Kaleidoscope: Shards of Yesterday

My Christmas reading this year is Will Ferguson's book, "Beyond Belfast" which is a telling of his 800 km hike along the Ulster Way in Northern Ireland. Ferguson is an exemplary storyteller, bringing the reader along on his journey by way of insight and humor. 

Irish history, like Middle-east history, like African history, like... human history is a story of conflict and resilience; suffering and hope; striving, subjugation and... more subjugation. As I pour myself into Ferguson's telling I find myself asking a question that has arisen many times in my contemplations: "Why do we allow our yesterdays to determine our todays?"

I'm not suggesting that we forget the past (not sure this is even possible without surgery and drugs on a mass scale). Nor do I propose that the past does not impact the present. Clearly our todays are shaped by the years in the rearview mirror. I am merely asking us all (us homosapiens) to consider honoring the story of yesteryear's sorrows, wounds, successes, and dreams as exactly what they are - a retrospect! Finished! Wisdom-foder. 

The short term for this is forgiveness - not forgetting and not holding on; letting lived moments, ancestral moments, all of our moments slip down the flow of time to make room for the possibility of new life, of a new today. Perhaps much of the world's current conflict and sorrow arises because we have chained ourselves to archival memories that bear no space for reinvention. 

What does this negative space look like? It looks like the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites; north and south; Irish Unionists and Nationalists; east and west... pick a team, pick a cause, pick a memory to kill for and watch today die in the ashes of yesterday's fires. 

From marriages to countries - yesterday forms us and yet it is our power of choice that will define us. Perhaps this New Year is an opportunity for a new storytelling, one that honors ancestral lineage by birthing today into a nova lux.

Honoring and letting go.

Something to ponder...

Living amongst the shards,
B

Shards of Uncertainty

Tidbits of recent news are lingering in my thoughts this evening: Oil prices are low; civil wars in several countries are causing immeasurable suffering; weather patterns are increasingly erratic; suicide rates are on the rise...

So much hurt in our world; so much anxiety. How are we to move forward when we are surrounded by this cacophony of sad news?

Perhaps the answer is to found in comments from a participant at a workshop that I recently facilitated. In considering her own wellbeing and her need to increase her vitality, she said, "I need to build a stronger village around me."

This strikes home for me. When we feel isolated we despair. In the village, however, all have a place, all are supported - mutually holding and being held. if there is an antidote for despair it may be found within interwoven threads of the village's mosaic. 

In an era of increasing individualism and growing isolationism, sowing the seeds of village is perhaps our most important endeavor. That leaves us then with one simple question - how do we grow village?

The soulfulness of village.

Something to ponder...

Living amongst the shards,
B

Shards of Re-membering

I met with six friends yesterday with whom I graduated from high school...34 years ago. We haven't aged a day. Well, we haven't aged significantly since we saw each other a year ago. 

We caught up on kids, cancer, vocation, losses, travel... and of course a thick helping of conversation regarding classmates with whom we've lost track.

All in all it was an evening of remembering. Or perhaps more accurately it was re-membering. To re-member is to bring into membership again that which was perhaps lost or pushed out. 

In re-membering stories we weave back into the tapestry of our life those threads that have been dropped, torn, or maybe just faded. In sorrowing, for example, the recollection of a loved-one returns that person to the communion of our inner being, back into membership with us - lost physically, reclaimed emotionally.

My classmates and I reclaimed old stories, experienced anew from a more mature lens, a different lens. We salvaged long forgotten tales, not to stir the pot of old wounds, rather, to bring back into the membership of our life mosaic reminiscences that are precious in both their wounding and their wonder. 

Re-membering.

Something to ponder...

Living amongst the shards,

B

Shards of Falling Leaves

There's a big 'ol grandmother poplar outside the Hospice office window. She has stood her ground, deeply rooted, next to the Stoney Creek for countless decades. She is my mentor...

One of the stories she whispers from within the cool fall breezes is about leaves. 

In the early spring, before the nights are warm and as the days lengthen, she wakens from her winter slumber. Sap rises, and the first stirrings of rebirth are witnessed in the swelling buds of new leaves. She dares to hope, dares to believe through winter's grief, that life might continue. 

