What you feel is life, what you live is another story.
Here is my latest on Elephant Journal.
“It’s moments like these that turn our lives on edge, that make us reel and then, hopefully, real. It’s our choice what to do with them, how to react to them, and what we choose to take out of them. We can be a tree that cracks through its seed, or we can remain dormant in the soil to dawn another day.
It’s our choice and I made mine.”
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/02/divorce-or-breakup-the-art-to-healing/
We have all uttered vows in our lives that we’ve broken. I’ve promised “till death do us part” and so on only to be parted before death. We have all promised eternity, fidelity, honor and obedience to our partners. We’ve all uttered the words “I’ll never leave” or “You are the only one for me” at some points in our lives to someone who is no longer with us.
So, why utter the vow in the first place?
“Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
I wander, in this windswept world of ideas and thoughts, and wish I could escape it all. Yet, the wish is yet another idea, part of the mind, and it seems as if there is no liberation from the voices in my head.
My soul, my essence, my spirit, has apparently decided it wants to play in the land of the Great Known. Here, everything is judged, defined, and falls under certain rules we must all live by. Judgment is a part of the breath of our physical form, for even the very act of being non-judgmental is an act of judging itself. Beneath the conscious parts of ourselves lies an undercurrent of patterned behaviors, of instilled thoughts and ideas that can only be vetted by the amount of suffering they cause. It seems as if the world around me is devoted to the act of suffering to the point where even the practice of detachment is devoted to it. We suffer in the fact that we must become detached from those things that make us suffer, never realizing that it is the suffering itself that is an arrow pointing toward places of pure joy. Yes, Eve, it is possible to revisit the Garden of Eden, but first you need to wake up from your nightmare.
I am fortunate. I live in a society where, traditionally, being white and having a penis is an immediate advantage. Yet I feel distinctly disadvantaged as I observe the suffering around me. I see men forgetting who they are, struggling daily to act like their fathers and the men who taught their fathers. I see the glorious power of women being trampled on by the fear and insecurity of men taught such things by their ancestors. I see children being victimized by those who love them the most as the shackles of ideology and culture are placed upon them, and see the wonderful wings of a child’s imagination clipped as they are taught they cannot be who they want to be, and they cannot do what they find great joy in doing.
Of course I generalize here, describing the things I see pejoratively in the largest part of the whole I have lived my entire life in. My memory brings back a time when I was a conservative white male and saw the world through those eyes. My, how the victims I see now were the victimizers then. My, how those with the least were trampled under the weight of my idea that they deserved to be. I remember how the poor were unworthy of my help, and how my white, male self was being victimized by the poor simply because I was forced to help them.
Today, of course, I have evolved and see things much differently. I’ve been wealthy and have lived the life of a wealthy, white man. I’ve had a gorgeous wife, a big house, fancy cars and money to spare. Yet, like a short-necked giraffe I could not reach the sustenance I needed even as I stood on the summit of the American dream. The fruit I needed to live was on a much higher place than I could reach, so something needed to change.
So, as is the case for most of us, something much more powerful than I took over. I lost my financial wealth and was forced to downsize a life that had gotten out of control, a process that continues even now. I lost the gorgeous wife, the fancy cars, and now live in relative simplicity. The talents that helped me accumulate wealth are still there, but my focus is now on what brings me joy. I write, I think, I protest, I work and I live to love my children. My children are not an aside to my workday, my workday is an aside to them. I have discovered the love of people I would have never known in my “past life”. I’ve taken charity, I’ve received and I have learned. I’ve learned to let go. I’ve learned to tolerate. Most of all, I’ve learned to forgive and accept while always realizing that my choices are my power. There, I’ve learned much about responsibility that goes well beyond the type my ancestors taught me.
I may not die the millionaire I once sought to be, but I will die a wealthy man. I will die a liberated man no longer a slave to the story I once saw as “my truth”. Today, I see my truth in the fact that I am a perfectly fallible man, full of judgments and opinions and thoughts and ideas. I accept the fact that there are times when I will judge you harshly for your actions, but I also accept the fact that the gaps between such judgment and my forgiveness of it is narrowing quickly. Perhaps that is the role of judgment, to make us examine the gaps between the lower vibrations within us and the higher ones we seek to feel and how quickly those gaps close.
Right now I look to compassion and love for solutions that used to come in dollars and cents (no, not sense). I’m talking about real compassion and love, not the kind that says “I’m beating you with this stick because I love you,” or “starving people is compassion because it teaches them they need to fish.” Compassion, to me, is defined by what makes me smile in service of others, and love is defined by what raises those tiny little bumps on my skin. That’s all. It’s not about you as much as it is about me.
This is a new kind of selfishness that I define as a “pure and holy selfishness.” Here, my neck must lengthen not for the good of the herd, but so I can reach that fruit at the top of the tree that will keep me alive so that I may do some good for the herd. Here, my arms must widen so that I can hug you tighter. Here, I must be happy so that I can make you smile. It has to be about “me first” so that I can put YOU first. It’s a simple equation that goes something like this:
Ok, I’m just kidding. Actually, it is more like this:
I(x) = U(x)
If “x” is happy, well then I am happy and you are happy. But I have to be happy first. I can also make you upset if x= upset. See how easy that is?
