Category Archives: Philosophy

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Resistance

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Earlier this week, we sold a book called I Want That!: How We All Became Shoppers by Thomas Hine.  The blurb about it reads:

“Shopping has a lot in common with sex,” Thomas Hine observes near the beginning of this wide-ranging exploration of the history and psychology of one of the most commonplace and important activities of modern life. “Just about everybody does it. Some people brag about how well they do it. Some keep it a secret. Most people worry, at least a little, about whether they do it right. And both provide ample opportunities to make foolish choices.”

Choosing and using objects is a primal human activity, and I Want That! is nothing less than a portrait of humanity as the species that shops. ”

Me?  I hate shopping.  My first reaction is always, “I don’t want that.”   I have been thinking about getting a place in a more rural area of Wisconsin.  Lying in the bathtub this morning, I was struck by a realization.  Even if I pay cash for the real estate (from the sale of my former home), I still would have to pay property tax every year.  I don’t want that.

I don’t want to be indebted; I don’t want to be obligated.  I don’t want to be coerced or pressured into a relationship with any thing.  I am beginning to feel a mounting sense of resistance.  I’ve resisted getting a full time job for more than a year.  I’ve resisted being a consumer, especially of clothing and beauty products.  I’ve resisted Facebook.  I’ve resisted television and movies.  What is that about for me?

I am still struggling to be my own person, I guess.  I am struggling to focus on the things that I do want in a manner that I like.  I’m not ambitious.  I am an observer, an appreciator, but not much of a go-getter.  I resist marketing, for sure, but I don’t mind discovery.   Maybe part of that is simple laziness.  Maybe part of that is wanting the freedom to choose my relationships and responsibilities.

When I first read that comment about shopping having a lot in common with sex, I didn’t get it.  I hate shopping.  I love sex.  I suppose my consistency is in insisting on having the freedom to be very particular about my engagement with both.

And now, for the photo portion of my blog.  Choosing images and focusing where I want to, observing and appreciating has led me to these shots.  If you discover you like them, great.  I will not try to convince you to, though.  (Do I sound testy?  Okay, so be it.)

A fungus among us

The pod people have hatched

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While You Were Sleeping

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As usual, he called me at the office that afternoon while he was working from home.  “Hi.  How are you doing?”  I probably mentioned something about my ordinary frustrations on the job or something about our daughters.   Then it was down to business.  “What are you doing tonight?”  It was Friday night.  Our youngest had a rehearsal at a church only a few blocks from our house, starting about a half an hour after I got off work.  “Do you want to go out to dinner?”  “SURE!”  It was cold, the roads were icy.  We didn’t want to go far, so we dropped her off and went to a bar & grill  that had just opened behind the strip mall in our little town.  It was full of activity: TVs were on, people bustled about, artwork from the public schools was displayed on the wall.  There was lots to look at and hear.  The menu was new to us.  Teriyaki green beans sounded good.  So did fried artichokes.  I ordered a beer; I think he did, too.  We had sandwiches as well.  Then he got a call on his cell phone.  Our daughter was not feeling well and was leaving rehearsal early.  We said we’d meet her at home.  We all talked in the living room for a little while, as he sat on the couch gathering his strength for the climb upstairs.  He seemed pretty tired.  He’d come home from the hospital just 10 days earlier with 2 cardiac stents implanted.  In the bedroom, he turned on the flat screen TV, took his medications (all 23 of them) and hooked up his dialysis machine and his sleep apnea mask.   In our big, squishy bed, we watched an episode of “NUMB3RS”, and then the movie “Regarding Henry” came on.  I’d seen it before: Harrison Ford and Annette Bening in a good story about marriage, change and intimacy.  It complimented the mood perfectly.  We were feeling secure, companionable, close.  I fell asleep beside him, holding his hand.   I awoke at 6:30 AM.  His body was still and cold.

