LIFE ON A WIRE

 

            Dangling by fingertips from invisible wire strung between two buildings in Downtown Grand Rapids—holding tight to a sliver of hope while life passes by beneath and around. 

          Old age can feel like that. 

For me it was a sudden unexpected event (illness) and I fell from life as I knew it, grasping in a fragile finger-hold the life I had left—from living life fully to watching it go by around me. 

Even now, even when I’m participating, I find it is hard to focus on the now.  My mind strays to thoughts and worries about blood pressure and cholesterol, clots in my heart, arrhythmias and mind farts or holes in my mind.  My hips and knees don’t bend.

The enjoyable day with family at ArtPrize became embarrassing when I couldn’t maneuver climbing down and back up a three-foot wall without the help of my two teen-aged grandsons lifting me, and I lagged further behind as the day went on despite the yoga, daily walks and occasional swims I do to keep up my strength and agility. 

          “If that old lady can do it, you certainly can.”  Do I imagine the impatience in my daughter-in-law’s voice?  I want to believe she is paying me a compliment; that she and my family do not see the real me fading slowly, becoming slower physically and mentally—less able to do it all myself.  Is it my own impatience I’m witnessing?  My own chastising voice pushing me to keep moving, don’t slow down; telling me age is only a number.  Sometimes it is a number.  Sometimes also a fact of life.  Can I be honest with myself, paying attention to what I still can do and also what I can no longer do as quickly and as well?  Can I be honest without being dramatic?  Can I continue to meet changes with humor and compassion? 

          We allow trees to age gracefully and we see beauty and strength in gnarled old trees.  In old people we so often see only weakness and loss of value.  Can we, can I not see beauty in my wrinkled hands with prominent veins? In my gray hair? When did beauty spots turn to age spots, to imperfections, and meet with such derision? 

          I’m torn between appreciating Tim’s help on stairs and his hanging back with me when I slowed, and frustration that I’m the “little old lady” who needs that help.  Selfishly I want the world to slow with me, to “stop and smell the roses.” 

          Yet I remember me as a teen and young—even middle aged adult—racing ahead of my mother (and even my six-foot husband,) proud of my speed walk, impatient with those who walked too slowly for me. 

          Growing old has forced me to slow and in the process has shown me things I would have missed…an afternoon watching butterflies gather on a butterfly bush, a morning of watching wrens take turns feeding their newborn young whose faces and large beaks crowd the entrance to their nest.  One day I sat still as I felt, then watched a chipmunk take the shortcut over my shoulder, down my arm, onto my lap, down my leg, on his way from a bowl of sunflower seeds I’d left on my deck.  His mouth was crammed full when he went down a hole just beyond my foot and empty when he poked his head back up.  I sat quietly while he made the same roundtrip several times. 

          Yesterday art and people swirled around me—happy faces, happy voices, bright colors, warm sunshine and light breezes.  Interactive art and people.  Art recycled from rejected objects, recreated.  Hopeful art of love bridging the river—fragile yet sturdy—and the sculpture of a man hanging by his fingertips.  All rushing by me or me by it.  Unable to take in foreground because of the rushing forward of background.  A piece of art I focused my camera on would disappear, replaced by people walking between us.  The people became the foreground. 

          Seldom really in moment.  Seldom in the experience.  Pushed by life, by others, I long to slow down, live life fully at my own pace.  Time keeps racing by.  I grasp what I can, enjoy the moment, then let it go. 

 

Mirabai:  A Hundred Objects Close By

I know a cure for sadness:
Let your hands touch something that
makes your eyes smile.

I bet there are a hundred objects close by
that can do that.

Look at beauty’s gift to us –
her power is so great

she enlivens the earth, the sky,

our soul.                                                                   

Recently I joined a group called The Mystic Poet’s Circle, led by Alex Riegel.  I've been quickly drawn in to the wisdom of a poetry that speaks to my heart in today’s world.  Having battled depression and sadness most of my life, I've learned that the cure often comes when I “let my hands touch something that makes my eyes smile”.  I take this figuratively, because it is often my eyes that notice something.  If I stop to truly see, my sadness and depression retreats.  If I allow my perceptions to let go of the merry-go-round of preconceived negativity and focus on the beauty that is close by, my eyes and my heart begin to smile.

I think of my lowest days and the healing power of sitting alone in my living room in the dead of winter feeling only dark hopelessness.  Something dragged me outdoors on that cold sunny winter day.  I slowly and tearfully put on my snowshoes and set off down the beach.

 In the stillness, the sound of my snow shoes on ice annoyed me, and I stopped to look out at the lake of ice.  I listened to the stillness, the breeze in the trees, the water gurgling under the ice.  A feeling of beauty swept me and suddenly all sound stopped.  Though I've tried to find words, none are adequate to tell what I experienced that day.  But when the world resumed its turning, something inside of me had shifted.  The power of beauty had enlivened my soul and brought a smile to my eyes and a song to my heart.

