The Days to Praise: Anticipation

“These are the good old days,” sang Carly.
I wish I’d known myself. I would have chimed in
Rhyming, harmonizing every minute
With everything we call
Nothing and not much:
Maybe just the feeling of my steering wheel riffling
Through an easy grasp on a late night’s drive,
The state highway chill as the moon-glare’s dance
Rolling with the dashboard lights along my windshield glass.

They are the good old days,
With best things most unknown.
A walk outdoors in any season, anywhere. Just some leaf
Falling clean and dry to asphalt at your feet, or air
Wafting humidly with heat when stepping out the door,
The body for a moment languid. It recovers.

Beyond the good old days
There comes for some a time of no recovery.
They are the days beyond our memory-making,
Past filling in the background on the life that we were painting:
A time our lives stall out to housebound, heading fast for bedridden
Oblivion, and already fallen half-way there.
It is the last, not greatest journey,
Barely journeying at all,
When in the good old days

All life was that: a stepping out
Steeped in a streaming rush of sounds to overhear:
A child’s laughter in a store, metallic chatter from the silverware
In any restaurant; a coursing world that pulsed
With sights and smells in passing, like any unremembered time
We made the calculation, took control, hit the gas,
And easily careened around the slowpoke stalling us ahead,
Flashing past, then back in line, well in advance
Of that opposing car we never did collide with.
The stuff of good old days is not our love affairs
But our flirtations; not the places where we stopped
But the spaces in-between too numerous to track or count,
The steps we took along a way not noticing the composition
And the notes of the song we might have taken in.

So let all who may chime in, right now, with Carly while our voices
Rise as strong, striding through the streets, catching how
The restlessness of light makes all things glimmer, hearing how
Every small sound quivers, shaken in shimmers from out of sheer
Unsoundedness: smallest particles of particulars that matter
In a human world that’s finally made up of all the little quirks
We’re meant to love and sing

Right now:

These are
the days to praise...
{quick snare lick}

These are
the days to praise...
{staggered syncopation, snare to toms}

These are
the days to praise...
{further false starts and sparse falterings, snare to toms, flirting with disorder...}

These are... are...
{held high and long, until percussive, pa-chop! Followed by flailing snare, spacious and disjointed into}:

The good old days.
{Drum roll to floor tom and out.}

###

The reference here is to Carly Simon's song, "Anticipation."

From Original Faith: Falling Towers - Poems of Strength from Disability and Disaster

The Joy of Things Usually Taken for Granted

Jan Lundy at Awake is Good recently asked her readers what sort of “The Joy of…” book they’d write based on their interests and experiences – e.g., The Joy of Cooking, The Joy of Sex etc.

I commented that mine would be titled, “The Joy of Things Most Taken for Granted.” Here are some of the things it would discuss:

Freedom of physical movement, being able to go outside, being able to sit, to eat with other people, to bend, to reach for objects without giving it a thought. Independence. The ability to drive a car, get food for yourself, wash your own hair, and take a bath or shower instead of having to use baby wipes.

Comfort. Sheer comfort. The absence of physical pain, even for a moment – say at night, in bed. My illness has meant the progressive loss of even very basic joys and comforts – and it turns out that these are the best of all.

When I see people walking and turning and bending freely, reaching for objects easily and at will, it’s like watching birds flying that don’t know they’re flying.

Those things we’re apt to notice least of all are most worth noticing, at least from time to time.

Spiritual Influences in Childhood and Youth

Some people find childhood a time of life when they’re especially responsive to nature. This was the case for me. To look up at the stars was to experience awe and wonder. The sound of wind surging through trees or of surf surging up a shoreline stirred and mesmerized me. The fragrance of the air after rain seemed to fill my whole being. But as I entered my pre-teen and teenage years, the feelings faded and were largely forgotten – but not quite – under the influence of a depression that lasted and deepened until age twenty three.

My connection with nature wasn’t completely broken, however; in college I discovered the poetry of William Wordsworth. For the first time, I became aware that others had responded to nature as I had and had found these responses especially powerful in childhood. Perhaps most significantly for me, I saw that Wordsworth and other writers had returned to nature as a source of inspiration in adulthood.

It would not be until I’d been out of college for a couple years that I would find out for myself how my responsiveness to nature could come alive again as an adult - with less sheer wonder than in childhood and yet with greater depth and appreciation. Meanwhile, Wordsworth’s poetry was a real consciousness-raiser and a hopeful sign for me in a dark time - so much so that I count his work and that of other nineteenth century British poets and essayists as the major spiritual influence on me in youth.

I’ve known people who don’t seem to have ever had much of a response to nature – also, folks who remember childhood as a time of enormous misery from which they were happy to escape.