That day was exactly four years ago. What did he dream about that night?  Did he feel any pain?  Did he try to get up?  Did he try to call out or wake me?  Did he see a brightness as his neurons flashed for the last time?  Was it peaceful?  I can only imagine.

I can imagine him firing up feelings of love and bathing in them, floating on a surge of endorphins while images of his babies rushed by.  I can imagine him strolling an endless golf course of rolling green fairways, tree-lined and bright.  I can imagine him soaring with the tenor section in an angel choir, his energy trembling and resonating with clouds and stars.  I can imagine him satisfied and proud and smart and good and kind.  I can imagine him wrapped in the embrace of the Universe…forever.

I can imagine him, but can I know him any better, any more?  I still feel open to him, and as I continue to try to expand my awareness, I wonder about that.  I know that I don’t know what I might be able to know.  What is memory? What is sleep?  What is consciousness?  What is death?  Are they ‘real’?  I don’t know.  What is ‘real’?  What I know is that I don’t know.  What I feel is that he mattered and still matters.  I feel that he is.

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Sentimental, Sacramental or Cynical

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Valentine’s Day.  A Hallmark holiday.  Is it even connected to anything in history?  The Roman Catholic Church removed St. Valentines’ Day from its calendar in 1969 because there was nothing known about the 3 St. Valentines that had been venerated except that one of them was martyred on February 14th.   Chaucer had started the whole romantic connection by writing this verse in 1382 as part of a poem to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia:

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.

“For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”

Okay.  So what?

Eventually socialization takes over.  We establish a day on the calendar to honor Love and allow traditions to flourish.  It’s good for the economy.  See also Mother’s Day and Sweetest Day.  We grow increasingly attached to our traditions and habits and compartmentalize the celebration of Love to coincide with the day.  That’s what I would call sentimental.  It’s about the past and nostalgia.

But why not forget February 14, the calendar, and time itself, since they are merely social constructs, and instead try to honor every moment as we live it?  The Bell of Mindfulness rings for this moment only.  What are you feeling?  What is happening around you?  Are you fully aware of the miracle of living right now?  If in your awareness, you choose to employ an “outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace” of being mindful, then that’s what I would call a sacrament.

And if the whole thing just strikes you as absurd and unrealistic, then you might be what I would call cynical.  You might connect the day with massacres and treat your loved ones to:

Texas Chainsaw Cupcakes

Whatever your particular taste tends to on Valentine’s Day, I hope you enjoy the flavor!!

 

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The Cycle is Complete

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I have just returned from spending 6 hours at a modern multiplex movie theater.  Hate the glitz, the ads and especially the totally incongruous pre-show music.  I was there to see the HD simulcast of the Metropolitan Opera production of Götterdämmerung, the fourth and last installment of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.  If you’ve never learned anything about opera or Wagner before, I must encourage you to at least read up on it.  This was my first time getting the whole story and the whole score into my head.  I’d heard from my parents about how looooong the operas are.  I’d heard snatches of the music, even parodied by Elmer Fudd (“I shot the wabbit…”).  I’d heard about Wagnerian sopranos and sniggered at breastplates and horned helmets (hasn’t everyone?).   I was not expecting to be emotionally gripped and wrung out on an epic and divine scale, though.  The psychology is deeply moving.  The music supports it as cinematically and sumptuously as may be humanly possible.  The live action, singing and acting, is absolutely intense.  Seeing it with close up camera shots accentuates the intimacy, but it may take away from some of the total experience.  For this production, the set was designed by Robert Lepage of Cirque du Soliel.  It features a monstrous hydrolic machine which often distracts during the quieter instrumental passages as it whirrs and chunks into new positions.  Nevertheless, I was spellbound.  Particularly, I think, because I found myself identifying with Brünnhilde so painfully, on so many levels.   I’ve  been left sobbing at the ending of each of the four operas. 

