Reverence

I had spent 2 and 1/2 years writing (my 1^st book) thinking I might die somewhere along the way. I ended up disabled, with a book-length manuscript, and wondering why I was still alive. The stroke, its brain-damaged aftermath, and its loneliness, didn’t kill me, so I had to find something else to do. Without realizing it, the writing had sent me along a trajectory I didn’t fully notice, or take seriously. I had written in the appendix of the book that I wanted to work with old people, speculating that perhaps they had developed into the farthest realms of consciousness, because they had lived longer, harder, and with more uncertainty. Little did I know, that years later (about 4) I would be immersed in elderdom, and would be discovering that old age brought with it the possibility of ripening.

The lifetime I traversed was arduous, but sugared with traces of transcendence. I joined the company of those who weren’t what they used to be, who knew enough, to know, they didn’t know much, and who found themselves way more open than they ever expected to be. Adult maturity turned into the introduction to a ‘looking-glass’ world.

Nothing was what it seemed. Vulnerability was the coin of the realm. All of this disruption led to a lot of growth. Some of it was forced, as Life had its way. People, including me, moved from the driver’s seat to the passenger’s seat. It is humbling, and strangely enlivening. A new semi-desirable era began.

All of this has been the way the world has changed. As I mentioned earlier, these changes knocked most of the hubris out of me. Life stripped me of some of my superfluities, leaving me more able to relish the miracle of what’s left. So much is contained in so little. Its more than a miracle! Anyway, these pesky losses prepared me for the unknown gains that are now altering my life. This passenger never knows where he is going.

This is a long way of saying that being dragged around the block a few times is a good way to learn what is essential. There are many types of drag, and many breath-taking times — they are all great teachers. And, they each teach the same essential message. With a creative fervor that goes way beyond expectation, Life teaches reverence. It not only happens when you are making other plans, but it surprises you, with the accuracy of what it does send your way. All to help you know your place.

After many years of being old, I came to see that these extra years, are a bonus that Life offers some of us. Out beyond the mere biological gift of reproduction, with time, another kind of reproduction takes place. Wrinkled and grey, this relatively new form of reproduction is an experience of becoming. A graduation of sorts. A human being becomes a little Universe attached to the bigger one, through bonds of love. In a protracted spasm of affection, reverence arises, and one experiences kinship with the Great Mystery. Not in any abstract, or imagined way, but as a palpable reality.

In my forties and early fifties, I could imagine this is true, in my sixties and early seventies, I had a more vivid sense of ripening, but now, I have become more of who I am, a small part of the whole.

The Universe is my truest parent. You too!

This is, the latest news from the senile sector. Academia, thanks to the power and sensitivity of Eric Erickson and his wife, has long-thought that becoming primarily integrous was the final stage of human development. But these last years have shown, that out beyond ideas of integrity, ego-transcendence, and aged lucidity, lies reverence — the experience of being part of a beloved Larger Being. Wholeness includes us!

This, of course, is unprovable. It lies where it belongs, in the subjective realm. I am thriving here, and reverence seems like the term that best describes what I am experiencing.  So, I’ll keep it. I am nobody, so I won’t have to defend it. But, I did want you to know. It just might be, that you are headed in the same direction.