What were the major influences on your spirituality from childhood and youth? These might include people, places, or events whose influence you didn’t recognize and appreciate until you looked back years later.

From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

- William Wordsworth

Animal Planet: What’s Your Totem?

Is there any species of animal for which you feel a special sense of connection? For about seventeen years I jogged either most of the year or year-round in small-town New Hampshire, and I got to know crows pretty well...

At least the “Live Free or Die” subspecies. Those NH crows seemed to take the state motto seriously. When I moved to DC, I was surprised to see that the crows there got together in huge flocks to migrate when it started getting cold. In New Hampshire, a "flock" was more like a loose band of freely consenting individuals that seemed to do absolutely nothing in formation and toughed it out year round.

Summer and winter, I was out there very early or in the cold or both. So usually it was just me and the crows in the cemeteries: two right across the street from each other with leafy old trees and plenty of different routes to take along their paths.

The crows clearly didn’t like my presence, especially early on Sunday mornings when it was rare for even a car to pass by. I could hear them talk about me back and forth from a short distance away:

“What’s the idiot doing out here at this hour?”

“Is he supposed to be going somewhere?”

“Doesn’t he know he’s doing this on our time?”

“Maybe he thinks he’s like… one of us?”

Laughter and guffaws would ensue…

As I’d approach, three or four might be in nearby trees with one or two strutting on a path paralleling mine. They’d fly off when I got close, but they'd never be in a hurry and they'd never go far. They wanted to be sure I knew they weren’t afraid of me and just plain found me obnoxious. They’d even say stuff over their shoulders as they flapped away and landed a few trees over:

“Loser…”

“What a joke. Who does he think he is?”

“Maybe he’s reverted to hunter-gathering, LOL!”

Though I couldn't always be sure of their exact words, here's something transcribed verbatim:

It’s early, around 8 AM, but already a warm midsummer’s day. A small band of crows has been doing their usual thing of noisily flapping away at my approach. I’m not paying much attention.

Not until I stride in a reverie into the lazy dappled shade of a tree and there explodes a single crow-yell directly over my head, and I do mean directly – this guy couldn’t have been more than a yard above me. It was a kind of vocal hand grenade. Though I'm normally slow to startle, it was loud enough, held long enough, and delivered at such close range, that in that instant I covered about as much distance straight up as forward.

And then I had to laugh out loud: I had just been outsmarted, outtalked, and told off by a crow. I knew it - the crow had made sure of that - and it was hard to believe the crow didn't know it too!

That brassy, sassy independence, tinged with a kind of jocularity and founded in an unshakeable depth of self confidence – that’s what I like about crows and what I found myself identifying with as I got to know them through my running years.

What’s your totem?

Global Warning

“Migratory birds are traveling thousands of miles only to find the insects they depend on had their breeding cycle a few weeks earlier based on the temperature rise.”

National Wildlife Federation

Strangeness Spirituality

Several posts back I’d started to look at altered states of consciousness but I guess my train of thought got derailed. Returning to the theme…

Here’s one particular type of ASC that was meaningful to me as well as interesting. It occurred maybe ten times when I was in college. At the time I hadn’t studied religion or spirituality. When I look back at it now, it seems to me that it may relate to the Zen concept of “beginner’s mind.”

Ain’t That Odd…

It would usually happen between classes. I’d be walking along a walkway just blankly looking in front of me (I majored in English), when there would be an abrupt shift in perception. Suddenly whatever happened to be in my field of vision – the walkway, a few fallen leaves, an adjacent lawn seen from the corner of my eye – looked completely unfamiliar. I was genuinely astounded to see lawn grass, pavement, and the tips of my shoes. What on earth could THOSE be doing THERE?!

Of Course – NOT…

Sure I majored in English, and, perhaps worse, double majored in English and psych. This might partly account for certain impractical and even other-worldly predispositions that could have helped produce these experiences. I had, after all, no idea what I wanted to do for work after college; wasn’t giving the matter any real thought; was paying close attention to “Ode to a Grecian Urn;” and falling in love with the kind of extended sentence structures you can make with semicolons, which were popular back in the nineteenth century where I was spending much of my time.

So at the time the experiences occurred, I had no idea what to make of them. They just struck me as puzzling and oddly uplifting. Eventually I would realize that they’d been trying to tell me that I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did.

Normally we look at the sidewalk, a leaf, a house, another person – anything familiar to us – and our minds go, “Of course…” Because we’ve seen these things a million times, it’s as if we suppose that we have special insight into why they're the way they are. “Of course things have to be that way…” As if we knew! As if the sheer presence of anything weren’t incomprehensibly amazing!