Against all odds, the buds unfurl to reveal the fluorescent green of soft young leaves. Her joy is ecstatic as one by one by one they unfold, covering her in a cloak of brilliant verdence.  The weeks ease by, June morphing into July and the heart of summer. The leaves have changed, deeping in hue to the darker green of mature foliage. The soul of this great grandmother poplar rejoices in being nourished, and in turn nourishing each and every limb and branch, twig and leaf.

The weeks slip by and soon cool autumn evenings invite the harvest moon to spread an early frost. A shiver runs down her limbs as the first tinge of gold touches her cloak of green. A leaf falls, gently drifting to the ground - tree tears, and soon she is in awe of the bronze, copper, yellow and gold that adorn her every branch. Even as she cries out in wonder, though, her heart shrinks back in grief at what is to come. Soon they will be gone, and the life which she shared with her emerald mantel will soon be a memory.

The last leaf is ripped from her in the grip of a winter storm and she is left bereft. She dared to love again, to taste hope in spring's viridescent promises of renewal, of communion. 

In her sorrow she recedes to a place at once forlorn and familiar. She goes into her roots, her being flowing down to dark places where grief will begin its slow transformation of her being. 

Dark, cold, slow, unknowing, uncertain, alone. 

Until...  with the coming of early spring, before the nights are warm and as the days lengthen, she wakens from her winter slumber and dares to Love again.

Ah, grandmother - your tears and your joy mingle in the telling of your tales.

We take but one breath in this life - a startled inhalation at birth, and a slow exhalation at our death. In between - is beginnings and endings, birthings and dyings. Grandmother poplar teaches the way, how to hope, how to live, how to grieve. The rhythm of our breath, in, out, is the rhythm of starting again, of rising from the dark ground of our sorrowing to reemerge into this world of prasine wonder. 

Life and death... it is who we are.

Something to ponder...

 Living amongst the shards,

B

The Color of the Human Spirit

“The human capacity for burden

is like bamboo;

far more flexible

than you'd ever believe at first glance.” 

(Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper)

In my work as a journey-mate to sorrow I am a bearer of stories of human tragedy and loss. The phone rings; a shaky voice asks if they may come and water the couch at the Hospice office with their tears. Face-to-face, stillness fills the room - calm before the storm. Then comes the story... of a diagnosis, dread, months, weeks, days, and the bitter sweet aroma of death. Or perhaps it is a telling drenched in the loss of tragedy - vehicles, drugs, children, spouses; worlds shattered, communities broken.

I hear these stories, over and over - and I am grateful. I give thanks that I am privileged to sit at the feet of these mentors of human resilience. The mother who's son died of an overdose - her eyes hot with anger at a world gone wrong; her heart flayed and laid bare. She thinks she will die from her grief, but she will not. She will breathe again, smile again, and will love, with a ferocity to shake the mountains from their roots, the son she now holds in her heart. 

“Life doesn’t get easier

or more forgiving;

we get stronger

and more resilient.” 

(Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free )

Robert, who's wife died from cancer after 40 years of marriage. He is lost, and anxious, and lonely to his bones. Jennifer's baby died in the womb one week before he would have been born. She feels shame, fatigue, and longing to suckle a son she never met.

I hear only a minute fraction of the sorrows of humanity; enough though to know that the human spirit is immensely powerful. It will be bent, crushed, torn, and violated; nature will bear down upon it with savagery; all manner of evil will assail it. And when darkness lays heaviest upon the human spirit it is then that it rises up and shouts at the universe, "I will not be overcome!"

“The oak fought the wind

and was broken,

the willow bent when it must

and survived.” 

(Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven)

Whatever troubles you today know this - you are strong. You are bones of the earth, power of the wind, depths of the oceans, brilliance of lightening strong. If your heart is torn in grief - you will overcome. If you are drowning in despair - you will overcome. When you feel lost - you will overcome. When you are betrayed, violated, persecuted - you will overcome. Nothing has the power to assail you for you are made from Love and Love always overcomes.

I leave the last word to author, Steve Goodier:

“My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.”
(Steve Goodier)

The Color of the human spirit...

willow in the wind, roots in the earth, stars in the heavens.

Gold

is always

gold

always!

