Tag: Awe

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Unlearn the Constellations

“We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.”

          Jack Gilbert, from his poem, “Tear it Down”

When did we first try to corral the stars – was it the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Mayans, Chinese astronomers of the Zhou dynasty? According to their traditions, the first Australians have been mapping the skies for 50,000 years. Or was it further back, archaic humans, their memories lost in time, who looked up in awe and wondered themselves into the night sky?

Constellations are human constructs, framing the stars with stories that explain something to us, about us; that we are brave, or foolish, or brokenhearted. We project our fears, desires, and frailties onto a glorious cast of characters – a guardian dragon, a boastful hunter, a vain queen, seven sisters seeking safety, wise animals offering guidance, the twins who stand at the portal between the worlds. Constellations reflect our nature back to us so we can ponder who we are.

I love stories because they help me make sense of things. They make the incomprehensible grandeur of the cosmos something I can relate to. But reducing reality into meaning diminishes the light and color of the stars themselves, as any filter must. We are arrogant if we think the stars have meaning because we name them. There was a time when they had no names, and we looked at them directly, fully as they are.

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Full Contact Living

As a word on the page, mysticism might look exotic or exalted. In lived experience, it is neither. Exotic sounds foreign; exalted feels distant. Mysticism is direct contact with life. More subtraction than addition, it strips away layers of interpretation and abstraction that obscure reality. It touches the heart of the matter. Mysticism is as real as it gets.

It’s hard to write about mysticism because words are a form of interpretation and abstraction several rungs removed from direct contact. Writing is an attempt to convey my experience to you by a series of steps, most of them mental: I have an idea, I pick words to relay my intent, you interpret my words, you form an idea of what I’m saying. We’re engaged in a parallel process of my thoughts alongside your thoughts, hoping for an overlap in understanding. The fewer steps between us, the more chance of connecting with the essence of something.

That is why poetry is so powerful. It relies more on the fullness of language than the logic of language. Done well, poetry conveys by resonance – the ringing of a bell in me, whose vibration rings a bell in you. Poetry uses words, but the impact is more immediate, the depth of the ringing is carried by currents beneath the words. The steps are interrupted, quickened, and our parallel minds are brought closer, perhaps to intersect.

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The Longer Project

Being human, I am a messy jumble of complexity. Capable of unspeakable cruelty and epic heroism. Glorious and profane. Creation’s big bet to see what consciousness would do if given free rein. A shining light on the horizon. A hot mess.

I see all of this in me. I’m part of this long project that has been going on for countless eons. I yearn to see where it is going and to help it along.

I’m a physical being. I acquire and use the material aspects of the world to survive and flourish. I enjoy the sensations and movement of my physicality. I feel secure when I have what I need and fearful when I don’t. These are necessary to sustain my body, but I know the point is not to collect more possessions. There is something more.

I’m a mental, emotional, psychological being. I learn to regulate my internal states and navigate my relationships with others. I create theories and philosophies in my mind. My creative drive spins worlds of artistic beauty from whole cloth. These aspects enrich me. But I know the point is not to curate a life of personal comfort, chasing experiences that provide pleasure and avoid pain. There is something more.

All of these aspects of being human are indispensable. As a thinking, feeling, creative, physical being, I enjoy and participate in them freely. But I have an inner sense that they are not the final ends life is pointing to. They are the platform that allows a larger scene to play out. These first-layer aspects of being human facilitate something more because we humans are also something larger – we are spiritual beings too.

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The Gift of Story

The island of Cape Breton sits on the eastern shore of Canada, part of the Maritime Provinces, poking into the North Atlantic like the thumb of a mitten. It is the home of miners, farmers, fishermen, and master storyteller, Alistair MacLeod. If you wanted an example of superb writing anchored in the rugged history and people of a place, you could not do better than MacLeod’s collection of short stories, Island.

That book contains many gems, but there is one I would like to share with you, To Everything There Is a Season. It tells a tale simply and well, recounting common events while pointing to the magic behind them. And MacLeod does this in the hardest of genres, the Christmas Story, which can easily slide into cliché.