Yes, I’m a bit of a drama queen.  I was a Voice Performance major in college and spent the last 7 years working for a theater company.  I can really get into live performances.  I put myself into the skin of the lead soprano every time.  But that’s just surface kinship.  Like Brünnhilde, my father was a god (in my eyes, at least, for a very long time), and I did everything I could to please him and do the right thing.  I ended up disappointed, my sister ended up banished, and the betrayal felt very real.  I left my father’s protection and fell in complete and holy love with a hero, a demi-god to many people.  He was duped and taken from me by a fatal disease.  I felt the anger, the confusion, the crushing grief and vowed to put the pieces together and learn the truth.  It took all my strength to face the facts, give up the ring of power, and stand for love.  I want to believe that in the end, greed, envy and the renunciation of love will sink down to the bottom of the river and that true friendship and faithful love will rise up.   So when our heroine mounts her trusty steed and rides into the funeral pyre with the ring on her finger and all of Valhalla (the gods’ palace) burns up and is engulfed in the flood of the Rhine and the ring finally returns to the river maidens, I experience an emotional catharsis that draws from a deep well of tears. 

Brava, Debra Voigt!!!

Drove home in below freezing temperatures, dove under the blankets in my bedroom and looked out the frosty window at this sunset:

It’s like Valhalla is still burning.  Will we ever learn?  At the end of the world, will love win?  The shamans of the Romantic era are telling us it’s possible.  Dare I believe?

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Looking at Life: The Photography Metaphor

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So, my son’s visit has come to an end.  It was good to offer him a retreat from his everyday routine, a chance to slow down and reflect, the reassurance of support and the challenge of articulating his thoughts, feelings, and desires.  Making your way in the world as a young adult is hard work; there’s so much to process and so many options.  As I mess around with photos, sliding tint and color saturation and cropping and brightness tools around, I think of all the different ways there are to look at the world.  How do you land on the one you want to “apply”?  What is the result you’re looking for?  How do you recognize that result or closer approximations of it?

I keep asking myself those questions, and the answers do change.

My son remembered some of my “dragon lady” moments as his mom, those angry “This is not the result I want!” rejections of his behavior.  I had forgotten the specific events, but I remember the frustration.  As always, I had (at least) three options: run/hide, change the situation, change yourself.  I spent a lot of energy trying to change situations.  “I wouldn’t be this frustrated if I could get these kids to obey me!”  I tweaked and cajoled, but I never managed to break their spirits and get them to comply completely.  They had their own will, just like a photograph whose focus is already determined.  The one thing I can’t do with my photos in post processing is sharpen the focus.   So what do I do then?   Change myself.  This is a fuzzy picture and it will never be crisp.  But I can learn to understand fuzziness as a quality that represents a true thing in the universe and so makes a valid image.

I think I’ve evolved to be a closer approximation of the person I want to be.  Less of a “dragon lady” or control freak or perfectionist.  More tolerant and compassionate.  More honest and willing to look at things as they are and drop the tyranny of looking at things in comparison to how I wish them to be.  Kinder, more open, less anxious.  Oh, but I still have some more adjustments to try.  I may get closer still.  Meanwhile, here are some examples of the results I got with pictures from yesterday.

"Canyonland" in a decaying willow

 

Slimy tendrils of ice

 

Blue lagoon, Wisconsin style

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Down By The Riverside

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Gonna lay down my burden…

I ain’t gonna study war no more.

Gonna lay down my sword and shield…

Took a walk by the Mukwonago River yesterday.  Heard lots of geese honking raucously, actually ridiculously.  “Sounds like a barnyard!”  I said, imagining donkeys braying and cows lowing.  Actually, there was a barnyard of sorts across the river.  On the slope leading to the water there were about a dozen white domestic geese.  All along the waters edge, there were wild Canada geese splashing about, enjoying the sunshine.   I wonder how they size each other up?  I wonder what their honking was all about?