Bend it

melt it

stretch it

burry it

still gold

You are gold

Resilience

To Ponder Further:
- From the Bible: " For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." (2 Timothy 1.7)

- From Sikhism: "Make chastity your furnace, patience your smithy, The Master's word your anvil, and true knowledge your hammer. Make awe of God your bellows, and with it kindle the fire of austerity.
And in the crucible of love, melt the nectar Divine. Only in such a mint, can we be cast into the Word." (Adi Granth, Japuji 38, M.1, p. 8)

- From Hinduism: "
The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of his Maya. Take refuge utterly in Him. By His grace you will find supreme peace, and the state which is beyond all
change." (Bhagavad Gita 18.61-62)

The Color of Gathering around the Fire

“Each of us is born

with a box of matches inside us

but we can't strike them

all by ourselves” 

(Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate)

So the story goes, that humankind, in some form, has gathered around a fire for hundreds of thousands of years. Frightened to awe-full respect by the explosive unfolding of a lightning strike; fleeing bush and grass fires; and one fateful, trajectory-changing day, holding fire captive to the control of a stone ring. Humanity's first hearth; the soul's light incarnate.

Gathering around the fire... ancient fires of the herds-people as they listened to the song of the stars, huddling for warmth; remembering hearth and kin at home. Ancient fires of the gods in mythic tales of struggle and power, creation and destruction. Ancient fires kilning bricks for monuments, roads, palaces, and huts. 

“Keep a little fire burning;

however small, however hidden.” 

(Cormac McCarthy, The Road)

Gathering around the fire... desert peoples on cloudless, cold nights, the cry of a desert fox on the hunt piercing the dark; arctic tribes feigning sunlight through the dark of winter's solstice, a soft fire's glow illuminating a snowy hearthstone.

Gathering around the fire... ancient flames, older than humanity; old when the dinosaurs roamed; timeworn when the earth trembled in its forming. Fuel and oxygen, joined in elder-dance; the movement of the universe in its first tentative steps, energy in motion. 

Gathering around the fire... the cooking hearth, upon which hangs a hearty stew, simmering and filling the home with the aroma of welcome. The forge: wherein the blacksmith bends metal to her will - nails, shoes, rails, hoes; tools of life. Gunpowder: the fire of war, of the hunt, of life and death.

For one hundred thousand years the village has gathered around the fire. Here our collective story is given voice, digested, remembered, retold. The village fire softens the hard heart of conflict, hardens resolve for life's challenges; makes a place for sorrow, even as it celebrates joy. In the fire's gathering shame has no voice as the village gathers wounding's fragments into wholeness.

The finest steel

has to go through the hottest fire.

(Richard M. Nixon)

Even now, after countless millions of fires, we gather. Electric stoves, natural gas furnaces, wood stoves, and combustion engines. We are drawn, as were our ancient ancestors, to the heat, the power, and the life of fire. It is written upon the codex of our cells - into our DNA: turn to the fire; come to its light; bask in its warmth. 

Gathering around the fire... a slowly dying thermonuclear reaction that floods a solar system with light and life. One star, in the immense vastness of the universe; one star whose gravity swings our planet on an invisible string. One star - our fire, the fire, the world's hearth.

The most powerful weapon on earth

is the human soul on fire. 

(Ferdinand Foch)

Gathering around the fire... fire of passion, fire of Love; the infernal of injustice burning against the background of change; the raging fire of new romance; the white-hot embers of old friendships. Finally, of all our gatherings, fires archaic and fires new, it is the fire of the soul that seeks meaning, connection, fuel. What fuels the fire that warms the hearth of your soul?

I leave the last word to 13th century poet, Rumi:

“Set your life on fire.

Seek those who fan your flames”

(Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi)

The color of gathering around the fire...

safety, community, life.