Though the intensity of this experience passed, the gift of my enlivened soul has remained. 

A BOOK LOVER’S DILEMMA

            Looking through the fall OSHER catalogue, Bantering Bibliophiles’ Club caught my attention.  How could I not sign up for a club for book lovers taught by Deb Mukherjee?  I had at least one rational reason why not.  I’m in the midst of a spiritual quest and reading several books that are slow, thoughtful, prayerful reads, including The Upanishads, Sufism:  The Transformation of the Heart, and Prayer of the Heart in Christian and Sufi Mysticism.  For my early morning meditative reading, I’m reading from The Cloud of Unknowing.  Before bed in the evening, I read a poem or two from I Heard God Laughing, by Hafiz, a Sufi poet.  On the other hand—my mind works in paradox—perhaps that is just the reason I should take the course.  It would most surely give me some balance.              

In the past, I read a lot of fiction and looked with disdain on those who minimized fiction with a superior “I only read non-fiction”.  As I’ve switched to more non-fiction, the other has become merely an escape from the intensity of the spiritual reading I’m doing.  I’m almost embarrassed to admit that the fiction I choose is sometimes a light, quick read—often a mystery—though I have to admit that I can sometimes turn the most superficial book into an important lesson. 

I signed up, wondering about a book lover’s club where a different book was assigned each session.  We weren’t expected to have read or required to read the books, yet would be discussing the author, theme, plot, context, writing styles, etc. 

            I’ve often described myself as a person who can’t see the trees for the forest.  I see the whole more easily than the individual parts and context more easily than the individual pieces that make up the story.   The first class showed me how different my reading style was and I wondered if I could fit my style into the whole, or would I have to, for the six sessions, forsake my style of reading—learn to read all over again.    It came to me the day after class that I read with my heart/mind, not my thinking mind.  Whether fiction or non-fiction, I have to have a heart connection with the story.  Since I also believe that I am/we are each part of the whole—that each person I meet is a part of who I am, and everything I see, hear, touch, smell, taste is a part of the whole, it is not difficult to find some portion or person in a story to wrap my heart around.  How can I experience the story if I am looking for plot, history, travel, characterizations, motifs, etc.?  If I am focused on what’s plausible or not plausible, how do I feel into the story with my heart?  How do I hear the truths that may not be fact, but may, in fact, be deeper truths—or at least my truths?  How do I focus on punctuation and grammar without missing the heart of what the story has to tell me?

The week before our Bibliophiles’ class, I began rereading Peace Like a River.  I’d read it years ago.  It has currently replaced I Heard God Laughing as my bedtime reading, and I can hear God laughing at the irony.  Due to eye problems and difficulty staying awake past 10 p.m., I have not yet finished the book, but again it is touching my heart in ways that are difficult for me to talk about in the context of the agenda.  But the fear that I will lose my ability to read from my heart/mind is fading—I doubt that this class will remove that ingrained way of reading.  My hope is that in learning to read more objectively, the “trees” will come more into focus and I will emerge with a sharper experience of the rich life of the books and the individual people that surround me with their knowledge and insight.    

A BOOK LOVER’S DILEMMA

            Looking through the fall OSHER catalogue, Bantering Bibliophiles’ Club caught my attention.  How could I not sign up for a club for book lovers taught by Deb Mukherjee?  I had at least one rational reason why not.  I’m in the midst of a spiritual quest and reading several books that are slow, thoughtful, prayerful reads, including The Upanishads, Sufism:  The Transformation of the Heart, and Prayer of the Heart in Christian and Sufi Mysticism.  For my early morning meditative reading, I’m reading from The Cloud of Unknowing.  Before bed in the evening, I read a poem or two from I Heard God Laughing, by Hafiz, a Sufi poet.  On the other hand—my mind works in paradox—perhaps that is just the reason I should take the course.  It would most surely give me some balance.              

In the past, I read a lot of fiction and looked with disdain on those who minimized fiction with a superior “I only read non-fiction”.  As I’ve switched to more non-fiction, the other has become merely an escape from the intensity of the spiritual reading I’m doing.  I’m almost embarrassed to admit that the fiction I choose is sometimes a light, quick read—often a mystery—though I have to admit that I can sometimes turn the most superficial book into an important lesson. 

I signed up, wondering about a book lover’s club where a different book was assigned each session.  We weren’t expected to have read or required to read the books, yet would be discussing the author, theme, plot, context, writing styles, etc. 

