“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.

Trying by Lucky

I have to admit I write about this reluctantly. I have an ambivalent relationship with trying. I guess these mixed feeling can be attributed to once having someone say to me, that “try was a coyote word.” By that, I took her to mean it was a word I might choose to give myself an out, a way to fail comfortably. I know that tendency too well. But, trying goes deeper for me than that. At least I hope it does. That uncertainty is the source of my ambivalence. I really don’t know how much of myself I am giving to anything. I’d like to think I am in charge, that I define my efforts, but I really am uncertain about that. So trying stays in my vocabulary and I have to live with the uncertainty that comes with it.

Life seems to constantly be asking me to be more than I see myself to be. It isn’t just that I have an inaccurate image of myself and I can do, and be, more. That certainly happens. But there are times when Life seems to be asking me to do something I know I’m not capable of. Sometimes I do know myself, and recognize my actual limitations. Life doesn’t seem to care. It asks me, in no uncertain words, to go ahead.  Then, if I have the appropriate audacity, I have to try. Trying in those kinds of moments is a leap of faith. It is going beyond myself in some desperate attempt to mollify the unknown.

I’ve told myself, and enough precious others, that I know my writing, and my work building community is on track when I’m having an “oh shit” moment. When I realize I’m thoroughly over my head, and I have put myself in this place where I can see no way forward, I know I’m doing a good job. I have to go to the place of my limitations to discover any possibilities. I can’t really explain something that is this paradoxical. I have to be hurting and totally afraid too get to a place where I have a chance of making a difference. I don’t like to be raw that much. I don’t like to ache nakedly in public ways either. But I know this is what it takes for me to do anything real. I want to try, and I want to avoid it like the plague.

Life is asking that much of me. Sometimes, if I’m really honest, most times, I just try to ignore the fact that I can feel when I’m being asked to go further than I’ve gone before. If I put it off long enough the call gets louder and I begin losing my confidence in myself, and in Life. I want to do anything else. I even fool (or so I think) myself by doing things sort of like what I’m being called to. I’ll try anything to avoid trying what I know is real. No doubt this is the real source of my ambivalence. I know I’m still susceptible to fooling myself.

I should know better. I’m just Lucky enough to have been pushed off the cliff, and to know that falling and flying can be the same thing. But, I’m still living in a world where it looks like falling can lead to suffering. I don’t want to suffer, but if I’m good at avoiding that kind of suffering, I suffer with the knowledge that I’m avoiding something crucial. In the end, I try because I make the choice of facing my lack of choice. I choose to suffer the not knowing, the leap into the abyss, the “oh shit’ moments, because I know that if I don’t I am going to suffer another kind of suffering. Either way I look at it I suffer, so it might as well be trying to be something I’m not.

Strangely, it seems as if Life thrives on this kind of choice. I don’t like it much, but you know what, being used by Life in this way, increases my respect for Life and for the level of challenge I’m engaged in. I have greater self-respect, greater compassion for others, because I have an idea how hard, and how precious, it is to really try.

Trying, if it comes too easily, is suspect, because really trying is a trial. There is doubt and no way out. The jury doesn’t render the standard verdict of guilty or not guilty. In this case the jury is within, and the consideration is the quality of life. Real trying is living uncertainly. It is leaping into the unknown without the pretense of a net. It is what Life is doing with us.

Loving Yourself — Lucky

A report from the Slow Lane

Sometimes I believe I’m not part of the whole. I know, that’s silly, and it hurts so much. I know better, but every now and then some form of amnesia comes over me and I forget. I guess the experience of connection (despite the fact that it has been lifelong) doesn’t run deep enough yet. I frequently fall into moments when I feel untethered, when I am lost, or so it seems. I can’t seem to consistently hold myself with the reverence needed to maintain appropriate perspective. I am finding that loving myself is not easy. And, I am gradually learning how essential it is to holding on to my connection with the whole.

Loving myself is still fairly new, and is tenuous at best. I didn’t know, until recently that it was necessary to care about myself, and even possible. If I hadn’t had a long time of lonely recovery after my stroke I might not have ever known how important I am to the equation of unfolding.

I look back at that time with wonder. Early on, the life I knew was defined by grief, loss (so much of who I was disappeared), and some strange will to go on. Only later did it become about what remained (and thankfully that was a lot). Somewhere in that long time of day-to-day uncertainty I came across my neglected self. I think it was when I felt alive enough to feel alone. I started longing for a relationship. It was a totally irrational desire. It always has been. But at that particular time, this longing, for a relationship seemed especially off because I was so severely broken physically and psychically.

