A Future Not Our Own — Oscar Romero

It helps, now and then, to step back
And take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
It is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
The magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
Which is another way of saying
The kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

                                                                    Oscar Romero

On Dying — by Lucky

I have recently been focused upon happiness. I discovered the possibility that I could be happy, that I could be just myself, during a meeting with a group of elders. Since that time, I’ve been looking at my life, and trying to identify the chief obstacles to my happiness. This piece is about what appears to be my foremost obstacle, death. I identified my anxiety as a daily obstacle, and then fear of death when I examined my anxiety more closely. I gave myself a retreat for the holidays, felt the loneliness I’ve traditionally resisted, and came up with a gift I never imagined. I rediscovered dying, the nemesis of my happiness, as I kept lonely vigil over the holidays. 

What I mean is that dying didn’t change, it is still an inscrutable mystery, a silent one-way passage, through which I know I will one day go. Instead something in me changed.

It started with the realization that I would be (have been) sorely disappointed if I let my fear of death keep me from being happy in this life. Having been surprised to discover the viability of genuine happiness, that what I thought was just an advertising slogan could be real in my life, I realized I was unlikely to truly be myself if I was not happy. I have been thinking about happiness, as a regular part of being myself, of actualizing Mystery’s creation, ever since.

So what has death got to do with happiness? Those two words, death and happiness, don’t often appear in the same sentence. What relationship do they have in my life? As I explained, happiness, for me, depended upon finding a new way to relate to the fact of my coming death.  And that happened! In no way I could have expected, but death is suddenly another rite of passage that is going to deliver me to a new way of being. This is still scary but not as scary as it once was. Here’s what I discovered. Probably it won’t work for you, your freedom is your business afterall, but it might help you to know about it.

I noticed a pattern, that seemed to prevail in my life, and in the lives of the elders I find myself respecting the most. It has to do with diminishment. I wrote about it once, in one of my Slow Lane pieces, and it has stayed with me, as a compelling paradoxical mystery, that it seems to me, everybody should know about. You see the paradox is that diminishment, whether it be by hardship, loss, infirmity, bad luck, or old age, seems to lead (not in all cases) to a kind of enlargement. What I mean is that those who have suffered being made smaller and less capable by life, miraculously gained some new capabilities and perspective. Diminishment lead to enlargement.

This pattern gives me a lot of reassurance. Not in some New-Agey way, because having to suffer the uncertainty and pain of diminishment is still in the picture, but because someone new, with a bigger picture, often emerges from the ashes. As Rumi says in one of his poems, after exploring his earlier lives as mineral, plant, and flesh, “when, by dying, have I ever been made smaller?” I see death as the great Diminisher, and as a result of noticing the reliability of this pattern, as the great Enlarger. Now my anxiety about death is greatly reduced.

That is not all, though it could have been enough. I also realized that if I put death in my right hand, and learning, growth and life in my left hand, I could enhance my life by merely shifting my attention to the left hand. It seems that if I look too intently at my right hand, at death, it fills my field of vision and becomes everything. I am dead before I die. If however I attend to the other hand, I’m not living in denial of death, it is right there with my other hand, I am instead actively involved with living, learning and growing.

Shifting my attention has never been easy. My fear and anxiety have too frequently determined where my attention goes, but one of the gifts of my stroke difficulty was I had to learn how to do just that. You see I had suffered such losses, of my marriage, family, home, health, and work that I was kind of mesmerized by them. I knew that in order to live, I had to shift my attention away from what I had lost, to what remained. It took a long time. I still have days when the losses overrun me. But, after a difficult time, I succeeded. It helped to discover that quite a lot remained. But I wouldn’t have made that discovery if I hadn’t shifted my attention. So, I know I can do it, because I had to do it, with the chips down, earlier to save my life.

I know I can do it again, that living fully, being true to myself, staying close to Mystery, being happy, matters enough to me, that the work involved with shifting my attention adds to the dignity of living as consciously as possible. I’ll probably fail often, but if I’m diligent, maybe I can move my default position of fear and anxiety toward happiness. Can you imagine that! At last I can.