            I’ve often described myself as a person who can’t see the trees for the forest.  I see the whole more easily than the individual parts and context more easily than the individual pieces that make up the story.   The first class showed me how different my reading style was and I wondered if I could fit my style into the whole, or would I have to, for the six sessions, forsake my style of reading—learn to read all over again.    It came to me the day after class that I read with my heart/mind, not my thinking mind.  Whether fiction or non-fiction, I have to have a heart connection with the story.  Since I also believe that I am/we are each part of the whole—that each person I meet is a part of who I am, and everything I see, hear, touch, smell, taste is a part of the whole, it is not difficult to find some portion or person in a story to wrap my heart around.  How can I experience the story if I am looking for plot, history, travel, characterizations, motifs, etc.?  If I am focused on what’s plausible or not plausible, how do I feel into the story with my heart?  How do I hear the truths that may not be fact, but may, in fact, be deeper truths—or at least my truths?  How do I focus on punctuation and grammar without missing the heart of what the story has to tell me?

The week before our Bibliophiles’ class, I began rereading Peace Like a River.  I’d read it years ago.  It has currently replaced I Heard God Laughing as my bedtime reading, and I can hear God laughing at the irony.  Due to eye problems and difficulty staying awake past 10 p.m., I have not yet finished the book, but again it is touching my heart in ways that are difficult for me to talk about in the context of the agenda.  But the fear that I will lose my ability to read from my heart/mind is fading—I doubt that this class will remove that ingrained way of reading.  My hope is that in learning to read more objectively, the “trees” will come more into focus and I will emerge with a sharper experience of the rich life of the books and the individual people that surround me with their knowledge and insight.    

 

THE SIEVE

 

 My mind is a free-floating sieve.  Thoughts visit,

 but none stay for long,  

            Moving on waves and rapids—floating slowly,

disappearing unexpectedly into a whirlpool,

always moving. 

Moving away from a flash of insight

seemingly important at the moment,

but escaped before I could write it down or

properly note it—make it stay put so I could examine it. 

 

Hit and run. 

Tease, just tease. 

A bit of a poem possibility—gone

before I can nab it and work it—gone

before the snippet I caught on the fly settled into a formed thought.

 

Perhaps the detritus that catches in the sieve of my mind

 is the debris I’ve been hanging on to for much too long—

past pain, past anger, past injustices—my own and others. 

Let it go.  Let it flow through the open pores of the sieve to join the river.  

Don’t let it stagnate polluting the life around it.   

Let it merge its song into the flowing stream of living water.  

Let it dance in its eddies, rest in its still pools.

            Let it ride the laughing rapids,

joining the songs of the ages

riding the river of life. 

 

 

 

 

Random Thoughts: New Years 2013

            People who escape into theism too readily and don’t allow themselves to feel the pain of “the world”, sometimes become blinded and unable to show real compassion to those who are hurting.  Some of them just hide heads in the sand and ignore the hard realities.  Others become hardened and “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” people, not realizing that there are some things one cannot do alone and some things that cannot be fixed.  Many lose their compassion toward hurting people, impatiently expecting them to stop complaining and move on before they are ready or capable of doing so. 

            As I move out of my mid-70s towards my 80s, I am becoming more attuned to and accepting of the cycles of my days especially as they “go south” into the grays of depression which has been a part of my makeup since I was a child.  I have the time now that I am retired to feel them more fully, explore them more deeply.  And I have the knowledge gleaned by therapy, existential reading and classes, discussions with friends who find hope even in conflicts, calamities, and depression, to know that:  1) depression can turn around. 2) I can change my thoughts and perceptions. 3) Much depends on my attitude and expectations.  Many examples inform me:  Hurricane Sandy; the Sandy Hook tragedies, to name two.  Glued to my TV and radio the first day or two, I grieved deeply for those I did not know personally, but felt deep in my heart and soul.  I looked at the shattered homes and shattered lives, listened to the names, looked at the faces, and cried.  Then came the stories of love, of compassion, of people helping people, victims helping other victims, people digging deep into the love in their hearts connecting to others and to the world of love, not hate.  There were other stories, I know, but I chose to focus on the stories of love and to look in my own heart for ways I love and ways I can love now and in the future.

            My secret grandiose goals of years past—of being a successful psychologist, successful writer—were all about money and fame.  They hinged on others approval and disapproval, of success as the world so often rates success—number of clients seeking my services, reading my articles, and amount of money I earned, number of books sold, compliments of clients and of people who read my poetry.  When the numbers didn't add up to enough for me, I became discouraged and withheld my gifts. 

My goals of today are simpler and freer—to be the best me I can be in my corner of the world.  To love and give to my friends, family, and people I meet in the course of my day what I have to give—my smile, my laughter, my words, my time, my love.  This year I want to live more fully in this world, feeling all; its pain and its glorious surprises.  I want to stop still and let its wonders fill me with awe.  I want to give more compliments, give more hugs.  I want to listen better—hear what is said in and around the words that are spoken--and give more time to others.  I want to do this as my small gift, given freely without expectations of approval or gratitude.  And when the cycle of depression comes, as it most certainly will, I want to honor it, explore it and learn its lessons, knowing that the more I open my heart, the more I am able to find the true gift of goodness and love that lies in each of us and in our troubled world.