Wonder

It’s Sunday morning and I want to write a Slow Lane. But, I’m hesitating. The things I thought I might write about, are either too cool or too hot. Neither will really do.  So, I’m just sitting here wondering. I want to write, to enjoy the respite from being so physically broken, that these little writing meditations allow. Now, I’m just sitting in silence, waiting for some inspiration to strike me.

As I do, my mind wanders.  I’m remembering the new men’s group that met for the first time yesterday. It was a complex, uncomfortable event. Every time I start-up with a set of new men, it feels like trying to start a conversation with my father — awkward silence, or small talk. 

Eventually a lot got surfaced. We marveled at being a group of old men meeting. All of us wanted to compare notes, we were sharing in something men in this culture don’t do, and never really get to experience so thoroughly. Getting old, publicly, becoming vulnerable, visibly. Out of our first meeting came a sense of wonder. We seemed to know enough, that there was widespread agreement, that we didn’t know much of anything. This left us with a lot to wonder about.

We never tried for any kind of agreement, but it seemed to me, we shared bafflement — at getting so old, at having slipping bodies, at wondering what we were for, at aching with uncertainty about what we might have to give. Losing so much left us feeling raw.

It was a good and unusual experience. There is no way to evaluate it. We were all virgins, meeting together, to do something we didn’t know how to do. Pretty extraordinary for a group of men. I liked it, except I can’t exactly say why. I guess I think meeting — if only this once — was such a courageous, and counter-cultural thing to do.

It left me wondering. I notice I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Feeling awed by what’s happening, or overwhelmed, by the mystery that seems folded into everything. There was a point in yesterday’s group, when we men surmised, that perhaps, our ability to wonder was what we have to offer. I like the notion of being aged into wonder. It makes me feel like Life knows what it is doing.

So, anyway, as I’m getting older — heading toward the horizon — I’ve found myself thinking, about whether I have anything to leave behind — for other’s coming along? My guess is no. It seems that people benefit by discovering for themselves. I care, but I’ve learned from my disability helplessness, that caring is complicated, and that people, no matter their circumstances, seem to thrive best, when they have weathered uncertainty, for what matters to them. 

In the meantime, I ponder. It seems like it is good that I’m getting slower and slower, more silent, less confident, and more uncertain. I’m slowly sinking into non-existence, becoming invisible, a shade, soon to be forgotten. I expect I’ll make a good anonymous ancestor. Though, of course, I wonder about that.

Conjecture, that is what I seem to be good at now. Living has taken away all of my certainties. It fascinates me, that all of my lifetime of losses, has brought me to this place. I wonder, if there is something inevitable, and natural, about wondering this much.

Here After

“What did I come in here after?” That’s what she says every time her memory fails, and she finds herself, in someplace, on a mystery quest. She has taken to calling, these increasingly occurring failures of her short-term memory, “here after” moments, as in, what am I here after?

When I heard this story, recounted by a friend, I knew I had to write about it. The only thing is, I can no longer remember what it was about this, that made me motivated to focus upon it. It rang some writerly bell.  So, hold on, I’m about to go off.

I like the sense of irony, or desperate humor, that is conveyed by her encapsulation of this little aspect of getting older. A ‘here after’ moment. It reminds me of the fairytales, and other stories I’ve heard, that all end the same way. They lived happily ever after. As if there is some place where things don’t change, where the moment goes on, despite the grip of time.

I don’t know about you, but when I have such a forgetful moment, when I can’t find a word, or I’ve screwed up my schedule again, forgetting something or someone, I feel like I’ve just suffered a psycho-emotional fall. Suddenly, I’ve been reduced, some form of gravity just brought me back into my decaying orbit. I am having my own form of ‘here after’ moment. Death seems closer than ever, and I find, something in myself is getting prepared, by falling, in this way.

Isn’t the time after death also referred to as the “here after?” There is something eternal about these kinds of moments. Oh yeah, that’s why I was so touched — by her seeing the everlasting aspect of these moments. It isn’t the first, or last, time I have arrived at the realization — I have no idea why I am here. What did I come here for? Am I in this scene for a reason? I don’t know. Is this a memory failure, or success? Whatever it is — it’s my “ever after” moment — just arriving.