The Magic of Two-year Olds — by Shepherd Bliss

The biggest surprise of my 2010 was relationships with four unrelated two-year-olds, who are so full of magic and life-giving vitality. I am 66-years-old and have never had two-year-olds in my adult life. They have become this college teacher’s teacher.

I have known Ruby since her birth. I remember when a dozen adults commemorated the passage of Diana seven years after her death. Our sadness differed from Little Miss Goldilocks, as some call Ruby, who was bubbly and buoyant. I know that death and life are theoretically connected; Ruby’s continuing enthusiastic participation in life confirmed this. Her energy shifted ours and lifted our sadness to joy as we remembered Diana’s good life. Children belong not only at weddings, but also at funerals and memorial services.

River came to my farm one day, and we immediately recognized each other as kin. River re-parents me, though I am thirty-three times as old as he. He radiates contact with some primordial energy that was there before we arrived and will continue after we expire. He tends to unite people and draw their attention closer to the ground as they watch him interact. Yet when he visits my classes he sits calmly in one of his parent’s laps and seems to give even deeper attention than some of my adolescent students.

When we play together people ask if I am the grandfather, since there is a physical resemblance, given our olive skins and long eyelashes. I just smile in response.

Ruby is one of River’s “girlfriends.” They have such a unique dance when they see each other, open their arms, and move toward each other. They even hug and kiss.

River’s French grandparents recently visited. They modeled the importance of the grandparent-grandchild relationship. These two-year-olds evoke the grandfather archetype in me, which feels as if it has a biological base. I don’t have my own children.

Nor did I not have grandfathers. Lightning struck one dead on our Iowa family farm as he went out to get his son. The other, whose name I bear, being the third in this line-up, was thought to be dead. But in my thirties we got a letter from him, in his long search for his first-born son. “I’m too old to start having a father,” my father responded, since he had been told that his father had abandoned him as an infant. I, however, responded, and we struck up a good conversation. My brother even met our grandfather, and liked him. “Deceased” was on the envelope of my last letter to him, as we were planning to meet.

Such memories return as I think about the grandfather energy, and how important it can be, and why I refused to father a child. Fortunately, I had wonderful uncles, on my mother’s side, especially my farming Uncle Dale. He was my sweet masculine model.

Opal came to me through River when we were at a farmers’ market. She began following him. Like Ruby, Opal is blonde and bright blue-eyed. River and Opal recently connected for some Christmas music. River got there first with his dad Laurent. When I arrived they were sitting on the floor together. After a while Laurent wanted to buy some books, so he placed a meditative River in my lap. Then Opal arrived; she got very excited and started jumping up and down when she saw River, who looked at her and then back to the calming music. Opal had so much excitement at seeing River that she did not come very close—electricity in the air--but walked around him into the store, smiling and looking his way, as if inviting him to follow. This come forward/go back went on for around half an hour, much to the delight of others in the store. They finally touched, but only briefly.

We then went to eat. By this time River was getting more excited. After eating he would alternately chase Opal around the restaurant and lead her on, again to the delight of the adults there. Once outside on the grass, the chase continued as they climbed up the “mountain” where I was standing guard, keeping them away from the road, and would send them down.

River initiated an “All Fall Down” game, verbally and physically. Opal would repeat the words, but did not seem to understand them at first, or fall down. Eventually she did fall down on the grass. It was as if they were bowing with devotion to the ground that holds all of us up. I watch how quickly they learn, especially from each other, if they are protected by adults, but not over-protected. They fall and with the aid of those flexible spines get up again. By falling we can learn how to be flexible and get back up.

Opal and River also ended up hugging and kissing. Both Ruby and Opal seem to take more initiative toward River, who alternately holds back, responds, and takes some initiative.