Being irrational, the situation didn’t matter much. I longed for someone to know and care about me anyway. Well, almost needless to say, there was no one there. This was a good thing. It was another of the painfully disappointing lessons that I was lucky enough to be brought to. The absence of someone else was gravelly disappointing to me, but it introduced to me the one person who was there. Me. I didn’t much like or trust myself so I wasn’t thrilled to discover this remnant of a human being. The only reason I didn’t dismiss him is because I couldn’t. This misfortunate circumstance (which I could literally do nothing about) was the beginning of the relationship that frees and connects me now.

I didn’t know it at the time. I was just chagrined. I was stuck with me. I had managed to become the booby-prize in my own life (thankfully). I had a hard time sleeping at night, because sleeping alone meant sleeping with me. I wasn’t ready for that kind of intimacy. Ready or not, I got to know myself. And I discovered something. I’m not proud of what I realized, of what I have been doing all these years, of how I have used the women in

my life, of how I have avoided the obvious. But it became clear to me, that I preferred someone else to love me. The way I put it, in my own mind, was that I would rather have some woman do the dirty job of loving me than having to learn to love myself.

Happily for me, though it didn’t seem like a boon to me at the time, no woman was volunteering to sign up for the job. I continued to be left on my own. Disability is the shits, but sometimes it forces one to sit still. I got to know me because there wasn’t anyone else around.

It started with compassion. I realized that although I couldn’t personally love me, I could have compassion for the difficult life that he/me lived. Paying attention that way I began to admire the way he/I courageously persevered. I started to like what I saw. That is when loneliness became solitude. The time alone was better for me than I ever imagined. I was learning something about loving the one I’m always with.

I had a few friends. I could see, during this time of learning, that they tended, as I had done, to avoid them selves. I could see how this was costing them, and I got a lot clearer about how not loving myself was costing me. It was then I realized I had to quit avoiding doing the one thing I had always felt was a bad idea. Too avoid the pain and misery of living in a constant lie, I took on the pain and misery of learning to love the untrustworthy soul I seemed to be.

During the Christmas season only a year ago, I gave myself, accidentally, the best Christmas present I had ever received. I was alone as usual. I was scared about what that might mean. I wasn’t sure I could face more long-ticking hours of silence and aloneness. Instead, I had a wonderful time. I was the good, reflective creative companion I always wanted. I gave myself the seasonal spiritual retreat I always wanted. I discovered I loved myself. I, and the wisemen, arrived to behold another form of the Christmas miracle, the birth of a new relationship. Light has poured out of it ever since.

There are periods, like earlier this week, when I forget that I am always connected, and that I am a living portion of the whole. I forget to hold onto myself, that strange paradoxical being that resides uniquely as me, and somehow miraculously joins me to everything else. I forget to love me. I forget that I am love. Somehow, something of me keeps going, evolving right along with this mysteriously expanding Universe. I know it, live constantly in awe, aware of such fragile and impermanent creativity, and I forget.

I have some memory problems creeping up. Age is having its way with me. But I don’t think this is why I forget. I think I forget because I want to fit in. I go back to the well of community. It seems necessary that I forget so I can discover it again through my confusing connection with others. It turns out, that loving myself is still hard work, because the Universe is so big and diverse, and because loving myself means always going beyond myself to become larger, more complex, I forget who I am, and lose my grip on me,  in order so I can re-discover who I am, and learn to love me anew.

Loving yourself is learning to love the whole! Wow!

Longing— by Lucky

A report from the Slow Lane

Somewhere, some time ago, I felt so disconnected. This was before my stroke, when I lived in the normal world. I was longing for something I didn’t know I had. I longed to feel more connected, I didn’t know to whom or what, I just knew there was a feeling of emptiness inside. I was unseated by this feeling, unbalanced enough that I tended to blame everyone: family, wife, friends, culture, and mostly, in my heart of hearts, myself. I didn’t know that I was longing for something that had always been with me, that I was suffering a kind of reverse phantom limb syndrome. I was longing for a part of me (or my experience) that was present, but I couldn’t perceive it. Now longing indicates to me the awakening of unknown capabilities.

Longing seems to me to be one of the first phases of waking up. I had a dream recently that awakened me. The dream was vivid and it endured long enough, that in the dream I had time enough to think about what I was experiencing. As the experience went on I could feel, more and more, a desire to try an express what I could see. I felt, in the dream, a tremendous longing, that turned into a kind of action. The action ended up not being what I thought and it awakened me, left me aroused by the dream, awake, and uncertain about what had just happened. Longing, which occurred in the dream, awakened me.  To make a long story short it brought me too a new kind of awareness.

