Growing Older

I’ve found something I do really well. In fact, it’s effortless. No matter what I do, or how poorly I may do it, I grow older. I didn’t always do it so gracefully, but the inexorable way it kind of marches into, and through my life, taught me a few things. I used to worry about it a lot, then I realized I have no control over it, and happily, I came to relish the growth part of growing older. 

Now, I consider it a privilege, a perk associated with this mad thrill ride. Each day passes, I have a host of feeling experiences, and some part of me notices. And strangely, another bigger part, somehow benefits, and I am gifted with more awareness, than I know what to do with. I find growing older to be a complex, mysterious, highlight, of my short time here. I get to experience some perspective, friendship and rare moments of totally mystifying gratification. Oh, it hurts some, and I get tired of the uncertainty, but I know something extraordinary is happening, as I am forgetting my latest promise.

I have watched myself go through fear, loss, heartache, regrets, awe and wonder, apprehension, and now deep reverence. Growing older has brought me nearer to the freedom to be me, and the service I feel called to do, than all of the workshops, designed by well-meaning people. I am a graying stem cell, silently going about my business, becoming something needed and unseen before. Growing older, for me, means becoming barnacled with my connections, accruing from Life, the audacity of originality. I like it, the seeming fact that Life has saved the best for last. Death, for me, is an orgasm, the rest is just foreplay.

Growing older wasn’t intuitively obvious. It looked bad, smelled worse, and had a bad rep. The aged have been the homeless street people, the neglected refuse that deserved to be hidden away, for too long. I fell for it too. The sad diminishment, decaying into helpless nothingness. I’m still battling the rapacious refusal to give human dignity to Life’s finale. 

Then something unplanned and unforeseen happened.  I got older, began to wrinkle, turned gray, learned how to limp, and discovered a huge reservoir within. I began becoming more while I was becoming less. On the outside I am a typical old broken-down disabled man. But on the inside, mostly unseen, a light is coming on, an awareness is dawning, the landscape is changing. I might have trouble remembering to keep my zipper up, but some seed is breaking open inside. Life is pouring through me, as it never did before. In no way, I, or anyone, could have predicted from the images of the old that prevail in this culture.

The environment isn’t the only thing that has been recently exploited, ignored, and looted. Old people are Nature being mistreated. Growing older has meant playing in a trashed playground, and being considered part of the trash. To me, it is amazing, I would even say, somewhat miraculous, that joy arises with aging. Growing older has brought me to my knees, in more ways than I could have guessed.

The journey in took a lot longer than I planned (somewhere there was an inkling).  Ignorance and hubris had to go. Life humiliated me just right. I was raised in a cultural world that didn’t actually believe in an inner life. The religious had their dogma, patented ways to honor the sacred, but little real openings for Mystery. It took really being broken, hopelessly beyond rescue, the wretchedly neglected, living at the margin, to get a break. And, it was inside, there all the time — but discounted — and made other. Growing older is saving me from death by convention. The real spark came out from underneath all that weight.

Growing older is turning me into something else. I don’t know what, but I trust it. That’s good, because I’m not in control. I’m just myself, along for the ride, a passenger now, carried along by a friendly Mystery.

I had worshipped Nature. My greatest grief about being disabled was that I was unable to walk the face of the Earth again. The outdoors was my cathedral. But Nature came through for me anyway. As I say, “I couldn’t go out into Nature, so it came into me.” In truth, Nature had been with me all along, but I guess I had to lose it in order to find it again. Anyway, it became clear to me that I am of Nature, the spark inside is green, growing older is unleashing it.

To conclude this gray rant, I’ll just add, look inside yourself. The cultural world is full of bad advice. Be careful, and know you are endowed. Growing older allowed me some surcease, as I sank into essence. Perhaps it won’t be the same for you — but know — that growing older will come, and a release is in the offing.

Another Special Difficulty

Last time I learned that I am not supposed to be an animal — but I am. Several people responded to that “special difficulty.” Some had trouble with it— too messy. They’ll be thankful for it, when the mess happens to them.

  

“…. a response to a challenge

 of special difficulty 

 rouses one

 to make an unprecedented effort.”

                                                                                                                   — Arnold Toynbee

I’m going to write the piece I intended, before ‘the mess’ became more pressing. It is another version of ‘the mess,’ but with much more dire consequences.

One of my major disappointments about this life is playing out in a hideous way. Its pitting young folks against old folks, even more than was common during the Vietnam era. I have sympathies for both. To me, the body of our species, the home we live in, is suffering the greatest mess of all — we have soiled our nest. The earth is reeling and everything is being effected. This is the worst form of a ‘special difficulty’ I can imagine.

