8.4.14 Rediscovering What We Truly Know, As We Grow Older

     For so long, we humans trusted our sense of what existed.

Then we grew up a little bit, not quite enough.  

     And became a demanding, arms impetuously crossed, foot-stampingly crab who insisted upon PROOF.

     Of so many many things. Like  that God or the Divine existed (PROOVE it to MEEEEE)(I can't find any proof!)

     (Oh, goodness. Does a tree need to prove they are a tree? Must love  prove it exists if you can't smell it or see it or taste it? GIve me a break.)

     Sigh. Growing a little bit, but not enough yet, puts one in a  conundrum. You can walk around and open doors yourself and talk some, but you refuse to admit you are screeching and flapping about on the ground when you need to go to bed. Really.

Some of us, as we grow older, begin to remember all that we 'knew' when we were young.

     The 'knowing' being a kind of very very deep sense of things, of feeling.

        Jung, when asked what he believed, retorted that he did not have beliefs, he had knowing.

       We have knowing. Of some experience we didn't necessarily ever think of articulating or writing down, but sometimes by accident prayed about or drew pictures of. Because the experiences we were having would just kind of naturally slip out sometimes.

When we grow older, we oftimes begin to settle. No, not gravity and bodies - haha- I know. Nope. And no, not for less. Not that, either. But as in, deep inside ourselves, once again, we at times begin to notice this deepening.

Sometimes it can be mistaken for disappointment. Because it has a tinge of surrender to it. But that's only one aspect, and it's not disappointment, although we naturally, every day, especially as our days grow fewer, do feel disappointment, and it is an important feeling to sit with.

As in " Oh, hello.Good morning. You are some of my disappointment? Ok. Alright. Makes sense. Not the most fun page in the book, but I get it. Important. Ok. So let's  you and I sit here, whenever you come to visit, and we'll sit and I'll listen to you and you can listen to me, and then we  can sit quietly and feel what is. And then I know you'll get all composted into something divine and remarkable in me and in the universe, and I can go back to toddling about having a nice time in my day."

But truly, the settling is as though all the unspeakably intricate, individual, and connectedness we have experienced begins a process of breaking down and becoming a  distilled essence.....of itself.

We become more essentially our selves.

It's so cool, when we sit up and realize what on earth is going on, really. Once we identify it.

 I was seeing a dear friend of mine today. And as I sat waiting to see her, I hung with her grand daughter, who lives with her, and who I've known since she was little. I was so happy to see her, all the more of her now at 13, and we hung out and talked and I asked her how things are and what it's like being 13 instead of 5 and did she remember and we laughed and she did this amazing job of describing to me what her life is like, and how she feels about it. And I just kind of sat in the glory of her very loved very bright very stable very embodied very intelligent 13 year old self.

And when we got to the end of hanging out, I told her "You know, just to me? It just gets easier from here on in. You just stay awake and keep your self aware, and you will just get to do more and more and make good choices and have those consequences and make your way. " And then I kissed her and hugged her as my friend came out, smiling, and told her to have a good time being in her life.

Now, my friend is I think 56. She knows. She knows so much. And she is a dear dear person to be close to. I said "That child? She is solid and iridescently beautiful and confident and thoughtful and her whole love of life just shines through her eyes into the world." And she said, "Yeah, isn't she wonderful?"

     

       She's still at an age , at least in her life, where noone has crushed so much knowing that often gets smashed and thwarted and limp and discarded into the disbelief pile. But she still has it, and I think she's going to hang onto it.

But for lots of us, ours got grabbed away or laughed at or we saw nary another who whispered that they too noticed and felt and 'knew, just knew' things for themselves. Which is why, as we get older and more 'settled', ( and I"m not talking perfection and easy and all in our lives) it begins coming round 

again.

And we wake up so many mornings with a gentle tiny new sense of things. Of what we know to be true for ourselves.

     We get surprised.

We stop caring what others think, right?

     

We begin realizing one by one things we have not forgiven ourselves for. Like so much crappy old junk we're lugging about. And we stop for a moment, and say "Wow. I have not forgiven myself for that. And that. Oh, and that! Geeze!" And then we just plain do it.

    That's what's so cool about getting older. Who cares? Rules? What rules? We just go right ahead and do stuff.

Like forgiving ourselves each time one of those useless old things comes up. 

Because living with the emotion....of regret...is a whole different thing. Than not forgiving ourselves. 