At Ruby’s recent second birthday party I met Asher, the youngest of this gang. He came toward me with his arms outreached, as if he recognized me. I instinctively bowed to him and opened my arms, picking him up. He promptly laid his head on my shoulders, which he did a few other times that night, both of us with large smiles. I later invited Asher and parents to a night-time boat festival on the Petaluma River. His eyes were full and his smile bright, as he pointed at one boat after another that came by, drawing our collective attention. His joy ignited our joy.

There is so much that I adore about these four young ones. I teach communication to college students. Each of these children, in their own unique ways, are peak communicators. They radiate connection, curiosity, sweetness, tenderness, and vulnerability. They have a lot to teach adults, as well as other children. It reminds me of the phrase from the old book, “Be ye not like a child, you will not get into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

There is another side to this story of my growing attention to two-year-olds. The recent death of two-year-old Callie Murray hit me hard. She would have been three on the day that I began writing this, Dec. 25, the birthday of baby Jesus. She was walking across the street hand-and-hand with her mom Ling Murray on Dec. 1. A student from Sonoma State University, where I teach, who was using a phone in her car at the time, crashed into them, killing tiny Callie and severely injuring her mother.

Since then I have had trouble getting that crash out of my mind and my nightmares, so I have been talking to my students about the dangers of texting and cell phones. May tiny Callie’s tragic death guide us to appropriate behavior. May we adults cherish and nourish the life that all young ones bring into the world and care for them.

I look forward to seeing each of my two-year-old friends again into whatever future might remain for me. So however old you may be, it is not too old to have young children in your life, to enjoy them, and be part of the village that we all need—young and old. They need us and we need them.

My 78-year-old friend Doug Von Koss recently sent me the following that James Broughton wrote on his 80^th birthday: "Stand firmly, sit serenely, mutter profoundly, sing outrageously and dance all the way to your death."

Happiness by Lucky

I learned about something recently that has given me so much delight, and so much challenge, that I just had to share the prospect of it with you. As you may recall I’ve been blessed this year to be part of an elder’s group, awareness of the viability of real happiness first came to me there. I feel such gratitude toward those who I am traveling with right now, because they (the elders) helped me to see something I had long ago forgotten could exist for me.  Here is how it happened, and what it has constellated for me.

One evening, during a meeting of the elder’s circle, as we were going around saying our names, and describing something we liked about becoming older, I was struck by the impression that I was surrounded by a lot of people who had become themselves. This impression intrigued me. Later, we broke into small groups, where the impression grew into a full-blown, mind-altering, realization. Growing older had meant, for some of us, that we had arrived, despite still having further to go, at a time and place in our lives, where there were no roles, rules, or expectations, other than our own. We were free, and many of us had become idiosyncratically and uniquely our selves.

A rush of happiness came cascading in. I was surrounded by people who had become them selves. I was one of them; free to be authentic, different, uncertain, sensitive, foolish, erotic, crazy, and just plain me. At that moment I liked what getting old had done for me. Of course, I learned later that much of what distinguishes an elder from a merely old person had to do with how one responded to the hardships and losses of a long life. Freedom, and true elderhood, seemed to rest on choices that people made at the most difficult times in their lives. And miraculously, it seemed as if the best choices, the most effective decisions, had all been toward becoming truer to one’s self. In the midst of this group of self-possessed elders I discovered that happiness, my happiness, lay with cleaving to my own being.

That wasn’t all the joy I was to discover that night. I was delighted and surprised by what came next. I hadn’t even gotten used to the idea that my life-long struggle, to be me, had actually resulted in my becoming someone, myself, when it became clear that just being myself made a difference. One of the remarkable things that distinguished this group of people is that they want to give something back. There has been much talk in this group, perhaps spurred on by radicalism, of an elder insurgency.  The urge to provide some kind of alternative, met with the realization that becoming our selves was a radical, even subversive, thing, and an unbelievable joyous surprise was born. Merely being true to one’s self changed the world!

During that meeting, without ever intending it, I was brought to the realization that happiness existed, and could be a regular feature of my life. All I had to do, to be generally happy, was be my self. If I merely held onto my self in my relationships, if I stayed true to what emerged in me, as me, then I would be free. Happiness and freedom became synonymous.

In the weeks that have followed that realization, I have been reflecting upon happiness, and the limited role I have let it play in my life. I have discovered that I keep myself from being as happy as I could be, by letting my anxiety take me out of the moment. I have always been good at anticipating things, I liked to think I had the skill of a chess champion, looking ahead several moves. Instead, what I have realized, is best captured in the words of a friend of mine, who once wrote in a letter, that “anticipatory anxiety” was “the constipation” that “kept all the good shit from happening;” how true, and how unfortunate, for me.

With the experience in the elder’s circle, and with this writing, I realize that I have made happiness highly conditional. My happiness has always been a product of my circumstances, instead of myself. By holding on to my anxious response to each and every coming moment, I have trapped myself in a non-existent and totally fabricated future, which would determine my well-being. I kept looking forward because happiness existed out there, instead of in here, where I am.

I realize that circumstances don’t have to determine my happiness. I don’t have to attend to the future. That is a choice; it is a reflection of where I want to place my attention. I could be happy as a day-to-day attitude. I could choose to focus my attention on my marvelous ability to respond creatively to each moment. I have been granted the gift of not being a machine, with a pre-determined range of choices, I get to meet each moment naked. This freedom scares me. It seems like too much. I could easily fall or fail. I do all the time! But, I know that this is the way to learn to fly. And, I am happy discovering that this too is part of the potential that has been granted to me by Life.

It turns out that I can be happy. I am alive, and I have been prepared for just this much choicefulness. I may be disabled, brain-damaged and egotistical, but I still get to have enough choice about how I relate to things that I can be happy. And, you know the strangest, and best, part of it all, is that I just have to be me, to be happy.

Knowing I can fly isn’t the same as flying, but it is enough to render me happier. Knowing that flying, that being my self, is a service to the world, that makes me feel something else………. a grateful awe.

l/d

Eldering — by Lucky

I wouldn’t have believed this if I hadn’t been there. Maybe you won’t either.

For me it took an experience, maybe it will for you too. But, I think that my experience is so rare, that I want to convey it to you, in hope that it will touch something in you, as it did in me.

 

I’ve spent a great deal of my life struggling with myself to just be myself. What I have observed in my self, was that I had a tendency to make myself into whatever form I thought I needed to be, to earn love, respect, and caring from important others. In other words, in order to be loved I betrayed myself. I got really good at it. I could fool others, even sometimes fool myself, but could never get beyond the feeling that I was only too willing to sell myself out.

 

I knew the pain associated with being untrue to myself. I felt lost in a world that could not, would not, make a space for one like me. It is too simple to just say I was alienated, although I did sometimes feel like an alien, the truth was, that I couldn’t find a place, because I didn’t trust my self enough to take a lasting form, one that anybody could relate too. I was a blob, a changeling, restlessly trying to be something, anything, but myself.

 

There is a huge pain, and deep disappointment, in realizing you want someone else to love you, because you cannot love yourself. Coming to such a place, feeling so far from oneself, being so emptily alone is really disturbing. It is also liberating. The stroke forced me to do what I always was loathe to do, look at myself. It made me grasp, rather desperately at first, that I had one more chance to learn to love, and that I had to start with me.

 

I have spent much of my life being a freedom fighter. I have always sought, and advocated for causes, that increased freedom. This was part of my values, and part of the way I convinced myself that I was on-track when I wasn’t. In all that time I never took on the greatest tyrant, the chief restrictor of my freedom, the treacherous ambassador determining my relationships, myself. The stroke put me in a locked room with him. Learning to love a tyrant is no easy matter (maybe especially if its you).

 

That last sentence is the story of my recent life. So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I came to realize that the struggle to love myself was one of the greatest gifts I have to give. It was in the elder’s circle that the light came on. We had just completed going around the circle stating our names and sharing one thing that we liked about being elders. I had been paying attention because instead of the usual aches and pains of getting older the group was talking about what aging had given them. It turned out to be a lot, so much that freedom and richness filled the air, and filled me.

 

I was touched, as I had been before, by how much hardship had grown the people present. I was impressed by how unique, idiosyncratic, and self-possessed this same group of people was. Suddenly it dawned in me that having survived the years, undergone real hardships, and struggling to fight the good fight, and stay true to themselves, these people had been initiated, they were not just a group of old folks, they were elders.

 

In that moment several things rushed into my awareness. Eldering wasn’t just about getting old, it was about being ripened, initiated really, by life. Eldering also meant that these souls, through hardship, loss, love, diminishment, and struggle had become themselves, not completely, but just enough to make a real difference. They were the most subversive beings imaginable, the antidotes to a world gone materialistically mad, different in the only way that matters, free to be themselves.

 

Doubly surprising is the realization that the life-long work of becoming oneself can come to fruition, and can mean so much, not only for the self that has been struggling for freedom, but for the world that needs models, that needs to know that being different is possible.  Out beyond rules, roles, and shape-shifting for love, there is a way to actualize our existence, to give Life its due, to become free, to become what Life intended.

 

When I realized what eldering was I sensed the possibility of happiness. I saw, for the first time, that the freedom fight, the struggle to be myself, is synonymous with the pursuit of happiness. I will write more about happiness later, but for now I just want to bask in the glow that arises as I see that loving the tyrant, loving me, makes me one with, aligned with Life. And, that is what eldering is.

Waking Up in the Early ‘60s – by Edward Bear

I was born in 1938.  In the early ‘60s, I was living in Greenwich Village in New York and just waking up to life.  Some friends wanted me to meet a special woman.  She was just a few years older than me but reputed to be a true Earth Mother – an Astrologer and a sage.

We met one afternoon and, after tea and about an hour’s meeting, she had described me to myself so thoroughly I was astounded.  She was very comfortable and direct about my preferences in things, my weaknesses, my skills, hopes and current state of affairs. Meeting her changed my life. 

I was a relatively open-minded scientist up to that point who felt a stronger calling to the arts and mysteries of life and love   Now, if the positions of the stars and planets could influence and even predict future behavior and events, then it was clear there was so much more going on in existence than I had previously believed, I had to take still another, deeper look at everything.

After buying a book recommended by my Astrological friend, which I still have, I did what any former lab rat would do and set up an experiment to test the validity of basic Astrological assumptions. 

I taped big swaths of butcher paper up on the wall that I faced above the kitchen table in my apartment.  I wrote in twelve categories, one for each Astrological sign, and made areas for men and women that I could study as I ate.  Then I began asking all of my friends and relatives for their birthdays.  I only asked people I knew well enough to know something of their working lives, personalities and habits. 

I kept filling in names in the different Astrological fields as the lists of people grew to significant numbers.  I would study them over breakfast every to see if this Leo was like that, or if Scorpio men and women had similar Scorpio-like traits that should be recognizable.  I was amazed to see how uncommonly accurate the predictions usually were.  Conducting this experiment cost me the respect of my very scientific father who probably felt that his son had lost his mind into drugs and fantasies. No... I was just looking into some other disciplines.

But seeing that something as non-rational as Astrology could offer valid information, insight and understanding of human behavior at some level forced me to accept that existence as I had come to know it was way more mysterious and not quite as easily decipherable as my training would suggest. That realization was humbling and liberating for me and became a key catalyst in opening my mind to new life and understanding thereafter.  Experience has kept the process going indefinitely. 

The Astrologer, who so read me like a book, said that I would be a guide and advisor to those who immediately followed, and that same position would widely apply to a great many of my vintage, the ‘37-‘38 crowd.

*

It has seemed to me that we were great innovators and trend-setters for the Boomers.  There were so many profound changes in existence during our youth that it was unavoidable. 

