Going Nowhere Fast — by Lucky

I was sitting in front of the common house, in my wheel chair, in the shade, enjoying the day, when suddenly I was hit by something I didn’t expect. From time to time I sit outside, to get fresh air, to feel nature, and to let myself be assailed by what wants my attention. I didn’t see this one coming though, perhaps I should have, I’m not as oblivious as I seem, but for a period of time, I was taken aback by the realization I was living in a collapsing society.

I’ve been writing the Slow Lane for a long time now. Along the way I’ve realized that even doing something as mundane and simple as taking a nap can be a revolutionary act.  Slowing down, enough to fall asleep, to relax into the moment, to trust the self, is beyond many of us. Even the road to the unconscious is cluttered with cultural detritus such as things to do, people to see, thoughts that press for attention. Thank God, exhaustion sometimes triumphs.

Even with this disabled seat, at the edges of the slow lane, I haven’t let myself stare fully into the abyss. By that I mean, I haven’t really let myself know what I already know. I get jittery just thinking about this. I feel anxious. I worry that if I let myself know, or worse yet, feel, that this cultural edifice is coming down, then I am going to be thought too pessimistic, crazy, or somehow self-indulgent.

Yesterday was even worse. As I sat, the realization came to me, that the predicted collapse is already happening.  All at once I felt so many things. I still am. I felt my shame and dismay. I wanted my daughter to have something else. I knew my own vulnerability, how easily perishable I am, in my little home in the middle of urban sprawl. I knew how deeply unprepared I am. I saw the extent of the denial I live. I wanted to cry, to feel grief, that I, and the human experiment have come to this. My silent longing for a community of companions, suddenly morphed into a family feeling, together, we are confronted by the brink.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t need more books, or articles, movies and lectures about Peak Oil, economic disaster, or climate change. I’m saturated with apocalyptic images of the future. I understand the fear that possible futures generate. I’m afraid too. The present however, is enough to kick my ass. Yesterday, I grasped that the future is here and now. Collapse is happening! If not for me, right now, for those without jobs, homes, health, income, food, friends, family. Poverty, the third world, and all the ignominious ways that we let each other suffer, assail me now. I can’t walk away — there is no place to go.

So, in this moment, I’m just sitting with it, in it, feeling all that it asks of me. Strange, I know what I see is devastating, yet I’m still here, in the midst of this unfolding horror. I want to do something about it — but, I can’t. I’m too disabled. But, I am Lucky. I can sit right in the middle of it, doing nothing, just letting it sink in.

I’m sitting in collapse, the cultural world I have known doesn’t work, the end of an era is here. I know, I don’t want to argue about it, the whole edifice hasn’t come down yet. For some people it is working, there is very little change, maybe even an imagined future, the prospect of positive change. Maybe some unforeseen development will save us. I don’t know. I’m not predicting anything. But, I am aware of something. And, what I’m aware of, is that what is, already carries all the seeds that disturb me.

I think I have got to learn to live as if collapse is already taking place. What does that mean?

I’ve been blessed enough, by my life-threatening ailment, to know death exists. Knowing the surety of my own death has made me stronger, this awareness has helped me get clear about who I am. Maybe living with collapse could do the same. Suddenly, like Lazarus raised from the crypt, I might appreciate, more completely, the life I have. I imagine I might live differently, if I felt the presence of collapse, like I have come to feel death is a part of life. I know that my awareness of the miracle of this existence depends upon my ability to let if I let collapse in. Collapse is already happening.

I am sitting now. That is about all I can do. As I’m sitting, it is sinking in. I am in the circle. The end and the beginning are both here. Collapse, which scares the hell out of me, is part of wholeness (not my favorite part). I don’t want to accept it. I think a lot of the busy-ness and rushing I see everywhere around me are other’s refusal to accept it. But, I don’t know that. Still, collapse exists, and is part of the circle, an expression of wholeness. I want to run away. But, I can’t run, and there is no place, outside the circle, to go. So, I’m sitting, doing the most I can, letting it sink in. Collapse is here.

Age and Happiness — by Lucky

There have been reports, lately, from researchers who have been studying happiness, that people are happier as they get older. This development is consistent with my experience. It is good news. Something is happening, according to those who study happiness over the life-span, that makes people much more pleased to be alive as they get older. Why?

Oh, not for the reasons that are commonly thought, but because aging sometimes brings with it the chance to actualize a life-long project — that is, to become your self, to take possession of what makes you unique. This thrilling development comes with longevity, and makes aging, coming to ourselves, something, unique and potentially powerful.