The current death throes arouse in me a profound shock, a painful kind of horrible compassion. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have no idea what this moment will call forth from us, but I know, like all ageing people, the end is nearing. Out of the ‘unprecedented effort’ that this moment will mobilize, I can see our kind rising and falling. And, oh the ache! The ache! The ache!

Strangely, I have this intuition. Recently, during a medicine journey I wrote, “As darkness crowds around, I get brighter.” I imagine that things get so dire, that it brings out some of the best of what it means to be human. The end of human time might be the best of human time. I don’t know if I could handle that any better than I could handle another form of horror. Which blaze do I want to go out in? I don’t expect I have a choice, or do I?

I find myself captive of this awkward intuition. I look around, even anticipate a little, that some hearts will break open, and get larger. I want to be near if that happens. I think it can, because it is happening to me. Mind this, I don’t think it is because of my efforts —I don’t deserve any credit — I think Life is playing out an unprecedented effort too. It is happening through me, through the heartbreak of this time.

We, humankind, have made a mess, so tangled, complete, and awful — so us—  that we cannot resolve it as we are.  Nothing could stop us — like ourselves. Somehow, this is justice. Now we will see, what unprecedented effort can render.

Hatching Out

I’m convinced there is a larger story playing out. One that is unfolding, in part, through our lives. Every now and then, we get a glimpse of what is going on at some other level. I’m about to share something of the way I got in touch with feeling implicated, and part of, what is coming to pass. More questions are raised by this awkward and fuzzy memory, but it has also given me goosebumps. It is like an invisible being is breathing down my neck. I can feel it, this strange warm aliveness, but I can’t really name it. I am cornered by not knowing, and knowing too much.

When my father was in his late 80’s, he began writing a book about growing up an Iowa farm boy. In the time before electrification, during the Great Depression, he had an experience, that he only recalled as a result of the memories he was exploring as he wrote about that era of his life. I lucked out, as happens to be my nature, to be present when he told of his recollection of witnessing, and being touched by, a miracle.

 His mother used to raise a few chickens, so she had a little house cash. He recalled a day when he was with her, and she showed him a small egg incubator she had in the house. It was full of eggs that were just hatching out. He remembered getting to witness the baby chicks pecking their way out of the eggs. To his astonishment, that memory transported him back to that moment, and with a vividness he could not believe, he felt the awe he had experienced as a child. Baby birds, little vulnerabilities, were working hard to escape what had been their nurturing safe homes, to come into a larger unknown reality. He was transfixed by the drama of what he witnessed. Years later, this memory, became something he wanted to pass on to his loved ones.

That experience was notable to me, because my father was not an obviously sentimental man, and because I could feel his intensity, his awe at witnessing something he couldn’t give words to. In his old age it still touched him — maybe more —as he neared the end of his life. This is an element of my father’s unknown inner life that has stayed with me.

Recently, I was doing some reflection of my own (I’m in my 70’s now), putting pieces of my life into some unknown pattern. Suddenly, I had a memory from my high school experience. I was a senior, and I was having my first experience of writing a poem. Looking back, I could see myself as a young man with practically no wherewithal for expressing the complex feelings I was having. I was a jock boy, who was assailed by something inside, that had no way out. For some reason, in my desperation, I tried to write it out through a poem. It was a poem about myself as a baby chick, confronted with the realization that I had to breakout of my previously comfortable home. The world I knew had grown too small, and the world on the other unknown side of the shell, awaited with its promise, and its terror. I wrote out my teenage ambivalence.

Now, I am an ageing man. The process of loss is breaking me open. My body, my identity, the very story of who I have been, is all drifting away. I am something else. This thin veneer — of what I thought I have known — is giving way. I am a mystery to myself.

Somehow, I doubt it is coincidence, I am recalling my father’s memory, and my own from high school. Connecting these two experiences arouses awe in me, making my upcoming transition look like an old mystery, one that I am familiar with, one that is stirring within me, even if I do not know what’s on the other side. I do know the ambivalence, uncertainty, and vulnerability, inherent in this time. I also now know — thanks to the power of recall — that this is the way life proceeds. I am less afraid than I was, and more excited than I ever have been.

Hatching out renews some mysterious goings on, that I am ambivalently happy to be part of.

A Favor

“Death is a favor to us.”

                                                        Hafiz 

                                                                      from Deepening The Wonder

It’s been almost 10 years since I first ran into the poem of Hafiz’s that held that line about death being a favor. Initially, I noticed it.  It had some kind of compelling quality that made it grab my attention, but I wasn’t ready to reflect very deeply upon it then. I am ready now. I guess I needed to age, and hopefully mature some, before I could start integrating what it holds for me. Life is strange that way. I came across “Deepening The Wonder” years ago, noticed this line, and here I am, visiting it years later. How, and why, did it stay with me all this time?