I think I have felt longing most of my life. Mostly, I have ignored it. Longing always seemed so ambiguous and distant that I couldn’t do anything with it. It was unlike desire, which would also haunt me, because desire would always be for some identifiable person or thing.  Longing instead was hard to identify and even harder to satisfy. I let it remain on the periphery of my awareness, primarily because I didn’t know what else to do with it.

So, generally, I had longings, but I didn’t really pay attention to them. That’s good, because if I had tried to do anything with them, I probably would have done the wrong thing. It’s starting to look like the longings that have accompanied me, have shaped me. Instead of me doing something with them, they seem to have done something with me. Longing seems to have been the first stirrings of a dim awareness; an awakening of some unknown part of me (or my consciousness). Longing was a herald that announced the arrival of new, still distant, possibilities, unknown mes, awkward beginnings.

Longing is a funny feeling. I don’t know how it is for you, but for me, I have some mixture of feelings. There is some form of inchoate excitement. This comes over me like having something not yet identifiable appear on a long inactive radar screen. I also feel a form of pain. It is like a kind of birth pang. This isn’t a dull ache, but it is there, like a subtle warning sign, obvious, but not too obvious.  I also have some sense of this being really ancient, like it has been around, and ignored, for a longtime. I’m having some kind of orphan feeling.

There is also a taste of grief. It is as if something ancient is coming near home at last. There is something prodigal about what happens for me. Its like what is coming is somehow returning. My heart is just as closed to it now as it was then, whenever then was, and I want no more than to barely notice. Longing seems to hang out near some barely remembered, and never-used gateway.

I’ve come to see the dimly recognizable a lot more clearly now. I hate to admit it, but I’m still ambivalent, I don’t easily give admission to new seemingly vagrant aspects of who I am. Longing is more trustworthy now, but I’m not sure I am. I reluctantly let myself be aware of what keeps knocking at my gate.

Still, I have learned something, longing is an early sign (perhaps an expression) of something coming into consciousness. I like longing a lot more now. It still is dusty and road-weary, having suffered too much exile, and it still meets a wary me, but by and large I trust that it is an emissary of what is. My gate is more open than closed now. Connection is still a longing, but it is more like longing for a loved one to come home than for an adult child who’s been away so long that is like letting a stranger into the house. Both are welcome, but one is easier to take in.

I long for the day when it is easier to welcome all my parts home.

Humankindness — by Lucky

I first ran across the word that titles this Slow Lane piece when I was doing my doctoral research into community. For over 20 years I have been captivated by it. Coined by an anthropologist, the word was his attempt to give expression to the way some people treated other people, not just people of the same village, tribe, or language group, but people of all sorts. This behavior and attitude fascinated me, as does the double meaning of this word. Now I have a vivid experience to go with the concept and I want to explore this phenomenon more.

I think I have liked the word “humankindness” because it captures something that has been difficult to express; that is, the connection that exists between us. The word has two meanings that express different sides of the same precious coin. Humankindness describes the similarity that exists between us because we are all of the class of mammals called humans. In that way we are all of one kind. It also refers to the way that others are held, with kindness, as we ourselves would like to be treated. The word humankindness addresses simultaneous attributes of what binds us to one another.

Some indigenous people evidently had the wisdom of noticing that all humans had something in common and therefore were respectable, worthy of kind regard. This simultaneous recognition and regard seems to be missing from our modern world. Recently, however, I came to the realization that this form of connection wasn’t a product of on-going physical togetherness, but of wisdom. People can, and do, come to this awareness, not because of the niceness of their families, friends and loved ones, but because they have grown wise.

Not long ago I was involved in a circle of people who began spontaneously to express their sense of community with each other. They had come to confront the dilemma of our times, the threat we humans pose for each other, the planet and Life as we know it. Confronted, as they were, by a vivid recognition of our limited ways, and the question about the kind of consciousness needed in these difficult times, wisdom began to emerge.

They didn’t talk about the need for community instead, they began to express their experience of community. A part of this group’s response to the horrible mess our kind has created was to feel how kindred they were. Humankindness emerged as way of responding together. Unknowingly this group began to access a kind of collective wisdom that isn’t easily conveyed. A hardship, the difficult, maybe un-survivable dilemma we are responsible for, evoked out of the group feelings of togetherness. The wisdom of combining, of sharing, of learning together, of facing the imposssible in unison, began to manifest.