I can even change your x simply by being a different x first and choosing to stay there. Yes, I now love math when it’s taught like this.
I can attest to the fact that this is not an easy road to travel. It’s rife with the pain and anguish many spend their time avoiding. I can understand the avoidance, and I know that when the Universe says it is time you will have no choice. It may not happen in this lifetime or even the next, but it will happen when your soul is ready to experience something new we profoundly call, “the truth.” One day you will wake up, swallow the red pill, and the pathway will change. Enjoy the journey, it is nothing but wonderful once the fog lifts and the sunlight warms your heart.
Peace.
He had felt the sting of her absence and he had felt the pain of the distance between them yet, for the Wandering Man, he felt no greater pain than that of her departure. The end had not yet come for them, but even so he could feel the numbness in his chest and smell the stench of such discovery as if it had already happened. For him, now, it only seemed a matter of time.
Their love was, after all, a risk; a roll of the dice to which the odds were so heavily stacked against them. The footprints they left in the sand behind them were the divergent paths of separate lives that had intersected for brief moments of blistering passion, left cooled by the fear of guilt and the surrender to false comfort. To one there was a hope of truth whispering a soft song, to the other there was the liar of fear shouting loudly enough to drown out the music.
When fear sets in crimes of passion are often mitigated by the punishment of the mind. When hope becomes nothing more than a discomfort it is hope that dies. When love becomes that thing beyond our reach it is often happiness we leave behind. We have become masters of fantasy, one that would turn the sweet nectar of love sour and the bitterness of servitude to our liking. We live a lie, and then we hate ourselves for it even as we search for a truth we hate ourselves for finding. We are the most well conditioned of beasts, and we are the most indentured servants to fear, paying off the debt those before us have passed on.
It is said that there comes a moment with the prisoner begins to love his chains. It can also be said that there comes a moment when the prisoner begins to fear his liberation. Who does shackle you my dear? Who does bind you to the Earth with chains when your wings so much desire to fly?
Why must we compound the debt of our parents or of our neighbors by living their lie as well? Who created the monsters in your closet, or the shadows in the corners of your mind? Who sets them free to run amok in our lives? Who hides the torch that slays the dark beasts of minds in order to make them real?
Another firm footfall in the sand and behold, there is only one set of footprints there. I would rather die a thousand deaths in this deserted place than live a life in bondage as your neighbor. I would rather die a hard death as I crash to the ground than to have lived in fear of flight. I would rather die than to have never felt the wind rush through my soul, or never have tasted the sunlight upon my lips. Fear, let me go. Fear, let me be. Fear, say goodbye to this Wanderer as I set my compass to whichever direction I may go heading for a truth to which I may give my life.
If I must be alone in this journey, I accept my solitude. If I must be hated for my liberation, I accept my punishment. If I must continue to bleed to be released from these shackles and chains I accept the pain. In my heart I feel my purpose never so clearly. It is not to be loved. It is not to love. It is to acknowledge my freedom and take my liberation as a result of that understanding. There is love there, flowing naturally as the rain from a summer’s cloud.
Freedom is not liberation. Freedom is the knowing you can be liberated. Liberation is the act of exercising your freedom, of living that truth so vehemently that you awaken from the dream and find peace so abundantly that war becomes obsolete. Freedom is the knowing you can fly. Liberation is the flying.
The ground becomes a resting place and nothing more, the sky is where you roam. Gravity is what reminds you of the beauty of your liberation. Stillness becomes a beautiful activity. You begin to know fear as something you once felt, that liar who was once your Master but who is now a silent student.
So tell me, was the ride worth it? Did you feel the air briefly rush over you as you flew with me high in the sky, looking down on those clouds you have become so accustom to seeing above? Did you love the clarity of the bluest of skies even as you sought the murkiness of a clouded pool of mud on which to force a landing? I wish nothing more, I seek nothing less. That is love.
I will now rest my head to sleep. I will awaken on my earthen table to read the promise on the stone now covering my tomb. My tomb is the dream, the illusion of fear to which I have become enslaved. The written promise is of freedom, and in the rolling back of the stone I embark on my tale of liberation. You need not go with me, you need not sacrifice your bread for the promise of starvation. Yet you will not die of hunger if you do, for a wise man once said in a story written long ago that “man cannot live on bread alone.” Your body may feel hunger, and your mind may scream in the agony of fear, but out there, in that wonderland of liberation there is nothing you will ever need even as all your needs are met.
Peace.
I have been fortunate in my life to have been challenged by many people along the way. This story is an example of such a challenge.
This is a conversation I had with a conservative Christian woman who was slightly older than I am. It began as a group conversation about the checkered history of Christianity, to which I was offering factual accounts of atrocities created during that history.
The woman walked up to me afterward and said, “I’d really like to continue our conversation. You kind of peeved me a little bit.”
I’m pretty used to that reaction, so it no longer offends me. “How so? If I may ask.”
“Well, you seem to quickly point out the evils of Christianity, but you don’t mention that all religions have such issues in their history. Why not talk about that?”
Without wanting to get into a much deeper discussions of why it seems all religions have such a tortured past, I stuck to the subject at hand.