I think I have died many times. Certainly, my stroke has taken me into another world, where I could barely recognize myself.  Everything changed. Death, in that instance, carried me into a mind-warping reality, that brought me to the rampant confusion that is now my life. This was an example of reincarnation that took place all on this plane of existence. I’ve been through a few of these kind of soul migrations.  They take my breath away, and then land me in a new life. So, that has colored my thinking about how favorable death is. 

I have already been carried away, unexpectedly, a few times. As Rumi says, “When, by dying, have I ever been made smaller?” Somehow, I too, have been made larger, more aware, sensitized, and with a greater passion for what Life holds. Death seems to have taken me into realms of being, that made me more me, and then, given me some time, to more fully become this new being, before death moved me on. Each time, my life became something else.

I feel like I’m being refined. Each incarnation seems to extract some kind of new essence of me, some little noticed essential ingredient. I try to hold onto myself, but I inevitably slip away into something else. I like it — have found a confidence, a kind of equanimity, that makes shifting alright. Aging has helped with that. But, I still feel a kind of disequilibrium, a rush of adrenalin-like dizziness, that unseats me, and sends me spinning into a fresh encounter with emptiness. All in all, its bracing.

The greatest favor I have identified so far, is how clarifying death is. I start missing people, things, situations, and dreams before I pass, or before they do. My heart seems to break, in all the right places. I even find the wherewithal sometimes, to honor them, to really appreciate the miraculous nature of what I am exposed to, as passing takes place. Oddly, that has made living more vivid. Goodbye has become more poignant too.

There is a strange sweetness that attends death. Impermanence seems to have an embellishing effect. I am so touched by what I cannot hold. There is something striking about everything going, it’s as if some greater emptiness is calling to be filled, and attachment gives way, and the spirit, that lives by moving from one inside to another, goes in motion. Joy purifies joy.

Passing seems so fraught in our culture. Death is anything but joy unleashed. Why is that? I don’t know. But aging has given me perspective, allowing me to entertain newly discerned patterns, and changed my mind. Death is a favor to us. It is a passport, to any of the foreign realms where new forms lurk, and purification continues.

Ambient Uncertainty

It’s rising. Can you feel it? I can. There is an anxiety in the air, a pressurized hurry, that seems to be most everywhere. Even the water tastes of it. I feel myself eroding.  I usually feel freed by ‘not knowing,’ but something else is happening this time. It seems to be centered everywhere, like it doesn’t have a home, or its homelessness extends to this moment, this place. Life, the vitality that underlies this being, this energized actualization, is weighted with some tense freight. I can feel the atmosphere darkening, trees losing their luster, the hours becoming precious.

Something is waiting. Growing and waiting. I don’t know what it is, but I can tell others can feel it too. It is breathing down my neck. I would be squirming, if I could. Instead, I have this feeling of growing dread, like I’m somehow in the horror movie I’m watching. Perhaps, I am. One of the hapless, soon to be victims, of a strange monster, that wants to feed on me. It lurks, and I innocently go about my business. 

I’ve been feeling oppressed lately. There is a storm rising on the horizon. I can see it and feel it. I know it is coming. Not everybody sees it, or feels it, but I know some do. It is like growing older, and recognizing that death is closer. But, nobody is talking about it. I am strangling slowly from the lack of shared concern. My world is going down into some abyss, and I’m alone with the dawning recognition of what that means. Uncertainty is mounting.  I am screamingly lost, without other humans, isolated by this horrible awareness, unable to drink deeply of the miracle of the moment, because I am alone with this poignancy and disappearing beauty.

I am still here, a witness, gutted by what’s going on. I am facing what I would not, thought I could not, face. I don’t really have another choice. I’m seeing what we have done. I know I am complicit. I took the easy way too. Aching numbness overwhelms me. I want to be in the arms of my loved ones, and I wonder where they are. I realize, to my chagrin, that they too, participated in our mass suicide. 

I am not dead yet. I’m some sort of walking (actually wheeling) zombie. I am more dead than alive, defiantly angry and despairing. The rubble, the  world of appearances, looks so good, the smiles reassuring, and the inevitability so complete. It is an intoxicating set of circumstances. I keep wondering. “Why am I alive for this?” My only answer is “Why not.” 

The world, my precious mother, keeps providing, acting like nothing is wrong. Maybe for her, nothing is. But, for me, the storm clouds are gathering, the pressure is mounting, and I feel an increasing sense of dread. I’m ashamed to realize, I’ve never been so vulnerable. My soul is outstretched, do you feel it too, will you come into my arms, can I admire you for these last moments. You, like me, are such a beautiful and sensitive abomination.

The suspense is killing me. Maybe that’s the plan. Metamorphosis by loss, and shame, and of being a creative mistake. I hope I have another chance, and that my memory won’t fail. You too.