Wisdom comes in many forms. It often surprises us. Collective wisdom, especially in these times, is indeed surprising. But, we are capable (as the anthropologist proved) of recognizing it, of being part of manifesting it, of turning to one another and growing a collective awareness. Humankindness because it is built on upon a biological similarity transcends religion, class, color, psychology, ideology, age, Culture, gender, or education. Humankindness because it is an attitude of regard isn’t dependent upon outside circumstances, but upon inside development. Strangely, a dilemma,of big enough proportions, awakens it. Outside circumstance in’t the sole arbiter of fate. Because this is so, humankindness can be extended.

I have come to believe that humankindness is a logical way point on the journey toward wholeness. Loving oneself is synonomous with loving the other. The mystery of all being is part of The Great Mystery. There is a fundamental Unity but it expresses itself through diversity. The profusion of nature is a reflection of the profusion of Life in which we ourselves are spawned.

The mess we have created could, if we let it, bring us together. That is what I experienced as we all suffered with each other. Facing the dilemma together, in each other’s presence, drew forth from us a fresh recognition of what we have in common. It hurt to notice what abides in us. Wisdom sometimes is the juice that gets squeezed out of us. Its there, but needs a little pressure to become available. Humankindness is the recognition that the squeeze is always on. Just being human, existing, could be enough.

Exemplifying by Lucky

Wisdom can appear anytime, in the most surprising ways, so you have to be ready and looking for it. Luckily, I have been. So, I recognized it right away. Someone gave voice to one of the greatest and most common dilemmas of getting older. He actually was addressing something else, but I heard him, in my distracted selective way, and suddenly realized that he was naming, in a short form, the first level of solution to the dilemma of passing along important awareness. One of the main motivators that elders seem to have in common, and are often stymied by, is how to pass on the hard-earned wisdom that has come to them through living? He said, “exemplifying.” I heard it, and failing to embody it, I want to amplify.

I became so happy during a meeting of elders, when I realized that I was amongst people who were self-possessed. They made it; they had become themselves. I was so delighted. Suddenly, I realized that a lifetime’s pursuit of self could actually come to fruition. In later life people could be who they always wanted to be. This thought thrilled me. Even today it seems like the best news about elderhood that is still widely unknown. People can become themselves! Real freedom is achievable, and it can happen, and more often does, amongst those who have more life experience. This seems like such a hopeful development.

My discoveries, and my happiness, went even further during that meeting. I soon came to realize that the most subversive thing, we as elders could do to change things, was be ourselves. I was overjoyed to think that the change I wanted to promote could happen if I merely was myself. Wow! What a thought! A lifetime of learning — about who I was and how to be me — could now be turned toward change. I practically burst from the sense of how fitting, and elegant, this development is. I have been smiling and more hopeful since.

Well, to show how realization can often take time to unfold, I didn’t get until recently that this meant something important about how best to pass along knowledge. I have been fretting, like many older people, about how to give what I have gained back to my people, family, friends, and especially the young. Now, like never before I know. Exemplify! Live like your life depends upon it. Be true to self! People will notice. They may or may not have the courage to show up in their own lives, but they will notice, and think it possible, desirable even, and will probably be changed, just as I was, by the realization that one could be free.

Exemplify, by showing up, by being different, by having your own take on things, by being true to yourself. This idea seems so sensible, simple and yet radical. I have long known Life didn’t care what I knew, it only cared about who I am, but I didn’t see how this is similarly true of my fellow human kind. Now, I do.  For too long I have been stymied by the insult I have taken because my life experience was so hard to translate to others.

I taught, I counseled, I learned about communication techniques, I did everything I could think of to convince others I knew something, and all along, all I was demonstrating was my ignorance. I was proselytizing, not as blatantly as some missionaries, but never-the-less intent upon converting others to my reality.

It is no wonder I fail so much. People, because they are attached to their own realities (as they should be) have too much good sense than to be persuaded to my reality. If I have anything real and useful to convey then operating myself well is the best way to do so. Then people are free to notice, and they don’t feel any pressure (from me) to conform to anybody’s reality but their own. By focusing on being myself, I give my fellow man, adequate respect for their otherness (and the necessary freedom to be themselves).

The greatest gift I have to give anyone is best given when I don’t try to give it away. How about that for a paradox? No wonder I have not really been a good elder (maybe that’s why I consider myself a baby elder). I’ve tried a host of wrong ways to pass along hard-earned wisdom, I’m learning the best way to make any kind of life-experience available to others is through embodying it, not talking about it. I teach best when I am not teaching, but just trying to be myself.