In his reminiscence, MacLeod shows that coming-of-age is not limited to childhood, but continues growing our sensibilities to the gift of life at every stage, even at the end, when we hope we can “leave good things behind.” The beauty of the human spirit shines at every turn; we see it when we look.

It’s a quick read, which, when you reach the end, you’ll realize is a crying shame. Here are links to both the written and audio versions of the story.

Enjoy.

Photo by Chaz McGregor on Unsplash

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First Taste

The first taste is different.

Preparation is part of the practice. The morning custom of grinding beans, filling water, turning on the heat, all take time, and add to the suspense. I’m sure part of my anticipation is fueled by a low-grade addiction, my psyche craving the familiar comfort that is coming. Whether habit or chemical stimulation, I want it.

And when the grounds have steeped, the alchemy complete, I pick up the pot and pour. The bottom of the cup receives the steam and splash, stopping at the proper fill. I set down the pot and reach over, my fingers take the handle, tighten, feel the small but precious weight, and lift. The ancient aroma of the Americas rises up to greet me. I draw a cooling breath across the surface of the liquid, touch my lips to the rim, and sip. A smile inside me settles as I lower the cup, the ritual performed, the blessing received.

I enjoy the remainder well enough, but it doesn’t match the first moment. I attend to other parts of the morning, chores or worries or details, and taking up the cup again becomes an afterthought, a reflex. The spell is broken, the aura gone. The morning fades to normal.

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Learning to See the Light

Is it really true that sunlight is more beautiful in some places than others? I am stunned into silence by occasional flashes of radiance, yet I spend most of my time completely unaware, in the dark, so to speak. Is it my noticing that makes it beautiful? How many moments am I missing?

Physics would say the properties of light don’t change. A stream of photons travels as a wave, and if its length is right, I see the light. A wavelength of 500 nanometers equals green, never red or violet. Slip below 300 or above 800, and no human eye can see it, no matter how beautiful.

But the physics of a thing is not the perception of a thing, and many tangents cloud or clear perception. Light travels farther through the atmosphere during its morning and evening commute than it does at noon. The angle bends tighter at the top of the globe, latitudes shrinking as they travel north. Our axis tilts, seasons give or take away. Summer splashes, winter hides. The air may be thick and humid or windblown and dry; glittered with dust or cleared by rain. Clouds might be bulbous white, a flat of gray, or broken into strata like window blinds. Or entirely absent, allowing a span of horizon edge to edge in blinding blue.

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Himno de Andalucía

Striding down the Avenida de Roma, my way is blocked by a crowd of thousands waving flags. I’m on my way to the Museo Arqueológico, in Sevilla, Andalucía, the autonomous region of southern Spain. I am eager to get to the museum and learn about these people and their history.

In my rough Spanish, I ask a bystander if this rally is for the local futbol team. “No. Politico.” he says.

I thread my way through the crowd, boisterous and festive. People carry signs, chant slogans, ride children on their shoulders. The avenue is swelling with emotion as well as people, the mood is electric. Trumpets blare and a band plays a soaring melody. Suddenly, everyone around me begins to sing in unison. I stop in my tracks, goosebumps on my skin. As I listen, the air shifts, the electricity has discharged, grounding me to the spot.

“What are they singing?” I ask.

“Himno de Andalucía,” I am told. The Anthem of Andalucía.

I am amazed, inspired, immersed in a sea of people who love their homeland. My steps feel lighter as I walk on.

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Express Your Unique Beauty and Goodness

You are a unique and beautiful expression of the universe. If we pause to consider the unlikely chain of events behind it all, we know that each of us, just to be breathing on this planet, is a glorious and astonishing creature.

Stars formed in their primordial furnaces, earth coalesced from the elements, life flourished, humans began walking about, all leading to the creation of you, a distinct collection of qualities with your identity stamped in gold. Your DNA, experiences, memories, regrets, personality, strengths and weaknesses, vices and virtues, traumas and triumphs, all bundled into this singular being that has not been seen before in all of human history and will never appear again, even after the burning of a thousand suns.