We watched a video from the “Life” series, narrated by David Attenborough (our hero!) that featured footage of killer whales and leopard seals hunting.  I had seen a clip on the internet somewhere of killer whales tossing a seal around and many people commented about how cruel it was that they were playing with their unfortunate victim.  David Attenborough, narrating the scene of a leopard seal eating a penguin, described how it has to fling the body away from the piece its teeth are holding in order to rip off a manageable chunk of meat.   That made a lot of sense to me, and it dawned on me that the killer whales were probably doing the same thing.  Are non-human animals ever cruel, I wonder?   I’ve seen a real game of cat-and-mouse, but I’m not sure that’s about cruelty.  Then again, we have bred animals to demonstrate cruelty.  Fighting animals and hunting animals who attack other animals for reasons other than their own survival can be said to be cruel, I suppose.   Is it a human notion to cultivate violence for other ends, like status, power, sport and such?  Or do animals have that trait as well?

As I am typing this, a hawk has come to perch in the maple tree outside my bedroom window.  He is probably waiting for the sparrows and squirrels and cottontail rabbits that come to my garden chair looking for bread crumbs and popcorn kernels.   Here’s a shot I just took through my dingy window:

He’s still there, swiveling his head about, looking with his sharp eyes for his next meal.   It isn’t about war, it’s about food.  He takes no more than he needs.  What about us?  When we take more than we need, are we at war?  And what do we really need?

A sheltered place to bed down for the night

 

Fresh water, clean air, plants and sunshine

I don’t want to be burdened with war, status, power, ego or contention today.  I want to live like they live “down by the riverside”.  It seems peaceful and natural.  I could just watch this hawk all day….

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Playing Chess with Death

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Last night, I watched Ingmar Bergman’s film “The Seventh Seal”.   There’s nothing like hitting a gray mood smack on the head with a black & white film about Death!  Yargh!  Into the breach, mates….

First of all, the photography.  Beach scenes, faces, clouds and silhouettes, clean, stark, intense.  They just put me in a mood to ponder dark and light without looking away.  Bring it!

Characters.  One of the questions Steve always asks after we watch a film together is “which character do you think is most like you?”  The characters in this film are icons of human stereotypes, in a way, but rather like the roles in a medieval morality play.  The knight is questing, always.  He wants to know and understand; his intellect is never satisfied.  Steve has a lot of that in him.   Jof, the juggler, is a childlike observer.  He is easy-going and happy, and he has visions.  He sees with his heart and doesn’t understand why others don’t see what he does, but he doesn’t preach about his visions, he writes songs about them.  I think Steve has some of that in him, too.  I identify with Jof myself.  The squire is shrewd, ironic, confident and direct.  He seems very grounded in his ego.  There are some other players, more simply drawn: the actor, the cuckold smith and his loose wife, Jof’s young wife and their baby, a silent girl who attaches to the squire, a witch and of course…Death.

How each of these folks engage with Death is fertile ground for the imagination.  If you’re questing, trying to find answers, strategically engaging Death in a game of chess, what is the lesson you are likely to learn?  That Death doesn’t have any answers, but he’s going to win the game.  And how would you take that?  It makes me think of my younger days, when I was in the throes of religious fervor, convinced that I was learning the big answers to the most important questions.  I wrote terribly pretentious poetry and harbored judgments about everything.  I thought I was going to “figure it all out” eventually.  That was after Death’s first visit to me, and before his second.  I had a few close calls in between that made me think I might be on the right track.  His re-appearance convinced me that I wasn’t really onto anything.  So, the questions remain.  I like how the knight gets increasingly comfortable with inviting Death to sit down and join him.  He learns a few things, he postpones the inevitable, he diverts Death’s attention away from his friends for a while, and he even shows Death that he can be happy while they play.  I am learning from his example.