How many years will it take for this simple lesson to sink in? This is one of those things that is easier said than done. I have to keep my eyes on myself, and stay within my own skin, and I have to trust that others will pick up just what is useful to them. It is hard for me to show up everywhere I am in my life. Maybe I can do it more, and better, if I realize just how much is at stake, and who I want to touch. Exemplifying asks more of me than I’m used too, but it asks for what is best for everyone.

It is strange and wonderful to come back around to realizing I am a gift that is best given to others by being true to myself. What a wonder!? So, it seems, are you! You are my example, if you keep your eyes on your ball. I am your example, if I keep my eyes on my ball. I know that the ‘ifs’ in those sentences are big words, but they are not impossible ones. Exemplify is a word for the big, it represents an amazing thing, the likelihood that we really can help each other by helping ourselves.

Only A Child — Lucky

I was raised in a Christian (Catholic) home, but it didn’t take. I don’t know what I am. All I know is that I escaped from parochial school, catechism, and the best evil eyes of several priests and nuns with my own spirituality in tact. Today I would say I’m a Mysterian. I’ve been shaped by lots of influences from the world’s spiritual traditions, but I am enamored most by the Mystery that seems to reside behind them all. In the final analysis, I think I belong to the religion of no religion, a tradition that grew up with the human potential movement. Oh, but the Mystery awes me!

The Christmas season doesn’t do much for me. I’m turned off by its crass commercialism. The lights, trees, jolly fat man, songs and pageantry seem to me to be a poor expression of our sense of togetherness. I haven’t really celebrated Christmas in years. That doesn’t make me a Scrooge, or a pagan, or a Zombie. I am just thankful for the winter, and I have a continued hope for a real reflective period of silence.

I didn’t leave my marriage with any of the Christmas ornaments. I guess the stroke, and what seemed like near death, combined to make Christmas seem kind of irrelevant. I even gave my crèche to my daughter. I thought I had gone beyond Christmas. The underworld doesn’t have bright lights, and good cheer is extremely rare. I languished there a long time, nearer to death than to life, and was shaped into someone who appreciates Life, and the changes it brings.

I survived; I even have a new life now. But the experience of being held on the threshold, which I experienced more like a precipice, remains with me, and informs all I do.  My sense of the spiritual is much darker than most. I am still enamored of Mystery, but I have a solid dose of reverence for how this “larger something” can move in ways that are dark and unfathomable. I have reason to be grateful, and my gratitude is tempered by a sense of how fleeting and vulnerable everything is.

So imagine my surprise when I realized that I had three Christmas ornaments. They were the Magi. For several Christmasses now they have watched over my living room, colored my holiday solitude, and drawn me deeper into the Christmas story. I discovered, to my surprise, there was an aspect of the Christmas story, following a star in the darkness, which I could relate too. I imagined myself a wise man caught-up in a deep intuition, following a strange light in the darkness. My light was within, but I had to follow it just the same.

I have been on a long journey. I’ve been following a internal phenomenon I can’t name. I don’t know the how of such things, but the journey seems to be unfolding me. As long as I’ve wandered, alone, I’ve been compelled to keep going. It has seemed to me a twisted journey, a trip thru the dark lands, a lonely vigil at the bedside of a dying man, a delusion that was unfolding me in ways I could not understand.

The wise men give me solace. They reintroduced me to a part of the mystery of Christmas, a part of all real pilgrimages, which I have forgotten. It isn’t enough to be on a journey. There must be some times of arrival. The Magi came to the birth of a child. The journey had led them to something surprisingly ordinary. Only a child! At the end of the journey, there is a new beginning.

This year I’ve been looking at the Christmas story anew, not just from the travels and travails of the Magi, perhaps because I have a new life, perhaps because Mystery compels me too, perhaps because I’ve come far enough to really get what the journey has been about. Only a child! I know the Christian trip is about this being baby Jesus, the savior of mankind, but for me this infant represents something different, equally miraculous, but differently saving.

At some point in the journey, I am compelled to stop and pay homage to what has been born in me. The journey has become something. Something new has come into the world! I don’t know what this new being is yet, I can feel it is full of potential, potential that as it gets realized, makes me someone who is capable of saving my self and being useful to the world. The child I stumbled across on my journey is me, an unknown mysterious me, the light of my future, the beginning of a new life. I am the gift I always wanted.

Only a child — a miracle dressed up so ordinarily. Only a child — a beginning at the end. Only a child — some newness within that signals a new life. Only a child — a vulnerability dependent upon wise attention. The story of Christmas has changed me. The story of Christmas is not about a divine birth happening 2000 years ago, it is about the birth of hope within and now.

May you find what waits to be born in you this year!