. Wailing, silent or loud, is all that can give the tragic its due. These moments, laden with hopelessness, are like storm clouds breaking into rain. They paint the world with the grim determination of ruthless nature. They also water the land, sow life, and break the heavy pattern that has prevailed. Loss breeds gain. Grief simultaneously carries praise. The heart breaks open and is enlarged. The pain that breaks it open is the love that enlarges it.

These seemingly dark moments carry a strange form of gravity. It is as if two worlds are drawn together by the import of what has happened. Each, infused with its own energy, grief (loss) and praise (gain) combine, and form a third world. A place where the Divine works it’s unknown magic — a world, full of a painful awareness and precious understanding.

I chafe at being so grown.

Peace lies at the balance point of grief and praise. It is an uneasy, hard won peace. But, peace never-the-less. There is no substitute for the experience of knowing Life has your back.  It may come in a tangle of broken waves, darkened with uncertainty, but enlivening anyway, infused by a light so bright it cannot be seen.

Tragedy is just another way of getting at us. It takes us beyond ourselves in unexpected ways.  And we only have a few poor means of expressing this miraculous feature of Life. Happily, the Mayans have come up with one, and our lives reinforce it from time to time. Grief and praise are related — they both are expressions of love ­—and of how deeply we are connected.

May you have enough!

 

 

 

 

Extinction

My gratitude comes from the sheer gift of Life itself.  

I have been having the experience of a terminal person, rather than of someone who only knows about death. Life has grown more vivid, now that I know the end is here. It occurred to me recently, that we humans are already experiencing an extinction event. It isn’t popular to mention this, even less desirable to suggest it is already happening. I think it is. Fair warning. That is what this Slow Lane is about. My subject is what some call “the end times,” what I call, “fulfillment.”

I am not under the thrall of some ‘New Age’ dream about transformation. I sense death and destruction in the air (literally in our atmosphere). I can see where the trends are heading, and I can feel despair and anxiety growing. I directly experience the grief in my soul. I am, at times, very ashamed to be human, cause look what we are generating.

I know as a writer — the wind has gone out of my sails. I don’t have several generations of others to write too or for. My audience is becoming dust. I don’t see a future to dream about. This awareness constantly disturbs me, upsetting the joy aging has brought me. The prospects, I see for my daughter, haunt me. I worry that my time on Earth, has somehow been tainted by this planetary suicide. For all of this, I feel immense, and on-going, grief.

I am only a man, what can I know for certain? Perhaps something surprising is going to play out. I don’t know! Humanity may have more chapters to play out.

But, dying has shed an alternative light on all of this. I am experiencing the way inevitability enhances life in unexpected ways. Take conflict, for instance, the inevitable lack of resolution, leads to a living with conflict, and no sense that it has to go somewhere. Relief lies in inevitability. There isn’t really a dominate world-view. The end insures a complete life. The clouds of expectations give way to acceptance, a quality far too scarce in our current human world.

I have, as I have been coming to the experience of dying, witnessed the way it has altered my being, making me more human, and sensitizing me to the miraculous nature of this existence. My later years have been the best — they have led me to be more fulfilled in life — than I would have ever imagined. Because I have witnessed, and know fulfillment, I can imagine that it might be in the offing toward the end.

I have been blessed, if you want to call it that, with enough time in the darkness, to know that darkness is another form of Light. It is, to be sure, the form I most fear, but it is also the experience where I have been most alive, available, malleable, and aware. The darkness, I’ve learned, is the womb of light and change.

Because I am a creature of darkness, I can think that the coming time, as opaque as it is, might lead us into a blaze of glory. A warm, friendly, inexplicable dark and massive bonfire. As we become more subject to the darkness, the better angels of our being are roused into being.

Suicide is not the end, nor is it, when it is collective.  Instead, it just might be fulfillment of a sort. 

 

 

 

This Moment

Who 

you are

cannot

 be fully contained

 by what’s happening

to you

 just now.