Regret weighs nothing. Regret obstructs nothing. It's simply a respectable feeling to have, and that's 

okay, regret.

And just happens to be one of those things we pass by, pick up, and tuck into our pocket, wandering along down our path of our growing into ourselves.

     We begin doing what we want, and relish the moments that are so deep and simple and rewarding, because along with them, living side by side, are new and old heartbreaks, varying types of very normal and really hard loneliness, often times pain, and a gradual loss of loved and liked ones. We know all that is coming down the road we are on, and we might as well acknowledge it and talk about it, if that helps, and deal with it. 

Yes, it's happening. Yes, here I am. Yes, who knows. Yes, we pray, help me not waste my precious time. Yes, help me feel great about who I am and the way I have lived my life. Please. And, thank you.

The other day I was relishing the website of artist and writer Nanette Vonnegut . And under her writing, she shares this self same process, put beautifully:

       "A few things have changed recently, though, that have blown the hinges off the closet door.  I am no child, I am crepe-necked and gray, which I find to be liberating beyond words. Though I feel healthy as a horse, I know death is breathing down my neck, which makes the writing feel pleasantly urgent. "

Yup. That's the knowing.

I love to celebrate what grows and becomes complex and solid and starts the process of harvest; of blossoming and the fruitfulness of my own life, as I face all the hard things too.

     Because we are full of all things, great and small. The grievously challenging, and the simply divine. And you know what? Yeah, you know we are.

8.3.14 In Our Knowing

We were spending the morning together

laughing and working on each other 

spines and organs and 

cranial bones and stagnation 

and we were talking, as we do

 about today and yesterday 

as the summer's sun lit the 

burgundy blossoms of sheer curtains 

and the sounds of life being lived 

slipped in beneath the double doors  

whose surface was composed 

of so many small reflective segments 

of glass- so  that each one was a 

different color and portrayed a 

different version and refrain and it's 

own individual refraction  

and I gazed up  at the photographs 

lining the room like a prayer, a blessing 

all the while an overcast sky 

carefully murmured all the old songs 

that I could catch if I cocked my head 

and quieted my mind

and in this way we 

 continued on 

year passing year 

in our knowing

8.2.14 Whenever Music Has Come And Moved Us

Here many of us are. In our 60s. Children of the 70s. Long before music videos, but in the realm of yet another great music generation, perched upon the shoulders of music that came before. Grandchildren of bluegrass and gospel and country and blues and R&B and jazz and then the young one , Rock and Roll, smashing their way onto the scene, behaving badly - wailing away our adolescence . 

It was a time of movement and change and relinquishing staid and fearful acceptance, with The Civil Rights Movement and Women's Rights and The Vietnam War; and then other wars. Of a new wave of awareness of class oppression and sexual violence and so much more. 

Of the Pill and then the rash of predictable STD's . And fueling everything, that new wild child, Rock and Roll. 

And of course it doesn't end there. But there was that time when we were 15 and 16 and 20 and 23, when Otis Redding and Tina Turner and Chuck Berry and Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, and Jefferson Airplane , and Lou Reed and Marianne Faithful and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix burst upon the scene like so many firecrackers, each a bright unbelievable flash . 

We then were seriously at work, questioning authority, believing in something new and being yet another generation added to a very long history of people who learned to flex their political muscles. True believers for a while that so much may be possible.

It was yet another time of music greats. Add to that the advent of the capacity to record, and finally, film and ultimately, give birth to multiples of videos that race about the globe instantly.

There has been much great music produced, even in the last several years. But that was yet another very unique time. Which gave birth to a continued lineage of music that was so great it lasted and lasted unto newer and newer generations. 

The interesting thing is that with the introduction of recording and better and better sound systems, many of us discovered , when kids were not around, that we would hustle the guilty pleasure of playing the music SO LOUD as to feed the soul. Be it Dvorak or Prince or The Pretenders or Carole King or Bessie Smith or Laura Nyro or Joni Mitchell or Brian Eno or The Beatles or Traffic, it evolved into something best tasted with room rumbling volume. 

Where the depth of the meaning and the resonance of the song shakes our very neutrinos , as they silently flow through the universe, through our living room, slipping through our organs and cells and closed eyes and smiling faces; 

through our gently exhaled CO2, and on beyond, endlessly, that changed all forever , and cradled us ....whatever music has come and moved us.