When we respond to the spiritual impulse to connect with the sacred, we also follow an urge to return to ourselves. The real, authentic you, the you that is fully you, is the only one who can answer the call. You have gifts to give that are unique. No one else can offer the same range of responses to life, and if you don’t express them, they will be gone forever. And yet, we often forget or dismiss this brilliant inheritance, as if our uniqueness had no value and could be casually tossed away.

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I’ve Never Seen This Day Before

“This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.”

Maya Angelou

Sitting with a cup of coffee, the reliable comfort that settles my morning, I begin to plan my day, listing the things I want to finish or start. It’s an optimistic bundle, a bristlecone of activity.

Maya Angelou’s words invite a pleasant disruption. The art of seeing and the skill of planning occupy separate parts of the mind. Seeing is not cognitive, it’s a whole-bodied, sensory experience that removes me from the sometimes oppressive pressure of thinking. More than observation, seeing is immersive, allowing the world to enter through my perceptions and land in the cradle of my body.

Why is this a wonderful day? Is it so different from yesterday or the day before?

Failure to see the singular wonder in every day is a loss, and that is Maya’s warning. When my brain runs on autopilot, running the film of previous days on the movie screen of my mind, I’m sedated by the rush of images. If I peek behind the blurry curtain of the autopilot, I see the full texture of life: palpable, sensuous, reds and purples seething and brimming, sights and sounds splashing and spilling like a river overflowing its banks, pleading with me to slow my breathless pace and match my breathing to the rhythm of natural time.

Outside my window, finches chatter in conversation; a breeze lifts the last reluctant leaves from their branches and rattles them across the road; a black sheen colors the puddles; my familiar coffee becomes exotic, the warm liquid in my mouth retrieving something from ancestral memory that puts me in kinship with the first human who thought to brew the bean.

Each day, a door opens at dawn and closes at dusk. What a shame to let it pass without acknowledging I’ve never seen this one before and celebrating its arrival, unique and wondrous.

Photo from Ales Krivec on Unsplash

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A Thousand Thousand Reasons

“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

The anticipation as I raise my cup of coffee, the steam and aroma waving to my taste buds, who are already smiling.

The memories I’ve collected, triumphs and regrets, that pave the road I’m walking.

The miraculous orchestra of my body – lymph and lung and nerve and bone, beating heart and gastro-endo-something (and all the other parts I cannot name) – that serves me as a vehicle for growth, pleasure, wonder and joy, even as it wears around the edges.

A band of friends who have, for decades, grounded, comforted, reveled with me, forgiven excesses, celebrated quirks, shared intimacies, laughed at life’s absurdities, and proven the healing power of acceptance as a form of love.

Naps.

The delicious mystery of awareness itself, the center from which consciousness emanates into perception, experience, and the vibrating pulse of life.

A mind that can imagine; the unfathomable fact that I can fathom.

The gray moment of morning when dreams still hover but my full faculties have not yet arrived and the sound of Linda’s breathing makes everything familiar.

Cool water on a hot day; fleece socks on a cold night.

Tin roof sundaes.

The impossible fact that a planet of rock and water can, in a few billion years, create such staggering beauty: the Ninth Symphony, Abbey Road, the Impressionists, orchids, Italian cooking.

The fullness I feel when I empty the tears I’ve been holding.

An overwhelming intuition that the Cosmos is always here for me, available, accessible, nurturing, calling me to fulfillment, completion.

The inner knowing that beingness is the ground to any figure; that resilience is baked-in; that no matter how turbulent or terrible the world can seem, no matter how consuming the grief or anger, there is a glimmer that can’t be crushed, an element on the periodic table of being human that won’t reduce, a sparkling diamond that cannot die.

How can I pretend to give thanks for my blessings only one day a year? Why am I not constantly singing, drunk on the holy goodness of life?

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash