Gratitude for Darkness — by Lucky

“Darkness is the light most feared.”

The Solstice season is upon us. This is the time when one traditionally celebrates the return of the light. Each year we live through the darkest part of the year and focus most of our joy and gratitude upon the celestial turning that returns to us beginnings and new light. This is the season of the Christmas story, Kwanzaa, Hannukah, and the New Year. We, collectively, celebrate and honor the light that shows up in the darkest hour.

This year, perhaps perversely, I find myself thinking about my gratitude for darkness. I am well aware that what I am — some strange and contradictory combination of brokenness and wholeness — is a product, not of light, but, of darkness. I wheel around aware that I had to be dragged into hellish darkness to be forged into a new man — a lesser and paradoxically more capable being. It turns out that the Abyss is part of my parentage.

I used to think of myself as a kind of diplomat, an emissary from the realm of the needy. I was one who never hesitated to say that asking for help was one of the most community building things one could do. I was skewed enough to contradict the Bible and say that it actually is more blessed to need (to ask and receive) than to give. Now, however, I’ve come to see that I am really the ambassador of darkness. I came out of a place so dark that I never want to go back there, but all of my gifts of awareness were given to me there, and I have come to believe it is the darkness that gives Life.

I don’t have a Christmas tree, colored lights, or even candles, but I do have three wise men. They are all that remains of a once mainstream Christian life. They have stuck with me, and accompanied me during my lonely, sometimes solitudinal, dark vigils. I’ve come to see them differently, not just as heroes that persevered through the desert following a star, but as actual kings of the darkness, who have shown-up to pay homage to what the darkness has wrought. The star of Bethlehem is to me a product of the dark mystery surrounding it.

When I first had my stroke, and had to wait for declining year after declining year to find out if I would live, I used to curse the darkness of Creation. I was confused by the painfulness uncertainty of my life. I didn’t know then what I do now. I was being re-worked, re-made. In an invisible studio I was fitted with an awareness that could only come from suffering and helplessness. The hands that held and re-shaped me were not only invisible and non-palpable, they were stained with darkness, so deep and merciful that I could not imagine it.

Today, I have the pleasure of knowing many elders, old people who have known dark times – the sometimes painful, uncertain, and seemingly unending periods (where there is no human solace deep enough to last) — create compassionate understanding and real character. The darkness of Life, if it doesn’t kill one, confers a depth of humanity that cannot be attained any other way. In fact, darkness is the birthplace of depth. Hidden in the shadows is a dark gem, not one anyone can grasp, but one that sometimes grasps us. The broken body, job, relationship, or lifestyle, is a terrible well-spring that unleashes hard-won wisdom into the world.

I don’t really know how to be thankful for such a demanding and seemingly arbitrary fruitfulness. I feel hugely ambivalent about even harboring this awareness. I know I have much to give thanks for, that some angel must have had to endure a lot to give me a chance to write these words, but I would not wish this experience upon anyone. The darkness is just too exacting.

Still, here in the traumatized aftermath, I am thankful! I don’t really know how to express it, I don’t know how to honestly honor the unimaginable, but I know I owe this part of what is good about my life, to that which perched and feed upon me long enough that I became a being capable of being grateful for darkness. To me, this is the real gift of the season, one that in this dark-age offers a great deal.

In the end, I guess I write these words to remember what darkness has granted me, and to remind everyone that light sometimes shows up as darkness.

DESIRE IN AN AGING WOMAN —Alexandra Hart

My younger lover/best friend asked me to write about Desire. He is evidently confounded by the fact of a 73-year-old woman who is still juicy and loves sex. However confounded I found myself by his suggestion, I still found the question of desire, where it comes from, how it presents itself, an interesting one and the search for an answer rewarding.

I believe that desire is far deeper than physical urges for sexual connection. Almost immediately upon looking inside, I found what do I desire to be a more difficult search, and more revealing.  It’s a core issue: What do I yearn toward? What draws me? How does following that pull reward me? How do I experience it and how do I respond to that inner message?

So far I know that this is the same pull that leads me to any feeding of my soul. A full engagement of all of my self in alignment brings me to a multiplicity of criss-crossing and enlivening sensations and inclinations. At one moment it may be to feed my body with connection, touch, food, hot water, silks, sunshine, hiking, or sea air. At another it may be surrender to the exotic and refreshing realm of sleep. Or my lover’s touch, a sparkle in his eye, or a suggestion will light up my second chakra centers, making my genitals, lower belly, nipples sing while I smile back with mischief in my eye.

All of this, while fully embodied, still reverberates with the energy of Spirit. It becomes holy when I enter into each moment with full attention, deep listening, and wholeheartedness.  Spirit demands of me that I fully appreciate this amazing human experience of Itself made manifest, giving back gratitude, the pleasure of giving and receiving, and the never-ending effort to touch the Mystery.

It is this dance with the Mystery and how she flirts with me, constantly taunting me with the hope of solving the conundrum of the Other at the same moment as knowing myself as the Whole that I find at the heart of my desire. It is the Mystery that keeps me juicy.

On a more mundane level, giving in to the adages of this youth culture could well lead to giving up on desire. It takes courage to see beyond what has been presented as beautiful and desirable through a million advertisements and magazine advisements to what is truly beautiful and desirable. Besides, it changes as we change, so you never really know what’s real unless you pay very close attention. Checking inside, am I able to see a woman with a face deeply lined with character and age, a man confined to a wheelchair with his once-facile speech ripped aside by a stroke, as beautiful? That is a description of what this couple, my lover and I, look like at first glance. As it happens, I am able. But it requires living inside the surfaces, not on them.

Courage. Yes, it takes courage to keep looking past our self-imposed borders of convention and limitation. It takes courage to remove one’s clothes for the first time in front of a younger man at an age over seventy. It takes courage to admit that even kissing might be difficult to enjoy when breath is hard to manage or that getting undressed and hoisting oneself from wheelchair to a bed without a fall is chancy. But when that courage is rewarded with recognition of the beauty and, yes, grace of the human soul, then I am back in the presence of the sacred. Then Desire is reborn in me.

My true desire is to not flinch in the face of what Life wants from me. It is to find happiness in each present moment, even the dark ones lurking in the abyss. It is to celebrate the losses and the grief as gifts, even when they are disguised as unimaginable difficulties. It is to open to pleasure and to thrill to new ways to learn and to experience fully this amazing and unimaginably short lifespan. I can hope that I will remain relatively able-bodied, though I may not. I can hope that the difficulties of very old age will go easy on me. But my desire is to continue to rejoice in my dance with Mystery, on my hands and knees if necessary, however she presents herself to me.

PART II – THE OTHER

I was quite content with Part I above, but I knew it wasn’t going to satisfy this lover of mine, this Other. And because I knew that, I must have already known there was more. But it took his nudge to go this extra mile. That’s how a great connection with the Other works: it brings one the gift of a new perspective; and, when it’s really good, one can’t get away with much.

I awoke well before dawn this morning, needing more sleep but unable to shake the growing knowledge that to get inside that more, I needed to pleasure myself, watching very carefully what came into focus. I have an odd relationship to masturbation in that I didn’t discover it for myself. Perhaps it was sharing a bedroom with sisters. But an early marriage at seventeen introduced me to the pleasures of sex, and I took right to it. It’s been said that one’s early sexual experiences can form the basis for one’s life-long appetites. Perhaps. If so, it would be the presence of an Other that formed mine. Masturbation always seemed flat to me, a bit mechanistic. Where was the surprise, the not-knowing of what would come, what new sensation or transcendent moment might next appear?

This morning was no different in many respects. I didn’t feel desire for the sexual but for the information, so I had to rev myself up with a bit of oil and … it wasn’t until I allowed my Other and our recent sexual activities to flash through my brain that I began to feel the thrill sensations that made my juices flow. Aha. I didn’t continue fantasizing, but tried to follow the energy. Again, it became mechanistic. I came, it felt good, brought a feeling of body wellbeing, but it was flat. However, something else dawned in me. Life shook me — hard.

New life is created by connection between Others — from microscopic entities to complex humans. When inbreeding occurs, things begin to go wrong. When a marriage becomes perfunctory, it goes stale. The magic disappears when one allows oneself to be subsumed or recreated by another. It’s a tricky thing, because my relationships bloom when I give access to myself, but it will wear out if I merge with my lover, if I allow him to form me into an extension of himself. There is the paradox; there is where I touch the Mystery: by staying Other while also giving wholly.

Life wants us to cross-pollinate. If I bring my partner new glimpses into what he is not, and if he brings me insight into both what I am and what I am not, then we are both going to stay juicy. If we get complacent and refuse to recognize the Third Body* in our relationship, i.e., Life or The Mystery, and the role the Other has in bringing us to bump up against it, then we’re likely to grow apart, seek outside the relationship for what it no longer brings us. If I refuse to open and engage, I will lose my juice. This engagement does not have to be sexual; that happens to be an important avenue for me, but it does need to be with the Other. That Other can be inside myself, or outside, but I must engage it as wholeheartedly as I can if I want to make the most of this extraordinary human lifetime.

Why else does every list of what makes a happy, long-lived old person include social connection? Life is telling us something. We need each other; we need one another’s difference from ourselves; we need to engage with and learn to love difference itself. Life depends on us to do so. The alternative is obliteration through decline, withering, drying up, extinction.

So, what I learned today as I read this back is that this learning itself is making my desire rise. I’m feeling that general rosy sense of good health, twittering nipples and live genitals, warm belly, and euphoria in my head and breast. Life, the Mystery, is rewarding me for making connection with something that had been Other until now and now is part of me.

Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.

* “The Third Body”, poem by Robert Bly

Post-Traumatic Stress by Lucky

I’m tired. The drums of the election go on and on. I voted, and where last time I voted was the first time I felt I could vote for someone I wanted and could believe in, I’m back to voting for the lesser of two evils. I wish Obama could be the President I voted for. I’m not sure that fully explains why I am tired though. I think I just may be tired because I’m not the man I could be. I’m tired because I’m still carrying around a weight that grieves me.

I am dwelling with the possibility, I would say probability, that I know something, that I’ve been exposed to something so difficult to metabolize, that I live with the consequences everyday. What am I talking about? I’ll tell you how it came to me this time. Then maybe you will understand.

I was with a group of elders. We were having coffee and talking, like we do every Friday.

We started with a question about being happy while knowing the world was in the condition it was in. As sometimes happens in groups the conversation seemed to wander. Soon it came around to examining if I was traumatized by what happened to me? The stroke had changed my life in some very abrupt and difficult ways. I feel ‘Lucky,” the stroke has given me a special kind of awareness in place of what it had taken away. I am traumatized in a complex way.

This set me to thinking. The original question had been about the possibility of being happy despite the traumatizing awareness of the condition of our blue home. Together we more or less concluded that despite the trauma of knowing how much we have participated in screwing things up, the weight of Life circumstance dictated that we enjoy the moments that the Universe, or God, provides. Trauma was part of the equation but not ultimately defining.

It is the same for me. The suddenness and finality of the stroke changed my life completely. I now live with that awareness. Life can change radically any moment. Is that a traumatic awareness? Some would say “yes.” I, instead, feel lucky. The world is awash with transient, ever-changing phenomenon. I accept and appreciate them like never before. My life has been enriched by the trauma that altered my awareness. An abrupt, painful change, which I cannot forget, traumatized me and enhanced the quality of my life.

After this conversation I continued to think about this. I remembered when I had taught graduate school, I had once been given a student’s paper where she made the claim that because we have been exposed to this toxic culture we all were stunted by post-traumatic stress. This memory made me think that there was great trauma associated with waking up in this world at this time. While I think this is truly a painful realization, I can’t decide if this is classic trauma. Is wakefulness worth the pain? Am I a distorted being because I have weathered the pain and notice? I don’t think so, but I know I have been radically and painfully altered.

I carry around a kind of stress now, One could call it a kind of post-traumatic stress. If it is, then I am thankful for it. I wasn’t always. When I first came to realize the scale and complexity of what we have done to ourselves,  each other, and this beautiful green planet, I was chagrined, dismayed, embarrassed, and shameful. Despair followed me everywhere. Then slowly I have come back to life. I still feel the pain, mostly as grief now, and as I have learned, grieving is another form of praise.

Knowing what I know, being traumatized as I have been, I see the world differently. I’m not likely to ever forget what I’ve beheld, but I am much more likely to love the fragile and persistent beauty that I now see more clearly. The world is a traumatized reality. Existence is an overwhelming thing. I used to feel like it was too much, now I exult in having the opportunity to know this mysterious complexity.

So why am I so tired? I’m praised out. I think I’m suffering from caring fatigue. I know the Universe is going to keep going, expanding way beyond my comprehension. Thankfully! Me, I’m tired, and all I can do is rest in that assurance. Tomorrow brings new surprises. Undoubtedly, some of them will renew my rested energy.

Shyness by Lucky

You probably wouldn’t know it from interacting with me, or reading the Slow Lane pieces, but I am shy. I was thinking about this last week-end, and asked my sweety about it. I asked her if she ever felt shy around me, because, as I admitted, I sometimes felt shy around her. This precipitated a broader discussion of shyness, which I want to share, because it seems so relevant to the opportunity each of us has, to be ourselves and change the world.

We acknowledged our private shyness with each other, but we went on, to look at what leads to shyness and how it often gets played out.  For us, it seemed to revolve around the others seeing parts of us that we ourselves see barely and are unsure about. Suddenly these aspects of our selves are in the relationship spotlight.

We have a relationship where strangeness is somewhat welcome. Thank God! But this openness invites out of us all kinds of marginal characteristics. I like the welcoming attitude of my partner, but I’m not so sure about it when something shows up.

Anyway, looking at ourselves in relationship soon led to looking at ourselves in the world, in our community. I will confess a kind of shyness that regularly afflicts me, which I hide, in a moment, but I want to address the phenomenon of shyness first. I’m not talking here about introspection, I hid there for a while, I had Myers-Briggs to sanction my hiding then, instead I’m referring to the tendency I, and other people, share. That is, to keep our tenderest parts away from others. I’m discovering some of my tenderest parts, represent some of the aspects of my self that I am most unsure about,  they are also some the most important to share, because they contain my deepest and most vulnerable hopes and fears, worldly concerns, connections, and wisdom.

Shyness has been the way I have justified my reticence to be seen. It is so easy to say I was born shy. That’s just the way things are. I am shy, but that isn’t just the way things are. I am learning to overcome my shyness, to become visible, to even let myself as a disabled person be seen. I don’t feel comfortable doing it. I don’t like bearing any real scrutiny, especially my own, but I am learning that if I want to be free, I’ve got to free myself. It is a wonderful surprise finding out that freeing myself enhances the chances for a more wide spread outbreak of freedom. My shyness seems to be connected to the shyness in the world.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t relish anyone knowing about, much less seeing, my secret relationship with myself. I’m learning that the world of others (that includes my sweetie, you, the rest of my community, and the other-than-human world I belong to) suffers from a lack of freedom, choice, connection, and real vitality, when I let my doubt run me. Shyness is just one more way I let Mystery down.

After writing those words, I have to face the way I hide — my shyness. I am finding, thanks to our mutual inquiry, that I am shy about many things. But the one that is operating here, is the way I don’t really let you know about my writing. I know that sounds funny, especially coming as it does, inside one of my Slow Lane pieces. But, the truth is, that I have written three books (I don’t really know if they are any good) in the last several years, and I have not talked with anyone (except Xan) about them or their contents.

I have kept quiet about this. Why? I’ve told myself I’m shy, but a more informative truth would be that I have a hard-time letting anyone know I care that much and that I feel really vulnerable. I am proud of the work of writing, in terms of time, energy, and commitment, but I am anxious and fearful about letting anyone in on the ideas I express. They reveal too much about me. It seems like I am open and transparent, that’s what the Slow Lane would suggest, but the truth is, I am still hiding. I want you to know about my work and I don’t. I am proud of it, and I’m not. I can barely bring myself to acknowledge what I have spent the last part of my life on, and I feel like a fool, but I keep quiet anyway.

The books, the first one written when I was alone in 2007 & 8, the next (in 2009), compiled of early Slow Lane pieces and addressing transformation, and my recently completed True Things, have kept me awake, engaged, and alive. And, they reveal so much about me, and the world I live in, that I am hesitant to even let on they exist. Extrapolating from my reticence I wonder how many people are still sitting on themselves?

I don’t condone selficide, I tend to think of it like I do ecocide, but I have to admit, I contain and practice this contradiction. I swim in deep waters from time to time. I try to bring back what I see, what I hope will make a difference, but I am not really an unbiased reporter, because I keep secrets. I know I’m holding back. I suspect I’m not alone. Life is asking me to fess up. I guess that is because Life invented me. To the extent that is true, I can forgive myself. But I believe the truth is Life’s creation too. I am only a human being, being very human, I bear a foolish broken heart, because I can’t live up to what I’m aware of. They say the truth shall set you free, and maybe that is true, but to be free I have to get around me. And, pretending to be shy when I’m not doesn’t free anyone.

That Much

There is a story that I love. I first came across this story when I read the prologue to Scott Peck’s book A Different Drum. I subsequently loved it even more when it was read at the beginning of every community-building workshop I ever attended. The story conveys something of the radical power of respect, and I share it with you because I am still learning its lessons.

“ There is a story, perhaps a myth. Typical of mythic stories, it has many versions. Also, typical, the version of the story you are about to experience is obscure. The story, called The Rabbi’s Gift, concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti-monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all of its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over 70 years in age Clearly it was a dying order.

In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. “The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again,” they would whisper to each other. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed he abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. “I know how it is,’ He exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet each other after all these years,” the abbot said, “but I still have failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would me save my dying order?”

“No I am sorry,” the rabbi responded. “I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that The Messiah is one of you.”

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”

“He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered. “We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving —it was something cryptic — was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant.”

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered the possible this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The Messiah is on of us? Could he possibly mean one of the monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Bother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Eldred! Eldred gets crotchety at times. But, when you look back on it, even though he is a pain in people’s sides, Eldred is virtually always right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Eldred. But not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God not me, I couldn’t be that much for You could I?

As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off off chance that each of the monks himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was so beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

The story ends with the monastery being renewed and becoming a center of light. I’ve loved this story because it has had so much to say to me about the renewal of community, but as I was slowly typing the story into my computer, I found myself substituting in the word world, in my mind, for monastery. I have a feeling that if we could have the story’s kind of extraordinary respect universally, then a wider spread renewal could happen.

I primarily have loved this story because it has helped me to consider myself in a different light. Besides looking at myself as something unimaginable, and worthy of respect, I have been dwelling with the off hand chance that I could be “that much” to anyone. As I have come to respect that possibility, I have come to experience how much this world of others, means to me.  “That much” has turned into so much.

My regard for the possibility that I might not know myself well enough to be sure how much I could mean to another has turned out to increase my regard for everybody. I am learning that just opening to the possibility of being “that much” to anyone, opens me to noticing how everything is “that much” to me.

I share this with you, because I’m still leaning how to be and see “that much,” and because it means that much to me.

Vulnerability

I realized, as I was approaching this subject, vulnerability, that although the definition hasn’t changed over the years, the meaning has.. This is what I really want to explore. As I’ve changed so has the experience of being vulnerable. Along with the change of meaning, I think the impact of vulnerability is also changing. If this is so, then vulnerability, of a sort, heralds a change of capability that I think might be important to note.

Being vulnerable actually means putting yourself potentially in harms way. It’s a deliberate act. An act, that involves giving up all forms of protection and standing out undefended. One is vulnerable because one has elected to defy the probability of harm in favor of some other less probable outcome, and in the process one has made themselves totally subject, wellbeing wise, to the moment. Being vulnerable is a kind of exposure to risk.

This squares with my early experiences of vulnerability. I don’t like being vulnerable very much. Even to this day. In the early days I really didn’t like it. My experience of vulnerability was accompanied with a sense of fear. If I became vulnerable it was usually an accident, or a situation where I felt out of control, and in over my head. The experience of being exposed was very vivid and beyond my control. I always felt threatened, destined for a kind of jeopardy. The unpleasantness of the experience was always a feeling of naked smallness before something greater.

The smallness I felt, the involuntary nature of what befell me, made the experience one that was seared into my awareness, and one I didn’t want to have again. I couldn’t perceive any benefit, any reason to want to voluntarily have the experience of being vulnerable. Life was hard enough, scrabbling to have a place at the table.

In those days I was very aware of what, and who, was around me. I chose to act out of my awareness of my external situation. I wanted desperately to fit in. I felt vulnerable when I didn’t, when I couldn’t. My sense of vulnerability didn’t really have a voluntary component, not unless one was insane, or masochistic. Vulnerability was a sign of weakness, a sign that one didn’t have the ability to cope with Life.

Thankfully, after years of feeling vulnerable, believing myself to be defective, unable to cope with the complexity of Life, things changed. I ripened into another kind of awareness. Sure, I spent years in therapy, doing spiritual practice, being a social activist, having challenging relationships, discovering what being a man was, and working on myself. These things contributed, but what really brought everything together, was something I had no control over. I, inexplicably, ripened into a new bigger, more complex being. Now I feel vulnerable differently.

Being vulnerable now is more of a voluntary experience. I can still get caught up and overwhelmed by the moment, but it tends to be less unpleasant than it used to be. I have learned through living and practiced desire to regulate myself. I have more choice now. Thankfully. I may have feelings, I probably do, but I have a lot more discretion about revealing them. I can be feeling-full and discrete.

Being vulnerable can be a lot of things, but here, I want to focus upon the voluntary display of the amalgam of complex feelings that makes vulnerability a strength not a weakness. Vulnerability has an infectious nature. That doesn’t mean others feel the same thing in the same way, but it does mean that others are impacted, they notice. Vulnerability is composed of a set of human emotions that communicate something important.

As I’ve grown older I have begun to find a more existential kind of humor funny. I can’t help but smile, sometimes, when something makes me recognize the hilarious situation I’m in. Sometimes, I can’t help being impressed by how funny being here is. I often laugh at my own difficulties. I am so grateful I can.

Vulnerability seems similar to me. I am incredibly vulnerable if I let myself know the fix I’m in. What’s more, is that I can feel vulnerable if I really get the fix some one else is in. The truth is, that for me, the human condition makes me feel pretty vulnerable. I guess that is why I sometimes feel moved to let my vulnerability be seen. It seems to most accurately express the predicament that I find myself, and others, within.

Vulnerability, for me, means that I may laugh or cry. Being human is ridiculously hard. It makes me grieve, praise, laugh and cry. I am vulnerable from head to foot, in every moment, in every way, and I laugh, curse and wonder within such an incredible existence. Vulnerability seems to be my natural state, maybe yours too! Can we connect with each other around this shared experience? I believe we can. In part, that’s why I want others to see and know my vulnerability. Openness is vulnerable. It hurts good. So does living. Hah! What a humorous twist there is to this whole deal!

“A Good Death Is a Village-Making Event”

He said the words that title this missive, and they have haunted me since. He is Stephen Jenkinson, a Canadian, who is Harvard educated, a theologian. And he has attended over 800 deaths. I was listening to a radio interview with Stephen when he said these words. It was like a big wet shaggy dog shook nearby. At first those words just shocked me into an uncomfortable wetness, then subsequently, when I listened again to the interview, these words drenched me. I believe I am now, like Stephen says, grief soaked.

 

Known as the Griefwalker in Canada, Stephen’s principle mission has been shedding new light upon our culture’s phobia about death. That is moving enough, but that isn’t what grabbed me so hard. What galvanized my attention was his answer to the question, “what constitutes a good death?” His answer came across as if it was customized for me to hear. I have been a community-builder all of my adult life, and suddenly I’m accosted by an idea that seems so right, and that has evaded me for so long. If I wasn’t so moved by what it says to me now, I would feel ashamed that I hadn’t realized this before.

I don’t want to spend time on Stephen’s work. If you want to know more, and I do recommend it, go to Ken Rose’s site for the 1 hour interview (www.pantedmonkey.com), and to (http://www.nfb.ca/film/griefwalker) for the Canadian documentary of he and his work. Instead I just want to focus upon the village-making aspect of death, and life.

He points out how one significant part of life is ignored by our current attitudes about death. This is familiar to we elders, who are used to being ignored (or worse). I was taken by the sense that we don’t really know what death holds for us, we rarely talk about it, and we don’t inquire into the experience of those who are dying. In all these ways we are missing the potential of death to bring us together. It is, after all, one experience we all have in common. Dying probably has a lot to say about life, a lot we may not even know.

I am touched by the notion that there is a community-building aspect to dying. Dying transparently, apparently, holds a power that unites us. I can imagine that dying out in the open can touch us all. I can also imagine that knowing something about what it is really like changes the way we live. And finally, I can imagine holding the precious flame of Life so much more diligently, mine and yours.

I want that, for us, for my self, for this stricken world. I have attended some memorial services that brought out the village, now I want living to do the same. Is that possible? I know I can’t make it happen with anything I do or say, but it appears that by living and dying well I might be able to enhance the chances. So I’m writing to you to direct your attention, to the extent I can, to the work of Stephen Jenkinson, and to the kind of life/death I hope to share with you.

I share in the destruction of our world, I can’t seem to avoid it. I know that the end of an unsustainable way of life is coming, and that I probably won’t make the necessary transition, if one occurs, but while I am alive, I want to be working to lessen the unnecessary distances that keep us from being as connected and whole as we can be. The world is a holy vision (so are we really) and we need each other to see it clearly.