“I don’t believe that’s true. I don’t seem to remember much history of Buddhist atrocities, or of Buddhism’s evil side. I haven’t read where there were Buddhist inquisitions, or Buddhist crusades, or forced subjugation of people by Buddhists. It may be there, but have you ever heard of any?”
“No, I haven’t. But give it time, Buddhism isn’t that old.”
I kind of blinked strangely at that comment, and she must have seen it.
“Right?” she added.
“Actually, it may surprise you to find out that Buddhism is about 500 years older than Christianity. And it’s killed far fewer people. In fact, the vast majority of people who have died because of Buddhism have died because their Buddhist.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Check it out if you want, but I think you’ll find it’s true.”
“Ok, so let’s go with that. I can also say with some certainty that Buddhism doesn’t contribute to society. At least Christianity does that.”
“Can I ask you some questions,” I went on. ” and would you answer honestly? Keep in mind that I am not asking questions to compare Buddhism to Christianity, but rather want to see if Buddhism contributes to society.”
“Yes, ok, go ahead.”
So, I asked her how many people Buddhist monks have murdered, or of people who have been murdered in the name of Buddhism.
She replied, “none to my knowledge.”
Then I asked how many nations Tibet has invaded.
She said “none.”
So I then asked her how many Buddhists the Dali Lama has ordered to attack non-believers.
She said “none to my knowledge.”
“Then haven’t Buddhists contributed something to society? Isn’t peace something we all can contribute?”
It appeared she had no choice but to say “I guess so.”
Not satisfied with this end, she then started with the clarifiers. You know, the “contributions I mean are jobs, money, income, wealth, prosperity.”
“Can you take money with you to heaven when you die?” I replied.
“No.”
“Can you take your house, your car, or your TV with you when you die?”
“No.”
“Can you take any part of your wealth with you when you pass on?”
“Nope.”
“Can you take peace with you?”
“Yes, I hope so.”
“Then isn’t the very thing that Buddhist monks contribute to society the ONLY thing you can take with you to heaven?”
She again seemed to have no choice but to agree.
“Does it seem strange to you that the very place your faith says you can take peace but not wealth is called “paradise”? Doesn’t it seem ironic to some degree that the Master you believe is the Son of God is also called the ‘Prince of Peace’ and not the ‘Prince of Job Creation’ or the ‘Prince of Sound Finance’?”
She then put her hand on my shoulder, said “thank you” and walked away. I’m not sure what, if any, effect the conversation had on her, but it seemed to confirm in me what I’ve seen since my earliest memory. Peace is the answer, and love is the way to peace.
We all have our own personal Bodhi trees, and for me mine has been the many times I’ve sat simply watching. Watching others. But mostly watching myself. Watching myself in moments of suffering. Watching myself in moments of ecstasy, or regret, or sorrow, or joy. Watching myself when I am challenged and when I am not.
It isn’t easy being a human, or another other physical being on this planet. Yet it can be. We just have to set our sights on that star of Peace and Love and hold our course even when the wild winds blow and the waves try to crack our hulls. We can…
So maybe we need to consider something taught as a matter of life by even the lowliest of Buddhist monks. It we can’t take it with us in our passing it really doesn’t matter. If we can’t hold on to it when we close our eyes for the last time perhaps it isn’t worth holding on to beforehand. Perhaps we have been taught incorrectly, and perhaps each of us, if we listen, can change.
Here I sit, my Bible in hand, trying to find that part where Jesus changed his mind. I look through Matthew. Nothing. I look through Mark. Nada. I search through Luke, still nothing. I get past John and, surprisingly, I still find nothing.
Given what I see from those who say they worship Jesus as “God”, I figure somewhere Jesus must have changed his mind. The book I was taught while suffering through Catholic school must have miraculously changed at some point since those lessons. I wouldn’t be surprised, after all the God of the book did all kinds of wild stuff, so certainly changing the entire text on which His superstition, er, I mean religion was based certainly could be done.
I can’t see where Jesus suddenly turned his back on the poor, calling them “lazy freeloaders” along the way. I can’t find that notion where the poor were put on notice that they were “on their own” to either starve or beg for mercy to some church as a part of their poverty. I can’t see where Jesus said that the wealthy were deserved of special treatment or any kind of hero-worship.
Nope, my book still says the wealthy will have a hard time getting into heaven. My book still has Jesus eating with the most hated of his society. My book still has him working to feed the poor without conditions. Hhhhhmmmm.
I can’t find where Jesus is pro-death penalty in my Bible. I can’t find where he condemns people to death for violating the laws of the land. I’m sure it has to be in there somewhere because, after all, the Christian part of our society seems strongly in favor of the death penalty. I must have to reread it all over again because certainly those who follow Jesus as Lord and Master could not be for something he was not.
I also can’t seem to find that part where Jesus seeks wealth. I can’t find the capitalist Jesus every conservative Christian seems to know. I look for the man named Jesus who worships money and puts nearly everything behind amassing wealth and power. I can’t find that Jesus though and I can’t find where he even held a job let alone created a company. I am fairly certain that the Americanized conservative Jesus would have had one of the twelve carrying a cash register while another of the twelve carried a sandwich board stating the prices for being healed. I think it’s also fair to say that Americanized conservative Jesus would have had a 501-3(c) as well as a Political Action Committee all at his disposal.