The scariest part of the film is the depiction of fear itself.  The wailing and flailing and pleading for mercy is utterly desperate and triggers all kinds of panicky feelings in me as I watch.  I do NOT want to slide into that.  That’s the worst evil in the film.   Those people are being tortured and destroyed from the inside out.  It gives me the shivers!   This is a great example for me, too.  I don’t have to engage with Death in this manner.  I have other options.

The storm scene reminded me of a camping trip we took one spring.  After a balmy evening, a thunderstorm rolled in from across the hills to the west.  The sun had set and it grew quite dark, but just over the ridge, the lightning blazed up like bombs in a great war.  It was like watching a WWII movie, all black and white explosions in the distance.  And we were the only campers in the park, in a little nylon tent.   I was kind of scared.  I thought about doing the “safe and prudent” thing, striking camp and driving away.  Steve asked me, “Why?”  Well, because something bad could happen!  Bad like what?  We could get wet.  We could get hit by a falling tree or lightning.  We could, but it’s not highly likely.  We could just watch it and see what we learn.  And we can always get in the car, too, if we want.

So we stayed.  We did get wet.  We eventually went to the car.  We went home the next day.  But we saw the most amazing light show and felt the wind and heard the rain fall on every surface with a different sound.   And we experienced it together, present, honest, alive.   Take that, Fear!  Check!

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Four Years Ago Today

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I’m feeling rather gray and gloomy today, like the motionless monochrome sky.  I went out with wet hair, first to breakfast with Steve’s mom, then to do laundry at the laundromat, then to the grocery store.  I feel thoroughly chilled.  I think my hair is still wet.  Yet, there’s no snow on the ground, so I can’t really blame the weather.  It’s still far from wintry…not like it was, say, four years ago…

Four years ago, there was a snow storm.  Four years ago, the Super Bowl was on.  Four years ago, my husband was in the hospital.

I could give you the whole background history on his medical odyssey, but it would come out dry and clinical.  What I’m feeling now is more surreal.  Let’s just say that he was in the cardiac wing, waiting to be stabilized enough for surgery.  Waiting.  Like waiting for Godot.   There was no sense of time after a few days.  Doctors would come and go and offer conjectures and imagine scenarios.  I got the feeling that I should simply camp out with him and see what happened.  So I did.

My husband was a sports fan, and the Super Bowl game was a big party occasion on our calendar most years.   During the regular football season, we’d watch games together on Sunday afternoons and nap through a good chunk of them.  I can enjoy the game and root for the underdog or a sentimental favorite, and usually Jim would fill me in on some of the finer points of strategy or history.   I guess you could say we were companionable about it.  Jim watched a lot of TV in his later years, and in the hospital, there’s not much else to do.  “Camped out in the cardiac wing” meant that during visiting hours, you could find me squeezed in next to him on the bed, cranked up in sitting position, watching whatever was on the box suspended from the ceiling.   But I thought the Big Game should be more festive.  So I asked the nurses if we could watch it from the visitor’s lounge on the floor, on the big screen, and invite a friend or two.  They gave their permission.

It wasn’t a party.  It was just me, Jim and one of our church friends who stopped by for a while.  I brought a couple of coolers with snacks and drinks.  I got in trouble for bringing beer.  Not that Jim was drinking it, but I guess it was against some rule, because a nurse came by and told me I couldn’t have it there.  Jim was comfortably situated in one of the lounge chairs with his IV pole and beepy-thing beside him.  We were in clear view of the nurses’ station the whole time.  A few other hospital visitors peeked in periodically, but mostly, we were alone.  Our friend Dave told us that there was a huge snowstorm outside.  Toward the end of the game, we actually lost power for a while.  When it was over, it was past visiting hours, and I was concerned about digging my car out of the parking lot and driving home, so I packed up my coolers and kissed Jim good-bye pretty quickly.   Three days later, he had his surgery.  Ten days after that, he was dead.

I found out today that the two teams that are in the Super Bowl this year are the same two teams that played four years ago today.  They will play on Sunday.  And I won’t be watching.  I haven’t watched a football game in a long time.  We don’t even have a TV.

