Gratitude for Darkness

“Darkness is the light most feared.”

The Solstice season is upon us. This is the time when one traditionally celebrates the return of the light. Each year we live through the darkest part of the year and focus most of our joy and gratitude upon the celestial turning that returns to us beginnings and new light. This is the season of the Christmas story, Kwanzaa, Hannukah, and the New Year. We, collectively, celebrate and honor the light that shows up in the darkest hour.

This year, perhaps perversely, I find myself thinking about my gratitude for darkness. I am well aware that what I am — some strange and contradictory combination of brokenness and wholeness — is a product, not of light, but, of darkness. I wheel around aware that I had to be dragged into hellish darkness to be forged into a new man — a lesser and paradoxically more capable being. It turns out that the Abyss is part of my parentage.

I used to think of myself as a kind of diplomat, an emissary from the realm of the needy. I was one who never hesitated to say that asking for help was one of the most community building things one could do. I was skewed enough to contradict the Bible and say that it actually is more blessed to need (to ask and receive) than to give. Now, however, I’ve come to see that I am really the ambassador of darkness. I came out of a place so dark that I never want to go back there, but all of my gifts of awareness were given to me there, and I have come to believe it is the darkness that gives Life.

I don’t have a Christmas tree, colored lights, or even candles, but I do have three wise men. They are all that remains of a once mainstream Christian life. They have stuck with me, and accompanied me during my lonely, sometimes solitudinal, dark vigils. I’ve come to see them differently, not just as heroes that persevered through the desert following a star, but as actual kings of the darkness, who have shown-up to pay homage to what the darkness has wrought. The star of Bethlehem is to me a product of the dark mystery surrounding it.

When I first had my stroke, and had to wait for declining year after declining year to find out if I would live, I used to curse the darkness of Creation. I was confused by the painfulness uncertainty of my life. I didn’t know then what I do now. I was being re-worked, re-made. In an invisible studio I was fitted with an awareness that could only come from suffering and helplessness. The hands that held and re-shaped me were not only invisible and non-palpable, they were stained with darkness, so deep and merciful that I could not imagine it.

Today, I have the pleasure of knowing many elders, old people who have known dark times – the sometimes painful, uncertain, and seemingly unending periods (where there is no human solace deep enough to last) — create compassionate understanding and real character. The darkness of Life, if it doesn’t kill one, confers a depth of humanity that cannot be attained any other way. In fact, darkness is the birthplace of depth. Hidden in the shadows is a dark gem, not one anyone can grasp, but one that sometimes grasps us. The broken body, job, relationship, or lifestyle, is a terrible well-spring that unleashes hard-won wisdom into the world.

I don’t really know how to be thankful for such a demanding and seemingly arbitrary fruitfulness. I feel hugely ambivalent about even harboring this awareness. I know I have much to give thanks for, that some angel must have had to endure a lot to give me a chance to write these words, but I would not wish this experience upon anyone. The darkness is just too exacting.

Still, here in the traumatized aftermath, I am thankful! I don’t really know how to express it, I don’t know how to honestly honor the unimaginable, but I know I owe this part of what is good about my life, to that which perched and feed upon me long enough that I became a being capable of being grateful for darkness. To me, this is the real gift of the season, one that in this dark-age offers a great deal.

In the end, I guess I write these words to remember what darkness has granted me, and to remind everyone that light sometimes shows up as darkness.

Trust

Trust. Trust is something that seems so undermined, that I no longer feel that we, as a species, would trust any human-made solution to our current environmental/economic crisis. It seems, that people no longer believe in people. And I guess there is good reason for this. Never-the-less, this development concerns me, it leaves me wondering about our social nature. The other, who is all of us, seems to threaten us. The other, each of us, seems to be a big bogey-man, an obstacle to peace, stability, and progress. Trust is low and very conditional. I am suffering because I am assumed to be a threat, before I even get a chance to interact. I am deemed untrust-worthy until I prove myself trust-worthy.

Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be. Maybe access to the commons is supposed to be contingent upon the right kind of behavior. I feel troubled by the level of distrust that seems to prevail everywhere however. I’m not talking about the kind of trust involved in leaving the door to your house, or car, unlocked. I’m talking about the kind of trust that is involved in leaving one’s heart and mind unlocked, the kind of trust that means engaging openly with an other.

I’ve been a psychotherapist long enough to know that this kind of trust is an inside job. The glib way to say it is that we trust others exactly a much as we trust ourselves. This seems to be one of the biggest problems that faces us. How can I trust another if I can’t trust me? Hold on, don’t be your self yet, because I’m not sure I can handle it. Hold on, I’m not even sure I can handle me being me yet. Until I am sure about me being me, I’m not really able to handle you being you. And if I’m just faking it, to reassure myself I’m trust-worthy, then everyone is suspect, because they might upset my delicate balance.

Unfortunately, even trusting your self is inadequate. The other is simply a shadowy projection of the self, not truly an other with mysterious, uncertain origins. Now reality is just too psychological. Self-trust is necessary, but only a step in the right direction. This is, admittedly, a step that is rarely taken. It represents a developmental achievement, which does ease distrust, but it doesn’t actually let the wild other run free. The other is satisfyingly us, a kind of unity gets to be in the world, but only at the price of diversity. The other isn’t perceived as having a reality of its own.

I’m not really too good at being someone’s projection. Actually, I resent it. I don’t want to be that tame. Instead, I want to be met. to have my authentic aliveness interact with another’s, to be a wild and uncertain beings meeting.  Each interaction, I would hope, has a flavor of first contact — me, alien, you, just as alien. Now what?

But what is trust then? Certainly it isn’t something I want to place in something or someone else. That is a risk. Keeping it to myself is an option, I know me well enough to at least be predictable. But, wait a minute! I also know myself well enough to know I have limitations, I may not perceive all the possible threats. I’m not totally trust-worthy. Trusting me is a better bet, for sure, than trusting another, but not a sure one. Is there a sure one?