An easy example for me to cite is the development of “high fidelity” music production in the 1960’s. That technological leap alone put us so much closer to the artists that were having such a major effect on youth at the time.  The trueness and richness of the sound that became available on record put us right next to the artists, intimately within “breathing range” of their inspiration. 

Since music is so much about, and connected to, the emotions, it is not at all surprising that we broke the bonds of traditional emotional and physical repression in the ‘60s and set in motion thoughts about sex, love and behavior that changed our world forever. 

**

But what makes us who we are to a great extent is that we have an unusually rosy view of what the world is and what people are like.  This is not a fault and shouldn’t be taken as a criticism.  It’s an “is,” that’s all.

The '30s were very hard on people, but the upside was that so many Americans came together to help each other through those times, that it became normal for most people to be inclined to give the other person a hand when possible.  It was sweet lemonade from lots and lots of lemons.

WW II drew the nation together even further, as only a major external threat like that could.  Americans, at least white Americans, pulled themselves together even closer in most aspects of life and work.  That feeling of unity on a large scale that our vintage grew up with was normal and helped shaped us and our views of life in profound ways.

The ‘50s were repressive in social matters but were also expansive as our nation grew stronger and wealthier and was teeming with opportunities from the Roosevelt-Truman era policies that were largely based on helping everyday people. 

That had not been the normal structure of governments prior to that, not even of the original U.S. Government our revered Founding Fathers created.  The rights and freedoms they established, as lofty as they were, applied to men and not women, and to white men at that, and really to white men of European descent, which I believe, represented about 17% of the people living in the original 13 colonies at the time.  

But we kept improving the Dream of American Democracy.  Slavery was ended in a torrent of blood and destruction.  Women became full citizens and were allowed to vote in 1920, which, for the record, is after my mother was born.  She is still alive and living independently. 

My mother, Rose, was almost married off to a man she didn’t like.  It was as though her parents “owned” her and had the right to give her to someone without her having any say in the matter.  I am alive to mention this tale because she had the courage to run off with my father before her parents snatched her adult life away from her.  Times change.

We are different, I believe, partly because we grew up in times when our parents’ generation were unusually giving and heroic in facing the economic hardships of the '30s and World War II in the ‘40s.  We benefited from their sacrifices and their wish to give us a better life and a better world.  Our growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s was a blessing because the United States had truly become the Land of Promise as never before.

Our generation carried The Promise a lot further and expanded life, love and possibility to levels unheard of since before the Dark Ages.  We are products of a particular time that infused us with behaviors and views of humanity that are more idealistic than the reality of these times, certainly, and most times, probably.  

But reality becomes what we make of it through our vision, hard work, knowledge, wisdom and patience.  I don't have to tell you how much the '60s changed us and the world at the time, and how deeply it had to have affected those who immediately followed.

The vision we brought earlier is desperately needed now to help humanity save itself from the ecological disasters that are surely coming if we don't change our blindness and arrogance into vision and compassion in very short order.  We may guide, but others will have to implement.

Through the happenstance of time, we came to experience and know humanity's beauty and brilliance more intimately than the madness, selfishness and absurd stupidity that are currently gripping the United States and much of the rest of the world.

We are a different crowd for good reasons - a group imbued with strength and creative gifts that impacted the world and opened life to new vision. 

There can be no doubt that we hit the right combination of parenting and circumstance, scholastic and scientific growth, and advances in health, nutrition and community that were the gifts to us that became the gifts  we, in turn, generated further to and for others. 

Wisdom — by Lucky

“Wisdom is directly proportional to the size of the group you take responsibility for.”

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi

I have been wondering about wisdom. As part of an elder’s circle I’ve been thinking about what constitutes the wisdom in this group of human beings. I don’t think I understand what I’ve noticed here, but I think I’ve got a part of it, and if that is true, I think that there is something here for all of us. Here is what I mean.