Life changes.  Waiting only lasts a while.  Those days, suspended in gray like a snowflake, drift down slowly, but eventually, they evaporate, and something else takes their place.

I’m okay with that…I think…  Yeah.  I’m okay.

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A Bigger World

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I’ve been thinking lately about my ego and my mood cycle.   Two days ago, I wrote “I feel that expansive, fecund, open sense bubbling up in me, settling me down, inviting me to nurture and set free.  Then, a while later, I feel a feisty urge to grab hold and wrestle with my circumstances and force them to conform to some idea in my brain.”  Right now, I’m in the restless part of my cycle, and my ego is eager to get to work on something.   It gives me a sort of shimmering sense of dissatisfaction, not like something is “wrong”, but like I’ve been sitting too long and want to stretch.  I don’t want to get into the habit of simply indulging my ego with any old thing whenever it prods me, though.   Steve often talks of feeling like he’s “treading water”, too.  He told me this morning that he wanted to work on “pointing his canoe”, which is his metaphor for re-establishing direction and putting energy into venturing forward, so I asked him if he uses some kind of ego energy to address that.   He said, “It’s not like that.  It’s more like gathering your courage and discipline to step into a bigger world.  I think the ego is a smaller world.”

I immediately got my pencil and notebook and wrote that down.

A bigger world.  A world that is beyond me, beyond my control, beyond prediction.  A bigger concentric circle.  I do think we tend to pull back into our tiny, lower-case universe, the one where we feel safe and comfortable and powerful.  We can’t really help that tendency, but we can acknowledge it and try to point our canoe in a different direction.  I am really inspired by people who do that, and through the network of blogging, I have met a few who I think are paddling away.  Maybe they’re not the people you’re thinking of.  They aren’t the extreme sportsmen.  They aren’t the world travelers.  They aren’t the social superstars.  They are the suffering, the ones who have met their limitations and crossed into the unknown.  They blog about living with their illness, their addiction, their recovery, their brain damage in a way that definitely requires them to gather courage and discipline and step into a bigger world, a world which they don’t master.  And sometimes they whine, and sometimes their posts are incredibly boring, but I keep visiting them because I think they are truly onto something.  I suppose that I am hoping to witness their breakthrough flight, when they will soar high above the rest of us into that bigger world of awareness.  I’m not sure what that will look like, but maybe I’ll recognize it anyway.

I am working on writing a memoir on my husband’s illness and death.  Four years ago, he had his last surgery.

The story of how he came out of anesthesia is perhaps a glimpse into that bigger world.  My oldest daughter wrote about it in her Live Journal that evening:

“When I saw him after the surgery, painkillers and low blood sugar had rendered him almost completely unresponsive. We tried everything—tickling him, turning his insulin pump off, talking to him, poking him—but the most we could get from him was a groan or a slight shift of position. I told him I was pregnant. Mom said they’d called a rematch of the Super Bowl. I even took a picture of him, threatening, I think, to mock him with it later. Nothing made any difference until I had to leave for work. I squeezed his arm and said “Bye, Dad. I love you,” and in a sleepy, submerged-sounding voice, he said “Love you.” We couldn’t get him to say or do anything else, but every time someone said “I love you,” he would immediately mumble it back.”

So, I think of Jim, hovering somewhere between consciousness and death and knowing only one response: “I love you”.   This is the Universe you don’t control.

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What is Love?

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Yesterday, I read a travel post about a European romantic trend called Love Locks.  Apparently, an Italian novel whose title translates to “I Need You” has spawned the custom of lovers affixing padlocks to public fences, bridges, gates and whatnot as a sign of their everlasting love.  This idea really rubs me the wrong way, so I’m sorting out my thoughts to figure out why.  Of course, this is about me, not about judging any of the couples who have participated in this ritual nor about anyone else who thinks it’s romantic.  So, what do I know about me?