Teetering is a strange business. Utterly human, and desperately lively. My heart, is like some wild animal, penned into being a beast of burden. It shatters, then enlarges, and shatters again. My body is in the process of becoming dust anyway. So, why does it matter. I don’t really know. But, I feel the tide turning.

Gray, Restless and Strangely Alive

“One might say, I have decided to marry the silence….

                            The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife.”                                                     

“There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity.

 a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.”

                                                                                 — Thomas Merton

I am torn between two callings.  One calls to me like a quiet impulse, a feint throbbing within, steady like gravitational pull, forever sinking me deeper into silent emptiness. The other begs me to be as fully in the world as possible, to take part in the tumult, to care about the center and the periphery, to allow my heart to be broken, to revel in grief.

I don’t exactly know how to respond to either one. I know they are related, I learn from both, and I feel so inadequate, so oblivious, so human. I hurt with aliveness. Each beguiles me, de-centering me, keeping me forever off balance, asking me to seek something new and un-named from the darkness. I am alone and I am accompanied. I could be overwhelmed at any moment, and I am in love with surprise. My being resonates with these unheard sounds, and I find myself turning, not knowing what has found me. At least I’m called, crazed with delight and horror.

The world I live in is so mysterious, so demanding, so absolutely beautiful, that I can’t believe I’m part of it. I am only the stutter that precedes astonishment. I want to learn from myself, to occupy this portion of time and energy well, but I am too dumbfounded, too flabbergasted. Bafflement plays with my mind. Words like this come out of me, and I know I have no passport of understanding. I am naked, an unwashed innocent, playing at being human, wishing I knew better, but going along with the current. 

I am torn by two callings. One says be still, notice how full the emptiness is. While the other begs me to wear my brother’s clothes, to feel my sister’s heart, to break in all the fore ordained places, to go to all the places where love can take you, but cannot itself go. Each offers a kind of enlightenment, but combined, they coax one beyond.

Aging has made me a stranger to myself. I am both more capable than I was, and less capable. I now have wrinkles that reveal me, a tired being, worn into submission, glorified by the unpredictable. I am wizened by what has enthralled and shaken me. I know now I am not mine, just a shadow of who I used to be, and a snowflake of originality.  I should be satisfied knowing that, but I still feel called by these twin attributes of mystery. 

Gray, restless, and strangely alive.

The Rapture of Living

“People say that what we are all seeking 

is a meaningful life.

I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking.

I think that what we’re seeking

is an experience of being alive…

actually feeling

    the rapture of being alive.”

                                               Joseph Campbell

Living isn’t easy. Especially for the old, disabled or isolated.  All too often that means most of us. Getting out of bed, can be an act of courage. These challenges provide lots of opportunity. They can lead one straight down the rabbit hole, or through some paradoxical wonderland. The choice is ours, but it is such a large one, that it takes a lot of souls, plus Life to make. The rapture of living is gained through the magic of loss — a pinhole in reality — that it takes many human angels to pass through.

Have you ever asked yourself why it is so hard to live fully, and why, when you are fully alive, it is so hard to sustain it?  Living fully is tricky. Living fully alone is almost impossible.  Oh, that doesn’t mean solitude isn’t essential. It is. But, being here, completely, with no foot out the door, no hiding, no spiritual bypass, no patent happiness, no made-up face, in the moment, that is an achievement that is beyond most of us. For good reason. 

Rapture is like wildfire. It relishes fuel, and goes where it will, to get it. Strangely it is the broken-down places, the collapsing dreams, the failed identities, softened-up resolves — the ripped open that feed it. The rapture of living appears after the storm clouds of being broken open. As a rule, we humans don’t take easily to being that vulnerable. We are prone to personalizing so much failure. And, by and large, we don’t know, though we sometimes sense it, that the place of our limitations is the place of our possibilities.

Life, like the light, pours through the cracks. The rapture of living is not an attainment. It isn’t some sanctioned x-sport. It is the background of our being. The baseline setting that is always there, just beneath all of the errors and bad advice we tend to live by. It is the little green shoots, that break-up all of our assurances.

Being broken open, saturated with grief and uncertainty, and finding others who are similarly afflicted, that is the surest way to notice how finely each of us is held in the great tapestry of Mystery. Life comes surging through the openings. Breakdown is often breakthrough. We aren’t savvy enough to celebrate it, but the calming breeze of newly freshened air blows through us anyway. Life feasts upon our failures, and in the process, re-vitalizes us. 

The rapture of living responds whole heartedly to our willingness to go to the place of our most humble secrets. And, when we share them with each other, then we discover that rapture can become a maelstrom, a bursting forth of energy, a release, a freeing, of our truest nature. Rapture of living is infectious when openness breaks out.