The Magic of Two-year Olds — by Shepherd Bliss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happiness by Lucky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

l/d

Eldering — by Lucky

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

**

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wisdom — by Lucky

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

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

l/d

Wounds, Scars and Warrior Marks - by Lucky

There I was, sitting with a group of people who were of mostly as old, or older, than I was. I was delighted to be among them. We were just completing a kind of introduction process that entailed each person saying their name and then a little bit about what gives their lives meaning. I had been expecting the process to be long and tedious, full of reports, but it turned into something else, a moment of depth, of heart, of struggles engaged in for us all. I came to the discovery that the room was populated by people who were really living, really experiencing this compelling mystery we call life. I said, and I experienced it vividly, I was sitting in a true circle of elders.

There are many things that touched me as I felt the people around me. I could feel the creativity, compassion, commitment, humor, passion and wisdom of those I heard, that delighted me, and lit me up with expectancy, but what moved me the most, what made this train wreck feel at home, was how much suffering had carved wisdom into us. This piece of writing comes out of the experience, verified in the circle, that wounds, no matter how painful and debilitating, are sacred, gifts of unimaginable fury, beauty and spiritual  potency.

What I found amazing is, that this group knows that. Between deaths of loved ones, losses to the ravages of cancer, heart disease, stroke, or financial uncertainty, blossomed the most incredible appreciation for life, other humans and especially the young ones coming along. There was much to feel lucky about, much to wonder about, much to feel awed by. If I had been truly free, old enough to be inappropriate, I would have done the most appropriate thing. I would have, now I wish I had, cried. My tears would have signified an acceptance of what I have tried so hard to accept, that human suffering has a place, and that place is in the wizened heart.

Wounds open and sensitize us. Scars remind us. Warrior marks embolden us, they confirm that hurting is part of the way, and that going forward means hurting purposely. This kind of wisdom can only be found through running the gauntlet (an old Native American rite of passage for warriors), but being amongst a circle of people who know about this rite of passage, even obliquely, because they have endured it, is deeply sustaining. Hurt becomes a strange and compelling miracle, a privileged brokenness.

I don’t know that I understand the relationship between suffering and wisdom. Maybe I’ll learn more about this unbearable miracle in that circle. I just know there is one, and that I want to embrace it, so I can be as compassionate and as wise as these times need me to be.  I have my own wounds, scars, and warrior marks, I haven’t come to terms with them all, now I know, in a way I didn’t know before, that each is a fountain, not only of brokenness and shame, but of dignity and heart wisdom. If I gain nothing else, and I expect more surprises to come, the elder circle has touched me in a place tender and dark, and awakened a sleeping chunk of my soul.

All of this thought about the miracles associated with brokenness reminds me of a poem I collected several years ago from a woman who lived on the street.

There is a brokenness

            out of which comes the unbroken,

A shatteredness

 out of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow

            beyond all grief which leads to joy

And a fragility

            out of which depth emerges strength.

There is a hollow space

Too vast for words

Through which we pass with each loss,

Out of whose darkness we are sanctified into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound

Whose serrated edges cut the heart

As we break open

To the place inside which is unbreakable

And whole.

                                                            Rashani, 1992

I’m savvy enough to know that everyone doesn’t get to the wholing miracle that underlies wounds, some people just end-up bitter, feeling like their lives have been interrupted by tragedy, feeling like something is wrong. I know this place. I live there sometimes too. But, for this moment, in this circle of elders I knew it didn’t have to be only this way. Being wounded, scarred, and carrying warrior marks is a sign of living, loving and caring, and being intact, enough, to hurt about it all. Given the choice, I would rather carry the marks of life.

l/d

Diminishment- by Lucky

As you may remember I’ve been blessed to be part of an elder’s circle that has been meeting monthly for about 5 months now. I have learned a lot and been touched by many things. At the moment, I am wrestling with something that seems to be counter-intuitive, paradoxical and miraculous. Something that I have experienced personally, and something that it turns out is a part of the human experience. I’m talking about diminishment.

When the elder circle first started I used to joke that chronologically I was a baby elder, but experientially I was precocious. I was of course referring to my age (62), my stroke, and the losses that attended it. I have always been somewhat amazed (and a little too proud of) the fact that the stroke, and its aftermath, both reduced and enlarged me. By listening to the experiences of others, elder’s who had losses, of loved one’s, health, economic stability, or other vital connections, or hearing about the losing of faculties, I discovered that these diminishments set up a kind of awakening to what it means to be human.

This reality, that living seems to diminish, and thereby, grow us, is fascinating to me, and seems to me not widely known. Ageing is transformed, if it isn’t just about loss, but also is about gain. The idea that elders might contain wisdom has been around for a long time. There haven’t been too many elders, until recently, to say what that particular wisdom is, but now something of elder wisdom is starting to emerge.

One facet is that the losses of life, put us (human beings) into another world, where the fragility of being human is the strength that binds us to each other and life. That is an amazing reversal, one that you need a certain kind of life experience to know. Luckily, and I do mean luckily, ageing makes that realization possible, maybe even necessary. I think that is a kind of miracle. In an age where there is so little emphasis upon human resilience, who among us would ever believe that the old folks amongst us, the one’s who had been through so much, would have important experiences that could shed light on our capabilities.

Diminishment isn’t just a tragedy. Sure, no one likes to see a young person (or anyone) crippled by disease, war, malnutrition, or accident. The sense of potential wasted, and of loss and suffering, is palpable. But, and here is where elder wisdom is handy, that isn’t the end of the story. Loss, which is painful, could mean gain, for the individual, and for the community, and that is another kind of pain, a miraculous pain born of wonder and a realization of human fragility.

Diminishment isn’t something you look forward to. No wonder elders are so often isolated. It isn’t the kind of miracle anyone wants to befall them. Yet, when it does, it helps to have a few people around who know what a gift it can be. Elders, by and large, are those people. They know loss intimately. They know that a certain end is coming. They have been shaved down to meet it, and in being shaved down, they know

something about what is really important about human life.

Diminishment, despite its bad rep, is a doorway, a kind of opening that can introduce us to our own deeper humanity. At a core level, which hardship and diminishment make clear, we are social animals, beings that thrive as part of each other. Losing individual faculties is hard, I know, but all that harder if one is isolated. If one has a sense of being part of something bigger, part of a larger community, then diminishment, means turning to that something larger for what is needed. This turning is the beginning of a new life, the reliance on a miracle that is already in place.

This is a part of what elder’s know, a part of what I am learning, and the thing that diminishment brings. Death, the big diminishment, awaits us all, facing it is easier, though never certain, when you know diminishment can be a gain, and is part of the circle of life.

l/d