I don’t think there is. Reality is a wild crapshoot. Yuck, and of course! I place my trust in the best illusion I can find, and only then, because it reassures me, not because it renders me any more secure. Strangely, and paradoxically, when I get this vulnerable, when I realize this is the way life is, that everything and everyone that exists is equally uncertain and vulnerable in this way: I become more trust-worthy, and more trusting. The untrust-worthiness of life generates greater trust.

This is the trust I want to bring to life. The trust-worthiness of knowing of how untrust-worthy life can be. The other doesn’t exist in any way for my sake. I don’t exist in any way for their sake. We share the vulnerability that comes with existence, and we can’t do anything about it.

I trust how untrust-worthy life is. That makes the other something I have no way of relating to. That makes of me an innocent, an empty-pocketed traveler, in a mysterious world, encountering the other like I would an ocean, a mountain, a herd of elk, or any other phenomena of nature. I am trust-worthy because I no longer carry a need for trust.

This is the kind of trust that can make relations more trust-worthy, but is it the kind of trust I am willing to put my faith in?

Goo

A few days ago a friend described to me a metaphor for metamorphosis that set me to thinking. He was watching a video of Barbara Marx Hubbard when she described the transformation, in the chrysalis, from caterpillar to butterfly. We had each heard the details of this change before. He found himself wondering about the soup of former caterpillar that was to become a butterfly. I too wondered about the soup, the gooey soup of butterfly potential. My wondering goes beyond the resistance to change that the final caterpillar cells manifest, to the properties of the transforming goo.  That wondering follows, and takes form, uncertainly, just as the cells of the new emerge from soup of the old.

There is something, somewhere, that knows what it is doing. The goo goes from no form, the broken-down mess of a caterpillar, to a newer more functional being, a butterfly. No one seems to know how. The goo seems to be part of a mystery that beguiles and threatens us. Efforts to aid, or try to speed-up, the emergence of the butterfly, only end-up with deformed, or dead, butterflies. So we know the process of this transformation is beyond us.

Or is it? So much of this mystery has been investigated. The goo has been looked at chemically and genetically. Currently, we tend to see the properties of this substance as the agent of transformation. The goo seems to contain the magic. But, I’ve been wondering if it isn’t just the goo, but something else, something the goo belongs to, and expresses, that may be the power behind this alchemical miracle.

I tend towards thinking there is “something larger” afoot. I don’t mean God, but something more mysterious and less defined than human notions of God. For lack of better words I call it Life. In this scenario, Life surges through the chrysalis, organizing the butterfly, to give expression to itself. It is only right that our attention is riveted to the chrysalis, to the miracle of transformation that takes place within. That shift of forms is so compelling.

A funny thing happened on the way to existence. Nature endowed us with all of its powers. This includes the power to transform like we see done in the chrysalis. Humanity has a track record of transformation. We call it evolution. Somehow we have been mesmerized into forgetting what we already know, that is, how to transform ourselves, how to evolve. What takes place in the chrysalis, takes place in our lives; but, instead of noticing these changes within, we get caught up in believing its only happening out there.

The potential to change lies within us. This is the good and bad news; good because transformation gives us hope, bad because it contributes to our sense of failed responsibility and deficiency. We have forgotten how connected we are, and with that connection, how the potential for change is also all around us. The hope is real. Change is happening. If we want to influence the direction of that change then we best be at the process of trying to align the inside and outside potential.

This brings me back to the goo. I think it has a lot to teach us about how to align ourselves with the power of transformation. There is something about being reduced that seems to insure that something new emerges. Life often does that to us. When it does we often call it a tragedy, accident, failure, sickness, or happenstance. If one is lucky then a new more sensitive and aware being emerges from the fire of that hardship. But we seldom invite that kind of change. We think of it as traumatic.

Isn’t there a trauma free variety of change? Yes, and no. The amount of trauma goes down as one learns to lean into the fire of transformation, but because it isn’t something one alone can accomplish, the outcome is unpredictable and often wildly unexpected. Trauma then correlates with expectation.

What I am interested in, is embodying the attributes of the goo. I’d like to learn how to live with less definition than I am used to, tolerating uncertainty, learning how to ‘not know’ well. I think I am becoming goo, as I get older, as I let go, and paradoxically, as I come to terms with my limitations. Maybe my death, the seemingly ultimate reduction of my being, makes me into goo.

I like to think so. I’ll trust creation to make something serviceable. In the meantime I think I’ll become the best goo I can be. Luckily, greying seems to be helping.

Self-Hatred

 It has been a challenge to bring myself to this writing. Examining self-hatred is a painful thing to do. I know this particular form of suffering runs rampant in our world. I know I am complicitous. I know that many of you probably are too. Let’s look together, through the lens of my particular brand of self-hate, at how much damage we participate in.

I am not proud of the way I am. I know I’m probably not over it, and I look forward to the day when I’m old enough and mature enough that I can treat myself as respectfully as the rest of nature. Oh dear, I just realized, I probably do that already. What I need to face, is how much my way of treating myself leaks over into the way I treat everything, and everybody else. This is a hard-earned realization, which is still unfolding.

The horror that rises from realizing that I’ve been treating my loved ones, this beautiful green life, and others, with the same disdain I’ve been heaping on my self, is also compassion-raising. I like that I care enough to take the emotionally-chagrining hit of this glimpse at how misdirected, wrong and oblivious I’ve been. I know that is part of the way forward. Speaking of moving forward, I so want the pain of this recognition to be over. I want to move on to being a better me. But I’m savvy enough now to know that I have to stay in this pain for awhile to realize to a greater extent what I have wrought.

Self-hatred, which is so terribly destructive to self, and other, is a natural occurrence. I have trouble with that. It is so painful, it must mean something is desperately wrong! Not so, but acting like something is wrong, is part of the very same self-hatred that I want to overcome, and don’t want to look at. Continuing to look is extremely painful, disheartening, and paradoxically courageous and compassionate.