What am I here after? The uncertainty implicit in that question haunts me. I spend so much of my life energy on other things. Some are very compelling distractions. But, no matter what I do, I can’t forget, that even as I am forgetting, I don’t really know what I am here after. This life seems to be my ‘here after’ moment.

I feel chagrined when my memory goes south. De-pantsed. Nakedly human. For a moment I am a flower with a broken stem. I wouldn’t pick me. I might admire the poignancy of my beauty, but I would move on. Out of the corner of my memory’s eye, I notice a long-misperceived latency. Something tells me, I am here, for this moment of uncertainty. 

What seems to be unchanging, in this parade of constant change, is the level of uncertainty that is omnipresent. How can that be a quality of ever after? I guess that is the ‘ever’ part, and the rest is the ‘after,’ that I clearly don’t remember.

Anyway, the “ever after” seems to be a place where things go when they slip the mind or, a moment when the mind is really working. I haven’t quite figured it out yet. And to be honest, I can’t really remember why I want to.

The Soul of Community

The soul of community is coming through us,

light on its forehead,


old stories in its right hand,

unknowing freedom in its left.

Don’t ruin this chance with easy promises,

 politeness,

pretenses of knowledge,

or elegant quotes.

The help that has been longed for is here. 

Join with other great souls.

Gathering together becomes a ceremony,

 approaching Mystery.

Meaning: pass quickly through your being 

into absence, unknowing and emptiness.

The self of your name and fame 

secures you


with a new knot every moment.

Personal identity is a sheath

The unique one resides within.

Reality unites


worn covering,


with our mysterious, unencumbered, nature.

 Look closely.

In community,

                           Love is purifying love.                           

                                                   —Rumi re-translation by David “Lucky” Goff

A Holy Vision

To be sane

in a mad time

is bad for the brain

even worse

for the heart.

The world is a holy vision,

had we clarity enough to see it.

A clarity that people

depend upon people

to make.                                                       

                                                       Wendell Berry

This is a difficult world to live in. This particular time in human history is full of uncertainty. To be a good citizen during these times is a daunting and powerful thing. Winding one’s way through the thicket of grief and joy makes such a present-time complex. The good and bad saturate this moment. Caring hurts. Awareness twists. The slippery dominates. A rare kind of vertigo arises.

During such a time it is easy, perhaps necessary, to lose one’s balance. This poem confirms this loss, while also affirming the underlying wholeness that sustains vision. There is a larger balance that can be found. It is a balance that relies on an assembly of human beings. The world is a holy vision that can be best seen together. This poem serves as a mantra that provides protection during an eclipse of coherence.

The age of modernity swells with chaos. The personal, social, political, and environmental are all under extreme pressure. An increasing speed of change, breaks everything down. The institutions are losing their integrity, and becoming untrustworthy. A great malaise blankets the land. It is a time when survival is in doubt. 

This is the backdrop that humans must cope with now. Human life reels with the extra burden of this apocalyptic awareness. There are fewer silent and beautiful places left. To maintain any kind of balance in such a world asks one to live unbalanced. As the poet, and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen says, “The blizzard of the world is crossing the threshold and threatening the order of the soul.”

Living in this kind of maelstrom is taxing. The mind that has crafted this tangle cannot go beyond it.

It is “worse for the heart.” Feeling the ailment that besieges these times is like feeling a ghost-infested house. The body-snatching denial of the masses heightens the heartache, increasing isolation, and rendering madness a relieving balm. There is nothing so debilitating as being sanely mad, and insanely well adjusted. Just as a plant wilts when it is denied water, the human spirit shrinks when it is immersed in a fragmented world.

The life of our times is a good mirror, as the poet knows, reflecting back to us who we have become.

Human constructed reality falters under the weight of too much hubris. The human world is bleak — but beyond the knowing and certainty of this era, there is a light. It is an underlying miracle that manages, despite our distractions, to support Life. This light is obscured by the beliefs that define the age. The junkyard of throwaway values is hiding our true home.

To really see what shines beneath us all, requires being in the world but not of it. Collectivity provides its own sight. Alone one can sense obscurely the animating force, but that intuition is not clear and stokes a hunger that only true vision can slake. This vision is multi-faceted. It takes many eyes and diverse meanings to behold it. Clarity is a relational thing; existing only through the perceptions of many different viewpoints.

There is an opportunity that interdependence brings. Communal life is more than a safe place, more than shared values and shared behaviors — it is multiplied awareness, which provides revelation. Between the many there is a level of perception that is larger, more informed, and more sensitive than what is common. A greater portion of the whole awaits cooperative perception.  The minds of many working in concert, magnify awareness, and reveal of the larger picture of mystery. 

Reverence for what made us, and locates us here, comes from an essential recognition of our mysterious origins. There is an opportunity that our mutual dependence provides — an opportunity for collective sight. The Universe of relationships is alive to the mind that is large and multi-faceted. As the poet says, this is “a clarity that people depend upon people to make.” The inclusive mind is a mutual mind; the result of shared endeavor, of collective learning, diversity, and of people looking together into what is.

This poem captures the effects of two relationships that define our possibilities. The first expresses the way our experience of ourselves is linked with our cultural practices. There is another relationship that is evoked. The magic of our larger surrounding is hidden away, obscured by social distrust, and its resultant blindness. The gravitas of this poem is captured by the poet’s use of the word “clarity.” There is a fog, an impenetrable haze, which comes between people. This smog is produced by distrust, alienation and isolation. It paints the world with depressing grey-tones, while obscuring a view of what mystery has wrought.

To see further, to more accurately take in the many-faceted complexity of our natural inheritance, requires overcoming the blindness of the crowd. From learning to distrust the many — one must make the journey of learning to trust one’s self in the midst of others. Such a journey is a complex maneuver. By becoming a part of something larger, while maintaining personal integrity and identity, one becomes a facet of the multiple eyes that are necessary to see more clearly. 

The relationship within is what enables the relationship without. Another way to say it, and to see the world more clearly, is that as self-intimacy grows, intimacy with one’s surrounding expands. The world comes freshly into view as the self does. The eyesight of the many is enhanced when some of them can see beyond themselves (because they can see themselves accurately). Community grows that capacity, providing the means. 

The process of growing a lucid response to a mad world is based upon our relations with each other. Some are capable of depending upon each other, they are made ready by the rigors of relating, and they have learned to hold on to their uniqueness. When this happens the integrity of the whole collective improves, and a multi-faceted viewpoint is more assured. Many eyes enable the holy vision.

The poet knows that “the world is a holy vision.” This vision provides an antidote to the madness that infects us. That antidote is available through workshops, seminars, and groups — wherever two or more are gathered together. The development of immunity, however, requires a longer-term engagement, immersion in a more complex social situation. Surviving in a mad world requires a kind of mutual reliance that now needs to be re-invented. We are social animals, capable of feats of collaboration. The poet reminds us, we need each other, to perceive the holy vision.

Wondering

“If our religion is based on wonder

our chief emotion is gratitude.”

                                            Carl Gustav Jung

Wonder. The gift of looking at something with awe and expectancy.  Different than an Easter egg hunt, where you are looking for it out there somewhere. Rather, wonder is something you carry with you, it’s more like an attitude, like planning to be surprised. Wonder is an inside attribute. Interestingly, carrying it around, seems to contribute to it happening. It’s like the world notices and preens before it. Wondering is a form of enchantment. Wonder makes ordinary magic more palpable. Some strange reflective something that puts things in focus, while shifting them onto the spectrum of awe. A life sentence, but of luminescence!

I woke-up recently to this form of noticing. I literally was assaulted with gratitude in my bed. It’s hard to know when awakening actually took place. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t deserve it, call for it, intend it, pray or meditate. It just invaded my soul.

I’d like to live this way. Perhaps, I will. Stranger things have happened.  I feel myself making a home for wonder, but it seems too wild to settle in one place. How does one hold what cannot be held? I am dying to find out.

Recently, I remembered a visit to Chaco Canyon. It was during a vacation with my second wife. Our “Rocks and Ruins Tour.” We pulled off the highway near Durango, and drove 30 miles of dirt road, to a place where wondering was a religion. We, being so sophisticated, didn’t know it at the time. While visiting the ruins of an ancient culture I went down into a Kiva. Maybe there, I got infected with wonder, but what seemed like a hole in the ground, held some kind of essence that enchanted me. I was inducted into a world beyond any I knew. Apparently, some forms of wonder have a long shelf life. Like an ancient tick, it jumped on me.