That’s right!  The moment doesn’t capture all of who you are. Think about it. Are you only who you are, when you have one of the mini-rants, you go on, when you are confronted by the political divisions of our times. Of course not! Nor are you solely like you are, when a baby is around. Humans are such complex beings, that no moment can fully capture the wholeness of our being. So, your worst moment, only says a little bit about you. Maybe enough, for some people, but never very much. Beware of judging on too little information.

I mention this, because too many of us fall prey to this tendency, for quick and too simple judgement. This is another of the ways that speed can be damaging. This is the most negative form of reduction. All too often, it is one of the sins we commit with ourselves. We are not just what we did with our last insensitive move. So, it’s time to let ourselves off of the hook. Knowing oneself means, knowing what runs deep and consistently, inside. The moment rarely catches our wholeness.

Yes, the moment is extolled. Certainly, there are people who, at times, are unable or unwilling to come into the moment. But, too many of us are defined by a moment. Getting into the moment, and getting out of the moment, are real skills,  that are more complex than many of us realize. The moment can be a trap. Don’t get captured by it! But, do find your way to it.

There are intimate, desperate, funny, defining, harsh, loving and liberating moments. They are all fleeting, and all deeply involving. They capture so much, and so little. Life is a parade of them. Enough of them, and you have a tendency. Then, you can start having a response. But, until then, watch out, they only give an impression.

The moment can be sacred. Transcendent too. In it, one can die. It is ephemeral — can be transporting, and enlightening. But, the moment can also trick and mislead. The moment can be eternal. It is what one makes of it. So, be careful.

In a moment, you will realize that this moment isn’t what you think it is.

This is a fair warning — that abuses the moment — to reflect some of it’s joys and limitations. It is a momentary reflection upon the moment, a comment on a complexity that can paint a lifetime.

Enjoy the strange, everchanging moments left you.

 

 

 

  

Dawdling

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

 Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.

 We cannot cure the world of sorrows,

but we can choose to live in joy."

                                                                    - Joseph Campbell

The pace of modern life is hectic, it is as if, speed and efficiency are the signs of a good life. We all know that isn’t true, but that awareness, doesn’t keep us from the consequences of speeding along. Who knew lemmings were so fast.

Every year, I promised myself long ago, I would write at least one Slow Lane that addressed the way we speed through this life. This piece hails back to that impulse, the one that served as the beginning place, for this long-winded diatribe about Life’s gifts. Speeding is decidedly not one of them, because it tends to obscure the real beauties of existence. Slowing down, not only reveals the real sorrows and miracles of life, but reveals how they are joined. It is this invisible (with speed) symmetry that makes the holy vision of the world palpable.

Lately, I have found myself grieving about another way speed, the pace of our race, has enabled the denial of our truest humanity. Like water that adhering speedily to the surface, creates a flash flood. Too many of us, caught up in the rat race, never experience depth, and as a consequence, never really know ourselves.

It makes sense that we are haunted by so many conspiracy theories (threats from others). It is difficult to maintain a life, that is so easily thrown off course, because of others actions. To maintain course, one needs the ballast of solid self. Speed, the over concern with having too much to do, denies self-knowledge. Constant activity prevents experience of the self. That is why some people keep themselves busy. They don’t want to face the emptiness, that comes with not knowing self. And that experience of shallowness inside, and distrust outside, is the recipe for feeling threatened by outside sources. 

The solidity and depth of one’s self provides the confidence in one’s self-motivated direction that keeps one on one’s self-chosen trajectory.  To get anywhere significant, one has to slowdown enough, to take one’s own measure.

Then going has intrinsic meaning — paradoxically —slowing down speeds one up.

The essential message of this tract is, that the holiness, created by the blending of the world’s sorrows with the world’s great joys, cannot be apprehended going too fast. Slow down, and feel your heartbeat. It is a part of the world’s rythem.