What I see is a part of how hard it is to be human. I have the tendency to hate, or have a hard time with, the wild, unruly, uncontrollable parts of my self. They seem to have lives of their own. I tend to hate the parts of me that are other, that threaten to reveal me, or take me into vulnerable and unknown places. Sitting here, in the fire of painful realization, I see, that like my war-mongering, slave-holding ancestors, I discriminate against what I cannot control. I revolt against what threatens me. I hate (that means I actively try to eliminate) the other, both in myself and in the world.

There is nothing quite so humbling as acceptance. I see that I tend to hate my self, and create great damage to others, because my self doesn’t conform to my ideas of who I should be. I think I ought to be what I think I should be. But I’m not. I’ve spent too much of my life not-accepting who and what I am. What I’m learning to accept, is not some spiritual bromide about loving everything, but the fact that my self does not belong to me. I am life’s life.

I am more other than I have ever suspected. I belong to Life, that is what is living through me, using this opportunity to advance creation, exercising an agenda of its own.

From this perspective, born of more painful awareness than I would normally allow myself to endure, I can see that I have so wanted to fit in, to be acceptable on my own terms, that I haven’t accepted my own true nature. In the process I haven’t accepted the true nature of anything or anyone else. My refusal to accept this aspect of who I am has generated a lot of suffering everywhere. I have been like a “typhoid Mary” spreading my suffering around to anyone (or anything) that remotely resembles parts of me I don’t like. And, I haven’t liked, or trusted very much, the parts of me that have never been mine.

The truth is that I have been unwilling to accept my own true nature. I can look at this with some compassion for two reasons. I’ve grown up in this self/other hating culture, and I’ve at last come to the place in my growth where I can handle knowing the truth of this way of being human. Evolution just got to me. The fire of painful realization is growing me.

I don’t like knowing how much suffering I generate. I don’t like looking at the natural holocaust I have helped to create. But, I know that having a vivid experience of these things is a vast improvement. Now I have more choice. Now I have some possibility of doing something different — with myself, and with others (including nature). I am trying to figure out what that is. And honestly, and surprisingly, I like myself better for looking at how much I have let hatred run my life. So, out of this lesson, and my ongoing discovery of the compassion-inducing awfulness of my own choices, comes a new possibility. Maybe, just maybe, I could learn to hold the mystery of my self, and the mysteriousness of the other (in all its myriad of challenging forms) a little more kindly, like the one mystery they are.

Post-Traumatic Stress

I’m tired. The drums of the election go on and on. I voted, and where last time I voted was the first time I felt I could vote for someone I wanted and could believe in, I’m back to voting for the lesser of two evils. I wish Obama could be the President I voted for. I’m not sure that fully explains why I am tired though. I think I just may be tired because I’m not the man I could be. I’m tired because I’m still carrying around a weight that grieves me.

I am dwelling with the possibility, I would say probability, that I know something, that I’ve been exposed to something so difficult to metabolize, that I live with the consequences everyday. What am I talking about? I’ll tell you how it came to me this time. Then maybe you will understand.

I was with a group of elders. We were having coffee and talking, like we do every Friday.

We started with a question about being happy while knowing the world was in the condition it was in. As sometimes happens in groups the conversation seemed to wander. Soon it came around to examining if I was traumatized by what happened to me? The stroke had changed my life in some very abrupt and difficult ways. I feel ‘Lucky,” the stroke has given me a special kind of awareness in place of what it had taken away. I am traumatized in a complex way.

This set me to thinking. The original question had been about the possibility of being happy despite the traumatizing awareness of the condition of our blue home. Together we more or less concluded that despite the trauma of knowing how much we have participated in screwing things up, the weight of Life circumstance dictated that we enjoy the moments that the Universe, or God, provides. Trauma was part of the equation but not ultimately defining.

It is the same for me. The suddenness and finality of the stroke changed my life completely. I now live with that awareness. Life can change radically any moment. Is that a traumatic awareness? Some would say “yes.” I, instead, feel lucky. The world is awash with transient, ever-changing phenomenon. I accept and appreciate them like never before. My life has been enriched by the trauma that altered my awareness. An abrupt, painful change, which I cannot forget, traumatized me and enhanced the quality of my life.

After this conversation I continued to think about this. I remembered when I had taught graduate school, I had once been given a student’s paper where she made the claim that because we have been exposed to this toxic culture we all were stunted by post-traumatic stress. This memory made me think that there was great trauma associated with waking up in this world at this time. While I think this is truly a painful realization, I can’t decide if this is classic trauma. Is wakefulness worth the pain? Am I a distorted being because I have weathered the pain and notice? I don’t think so, but I know I have been radically and painfully altered.

I carry around a kind of stress now, One could call it a kind of post-traumatic stress. If it is, then I am thankful for it. I wasn’t always. When I first came to realize the scale and complexity of what we have done to ourselves,  each other, and this beautiful green planet, I was chagrined, dismayed, embarrassed, and shameful. Despair followed me everywhere. Then slowly I have come back to life. I still feel the pain, mostly as grief now, and as I have learned, grieving is another form of praise.

Knowing what I know, being traumatized as I have been, I see the world differently. I’m not likely to ever forget what I’ve beheld, but I am much more likely to love the fragile and persistent beauty that I now see more clearly. The world is a traumatized reality. Existence is an overwhelming thing. I used to feel like it was too much, now I exult in having the opportunity to know this mysterious complexity.

So why am I so tired? I’m praised out. I think I’m suffering from caring fatigue. I know the Universe is going to keep going, expanding way beyond my comprehension. Thankfully! Me, I’m tired, and all I can do is rest in that assurance. Tomorrow brings new surprises. Undoubtedly, some of them will renew my rested energy.

Vulnerability

I realized, as I was approaching this subject, vulnerability, that although the definition hasn’t changed over the years, the meaning has.. This is what I really want to explore. As I’ve changed so has the experience of being vulnerable. Along with the change of meaning, I think the impact of vulnerability is also changing. If this is so, then vulnerability, of a sort, heralds a change of capability that I think might be important to note.

Being vulnerable actually means putting yourself potentially in harms way. It’s a deliberate act. An act, that involves giving up all forms of protection and standing out undefended. One is vulnerable because one has elected to defy the probability of harm in favor of some other less probable outcome, and in the process one has made themselves totally subject, wellbeing wise, to the moment. Being vulnerable is a kind of exposure to risk.

This squares with my early experiences of vulnerability. I don’t like being vulnerable very much. Even to this day. In the early days I really didn’t like it. My experience of vulnerability was accompanied with a sense of fear. If I became vulnerable it was usually an accident, or a situation where I felt out of control, and in over my head. The experience of being exposed was very vivid and beyond my control. I always felt threatened, destined for a kind of jeopardy. The unpleasantness of the experience was always a feeling of naked smallness before something greater.

The smallness I felt, the involuntary nature of what befell me, made the experience one that was seared into my awareness, and one I didn’t want to have again. I couldn’t perceive any benefit, any reason to want to voluntarily have the experience of being vulnerable. Life was hard enough, scrabbling to have a place at the table.

In those days I was very aware of what, and who, was around me. I chose to act out of my awareness of my external situation. I wanted desperately to fit in. I felt vulnerable when I didn’t, when I couldn’t. My sense of vulnerability didn’t really have a voluntary component, not unless one was insane, or masochistic. Vulnerability was a sign of weakness, a sign that one didn’t have the ability to cope with Life.

Thankfully, after years of feeling vulnerable, believing myself to be defective, unable to cope with the complexity of Life, things changed. I ripened into another kind of awareness. Sure, I spent years in therapy, doing spiritual practice, being a social activist, having challenging relationships, discovering what being a man was, and working on myself. These things contributed, but what really brought everything together, was something I had no control over. I, inexplicably, ripened into a new bigger, more complex being. Now I feel vulnerable differently.

Being vulnerable now is more of a voluntary experience. I can still get caught up and overwhelmed by the moment, but it tends to be less unpleasant than it used to be. I have learned through living and practiced desire to regulate myself. I have more choice now. Thankfully. I may have feelings, I probably do, but I have a lot more discretion about revealing them. I can be feeling-full and discrete.

Being vulnerable can be a lot of things, but here, I want to focus upon the voluntary display of the amalgam of complex feelings that makes vulnerability a strength not a weakness. Vulnerability has an infectious nature. That doesn’t mean others feel the same thing in the same way, but it does mean that others are impacted, they notice. Vulnerability is composed of a set of human emotions that communicate something important.

As I’ve grown older I have begun to find a more existential kind of humor funny. I can’t help but smile, sometimes, when something makes me recognize the hilarious situation I’m in. Sometimes, I can’t help being impressed by how funny being here is. I often laugh at my own difficulties. I am so grateful I can.

Vulnerability seems similar to me. I am incredibly vulnerable if I let myself know the fix I’m in. What’s more, is that I can feel vulnerable if I really get the fix some one else is in. The truth is, that for me, the human condition makes me feel pretty vulnerable. I guess that is why I sometimes feel moved to let my vulnerability be seen. It seems to most accurately express the predicament that I find myself, and others, within.

Vulnerability, for me, means that I may laugh or cry. Being human is ridiculously hard. It makes me grieve, praise, laugh and cry. I am vulnerable from head to foot, in every moment, in every way, and I laugh, curse and wonder within such an incredible existence. Vulnerability seems to be my natural state, maybe yours too! Can we connect with each other around this shared experience? I believe we can. In part, that’s why I want others to see and know my vulnerability. Openness is vulnerable. It hurts good. So does living. Hah! What a humorous twist there is to this whole deal!

Happiness

Today I want to write about happiness. I don’t feel that I am any kind of expert on the subject. Probably my real reason for writing about it has to do with my own surprise that I am happier than I have ever been. I didn’t really expect to be happy. I never made it a particular focus (a priority) of my life either, so you can imagine my surprise and curiosity about this burgeoning feeling of well-being. A part of what I want to write has to do with my suspicion that my happiness has come with getting older.

What makes us happy? Probably, the answer to that question is as diverse as we humans are. Still, I can’t help but notice that I am experiencing a kind of happiness that doesn’t seem to be emanating from the world around me. I don’t know about you, but I grew up, until now, with the notion that when things, and I mean stuff like money, jobs, homes, relationships, vacations or enlightenment, lined up, then I would be happy. I have almost none of that today and I’m happier than ever, so what gives?

Happiness, at least for me, seems more to be an internal phenomenon rather than being something out there. The happiness I find in the world, I seem to find first in me. That is a radical change from the idea of happiness I first learned.  Strangely owning my own home doesn’t make me as happy as owning, and being comfortable, in my own skin. One is an economic achievement, the other is a harder-won acheivement with my self. The sense of being at home in my home is more gratifying and sustainable when I occupy myself.

Happiness has become more of a reality to me as I have aged. I don’t think that merely aging did it. I think something happened inside me. I ripened into happiness. For me the happiness accompanied my gratitude with living. I came through a lot, through a long time of being more dead than alive, through a time of realizing I was being given a second chance, and through being surrounded by a host of others, mainly old folks, who similarly struggled, endured and found a way to happily persevere. It appeared that I was happy because Life had put me through the wringer and I had emerged more solid than I once had been.

I came to being happy not because I aged, but because I aged well. What do I mean? Well, I’m still formulating this, but it seems that I have something to do with the fact of my happiness despite being disabled, and having to ask others for help (a widespread fear), and having no insurance (the economic social net), I am still somehow happy. I know, in part, it’s the company I keep, but I also know I can keep company with some pretty unhappy people and retain my appreciation of Life. I am happy for no good conventional reason. No, I don’t think it is because I’m crazy. I’m weird but not over the bend. I’m happy for a non-conventional reason, because I’ve become what the Universe intended — myself.

If I sound a little like Walt Whitman, so be it. Life has shaped me into a misshapen, dysfunctional being, which is a horror story of possibility for anyone who really takes my life in, and has conferred happiness upon me. How can that be? I haven’t been able to believe it for the longest time. So I wouldn’t blame you, if you don’t. But, it seems with all that has gone wrong — with all that Life has put me through —happiness erupts.

I can explain it, at least I think I can. If words don’t fail me now, then I can explain that the miraculous (that’s how it sometimes seems to me) can happen in anyone’s life. Happiness is a by-product of inner life, not dependent upon anything external. It is what happens when one really gets how lucky they are to be in this vulnerable, teetering, human-scarred world. It isn’t a state of denial, a refusal to know just how bad things are, it is an appreciation of what is. I’m not happy because Life as we know it is in jeopardy. I’m happy because it exists, and I get to know it for a time.

My happiness emanates from the ground I wheel around upon. That is dirt for sure, earth of the most perishable sort. But it is more than that too. Not more, in the sense of other than that, rather in the sense of that extended. I am happy because I wheel upon the soil of my self. The two are not really two. The Universe, and Life on Earth, are composed of both, and both are part of the same thing — the life force of the Great Mystery. Check it out, it’s going on right beneath your feet, and right within you.

I’m happy now because I can perceive the movement of the whole happening most anyplace. It hurts, in some different kind of way, to experience so much denial, fear and hatred, but my sense of happiness can embrace those pains too. Mainly, because I can feel Life welling up, happiness wells with it.

That Much

There is a story that I love. I first came across this story when I read the prologue to Scott Peck’s book A Different Drum. I subsequently loved it even more when it was read at the beginning of every community-building workshop I ever attended. The story conveys something of the radical power of respect, and I share it with you because I am still learning its lessons.

“ There is a story, perhaps a myth. Typical of mythic stories, it has many versions. Also, typical, the version of the story you are about to experience is obscure. The story, called The Rabbi’s Gift, concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti-monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all of its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over 70 years in age Clearly it was a dying order.

In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. “The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again,” they would whisper to each other. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed he abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. “I know how it is,’ He exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet each other after all these years,” the abbot said, “but I still have failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would me save my dying order?”

“No I am sorry,” the rabbi responded. “I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that The Messiah is one of you.”

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”

“He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered. “We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving —it was something cryptic — was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant.”

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered the possible this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The Messiah is on of us? Could he possibly mean one of the monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Bother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Eldred! Eldred gets crotchety at times. But, when you look back on it, even though he is a pain in people’s sides, Eldred is virtually always right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Eldred. But not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God not me, I couldn’t be that much for You could I?

As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off off chance that each of the monks himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was so beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

The story ends with the monastery being renewed and becoming a center of light. I’ve loved this story because it has had so much to say to me about the renewal of community, but as I was slowly typing the story into my computer, I found myself substituting in the word world, in my mind, for monastery. I have a feeling that if we could have the story’s kind of extraordinary respect universally, then a wider spread renewal could happen.

I primarily have loved this story because it has helped me to consider myself in a different light. Besides looking at myself as something unimaginable, and worthy of respect, I have been dwelling with the off hand chance that I could be “that much” to anyone. As I have come to respect that possibility, I have come to experience how much this world of others, means to me.  “That much” has turned into so much.

My regard for the possibility that I might not know myself well enough to be sure how much I could mean to another has turned out to increase my regard for everybody. I am learning that just opening to the possibility of being “that much” to anyone, opens me to noticing how everything is “that much” to me.

I share this with you, because I’m still leaning how to be and see “that much,” and because it means that much to me.

Ceremomy

I don’t know why I want to write about this subject. I just know that I feel called to it, and have been for a while. I’ve been captivated these last few weeks by grief and a growing sense that the quality of my life, perhaps of all life, depends in large part upon a relationship with death. I could more easily be writing about that. But, for some reason, the thought of ceremony has been hanging around like a hungry orphan begging for my attention. I don’t exactly know why, but I’m going to use this writing time to inquire into what ceremony might hold for me. I hope this process of discovery might prove fruitful for you too.

When I think (which hasn’t been much until recently) about ceremony, I think about elaborate rituals that generally I don’t understand, relate to, and that I feel forced to endure. You can smell the old catholic in my reaction. I haven’t tended to think of ceremony as the little things I do each day to remind myself how lucky I am to be here, and how reliant I am upon the Mystery that keeps feeding me. I haven’t yet made the journey from ceremony being what someone else does, and I have to endure, to something I do, that infuses my life with my gratitude.

I think I started making that journey when I witnessed the casual reverence of a man giving a little tobacco offering to the Sun at the beginning of a day. I’ve never felt moved to do such a thing, I could, but I don’t really want to. What observing this did is stir me up. I think that is why I’m making this inquiry.

I’ve been a little critical of many of the social situations I’ve been in lately. It seemed like they had forgotten or ignored the sacredness of our gathering. Of course the real truth is more about me than about the group I’m in. Groups by-and-large seem to ignore this dimension of meeting, probably to avoid the issue of who’s idea of the sacred gets expressed and who’s doesn’t. That makes sense to me, but it has become less and less satisfying over time. I find the quality of what happens suffers without a sense that “something larger” has a stake.

I haven’t, until just this moment, held myself accountable for the fact that I tend to go along with the program. I don’t mean that I think I should impose my will upon everyone else, but maybe I should honor the truth of the situation as I see it. I need to create for myself some little ritual that reminds me of how I want to honor the moment. This line of thought is too potent, too hard to pursue, too slippery for me to approach head-on. I have to sidle up to it.

I find myself thinking about the little daily rituals I do now: the affirmations when I awaken in the morning, the thoughts of dreams as I go to the bathroom, my morning shower, eating, my at–the-table gratefulness, checking the computer, glancing at the news, throwing things in the garbage or recycle, dealing with clients, thinking about my relations or ambitions, listening to music, readying for bed, letting myself relax and fall asleep. Those are discrete moments when I have to be a little more awake to do them well. Maybe they are already little forms of ceremony I am currently doing?

Yes, and no. These moments are discrete enough and have been infused with a certain amount of holy awareness, but they pass-by commonly without me noticing, and caring enough to take the time to remind myself of the grace inherent in those moments. I could pay greater attention. Ceremony, as some little way of reminding myself, could help me to be more present. And, as one famous Sufi’s said, “He who isn’t present experiences no Presence.”

I am thankful that I am noticing my disappointment in groups, because when I follow the disappointment into the recesses of myself, I am beginning to grasp that ceremony is growing in importance to me. I need to remind myself. I am capable of being happy, of having a sense of my place in this strange unfolding, of experiencing praise at the glorious and surprising nature of Creation. Besides that, I like and trust myself more when I do more than just give a shit.

What a surprise! Ceremony seems to be welling up from within me. Apparently, as my memory fails, I am finding myself even more interested in remembering what is important to me. I seem to be experiencing something like the salmon of me longing to return to the source. Ceremony seems to me, just now, to be a mini version of a much larger ritual that seems to be going on.

I like this knowing. I’m glad I took the time for it. Writing is one form of ceremony that keeps reintroducing me to Mystery. I hope this little foray does the same for you.

Trying

I have to admit I write about this reluctantly. I have an ambivalent relationship with trying. I guess these mixed feeling can be attributed to once having someone say to me, that “try was a coyote word.” By that, I took her to mean it was a word I might choose to give myself an out, a way to fail comfortably. I know that tendency too well. But, trying goes deeper for me than that. At least I hope it does. That uncertainty is the source of my ambivalence. I really don’t know how much of myself I am giving to anything. I’d like to think I am in charge, that I define my efforts, but I really am uncertain about that. So trying stays in my vocabulary and I have to live with the uncertainty that comes with it.

Life seems to constantly be asking me to be more than I see myself to be. It isn’t just that I have an inaccurate image of myself and I can do, and be, more. That certainly happens. But there are times when Life seems to be asking me to do something I know I’m not capable of. Sometimes I do know myself, and recognize my actual limitations. Life doesn’t seem to care. It asks me, in no uncertain words, to go ahead.  Then, if I have the appropriate audacity, I have to try. Trying in those kinds of moments is a leap of faith. It is going beyond myself in some desperate attempt to mollify the unknown.

I’ve told myself, and enough precious others, that I know my writing, and my work building community is on track when I’m having an “oh shit” moment. When I realize I’m thoroughly over my head, and I have put myself in this place where I can see no way forward, I know I’m doing a good job. I have to go to the place of my limitations to discover any possibilities. I can’t really explain something that is this paradoxical. I have to be hurting and totally afraid too get to a place where I have a chance of making a difference. I don’t like to be raw that much. I don’t like to ache nakedly in public ways either. But I know this is what it takes for me to do anything real. I want to try, and I want to avoid it like the plague.

Life is asking that much of me. Sometimes, if I’m really honest, most times, I just try to ignore the fact that I can feel when I’m being asked to go further than I’ve gone before. If I put it off long enough the call gets louder and I begin losing my confidence in myself, and in Life. I want to do anything else. I even fool (or so I think) myself by doing things sort of like what I’m being called to. I’ll try anything to avoid trying what I know is real. No doubt this is the real source of my ambivalence. I know I’m still susceptible to fooling myself.

I should know better. I’m just Lucky enough to have been pushed off the cliff, and to know that falling and flying can be the same thing. But, I’m still living in a world where it looks like falling can lead to suffering. I don’t want to suffer, but if I’m good at avoiding that kind of suffering, I suffer with the knowledge that I’m avoiding something crucial. In the end, I try because I make the choice of facing my lack of choice. I choose to suffer the not knowing, the leap into the abyss, the “oh shit’ moments, because I know that if I don’t I am going to suffer another kind of suffering. Either way I look at it I suffer, so it might as well be trying to be something I’m not.

Strangely, it seems as if Life thrives on this kind of choice. I don’t like it much, but you know what, being used by Life in this way, increases my respect for Life and for the level of challenge I’m engaged in. I have greater self-respect, greater compassion for others, because I have an idea how hard, and how precious, it is to really try.

Trying, if it comes too easily, is suspect, because really trying is a trial. There is doubt and no way out. The jury doesn’t render the standard verdict of guilty or not guilty. In this case the jury is within, and the consideration is the quality of life. Real trying is living uncertainly. It is leaping into the unknown without the pretense of a net. It is what Life is doing with us.

Arrival

A report from the Slow Lane

There is something happening, particularly with older people, which I don’t think has been commented upon. I think that this phenomenon needs to be reported and considered, for the sake of those getting older, and for the sake of everyone who is pursuing genuine happiness. There is an actualization of self that can take place, in the later years, that brings happiness, fulfillment, and most importantly, the kind of unique perspective that can make hope a real thing. I call this phenomenon “arrival”, if you keep reading you’ll see why.

What I have to report is paradoxical. It isn’t straightforward, or simple, that is probably why this change, this particular form of the initiatory attainment is not well-known. If you think about what I’m describing here, you will probably know someone who has achieved this state, it isn’t new, just not widely commented upon. In some strange way, there is a taboo here. Happiness, and even freedom, are achievable — just not the way that the mainstream is invested in. There is no wrinkle cream, other than life, that can convey this particular elixir. Some of us have come to life in a way that is both an arrival, and a real departure from the norms of our society.

What am I referring to? Lately, I’ve observed, and gotten to know, people who are genuinely happy, full of life, who feel well situated and are already making a difference. These are people, which in my way of seeing things, have ripened. They have become themselves. These folks are, by and large, the elders amongst us. They don’t make a lot of noise, don’t call attention to themselves, don’t think they’ve done anything special, but they have achieved something, I think we all need to know about. They have arrived.

By arrival I mean that they occupy the very rare space of becoming themselves while being on their journey. They have a sense of becoming whole, uniquely themselves, free to be what they need to be, and they have a destiny before them. They have arrived — and as part of their arrival — they know they are departing. They occupy a truly paradoxical, and special space.

Arrival means they have become themselves, achieved true uniqueness, and are happily reconciled to this development being only half of the story. Death will come. They don’t fear it. Certainly adventure awaits them. Because they are themselves, they are ready. Their achievement, their existence, is important for us to notice. They reveal to us one prospective way to live, the possibility of actualizing ourselves, the miraculous perception that who we are, just might be what is needed.

I’m not talking about your average old person here. Though I could be, it is never too late to become yourself. I’m addressing the fact that some people never stopped learning, and going through the hopper of hardship. These folks, it appears, found a way to use hardship, pain, and loss creatively. They have made of their lives works of art, they have found ways to become themselves, to achieve wholeness.

They have a lot to teach us, but not in the school sort of way. Their knowledge isn’t something that can be transmitted in lectures, it takes the stuff of life. A part of the reason we need to know that such a thing as arrival is possible, is because to learn the art of being whole takes time, and is best communicated by absorption in the dilemmas of life. The elder best teaches by example. The learner learns best by honoring the teacher, and in this case, by noticing the arrival of those who know something important.

I keep saying there is a paradox here. I don’t say that to show off, or to make this attainment seem more difficult than it is. I say it because I’m impressed by the unlikelihood of this development, by the life-giving, character building nature of what they have been through. Life, evidently cared about them enough, to have really roughed them up. They, in turn, seemed to have cared enough on their own, to have turned that hardship into something original.

I remember once hearing a story, a part of which, went like this, “a Zen Master said to a group of his students, “You are perfect as you are, and you could use a little improvement.” I think that the paradox of our being explains what he means, and explains how elders could be arriving just as they are departing. I think we are always connected to the larger reality. For that reason, we are perfect as we are. We are after all a part of a larger whole that is also perfect as it is. Elders, as they become themselves, are little wholes who shine with the light of the larger whole, a joined part of that great magnificence.

We human beings are part of that larger whole and we are a separate piece, responsible for our own wholeness. The journey includes becoming a part of the whole and becoming whole unto our selves. That is how the Zen students can be perfect as they are (they are manifestations of the whole, whole themselves) and need a little improvement (and they are evolving, semi-complete parts of the whole). Elders too are arriving, manifesting their wholeness, and departing, manifesting their evolving partness.

Arrival is a real thing, a possibility that we cannot afford to ignore, just because it doesn’t look like completeness. Arrival is also essential to our kind. The old look like they are over the hill. The truth is that they have lived long enough to realize there is no hill, but there is the possibility of coming home, to them selves, and to the Universe. The rest of us, if we don’t notice elder actualization, live with no knowledge of the possibility of a homecoming. What is a journey that contains no arrival? Elders do arrive, and because they do, we know we can too.

Loving Yourself

A report from the Slow Lane

Sometimes I believe I’m not part of the whole. I know, that’s silly, and it hurts so much. I know better, but every now and then some form of amnesia comes over me and I forget. I guess the experience of connection (despite the fact that it has been lifelong) doesn’t run deep enough yet. I frequently fall into moments when I feel untethered, when I am lost, or so it seems. I can’t seem to consistently hold myself with the reverence needed to maintain appropriate perspective. I am finding that loving myself is not easy. And, I am gradually learning how essential it is to holding on to my connection with the whole.

Loving myself is still fairly new, and is tenuous at best. I didn’t know, until recently that it was necessary to care about myself, and even possible. If I hadn’t had a long time of lonely recovery after my stroke I might not have ever known how important I am to the equation of unfolding.

I look back at that time with wonder. Early on, the life I knew was defined by grief, loss (so much of who I was disappeared), and some strange will to go on. Only later did it become about what remained (and thankfully that was a lot). Somewhere in that long time of day-to-day uncertainty I came across my neglected self. I think it was when I felt alive enough to feel alone. I started longing for a relationship. It was a totally irrational desire. It always has been. But at that particular time, this longing, for a relationship seemed especially off because I was so severely broken physically and psychically.

Being irrational, the situation didn’t matter much. I longed for someone to know and care about me anyway. Well, almost needless to say, there was no one there. This was a good thing. It was another of the painfully disappointing lessons that I was lucky enough to be brought to. The absence of someone else was gravelly disappointing to me, but it introduced to me the one person who was there. Me. I didn’t much like or trust myself so I wasn’t thrilled to discover this remnant of a human being. The only reason I didn’t dismiss him is because I couldn’t. This misfortunate circumstance (which I could literally do nothing about) was the beginning of the relationship that frees and connects me now.

I didn’t know it at the time. I was just chagrined. I was stuck with me. I had managed to become the booby-prize in my own life (thankfully). I had a hard time sleeping at night, because sleeping alone meant sleeping with me. I wasn’t ready for that kind of intimacy. Ready or not, I got to know myself. And I discovered something. I’m not proud of what I realized, of what I have been doing all these years, of how I have used the women in

my life, of how I have avoided the obvious. But it became clear to me, that I preferred someone else to love me. The way I put it, in my own mind, was that I would rather have some woman do the dirty job of loving me than having to learn to love myself.

Happily for me, though it didn’t seem like a boon to me at the time, no woman was volunteering to sign up for the job. I continued to be left on my own. Disability is the shits, but sometimes it forces one to sit still. I got to know me because there wasn’t anyone else around.