Why does this matter; to me, to any old person, to our culture? It is too simple to say this matters because, as far as we know, it has never happened before. This is a first time in the history of our species! And that means that we have no idea about what this development means. This whole thing, happiness included, is up in the air. Knowing that, and getting older at this time, has drawn my attention. It has also motivated me. I’m part of, like it or not, the baby boom generation.  It isn’t in my blood to sit around and have someone define for me the meaning of this gift of longer life.

There are plenty of reasons why happiness might grow in this stage of life. On the opposite end of the spectrum from that dirty word “retirement,” lies an opportunity for a new, more self-defined, life, a chance to re-create your self. Theory has it that old people are used up, finished, too tired, to have much of a life. As recently as our father’s generation people had the good sense to die shortly after retirement. That isn’t the case much anymore. And, that change, people living longer, has just now come on the scene. In 1970 a person reaching the age of 65 had only a 14% chance of reaching 85. Now almost half of us who reach 65 can expect to live, healthily, to 85 and beyond. We have almost 20 additional years no one has had, or been able to, look forward to before.

Happiness grows with age. That makes sense. Rules, roles, cultural assumptions, family expectations all have diminishing impact. But, happiness can be surprising too. Work no longer provides a structure of meaning. This is a loss, it can be confusing and disorienting, out of mastery comes the Mystery of emptiness. The tides change. People experience the bitter, but enlightening, gall of diminishment. With aging comes loss. How then can this be one of the happiest times of life?

It is, precisely because of the losses that we are dealt. Diminishment, becoming less of who we were, leads to enlargement, becoming more of who we want to be. How can this be? There is a reversal here that is totally unexpected. The pain of loss; the losing of wealth, health, prestige, comfort, abilities, friends, loved ones, family members, adds up, and increases appreciation for the gift of life. As life is pared away, the truly old dies off leaving what is essential, a being cleansed of superficialities. One, happily, gets to choose again. The extra years, can mean for many, a new and more satisfying life.

Happiness researchers explain the uptick in satisfaction in old age by extolling the virtues of greater health, longer lives, increased selectivity about time usage, the easing of responsibilities, and deepening relationships. I see it slightly differently. For me, increasing age means the possibility of increased self-possession. External factors do change, as the researchers notice and report, but internal factors change too. To my way of thinking, these internal factors go a lot further to explain happiness than the external changes.

Responsibilities change. There is increased selectivity, a better use of time, not because of getting older, but because getting older means becoming more my self. I have new responsibilities that mean more to me than the old responsibilities. I use my limited time more carefully. I am more selective because I have more choices than I once did. I am, as an aspect of getting older, more at home in my own skin. This is the real source of my increasing happiness.

Obviously that means a lot to me. I’ve worked hard to become, and hold onto, my self. I think that what is happening for me, is possible for everyone else. I’ve seen it, in my self and others, aging can mean being free to be one’s self. What a surprising turn of events!  This seems like a watershed moment when society, culture, anyone could age into a greater maturity. I don’t know about you, but for me aging is suddenly something I don’t want to miss, and that makes me happy.

Old And In The Way — by Lucky

“If we don’t have extended consciousness to match our (new) life span,

 we are dying longer instead of living longer.” — Rabbi Zalman Schacter

I’m getting older. At my next birthday I’ll be 63. In this culture, that is over the hill. I don’t feel old. My memory isn’t what it used to be, but then again neither is my lifestyle. I suspect, as luck would have it, I am getting old at just the right time. There is the hard won wisdom I have come into, a demographic surge of my kind, and the fact that my old brain is well-suited to hold the big picture. Being old, being 63, has never been like this before. I’m probably going to live longer than any generation has lived before. No doubt that means some new and unforeseen problems, but it looks like it also means some new and unforeseen opportunities.

Amongst the unforeseen opportunities lays consciousness and maturity. Maybe, because we have been granted this miraculous opportunity of longevity, we can grow into our species potential.  Just once, I would like to hold up my head and feel pride for our kind. We have shown a remarkable capacity to care for others, and ourselves, in crisis, but we haven’t yet shown ourselves that we are capable of being our best, of fulfilling our potential, of serving life. Anything approximating this kind of aware-being will change the meaning of being in the way to something more life serving.

I don’t know about you, but I relish the chance to kick around and see what kind of changes I can generate. I plan on being really in the way. First off, I have no desire to apologize to anyone for being old. I’m not so set in my ways that I refuse to learn new tricks, but I don’t plan on just going along with the crowd either. I like the me my life experience has allowed me to discover, and I don’t intend to let me go for some new idea that doesn’t really honor what I’ve learned about life. If that makes me strange, then so be it, I’m ready to be a little strange. Especially if I get a sense that the big picture isn’t being adequately considered.

Being in the way used to be a slur that was aimed at old people. I intend to turn it into a calling, a chance to be true to what matters, a personal responsibility. I hope I can turn being in the way into an art form. I think the world needs more of us, in the way. Maybe that is the great hidden secret of having so many boomers, generating this dramatic demographic shift, coming along now. The work of the sixties is not done. We didn’t have the maturity required to finish the job of freedom then. Maybe we still don’t, but we can further the process, we can advance the ball, not only for the old, but for everybody.

I don’t think I’m retiring. I think that I’m just getting ripe. I now have a voice, I’ve gotten used to being disabled, I’m alive with a new fervor. I may have 20 years no one expected (least of all, me), and I’m really tired, tired of being bound up in somebody else’s dream. The new, unexpected years deserve a new, and better, dream. I think that Evolution is at work, that it has created this opportunity for some kind of wiser human to be on the scene, and I intend to play along with it.

This is a time when being old, where having seen some things before, where having the chance to go further, to be even more, is going to make a difference, not just to entitlement programs, but to our species sense of perspective. I think the elder years hold the prospect of advancing our kind beyond adolescence. I hope so. I think elders have a better chance to really reflect values that go beyond the marketplace. I pray that we know, and are willing to live for, what really matters. If so, then I have every confidence that we, the old ones, are going to make a difference. In the process I expect to be old and in the way.

                           Seven Reasons These Are the Power Years

•  We’ll be living longer and healthier

•  the cyclic life plan (cycling in and out of careers) will replace the outmoded linear model

•  We’ll have a big — and growing — pool of role models

•  We’ll be wiser about what matters

•  We’ll have new freedoms

•  We’ll still have clout in the marketplace (advertisers will break free of their addiction to youth).

•  We’ll be open to change.

                                 — Ken Dychtwald from Audacious Aging

Catch and Release by Lucky

I remembered a time, when I was young, probably 10 or so, when I used to get up early in the morning and go fishing. In a rather cruel form of childhood recreation I used to catch and release blue gill. I guess I got to feel somehow powerful because I could bait these beautiful but hungry fish onto my hook. I never once, in my childhood, thought about what these fish might have been experiencing. That memory haunts me, as I recall being caught and released.

When I had the stroke I had no idea that life had just caught me. But, I would learn. I was drug out of the water of everything I had ever known. No matter how I wriggled I could not free myself, in fact the hook went deeper. I could have died, perhaps should have, maybe did die in some ways, but was ultimately thrown back in, to live another day in waters that have been forever changed by the hook, and the journey of being caught and released.

Life has become a more complex experience since that time. I no longer believe that what seems to be, really is. The darkness seems to be so deep, deep enough perhaps, to make the light really bright. The more I know that I don’t know anything, the closer to the truth I get. The waters, once they changed, keep changing, and I am lured and landed with each shift. I have a kind of post-traumatic memory. 

I am, because of the vividness of losing, still there, still caught — something hard, inscrutable, exists in me, a gut-wrenching recollection — and I am in the shock of re-birth, of being tossed back. There is nothing now that does not remind me that this moment is fleeting and that radical change is always here. I am caught, horrified from time to time, by the same perception that releases me. I am in the flow of Life but I am not that flow.

I have a hard time being around someone who is bored. I don’t get boredom in the midst  of a natural disaster, like the recent earthquake in Japan. I want to yell, “Wake up! Wake up to the near-death experience you are having.” That is how caught I sometimes am. I forget that I have also experienced release. I am disillusioned, and thereby freed of old limiting beliefs. I am diminished and thereby enlarged. I have had my life taken away from me, and thereby been reintroduced to this improbable miracle I experience as new life.

Being caught always, being released always, makes it hard for me to participate in the day-to-day life that goes on around me. Sometimes I feel crazy. How can anything matter so much? What am I doing here? What’s really going on here? I am caught in a world that is crazy-making, filled with so much pain, despair and hopelessness. I am simultaneously released into that same world and it is unimaginably beautiful, aware, and exquisitely alive. Frequently I am just confused, weepy and uncertain. I can’t even really explain it, to myself or to anyone.

I’ve tried to think about it. Is there anything I have brought back from the edge that I can give my fellow beings, my friends, my community, my kind? I was reduced to nothing, to helplessness and hopelessness (I had to be, in order to learn), I was suspended there for a long time (I had to be, to be rendered available), caught by who knows what, and I am being brought back to life (I’m learning to praise Creation).

You’d think I would have something. I do and I don’t. I know this isn’t the whole story, and I know it is a mixed, more complex story than most of us have been led to believe, and I guess now I know that not-knowing how to live in this mad-dash world is appropriate. I wish I could say something more solid, but there appears to me to be nothing solid about the world, or perhaps it’s just me.

I recall how banal was the cruelty of my childhood passion for catching and releasing fish. I remember that I read the Book of Job during my ordeal. I was looking for some way to make sense of the suffering imposed upon my life. I have never overcome the experience I had of the darkness of God, the inscrutability of the Void, the carelessness of evolution. Now I rest on this brink of time, alive with possibility, quivering, knowing that it is all passing so quickly, and deeply thankful, that despite everything, the years of hopeless longing, I have one more chance, that I exist, caught and released into this life.

Ripening — Lucky

Life apparently thrives by occasionally knocking over the apple cart.  Just when I think I have something figured out, I am plunged, once again, in over my head. Sometimes I think Life has a wicked sense of humor and is a bit sadistic. I usually occupy this sentiment when I am feeling sorry for myself. I’m not in that place now. So lately, in the midst of my unforeseen happiness, where I am feeling glad to be me, I have been reflecting on what is happening when I, and my world, get turned upside down. It looks like I am adopting a new attitude. It seems that these recurring dilemmas, as predictably unpredictable as they may be, are all part of a process that seems to be ripening me.

The idea that I am being ripened appeals to me. I know that soon I am going to fall off the tree. I know, that despite all of my illusions, protestations and elaborate projects and schemes, the end is coming. I’ve stopped worrying about it. But, I am still curious. So the idea that I am being ripened, that I could be the seed pod for some, as yet undefined, new life form, intrigues me.

Now bear in mind, as I am this minute, I am only speculating. I don’t really know anything. But, I keep imagining death as a form of transition, a shift from one form to another. In my mind, seeing death as a form of transition has a lot of explanatory value. Mainly, viewing things this way, makes the ordeals, the inconveniences of my life, the little broken edges, have more dignity. These recurring challenges are not a sign of my incompleteness; instead I am being ripened. Maybe I am being prepared, ripening like a wine grape in the sun, steeping like a good cup of tea, evolving like a caterpillar being chrysalized. The thought that even death is a part of evolution, that I could, once more, be becoming something else, fills me with a feeling that I am going deeper into the familiar, instead of being cast away, dried out, useless, and done.

Thinking this way also helps me appreciate the difficulties that keep arising. They may actually be Nature’s way of shaping me into a new form, one that I cannot imagine but can intuit. I know I do better, I play the hand dealt to me, am more creative in my responses to Life, when I am anticipating becoming. I may not know where I am heading, may not have any idea about how I’m going to get anywhere, but I have a sense that I am moving, ripening, changing, becoming something else. 

This may be sheer delusion, certainly I have no science to back it up, but it still serves me. It seems to me that no matter what I believe, no matter how sophisticated I am with the scientific method, I still have to come to terms with the great inscrutable mystery of death. And, it also seems to me, that how I come to terms with death determines how I come to terms with Life. I live according to the way I envision death.

Ripening offers me a chance to participate, not like I alone hold the key to my fate. I am prepared to be alone, to take responsibility for this life, actually, I think ripening demands it. But, ripening, becoming, implies yet another stage, in another, I would say, greater context. I seem to be part of some larger, as yet unknown, ecosystem. If this is true, and in my current imagination it is, then there is this strange other, that I am part of, but that is unknown. I am simultaneously the new seed arriving and the old ecosystem receiving it. In my mind, I am being prepared to quicken a greater wholeness.

Death, in this line of thought, isn’t the end of the line, it is some kind of timely ripening. As the caterpillar entering the chrysalis, or a pupae becoming an adult, there is a change of states. The timing is semi-predictable, and the general direction is assured. Despite the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the energy in the Universe doesn’t seem to be running down, instead the Universe seems to confound us by conserving, even increasing its energy. Death may be another expansion of the Universe.

Ripening is a mysterious phenomenon for me. For instance it seems to happen by virtue of a combination of circumstances. There seems to be something inside that matures. And, while that is happening, there also seems to be something outside that provides the necessary stimulation. Ripening, to me, is a co-creative process. This thought thrills me. Maybe, by ripening, accepting the unacceptable turns on this thrill ride of life, going into the darkness of Mystery, and dying as I live, I get a little closer to the source of all this complex stimulation.

If this is true, wow, am I glad to be alive and to get to die! If it is a delusion, a fantasy of my own making, then I’m merely glad I had imagination enough to create an interesting  way of life.

I hope you do too.

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.