Medicine Moments

Illness, and the holiday season, combined to slow me down even more than my normal disabled, older self. And I’m glad it did. It seemed as if I was stopped. For what seemed like an eternity, I was totally in the moment. It was as if the tide had gone out, and revealed an always present but hidden structure. Under it all — my day-to-day activity — there was an unseen element, an energy that only became obvious when I had no energy. This Slow Lane is about that. I don’t know what it is, but I became aware of it, during my time of convalescence, during the time when I was down for the count, and so sick I didn’t care. Then, I was affected by something that exists unseen, and influences me. I hope I can refer to what seems a mystery without demeaning it.

I have been struggling to find the right words for this experience. It is so compelling, yet so shrouded, I am a combination of flabbergasted and awed. How could there be something beneath my usual awareness that holds such power, and that guides my efforts, without my knowledge?

I am beholding to the worldview of Native America. You see in that awareness, the idea of medicine appears in a more psycho-spiritual context. Medicine in the indigenous way of seeing things is healing, not only to the body, but also to the soul. This perspective helps me view my experience of barely moving, in an interesting new light. By being slowed down, even more than usual, I had an experience of something that always operates, something which resides inside of all my activity. I think of it now as a kind of medicine.

I think that the energy-less place I occupied when I was sick, which I called a feeling of “warmed over death,” was in fact a place near enough to this source, where it became somewhat palpable, but far enough away that I’m able now to reflect on it, and be caught up in wonder. I was sick enough that I got a little sense of how sick I have been. The illness was part of the cure. I had a medicine moment, through being slowed down and ill.

The paradox of such a happening is compelling. It makes me feel a sense of dizziness. I am here, thinking I am in charge of my life (or should be), when something else, something I can barely perceive, is generating a host of meaningful and healing effects. I guess that is just the nature of being lucky.

I don’t know, but I’m overwhelmed by a sense of the remarkable. In that sense of wonder I find myself engaged in a sort of magical speculation. What if, this thing I call my life, is a series of medicine moments, which pass by unnoticed, because I am so busy and distracted? Maybe, by being as sick as I have been, enduring this forced slow down, I simply am noticing what is always generating a string of salient possibilities?

I like the idea that I might be living out a kind of dual existence, a life partly of my own making, and one that is being created for me. Not exactly for me, something seems to be actively shaping this life, with me in mind, but for purposes I am barely able to guess. This sense gives me a feeling of having the wind under my wings, a sense of being lifted, scarily and surely, beyond my self.

I am considering, in this second, that this life I am accustomed to leading, is not what I have assumed (this is ultimately what is so hard about getting older). If I just slowed down enough, I believe I might sense, how much this life is composed of a series of medicine moments.

If so, I can feel how much I want to pay attention. I am enlivened when I notice, ennobled in fact. Life takes on a very different hue. From this place politics, sports, religion, sex, and wealth all seem less compelling and definitive. I am happy I lived long enough, to begin to think of my whole life as a medicine journey. I am living right in the middle of the playing out of a wonderful unfolding. Wow! What a way to enjoy the ill darkness.

I hope the light infects your darkness this year!