It started with compassion. I realized that although I couldn’t personally love me, I could have compassion for the difficult life that he/me lived. Paying attention that way I began to admire the way he/I courageously persevered. I started to like what I saw. That is when loneliness became solitude. The time alone was better for me than I ever imagined. I was learning something about loving the one I’m always with.

I had a few friends. I could see, during this time of learning, that they tended, as I had done, to avoid them selves. I could see how this was costing them, and I got a lot clearer about how not loving myself was costing me. It was then I realized I had to quit avoiding doing the one thing I had always felt was a bad idea. Too avoid the pain and misery of living in a constant lie, I took on the pain and misery of learning to love the untrustworthy soul I seemed to be.

During the Christmas season only a year ago, I gave myself, accidentally, the best Christmas present I had ever received. I was alone as usual. I was scared about what that might mean. I wasn’t sure I could face more long-ticking hours of silence and aloneness. Instead, I had a wonderful time. I was the good, reflective creative companion I always wanted. I gave myself the seasonal spiritual retreat I always wanted. I discovered I loved myself. I, and the wisemen, arrived to behold another form of the Christmas miracle, the birth of a new relationship. Light has poured out of it ever since.

There are periods, like earlier this week, when I forget that I am always connected, and that I am a living portion of the whole. I forget to hold onto myself, that strange paradoxical being that resides uniquely as me, and somehow miraculously joins me to everything else. I forget to love me. I forget that I am love. Somehow, something of me keeps going, evolving right along with this mysteriously expanding Universe. I know it, live constantly in awe, aware of such fragile and impermanent creativity, and I forget.

I have some memory problems creeping up. Age is having its way with me. But I don’t think this is why I forget. I think I forget because I want to fit in. I go back to the well of community. It seems necessary that I forget so I can discover it again through my confusing connection with others. It turns out, that loving myself is still hard work, because the Universe is so big and diverse, and because loving myself means always going beyond myself to become larger, more complex, I forget who I am, and lose my grip on me,  in order so I can re-discover who I am, and learn to love me anew.

Loving yourself is learning to love the whole! Wow!

Only A Child

I was raised in a Christian (Catholic) home, but it didn’t take. I don’t know what I am. All I know is that I escaped from parochial school, catechism, and the best evil eyes of several priests and nuns with my own spirituality in tact. Today I would say I’m a Mysterian. I’ve been shaped by lots of influences from the world’s spiritual traditions, but I am enamored most by the Mystery that seems to reside behind them all. In the final analysis, I think I belong to the religion of no religion, a tradition that grew up with the human potential movement. Oh, but the Mystery awes me!

The Christmas season doesn’t do much for me. I’m turned off by its crass commercialism. The lights, trees, jolly fat man, songs and pageantry seem to me to be a poor expression of our sense of togetherness. I haven’t really celebrated Christmas in years. That doesn’t make me a Scrooge, or a pagan, or a Zombie. I am just thankful for the winter, and I have a continued hope for a real reflective period of silence.

I didn’t leave my marriage with any of the Christmas ornaments. I guess the stroke, and what seemed like near death, combined to make Christmas seem kind of irrelevant. I even gave my crèche to my daughter. I thought I had gone beyond Christmas. The underworld doesn’t have bright lights, and good cheer is extremely rare. I languished there a long time, nearer to death than to life, and was shaped into someone who appreciates Life, and the changes it brings.

I survived; I even have a new life now. But the experience of being held on the threshold, which I experienced more like a precipice, remains with me, and informs all I do.  My sense of the spiritual is much darker than most. I am still enamored of Mystery, but I have a solid dose of reverence for how this “larger something” can move in ways that are dark and unfathomable. I have reason to be grateful, and my gratitude is tempered by a sense of how fleeting and vulnerable everything is.

So imagine my surprise when I realized that I had three Christmas ornaments. They were the Magi. For several Christmasses now they have watched over my living room, colored my holiday solitude, and drawn me deeper into the Christmas story. I discovered, to my surprise, there was an aspect of the Christmas story, following a star in the darkness, which I could relate too. I imagined myself a wise man caught-up in a deep intuition, following a strange light in the darkness. My light was within, but I had to follow it just the same.

I have been on a long journey. I’ve been following a internal phenomenon I can’t name. I don’t know the how of such things, but the journey seems to be unfolding me. As long as I’ve wandered, alone, I’ve been compelled to keep going. It has seemed to me a twisted journey, a trip thru the dark lands, a lonely vigil at the bedside of a dying man, a delusion that was unfolding me in ways I could not understand.

The wise men give me solace. They reintroduced me to a part of the mystery of Christmas, a part of all real pilgrimages, which I have forgotten. It isn’t enough to be on a journey. There must be some times of arrival. The Magi came to the birth of a child. The journey had led them to something surprisingly ordinary. Only a child! At the end of the journey, there is a new beginning.

This year I’ve been looking at the Christmas story anew, not just from the travels and travails of the Magi, perhaps because I have a new life, perhaps because Mystery compels me too, perhaps because I’ve come far enough to really get what the journey has been about. Only a child! I know the Christian trip is about this being baby Jesus, the savior of mankind, but for me this infant represents something different, equally miraculous, but differently saving.

At some point in the journey, I am compelled to stop and pay homage to what has been born in me. The journey has become something. Something new has come into the world! I don’t know what this new being is yet, I can feel it is full of potential, potential that as it gets realized, makes me someone who is capable of saving my self and being useful to the world. The child I stumbled across on my journey is me, an unknown mysterious me, the light of my future, the beginning of a new life. I am the gift I always wanted.

Only a child — a miracle dressed up so ordinarily. Only a child — a beginning at the end. Only a child — some newness within that signals a new life. Only a child — a vulnerability dependent upon wise attention. The story of Christmas has changed me. The story of Christmas is not about a divine birth happening 2000 years ago, it is about the birth of hope within and now.

May you find what waits to be born in you this year!