I’m also fairly certain the Americanized conservative Jesus also only raised the dead of the highest bidder. That’s the capitalist way!
Not to get on a tangent, but if the afterlife Jesus described was so wonderful, why did he raise people from the dead anyway? If I had died, was in heaven, and then was brought back by Jesus, I’d get off my stone slab and beat him with my shoe. I know, heaven didn’t exist until Jesus died…or something like that. Uh huh.
Ok, back to the gist of my thought.
I also can’t find where Jesus felt the need to have a weapon to protect himself. I do realize that anyone who can walk on water probably would have no need for a sword, but even when he could have used one he did not and commanded others NOT to use theirs. Certainly the Bible has undergone a Divine edit there. I’m sure it reads,
Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. 51 With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
52 “Give me that thing,” Jesus said to him, “we must defend ourselves against this terror.” And with that Jesus killed everyone save those who agreed with him, and the world was safe for capitalism and democracy.
The fact check is all done and, well, mine still says “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” No caveats, no conditions, just a simple statement of fact.
Yet, it seems conservative Christian America is addicted to our modern version of the sword. This conservative Christian America not only suffers from this addiction, and would not only draw the sword, but would also use it with reckless abandon despite the fact that God (or Jesus) did not sneak into our homes in the middle of the night and change the texts to be more agreeable their version of America. Of course he may have feared being shot.
Then there is our “War on Terror.” Our “War on Drugs”. Our imprisonment of more people by percentage of our population than any other industrialized country. Sexual repression and oppression. Guantanamo Bay. This isn’t even going back into our history of racial persecution, slavery, gender oppression, and slaughter of indigenous people.
It leads me to wonder what version of Christianity conservatives suggest we were founded on; the one Jesus lived in the story or the one they have created in their heads as their own. That’s an easy answer because the Jesus I have read about is nothing like the Christian conservatives of America. That is unless the only Bible not changed to fit their model of Christianity is the one I am reading.
Real Christianity doesn’t exist, much like Jesus didn’t exist. No one has ever raised a person from the dead after days on a slab. No one has ever reattached a limb without surgery.
The greatest proof I have found that Jesus did not exist is Christianity itself. The greatest proof I have found that the God of the Bible doesn’t exist comes from those who say they believe in Him.
If Christians really believed Jesus existed and that everything in the Bible existed and was truth, they would have no need to defend their life and property. Gun sales would plummet because they are all on their way to that wonderful place in the sky Jesus talked about. Why defend a life here when something like heaven awaits you out there? Pass the wine and bread, I need a good buzz.
If Christians really believed they would not be so different than the Jesus in the Bible. They’d all be loving those liberal Arab hippies who are like Jesus. They’d all be washing the feet of others. They’d be eating with Democrats and hugging crack addicts. They’d be rushing into prisons to save the condemned, and they’d be loving the hell out of “terrorists”. There would be no cheers over drone strikes. There’d be no joy over the killing of anyone, regardless of their sins.
After all, do any of us know sin-free Christians? If not, how can one of them throw the stone as Jesus asked? Ah, the devil is in the details, and the proverbial Jesus seems to have given conservative American Christians an impossible example to follow. Either that or Jesus certainly changed his mind about everything he taught since ascending into that board room in the sky. Whichever, it seems that despite some notable exceptions in history Christians have given up being like Jesus and have rather sought to make Jesus more like them.
What clearer failure can a religion endure than when the Master it is founded on becomes as irrelevant as a bumper sticker?
What surer failure can a religion find than when the teachings of its founder are less important than the wood on which it is believed he died?
I don’t mind if someone holds on to a rosary believing it will get them to some place that their actions could not. I don’t care if someone believes unreasonably that the world is only 9,000 years old. What I do mind is open hypocrisy on which we have to endure lecture after lecture and statement after statement from these misguided people who who I am is decided by what they believe. That’s when I mind.
So, stop with the nonsense that America is a Christian nation. Stop telling me how wrong gay marriage is and about how homosexuality is a sin. Stop telling me about the value of life when discussing abortion while you are hoping for the death of a convicted criminal. Stop with the clarifying statements that somehow reconcile your anti-Christ-like thoughts with the teachings of the story you pretend to believe in.
Harsh words, I know, but necessary to me nonetheless. I don’t apologize to those who find these words offensive unless they can prove me wrong. I welcome the debate, but please don’t start it out with how the earth was created in less than a week and how each and every woman I know owes me something for my rib. Instead, show me something tangible that doesn’t take a lifetime of conditioning and a lack of intelligence to believe. Do that, and I will apologize wholeheartedly and beg for forgiveness.
When, I ask humbly, is it time to tighten the laces on my boots and to just start walking?
When, I question the Universe around me sternly, is it time to stop catering to the maniacal creations of man and start living?
I feel it in every pore of my body and nearly every fiber of my existence. I need to walk. I need to let go of all of this stuff and just start walking. Starve if I must, freeze if I have to, die a lonely and tired death if that is what I am destined to do but do it nonetheless. I close my eyes and can see it clearly; a roughly unshaven man walking with the mountains and the pink-hued tales of sunsets as his backdrop with nothing by his side but the stories of then and the causes of now guiding him.