It is true I’ve found perspective being amongst these people. I can see a lot of things I couldn’t see before, or could only see dimly, partially. My sight is sharpened as it is failing, but this isn’t the source of the wisdom.  I can see the way the years have brought some things into focus, and that is good, but it isn’t what has moved folks to go beyond themselves. Sight, seeing the bigger picture, certainly is edifying, it brings about a change in consciousness, but it doesn’t go all the way to wisdom.

What is it — what moves a person into a realm that goes beyond conventional ways of knowing? As I sit with these folks I sense the presence of a broader way of knowing, of feeling. I can feel it. It is in the group, sometimes it comes out of someone’s mouth, behavior, or demeanor. Sometimes it sits over, or amongst, us like an atmosphere, about to storm through us, or someone amongst us. Sometimes it is ripe in the silence. Sometimes I am suddenly pierced, something in another’s words, or quietness, takes me away, and simultaneously delivers a chastened, or healed, heart. I want to cry, to exalt, to exclaim my undeserved privilege. Sometimes it just hurts so good.

I have been after this experience for a long time. For me, it started in a community-building workshop, in 1986. I felt something, a presence I knew was bigger than the group gathered that spring day. It included all of us, was somehow of us, but went way beyond us. I had the audacity to believe then that whatever it was, was something that could be integrated and made a regular experience of the world. I’m glad I had that impulse because it has kept my butt sitting in large circles paying attention and trying to learn. Now I’ve had enough experiences of what I’ve come to call communitas that I can tell when its present and when to shut up and listen real hard.

And I’ve been changed. I don’t know how much is a result of the stroke (though I do recommend near death experiences), and how much the world appearing as a circle changed me, but I do know the combination created some kind of strange hybrid awareness. Now I’m always in a circle, always feeling my self, extending out in disconcerting and overwhelming ways. I’d say I simply like it, if my circle of caring didn’t bring in so much human suffering. The Universe now is my circle, and I am just a part of it, trying to act consistent with the whole, and failing magnificently. Practicing being part of the circle has disrupted my life, so much that I no longer think it mine, and delivered me into a circle I intuited, but really had no idea about.

Oh, but I’m trying to write about wisdom, not about circles. I can’t help it, they seem to be linked in my mind. Its like, when I’m in the circle of elders, being in a gold mine, and discovering there are many rich, untapped veins, just calling out to be explored. I feel the rush of sudden wealth and an urge to share such abundance. The location of this mine is a secret though. Strangely it can be sensed, but remains hidden, right here in the midst of us. I can feel its presence, know its here, feel the wealth it implies, and am helpless to go there, to cavort in our shared wealth, until more of us open the doors. Which doors? Our doors, whatever that means.

Wisdom, of the sort that is present in the elder’s circle, is an emergent quality. It becomes manifest as we invest in each other. Not the passive kind of investment we’ve been taught, like into stocks, but a more active, even interactive kind of investing, of shared knowing, caring and responsibility. I really believe that it has been my investment in the others of the circle that has made the circle come to life for me. And, I know the circle, especially the big, unpredictable, other-populated, never safe, circle delivered me more fully into the wonderful mystery of Life.

What is wisdom? I don’t know, maybe its like pornography. Didn’t one famous, but now forgotten justice of the Supreme Court once say, “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.” Yes, I think wisdom is like that, but I can’t help but feel it is more likely another group of humans, motivated by something more exquisite and elusive than pornography, that create it. Like pornography, it probably starts between the ears but goes to the heart instead of the loins.

I’m sure that one dimension of this experience relates to the quote above. Large circles, circles filled with conflict, chaos, diversity, and differing capacities have served as microcosms of the larger macrocosm and have thus stretched me out in a variety of directions. I think I have been exposed to wisdom, and grown wiser, because of those circles. With exposure to them, like the elder’s circle, my circle of caring has grown, and with it, I have been grown.

From here, wisdom is mystery unfolding, in whatever circle I care enough about to be broken by.

l/d