Now, I’m infected. I regularly view the preposterous as a possibility. Ungrounded as I am, in a disabled body, I get strange messages from what I encounter. Medicine moments arrive unbidden. Reality contorts. The world is full of horror and miracles. Sometimes, they are alike, and I wonder even harder.

My intention, as I sat down to write this, was to extoll the virtue of wonder, to marvel at how aging seems to enhance the probability of experiencing it, to genuflect before a world that contains it. What I’m discovering is that as soon as I realized I knew enough, to know, I knew practically nothing, wonder started flooding in. It turns out, that what I don’t know, opened the flood gates. 

I am blessed to be the rare shut-in, who gets to know wonder, in my interactions with others on the computer. Cyber groups have become visits to Kiva’s. The sacred wonder of meeting on-line. Something happens, that no one expects, but everyone hopes for. One can feel a subtle avalanche occurring, Connection, seemingly made by cyber-gods, takes place. Where actually, it is the power of wonder bringing us all back into an awareness of what has always been true. Connection is, and wonder is one way of broadcasting that recognition.

Yes, gratitude rises with it. I am flushed with I can’t say enough, nor can I be silent enough, to really acknowledge what I am experiencing. I guess, I have little real choice, I have to live it out. Wonder has overcome me, and shown me both sides of this inexplicable world. I am thrilled and I am terrified. I guess that means I’m alive. Wonder of wonders!

Comfort

There is something about the desire for comfort that makes me uneasy. Comfort seems like it ought to be the simplest thing, but as I think about it, especially in the age of climate change, social distrust and all kinds of polarization, I’m finding it to be increasingly elusive. There used to be a time when I found lasting comfort in a warm bed, an affectionate hug, or a poignant silence. Now, even the comforts of life have some element of discomfort in them. I wonder how this can be? Come, wonder with me — maybe we’ll find comfort anew.

Recently I went to someone’s house, to have a climate change discussion with a group of strangers. The gathering was supposed to happen in the host’s back yard. It didn’t. The whole event moved indoors, I gather for comfort’s sake. Someone might have been cold or allergic. The meeting took place, was interesting, and aroused in me later, the realization, that we altered the original environment we  were scheduled to meet in, to improve the comfort of all involved. This was such a normal, and casual change, that no one thought anything about it. It was only later, when I was at home, reflecting upon some vague dissatisfaction with the meeting, that I realized, by seeking greater comfort we had altered our environment.

Naturally, it occurred to me, that seeking comfort in this way, is a big part of how we have created, and maintain, the climate crisis, and other forms of collective threat. Some people’s comfort results in other’s threats. This has been a disturbing realization. Now, I know there are economic and ideological reasons threats exist, but comfort-seeking is something each one of us contributes to the general malaise of our times.

Thinking like this upsets my apple cart, throws me in a tither, and puts a spell on me. Suddenly, I start thinking about comfort. I remembered, that I once spoke to members of the elder salon, about how becoming a community meant learning about being uncomfortable together. Then, I recognized the way seeking-comfort could be a way of abusing others, and caring more about individual comfort than the needs of something larger. Now, I recognize the same principle applies to my desire for comfort. That is an uncomfortable idea.

How strange, that the uncomfortable notion, that my basic practice of seeking comfort can create discomfort, noticing this upsets me, and provides a modicum of comfort. Oddly, my life benefits from my knowing how connected I am — when I become more aware of how much impact I have on others. 

I long to feel connected. Experiencing myself embedded in a matrix of connection, where my actions, small as they are, have impact on others, and on the world I live in, thrills me, calms me down, and gives me a feeling of comfort that seems to reach deep inside me. 

In some way, I feel comforted when I realize I’m part of something larger. So even though the realization that I create discomfort around me, when I seek my kind of comfort, actually becomes more palatable. How paradoxical! Comfort seeking often leads to more systemic discomfort, whereas being open to discomfort, seems to arouse the greatest feeling of being connected, and a greater sense of comfort.

It hasn’t been obvious. This association between comfort and discomfort, it is having an indelible effect upon me. I have been seeking lasting comfort, like the old country western song says, “in all the wrong places.” With some appreciation, of how failing can paradoxically can increase one’s chances of succeeding, I am taking some comfort from the clarity coming my way.

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.