The more I sit idle in this apartment the more I feel sure that every note the Universe sings to me is telling me to leave. The more I sit alone in stillness the more I am sure that the echo in my mind takes me to a place I have never been before. The more I look at the wreckage of my life behind me the more I feel destined to walk the wilderness of this place both figuratively and literally. The more I look at my hands once filled with the grip of lovers the more I know I should have a walking stick in one and a book in the other. The more I miss the embrace of passion the more I am certain it only stings to open my arms. My heart is open and full even if my arms are empty. My legs are restless with the fatigue of modern life and with the weight needing things. My shoulders are raw and sore from bearing the crosses of my experience, and rather than stumble and fall under the weight of that wood I simply want to pick it up and throw it far over some cliff somewhere. I want to watch it tumble through the open air, and I want to watch it shatter into a billion splinters as it hits the craggy rocks below. I want to be done with it and die a free, liberated soul.
Yet the Universe has given me chains that bind me to this place. I look at the eyes of my loving children and I weep for the ties that bind me here. I hear the word “Daddy” and I shudder at the thought of not hearing it again save those moments when dreams remind me of who I am to them. I wonder if they could ever forgive me for leaving while, at the same time, wonder if they can ever forgive me for staying. I wonder if I am failing to teach them the most wonderful lesson of all, that we are not born to wear the chains given to us by our parents and, ostensibly, by our posterity but are rather born to be free people liberated from such need. I wonder if they would get it, if they would take flight themselves one day, and if they would love the man who simply sought to be a free man wandering among the chains that bound others to a nonexistent dream. I wonder if I need to be the teacher, or if I need to remain a slave to the ideas of what I need to be, created not by me, but by others who will teach my children that I have failed them.
In those fibers of my existence that cause me to stay I have found a tight chain binding me to this piece of ground. The mountains call. The beaches beg. The road whispers in my ear but the chains clang loudest as my babies hug me and tell me how much they love me. The sweet music of that clanging chain rings loudly in my ears, reminding me of all I have ever wanted to be while demonstrating to me that I can be it given the right set of eyes, ears and limbs to adorn me. Their love fills my heart with the nectar of the gods while their laughter fills my ears with a certain knowledge that I am here for a reason. The Universe laughs heartily at this human notion that I am a provider of something even as my mind begs to be that provider. I want to be special here. I want to be needed here. I love being “Daddy” and I love being me. Yet, I need to walk to be free.
For now I lay next to my son and play with my daughter’s hair listening to their stories and their jokes and their dreams only
Photo by Tom Grasso
imagining walking free among the trees and sleeping under the stars. I only imagine the pangs of hunger as I wait for nature to provide. I only imagine never hearing my phone ring, or getting the mail, or hearing about some human atrocity or insanity inflicted on another. I can only dream of the sounds of nature being my constant companion, and Earth under my body as I make my way to some destination only God knows.
I can only imagine meeting people whose names do not matter, whose faces are but temporary visions in a story full of those things. I can only imagine being woken up each morning by the rain, or the sun, or the birds, or the crack of thunder.
I smile wandering in my mind while enjoying the moment with those who love me dearly. I laugh at the sound of my son cracking himself up. He is his Dad’s son for sure. No one can crack himself up like I can save this wonderful boy who is laying on me telling jokes that magically appear in his head. I love his little voice, the fact that a boy so big for his age can still bring a smile to my face with the innocence of his voice. I love his big little hands as they hold mine, his fingers tightly grabbing his “favorite poopy Daddy” with all of their might. I love his stories, his insight, and the brave way he adorns his fears as if they are a cape rather than something to be ashamed of. I love how he buries his sturdy head into me when something that scares him comes on the screen, and how he tells me his goal in life is to be “an Army guy who delivers pizzas.” I love his rationale; he can be in the Army but help people who are hungry at the same time. A peaceful warrior who carries a big gun with the voice of an angel making people laugh along the way. That’s my boy.
I give a chuckle marveling at my baby girl. She was born early and a fighter with what the doctors called “an attitude.” Yes, an attitude, a medical term for a tough female who has a heart of gold and a will of tempered steel. Her laugh can make anyone laugh, and I love when I say something that hits that spot where that laugh comes from. She’s as beautiful as her mom, with an artistic ability that comes from both her parents. She is steely sensitive, often unwilling to let her heart out even as her compassion and love comes spilling out all over the place. Her smile can make me instantly feel alive, and in those rare moments when she says “Daddy, I love you” my heart melts and the Sun breaks through even the thickest clouds. I know love here in this place with these Beings, and I know the sweet music of a man imprisoned by the sheer joy of love like a bird imprisoned by the loving tug of wind beneath its wings. Sometimes the freedom isn’t in the flight, but in the ability to land wherever you so choose.
My oldest daughter isn’t here, she’s away at college being mad at me for one thing or another. She may never know how she woke me up at the moment of her birth. She may never realize how dead asleep I was in my own drunken state, and how that gigantic spark of love felt the moment my eyes saw her began an awakening process that continues to this day. She is, was, and remains a gift who doesn’t realize her greatness. Yes, I am blessed.
Those are my tethers to this world, this reality; my “happy chains”. Those are the fuel to the fire of my joy that shows itself in the smile that crests upon my face in their presence. Those are the once-dreams-now-reality manifestations of a prayer once uttered by a lonely boy in the darkness of his tortured chamber. Those are what keep me here, rooted in the human dream-state we call reality wondering why I need to live here at all. Those are the little specks of “me” that grow daily into something completely “not me”. Those are flakes of angel’s dust that will remain long after my body returns to the place it was spawned from. Those are my children, my babies, my life.
Smile now and get the joy out of you. Laugh at my condition, the one that sees me playing this insane human game because of a Divine joy I have in being with those I love. Laugh at me while I play a string-less guitar singing a song you have never heard of before. Laugh at me as I dance out of your rhythm although certainly within my own. Watch me walk, fade into the pink-hued sunset of my dreams as the laughter of my little ones follows me into the wilderness. Chuckle if you must but please, I beg of you, never offer me that sympathetic “shake of the head” in bewilderment of my actions. Never offer my children a condolence as they eye their Dad with a spy-glass that cuts through the trees and the mist and the fog and the dew leaving only a certain truth to be seen. Let them laugh at their Dad and be free unto themselves in whatever fit of laughter, anger, sadness or joy they find in their ever-present moment. Who knows, maybe one day you may strike up the courage to tighten your laces and walk into the woods even if for a little while.
As for now I will close this chapter as the dusk settles in on yet another day. I will go and check on my now-sleeping sparks of joy and settle into my own place for the evening. I will let go of my passion for walking and rest here for a little while waiting to repeat the insanity and the wondering and, yes, the wandering all over again tomorrow. I am not sure of anything except the fact that if I am graced with yet another day of breathing here I will be blessed with another day looking out at the horizon wishing I was walking there. I will wake up, shower and make breakfast for the three of us. Then I will begin yelling, screaming, begging and praying for my little ones to get ready for school. I will have to remember that they don’t necessarily care to brush their teeth or comb their hair. I will have to be aware that their school necessities are necessary not to them, but to insane adults who put such importance on such meaningless things. I will have to remember that they don’t quite yet get the vast importance of “being on time” and that they simply don’t yet know that money does not grow on trees. I will have to remember that none of my important “adult” things matter one bit to my two littlest bundles of joy. I will then realize, again, that I am jealous that they haven’t yet been bitten by the serpent of insanity that has infected most of us with a disease called “adulthood”. I will then shake my head, vow to take it easier on those who still marvel at the idea that we adults think that we are, well, right. I will also vow to be more like the boy who believes that Army men should deliver pizzas and the girl who refuses to quit at anything she does. I will also vow to call the 18-year old who doesn’t answer anything not a text and who will most likely not return my voice mail.
Then I will look out at the trees, tighten the laces of my boots, and vow again to walk one day to parts still unknown. I will hear the mighty roar of nature in my mind. I will feel the breeze rustle through my heart and the leaves fracture beneath my feet. I will dream of freedom from the dream even as I caress the chains that keep me firmly planted here. I will go to an office I can’t stand, go through the motions I have practiced most of my adult life, and wander through the mundane practice of insanity we all call “sanity”. I will do it all over and over again until, one day, I either walk free or return to the dust we call “heaven”.
The love of a man.
In the aftermath of the horrendous acts on December 14th in Newtown, CT, I want to focus on something that has both inspired me and given me a moment to pause in my own life. This story is about the love of George Hochsprung and his wife Dawn. It’s also about the survivors of the victims who are victims themselves.
I won’t pretend to know the Hochsprungs, or in having interviewed George. All I have done is seen his interview on CNN, and I can tell you that what I saw and felt blew me away. His raw emotion, his untempered honesty and his unbridled love for his wife inspired me to continued realization of how special each moment of love we share is, and how we should not take any future we plan as something that is guaranteed.
I love the persistence of the man who had to propose to his woman not once, not twice, but 5 times before she accepted on the sixth. “She turned me down five times,” he said. How many of us would tolerate being turned down 5 times by a woman let alone keep pursuing her? His answer is simple.
“I just fell in love with her.”
Yeah. That’s the best explanation any man could give. It is perfect in its simplicity and wonderful in its completeness. We should all love so much.
As I watched George nestled among most of his and Dawn’s children, I saw a man in more pain than any man should face. I saw a family suffering at the sudden loss of a lover, a mother and a certain innocent none of us should have to experience. The future, however, is not certain.
George and Dawn had built a dream house in the Adirondacks to share, and George had planned on Dawn living there well after his own death. She was much younger than he, so the assumption was not hard to make. She was to live there after he had passed, with plenty of rooms for children and grandchildren to keep her company in his absence. George had though lovingly of taking care of his wife’s needs long after he had gone, and now he was faced with something he could never have comprehended.
“…now it’s me,” he said. “I don’t think I can do that.”
As emotional as it is watching George Hochsprung talk about his loss, nothing was more emotional to me than the raw honesty he showed when asked how he felt about his wife’s heroic actions.
“Dawn put herself in jeopardy, and I have been angry about that,” he said.
It’s not hard to imagine. He’s missing her, he needs her, and their well-planned future together will never be. She could have hidden herself and come home to her husband. She could have chosen to not face an armed killer and retired to that dream house in the mountains.
But that was not her way. Instead, she told two other teachers to hide while she delayed the gunman. She then confronted him.
“She could’ve avoided that,” George Hochsprung said. “But she didn’t; I knew she wouldn’t. So, I’m not angry anymore. I’m not angry. I’m just very sad.””
Yes, that is plainly evident, as is the truth that our futures are fleeting, our present moments are all we are sure to know. Love is forever, even if our physical bodies are not. Dawn’s actions that day were ones of love and tremendous courage, and the actions of George and his family’s remain just as courageous today. All heroes like Dawn leave behind those who must wish that, at some level, they would have made a choice to come home and to secure the future they had all dreamed about.
To those of us who marvel at such love we owe a debt of gratitude to Dawn and George for showing us something wonderful in the midst of so much suffering. Thank you for showing us something else to focus on besides the carnage and anger. Thank you for showing us something that should reside in us for the rest of our lives.
Tonight, I will hold my lover tight and remind her of something far greater than me. I hope so anyway.
Remorse. Sadness. Grief. Disbelief.
And anger. I can’t forget about the anger regardless of how much I want to.
Those are just some of the very human emotions that overwhelmed me as listened to the news about the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. Just some of them. To list them all would create something unreadable.
As I sat on I-95 near Philadelphia heading home from a long day at the office, I wept openly. Visions of my own children danced in my head. Visions of children everywhere flooded my mind. Those smiling faces, those wondering minds, those innocent souls. I could hear the banter flowing through those classrooms on what should have been just another Friday as children transformed into students eagerly anticipating a holiday season. I could imagine parents not unlike myself rushing around that morning, trying to get their children ready for a school day while trying to get themselves ready for a busy day at work. I could imagine parents who, had they known this would be the last time they would see their babies, may have forsaken all worldly endeavors for those final few moments of complete presence in lives they had a large part in creating.
Yes, our worldly endeavors seem a bit silly in those moments when we are faced with the loss of innocence and the finality of death. The Eagles losing yet another game is forgotten. The need to make end-of-year sales numbers seems meaningless when the idea of a tiny casket flashes across your mind. The arguments between lovers becomes very unimportant when the knowledge that one day you will not be with her and that one day physical and intellectual separation will be permanent. In truth, very little seems important when faced with mortality, particularly when it is the mortality of our children, our innocence, our posterity.
We fear permanence even more than we fear impermanence. The only thing that is permanent in our human experience is death, and we seem to fear that more than we fear anything else. It rattles us, not only because we don’t know what is coming afterward, but because it is so final. We not only fear our own deaths, we fear the death of our loved ones. Yet, it wasn’t death that found me weeping on a busy highway during rush hour, it was the death of innocence and of promise. It was knowing that each and every one of those children senselessly killed likely had no idea of what death was. It was knowing that each and every one of those sweet angels was left relatively unprotected despite deserving our fiercest shelter. It was knowing the fear they must have felt, and it was in feeling the ultimate betrayal as the shooter did the Devil’s work. How utterly devoid of compassion he must have been; how much hatred he must have held on to. It is quite unimaginable to, fortunately, the vast majority of us.
Now, I’d rather not focus on the man who destroyed so much in such a small period of time. Instead, I want to focus on the reaction many of us had to his horrifying actions. Many of us found love overflowing from our eyes. We found compassion pouring out of us. We found empathy, sympathy, and new-found purpose in each tiny droplet of salty water that made its way into air. We found that piece of ourselves that sometimes gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the illusion in which we “live”. We discovered a piece of truth in the lie, and will hold on to that truth at least for a little while. We will hug our lovers tighter tonight. We will be more present with our children. We will be more present with ourselves.
So, when I am asked “why?” I know what to say. I have no idea why a 20-year old man would lose his grip on his own humanity and divinity. Yet, those children did not die in vain if we, even for one second, pause to be more present in our lives and in our loves. Those children did not die in vain if the final words I say to my own loves is “I love you”. This understanding gives the very thing I can’t understand some understanding. It gives the senseless some meaning. It gives those of us who are doubting some sense of hope. That’s “why” my friends. So, get to it and don’t let those beautiful souls leave our consciousness while we have a chance to make good on the very thing that makes us who we are.
Make love like you have never made love before. Embrace each other like it is the last time you will feel those arms around you. Absorb the “daddy” and “mommy” moments fully as if they will be the last. Don’t live in fear of the end, embrace it and make it meaningful in your daily experience. Don’t go to bed angry with those you love. Don’t do anything that will sour your epithet. Don’t hug anger, hug love and don’t let go. Fight for it. Feel it. And cherish every moment you get to share it.
Love, laugh and live fully. Help others love, laugh and live fully. Let’s get rid of the need for instruments of death in our lives. Let’s cherish life and the living more than we cherish material things. Start saying “no” to your boss and “yes” to your family. Get high if you want. Whatever. Just start fucking living.
This is not an admonition to you. This is an admonition to me that I simply want to share with you. You are free to do as you please. Me, I want to have no regrets at the end of the last day I share with someone. I want to know I lived it all fully, even the bitter moments, and that in the end I’ve loved more fully than I’ve feared.
I am sure that soon enough we will see the smiling faces of those beautiful babies flashing across our televisions and computer screens. We will hear wonderful stories of victims, their families, and their own unique promise. We will cry again at the sight of young, smiling faces and we will make resolutions to end lunacy and seek love as our shelter. We will live, even for an instant, in the warm and loving embrace of knowing ourselves as more than money, more than ideology, and more than nationality. We will find our own promise and potential before settling back into our very human roles of forgetful man as the memory of those smiling faces fades.
I will also remember that the killer himself was once one of those smiling faces, and I will wonder what drove him to such darkness. I will wonder because I don’t want any other child to lose that part of himself that makes him both human and loving divinity. We all deserve our own sense of innocence, and it is time we start treating our children like they remind us of our own innocence and freedom. Children are not afterthoughts, they are not nuisances that keep us from work or our favorite reality shows. They are not weapons, and they are not punching bags. They are wonderful creations that we had some part in, and as such deserve not just the best of who we are as individuals, but also the best of who we are as a society. We owe it to them to pass laws that ensure that it is far less likely that they will be staring down the barrel of a firearm as they cry for a mommy and daddy who aren’t there to protect them.
Yes, I am done being on the fence about gun control. I’m done seeing the “right to bear arms” as equally important to the right of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Those children lost their rights to life. They lost their rights to liberty. They lost their rights to happiness as a madman pulled the trigger over and over again of a weapon he had the right to own. Gun control is not about the erosion of American rights, it is about the guarantee of them. So, fuck you, fuck your need to own a semi-automatic rifle and multiple handguns. You only have two hands, and I doubt Nancy Lanza could have shot both handguns while handling a semi-automatic rifle in the process.
Face it, 27 people, including 20 innocent school children, could have been alive today if our government and We the People had the balls to get rid of guns as a “right” and, instead, made it impossible to get them. End the War on Drugs, that failed social experiment that only ensures more of us spend time in jail than ever before, and begin the War on Guns. Empty our prisons of drug users and fill them with gun owners who fail to see that they have absolutely no reason to own firearms if no one else does.
See, Nancy Lanza was not going to go hunting. She obviously did not find protection in the guns she owned as her son gunned her down. In fact, the guns she owned ended up killing her, so I’m sure if given a Mulligan she’d probably take them back even without a refund. I’m sure she loved the children in her class, so I doubt she felt the Second Amendment worth the lives of 20 of them as well as 6 of her colleagues. I doubt as she faced her end she thought of Charlton Heston and his famous “out of my cold, dead fingers” pronouncement.
I will not use the term “rest in peace” for those children and brave adults who died on December 14th in Connecticut. That’s offensive to the very nature of the crime committed against them. Rather, we should have been blessing them with a “live in peace” on December 13th. We should have ensured their safety then, not given it lips service now. Prayers and love and compassion are meaningless to them now, but how much could it have meant to them Thursday? Yeah, that’s what I mean. Tomorrow is too late. Now is what matters.
And for Pete’s sake let’s stop being married to an ideal written 250 years ago in a document that was meant to be changed when necessary. It is necessary now, more than ever, to rid ourselves of the scourge of firearms in this nation. Our children deserve it, and we, as loving, caring, and intelligent adults need to ensure we protect them within a society that demands change. Yes, our society is demanding change. That is evident in the gun violence that is destroying us from within.
It is so evident that all we need to is review the gun violence over the last 10 years and ask, “how is that Second Amendment working out for you?” I’d say not at all. It’s time to move beyond the ideas that violence is the answer (that isn’t really working out for us either) and toward something a little harder to do but much more rewarding (as Gandhi and the independent India he helped give birth to without firing ONE SINGLE SHOT proved). I love Gandhi and his example because he was a tiny, diminutive man who successfully rebelled against a world superpower without ever owning a gun. It’s time we follow that example and bury Charlton Heston’s somewhere far away where we never need look at it again.
For now, I will follow other people who are crying, praying and empathizing with those victims of gun violence who decided to follow the pursuit of happiness rather than the right to bear arms and were shot in the process. Yet I will not let this fire within me be buried with those victims. Instead, I will use it to work toward ensuring that we create no other victims for the stupidity of a few who love the power of shooting something so dearly. It’s time to end the lunacy, and never forget those who died for nothing more than an ideal.
Got this from Facebook, and it moved me to tears. Perhaps because I am not getting any younger, and I can see my life thus far following this man’s description. I wish he was around so that I could give him a hug and let him know he is loved, but alas he has passed. Maybe another lesson here is to share that Love with others while they are around to accept it? To steal a line from one of my favorite Pearl Jam lyrics (to Love Boat Captain):
“And the young, they can lose hope cause they can’t see beyond today,…
The wisdom that the old can’t give away”
Man, if we’d only listen from time to time! Anyway, I hope this has an effect on you as well.
“When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in an Australian country town, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.
Later, when the nurses were going through his meagre possessions, They found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.
One nurse took her copy to Melbourne. The old man’s sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas editions of magazines around the country and appearing in mags for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem.
And this old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this ‘anonymous’ poem winging across the Internet.” ~Scott Sonnon (Facebook)
Cranky Old Man
What do you see nurses? . . .. . .What do you see?Pass the tissues and learn the lesson Tom!
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