First of all, I worry about the accumulation of stuff.  Seeing all those padlocks encrusting a surface reminds me of the proliferation of manufactured gadgets and things that we humans often allow to run unchecked.  Apparently, many city officials also consider them “an eyesore”.  It occurs to me that if they were something natural or biodegradable (like flower petals or garlands?), I would probably not feel this instant repulsion.  This may be just the surface of the aesthetic mismatch, however.

Second, I think a lot about symbolism.  What does a padlock say about love?  In all fairness, I have not read the novel, so I am probably missing the finer points.  I understand the desire for security in a relationship.  I was married for 24 years, “until death”, and I positively flourished under the safety of that bond.  But now that Jim has slipped all surly bonds, I think that anything everlasting must be a bit more mutable than metal, more plastic than any tangible material.  The words of a song by John Denver keep floating to the surface of my consciousness.  The title of the song is “Perhaps Love”.  Here’s a bit of the chorus: “Some say love is holding on and some say letting go; and some say love is everything and some say they don’t know”.   I guess I have to say that lately I’ve been sitting in the “letting go” camp.  Out of necessity, obviously.  I did the struggle of holding on.  I found it to be an ego thing, ultimately unsustainable.  Letting go, opening up, imagining expansiveness is a way to include a lot more without confining it to an embrace.  I believe love wants to include a lot more by nature.

Two nights before my love died was Valentine’s Day.  We celebrated at home with champagne and salmon in the company of two of our daughters.  My oldest brought out a book of Pablo Neruda’s poetry and read this one (Love Sonnet #92):

My love, should I die and you don’t,
let us give grief no more ground:
my love, should you die and I don’t,
there is no piece of land like this on which we’ve lived.

Dust in the wheat, sand in the desert sands,
time, errant water, the wandering wind
carried us away like a navigator seed.
In such times, we may well not have met.

The meadow in which we did meet,
oh tiny infinity, we give back.
But this love, Love, has had no end,

and so, as it had no birth,
it has no death. It is like a long river
that changes only its shores and its banks.

Translation: Terence Clarke

I cannot imagine trying to put a padlock on a wheat field or on the desert sands, on the wind or on a river.  I cannot imagine putting a padlock on time, even though that’s a concept we made up, just like the padlock, as a way to try to control things.  I do know that the impulse to lock down an experience is very human and very old.  The ancient story of the Transfiguration of Jesus comes to mind.   Jesus and three of his disciples (Peter, James and John) climb a mountain, and there the disciples have an experience of seeing Jesus in glowing white raiment talking to Moses and Elijah.  Good old impetuous Peter gets all excited and bursts out with an idea.  “Let’s build three booths (or tabernacles)!  We can put each of you in one and hang on to this experience for a while longer, perhaps invite others….”   He is silenced by a booming voice from the clouds. “Listen!”  When the cloud lifts, Jesus stands alone, and they decide to keep quiet instead.

I am beginning to recognize a kind of flow, a yin and yang of contrasting energies, in myself.  I think it has something to do with my biological cycle, but it also manifests in a mood cycle.  I feel that expansive, fecund, open sense bubbling up in me, settling me down, inviting me to nurture and set free.  Then, a while later, I feel a feisty urge to grab hold and wrestle with my circumstances and force them to conform to some idea in my brain.   I could say that I am still loving with both energies.  I used to tell my children that I disciplined them because I loved them, and I believe that’s true, but I think there’s an ego love and a non-ego love.   They are both part of me.  One is not “right” and the other “wrong”, but I think that the non-ego kind is more beneficial in the universe.

Valentine’s Day is a few weeks away.  It’s a time when many people are thinking about love, romantic love.  I keep challenging myself to think bigger, to open up.  I hear the voice booming from the clouds, from the trees, from the water and the air.  It asks me to Listen.  So I guess it’s time to shut up.