A spark

in the darkness

ignites

the tinder

of hope

hearth

and

home

You

are that

spark

Burn

Breathe

Be

To Ponder Further:

- From the Bible: "...for our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12.29)

- From Hinduism: "There lies the fire within the Earth, and in plants, and waters carry it; the fire is in stone.
There is a fire deep within men, a fire in the kine, and a fire in horses: The same fire that burns in the heavens; the mid-air belongs to this divine Fire. Men kindle this fire that bears the oblation and loves the melted butter." (Atharva Veda 12.1)

- From Taoism: "Buy captive animals and give them freedom. How commendable is abstinence that  dispenses with the butcher! While walking be mindful of worms and ants. Be cautious with fire and do not set mountain woods or forests ablaze." (Tract of the Quiet Life)

The Color of That Which Truly Matters

“I'm lonely.

And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way

and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely,

and how deep this feeling runs.

And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely

because it seems catastrophic.” 

(Augusten Burroughs, Dry)

My garage, and the storage room in our basement, are in similar states - they are filled with stuff. When spring has settled upon us (on the far horizon of this -31 C day) I want to go through this stuff to determine what are useful, desirable bits to keep, and which will be dispersed to new homes. It is a process of reduction of sorts - as in the cooking term wherein the flavor of a liquid is thickened and intensified by simmering or boiling. I want to simmer the contents of my storage areas down to an essence.

“What stays with you longest and deepest?

Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements

or sieges tremendous

what deepest remains?” 

(Walt Whitman)

Other parts of life are simmering as well. Francis Weller's excellent book, "The Wild Edge of Sorrow" is on my stack of current reading. His writing is an invitation to descend the basement stairs of our being, exploring dim places where long forgotten sorrows may lay dust-covered and mildewy. Weller leads us into rituals of deepening, attending to, and listening to our being. This is an exercise in gentleness and patience, for many of our sorrows arise from stories near-forgotten, barely a whisper on the soul's lips.

"We were not meant to live shallow lives, pocked by meaningless routines and the secondary satisfactions of happy hour. We are the inheritors of an amazing lineage, rippling with memories of life lived intimately with bison and gazelle, raven and the night sky. We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance. 

This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow."

(Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow)

Weller challenges us to engage that which he would say truly matters - our deepest sorrows, our shame, our healing, and our joys. All he says, are intimately intertwined. It takes courage to descend the stairs to the basement of our being; courage to unpack boxes wherein hurts were deposited that had no voice, no one to hold them. 

It is this work, though, of sorrow and grief, that gives meaning to the wonder of sunlight on snow, a grey shadow in the curl of a drift, or the innocent laughter of babies. Here is the grounding to find connection to others; to family, to community. To open our hearts to wonder we must first be open to deepening, to attending and to listening. Only then have we the presence of being to breathe-in this world, to take in the story of another, and to hold our own story as sacred.

Sorrows, some intimately known, some voiceless, await not our confrontation; rather, they beckon embracing. These raw places are full of energy; they pronounce, through a delicate dance, that we are alive, that we are being formed in a crucible, that we will not stand silent in the dark night of the soul. 

And so, a calendar page has turned, birthing the year of our Lord, 2018. A New Year, a new day, a present moment. Be alive in this moment - breathe deeply, feel passionately all that lays within the rooms of your heart; draw deeply from the well of your sorrow that you may quench the thirst of longing for wholeness.

“Consult your memory

to know what matters

most in your life.”

(Amit Kalantri)

2018 - there is only one of you among the 7.5 billion of us; you are rare and precious. May whatever sorrows attend you fall but gently upon your heart. Reduce to their essence the contents of your soul's storage rooms. In both joy and sorrow, grief and renewal, may you know that you are amazingly, truly alive, and may your sorrows be the bridge to that which truly matters.

I leave the last word to 19th century poet extraordinaire, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 

“Every man has his secret sorrows

which the world knows not;

and often times we call a man cold

when he is only sad.” 

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Color of that which truly matters...

darkness rising to meet the light.

A box

buried among boxes

dusty

and forgotten

inside

a single tear

shed

for all the world's sorrows

Breathe

Laugh

Be

To Ponder Further:

- From the Bible: "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit." (Psalm 34.18)

- From Tenrikyo: "I created you human beings because I desired to see you lead a joyous life." (Ofudesaki 14.25)

- From Sikhism: 

"Farid, I thought I alone had sorrow;
Sorrow is spread all over the whole world.
From my roof-top I saw
Every home engulfed in sorrow's flames."

(Adi Granth, Shalok, Farid, p. 1382)