 

 

 

  

Clarity

Sometimes a feeling of the end comes, before the actual end comes. Anyway, you know it is near. That changes things, in some unpredictable ways.  A kind of shroud descends. The world becomes more precious, and each moment is laden with portent.  What crowds into everything is the unknown.

Death is near-by, waiting for the inexplicable time, the corralling moment, when everything known goes bye-bye. Waiting is. Still, the opportunity to fill the end, with all that has meaning, presses. It is a time like no other.

This is what’s happening to me.  I celebrated the New Year with a medicine journey. It turned out that the medicine was about being at the end-stage. Surprisingly, it wasn’t morbid. I was whisked from knowing about death to dying — and the world turned more vivid. Clouds parted. I became more completely me. And a familiar, but somehow freshened clarity, appeared. I am no longer waiting for the inevitable, I am the inevitable.

Dying is a trip. Things are more urgent, while other things, lose their urgency. And urgency isn’t about time, it is about accuracy and completeness. I have so much to give thanks for. Nuances have flags now, and I notice like I never did. Everything shines with a breathtaking clarity. The darkness is even darker, but more intriguing, and more filled with potential.  I love this sense of being blessed to be here, and knowing that I’m passing through. Dissolving into wholeness. There is a tenuousness to things that evokes preciousness.

If I’d have known dying was so good, I would have died sooner.

The end is here. I don’t mean in this moment. I don’t know when, any more than I did before. So, I could still be around years from now. I don’t know. But, I do know that the experience of dying suits me better, than what I’ve done until now. Things are changing. I can feel myself integrating, in unpredictable ways, the end.

Does this mean that while I am alive I’ll live differently? I don’t know. Will I continue doing some of the things I’ve been doing? I don’t know. Everything and nothing could change. Mystery seems to have gotten deeper. The moment seems more pleasantly infused with it. Not-knowing, and being OK with it, thrusts me further into a warm fuzzy unknown. Love somehow permeates it all, bringing with it a strange clarity.

My days are full of “I get to” instead of “I have to” now. There is so much relief that comes with things being over. I don’t have to try anymore. I am free, even from my own unfulfilled longings. I trust that the Universe knows what it is doing. There is nothing so relaxing as letting go.

It won’t be long now. Oddly, I’m more here now that I’m going.  

 

 

  

The Self-Needs

I studied developmentalism. From about 40, until I was well over 50, I had an avid interest in the way we humans grew. What led me to elders, was an aspect of this interest. After the stroke, and its effect upon my consciousness, I theorized that old people had the best chances of reaching the farthest levels of development. I surmised that a longer life, might translate into a life filled with more educative and transformative hardship.

The Elder Salon, was my way to finding out if there was any merit to this idea. Gratefully, now I know there is. But, that isn’t the reason I am writing today. Along the way, I found out, that human self-satisfaction arose out of some simple, and seldom talked about, things. These are things, I think are best shared.

Sometime during graduate school, I read a book, entitled The Adjusted American (1958), that pointed out that America seemed to be caught-up in, what the authors called, a “normal neurosis.” Normal because everyone did it, and neurotic because it never produced the desired outcome. People were caught-up in caring too much about what others thought 

It turns out, that later developmental research (in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s) showed that this tendency is a by-product of early human development. It is a feature of the early desire all humans are born with —the desire to fit in, for survival’s sake.

That was interesting, and accounted for the some of the difficulty that people experienced. But more interesting, was how the book went on to describe basic adjustment needs, that I have learned to consider essential to the well-being of all of us.

There are only three of these needs. They seem very simple, but as you will see, they demand a lot more attention than most of us give them. Ultimately, they are needs we humans have, that we can only fulfill for ourselves. That is what makes them so interesting, and so dicey. Here they are;

1)   A need for an acceptable self-image. One that contains every element of who you consider yourself to be. From the one you are alone, to the one you are with others. This need evolves as you learn things about yourself. If your self-image is inaccurate, you are going to find yourself in a lot of situations you are not really happy about. Inflated or deflated self-image leads to a host of problems.