Learning from Altered States of Consciousness: Organic v. Drug-Induced

Sometimes we learn a lot from altered states of consciousness, and sometimes not so much. I think, for example, of my one and only experience that involved accidental experimentation with a recreational drug. Even though it was spectacular – really, much too spectacular – all I leaned from it was, “Don’t ever do THAT again…”

I wonder if one problem with drug-induced experiences is that they don’t occur organically as an integral feature of our lives. I would think too that context would tend to work against meaningful drug-induced ASCs in our culture: it's usually recreational, not spiritual.

Have you ever had anything similar to my “strangeness” experience? What sense did you make of it?

What do you think about spirituality and drug-induced ASCs – setting aside, for purposes of discussion, the obvious legal and medical risks?

Gray-Sky Faith

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow;
Why then, oh why can’t I?

I am six years old. My mother, a beautiful woman of thirty-five who looks ten years younger, sings me to sleep from the foot of the stairs. After I’d climbed into bed a little earlier, she’d asked if I’d wanted a glass of water.

I always did. It was 1962 and New Hampshire tap water tasted just fine. And every time my mom handed water to me in the green plastic cup that I listened to her fill in the adjacent bathroom, I found that I was thirstier than I’d expected and that the water tasted better than I’d remembered.

Sleep, sleep my little fur child
Out of the wilderness out of the wild…

That was another of her bedtime songs. The lyrics were from a children’s book, but she’d made up the melody herself, which had everything you could want in a lullaby. It rose and fell, then held low and warm. A song tinged with sorrow yet undefeated by it.

Today she is going on eighty-three, me on fifty-four. Neither of us can drive. I literally can’t leave my house. We seldom see each other. She has Alzheimer’s. I’m mostly bedridden and flat on my back.

I call her every day I can. She reminisces a lot, with increasing need of my help. Or we might joke about the Bonko Birds again. She usually remembers that there are no “Bonko Birds” – that I’d found online that the name of the bird whose word got reshaped by her memory is actually “Junco Bird.” Known by whatever name, she still enjoys feeding them and watching them use the birdbath on her balcony.

I’m learning to slow down and simply enjoy the sound of my mother’s voice again. She’s taught me that there's joy in being able to tell a story even when you have no new stories to tell and know it. My mom knows she’s losing memory and that she gets confused sometimes. She finds this process so disconcerting that she rarely refers to it. It’s good to know she feels safe enough to repeat her stories to me even though she knows I’ve heard them all.

Today though, she sounds serious from the time she picks up the phone. She tells me she is looking out the window at a tall tree. Very tall. She says it looks like it’s touching the sky, which is all cloudy. And that it reminds her of her mother.

My mom then alludes to the last time that her mother had asked her to play “Trees” on the piano, which, during my grandmother’s last year of life, she’d often ask my mother to do. That very last time, my mom had looked back at her, saw the empty expression on her face, and had a strong feeling that she’d never receive the request again. She was right.

Over the phone, my mom’s line of sight apparently continues to follow the tall pine up to the unbroken line of clouds. Her voice fades a bit as she forgets to hold the mouthpiece up and repeats that the tree is very tall and reminds her of her mother.

My mom reminds me of a tall tree too.

Faithless: Is Anyone, Really?

Many people identify their faith with a religious belief system. Not everyone though.

I’ll always remember my father’s response to reading the short paper I’d written right after having the spontaneous “mystical experience” - or “one with the universe” type of experience that people often seek through meditation or contemplative prayer - that turned my life around at age twenty-three. It soon led me to meet with Fr. Basil Pennington at St. Joseph’s Abbey, then on to divinity school, and eventually to complete Original Faith.

In that paper, I wrote about how although the experience went far beyond anything I could put into words, I’d immediately learned one thing from it that I could clearly state: that I was hopeful about life as a whole.

I’d thought I’d lost that. But in fact, it was there. I hadn’t been present to faith but faith had been present to me. And with this insight, I began dismantling what had been a very negative world view and got on track to discovering possibilities for life and experience that I couldn’t have imagined were in store for me.

Speaking of negative world views… back to my father’s reaction to reading my paper. It would have been within a few weeks of my having written it. I had mailed him a copy. We were on the phone, him in Florida and me in New Hampshire. It turned out to be one of the last conversations we’d have. We weren’t in touch regularly and he died a few years later.

My father was an atheist – the first atheist I’d known, when, at age eleven, I’d asked him if he believed in God and he'd replied, with visible regret, that he did not. He also happened to be a deeply unhappy man. (For the record, I’m not suggesting that atheists as a group are less happy than theists.) He had a pretty jaded view of human nature and, as far as I’d ever been able to tell, a pessimistic view of life.

During that phone call, he listened quietly as I related how the experience had let me know that I was still fundamentally hopeful about life and death and wherever it’s all headed and whatever it all may mean. I was astonished and uplifted at his response: “I have hope too. I don’t know for what – but I have hope too.”