2)   You also need a self-image that is accurate. Here is where one needs the integrity to be honest with oneself. The accuracy of one’s self-image improves over time, or doesn’t. Whichever is the case, this accuracy will determine how much one can rely on oneself, and how much of oneself one can allow to be seen. 

These two elements are only good if they line up; acceptability without accuracy leads to trouble, conversely accuracy without acceptability can lead to another kind of trouble. Each of these are subject to change, and either can throw one. The strength of each depends on a true reading of both, and that is where the third need comes in.

3)   One needs a sense of self that is verifiable. As a social animal, human beings depend on each other for lots of reasons. The foremost element of these, is the mirroring we provide each other. Sometimes, lifetimes are spent looking for accurate, unbiased, objective mirroring. Diversity can provide many viewpoints at once, all needed, to serve up an accurate take. But, the essential message of this need is that the social dimension of being human is a required aspect of forming an effective self.

Becoming fully human is a difficult task. I have learned it takes all of a human lifetime. I am grateful I have grown old enough to have a sense of this. I am also grateful, that I can now see, that I have always needed me, to fulfill my most essential needs. Life has always been risky, these needs, adequately fulfilled, give me the audacity to risk being myself on this journey.

I hope they serve you as well.

 

 

Three Kings

They came from who knows where. Out of the darkness, like royal beings appearing in the night, fully self-possessed, and yet searching. Beautiful and bizarre, they bring expectation, and the knowledge that something is happening. There is a presence about them. They bring promise, fortitude, and a steady gaze. And, they bring it all, into my living room each solstice season.

I’m referring, of course, to the Three Wisemen, known as the Magi. My only Christmas, and Christian, decoration of the season. I have been long influenced by them. And they make their long journey into my living room each year. They come, I think, to remind me, and to refresh my intention. Their journey, through the desert, echoes my own, through the wasteland of commerce and sentimentalism, that governs this time and place. With them, I’m keeping my eyes, and my heart, focused on the light that shines in the darkness.

I’ve been inspired by their tireless journey. By the constancy of their seeking.  I need to be encouraged to persist. There are days when it is hard for me to get-up and face reality. I drag myself to the next moment. It is not a pretty scene, but an all too familiar one. I’ve lost my sense of direction, and my will to move. Then they reappear, carrying the gift they don’t give away— the gift they are. The darkness, becomes once more, the desert I’m traveling through, as I follow the light.

This is the season of darkness. And, it is getting so dark. Everything wears a shadow, portending some coming reckoning. Life seems to have become some kind of enemy. The Earth hurtles toward the unknown. A darkening is upon us.

But the Magi follow the light, and see it brightening even this darkening era. I am heartened by their steadfast demeanor. I go too, with expectation, and the wisdom of the seasons. The light always returns, and ultimately prevails.

We are approaching the Solstice, the darkest time of the year. It is time to celebrate! It is hard to know which is more germane to the moment — the darkness, or the returning light. Both are enriching. Both carry us. The darkness is most feared, carrying as it does, the unknown depths, the aspirations we dare not utter. The light is another matter, brilliant with hope, and sometimes blinding us, overshadowing good sense. All of it so human. We welcome the light, honor the darkness, and cross our fingers. Each of them is so potent.

The three arrive just in time. Who knows what myth originated them, whether they are of totally Christian origin, or of some even more ancient people — because they embody some awed aspect of being human. There is a place in the human spirit where there is a constant trek through bleakness and waste, following a brilliant possibility. The Magi, in that sense, are real. They carry the rich gifts of our heritage. They are ancient activists —keeping the faith — following the best in us. They arrive during this intersection, when darkness and light converge.

Nobody knows what the New Year, the return of the seasons will bring. We are equally blinded — by the darkness, and the returning light. This year will be what it will be. The Magi search through the desert, through our empty culture, through our yearning hearts. Always seeking. Following what has heart, meaning, and possibility.

Let them find you, and I, this year.