Becoming Visible

This past year has been difficult with big changes and heart wrenching losses.  A few months ago we downsized to a smaller home - something we have been planning for a while.  Even though we love our new home the move was very stressful and there is a deep sense of loss associated with leaving a place where we had lived happily for 13 years.

This year four special men close to me died: a good friend from grad school who had been my main support during a painful divorce; our daughters godfather who was like a brother to me; a fellow musician who played and sung in the church choir; and recently, the priest who married us - he was 66.

Shortly after moving, my mom was having dinner with us and began to choke.  I got her to the hospital where she spent three days recovering - she had developed pneumonia as a result of inhaling some fluids.  It was touch and go for a while but I'm glad to say she is fine.  A couple of days after she came home our two and a half year old yellow lab, Ella, died suddenly and unexpectedly.  She was on medication for a liver problem but seemed to be doing fine.  She was a sweet baby and we miss her.

Amid these and other less dramatic losses what I don't feel is self-pity.   Rather, the heart opening grief that arises when you realize with utter clarity that one day you will loose everything and everyone you love.  What this has emboldened in me is a sort of passion for life - my own and the life of the world.  As the poet David Whyte says: 

        "to live as if your place in the world mattered, and the world could neither speak nor hear the fullness of its own bitter and beautiful cry without the deep well of your body resonating in the echo." 

In October I turned 61 and though I am in pretty good shape my body reminds me daily that I am no longer a kid.  What is present for me is an urgency that every moment is precious and matters.

A few weeks ago we had our annual holiday brunch with family and my wonderful office staff.  I was surrounded by the people I love and who love me - most especially my wife, our daughter, my sister, and our mom whose birthday we celebrated - she is 88.  What a gift it is to be alive! 

So I leave you with the invitation to sing, dance, laugh and cry your gifts into the world that is waiting breathlessly for you.

Gigging

I had a couple of gigs recently after a long hiatus.  They went fine but I wasn't really satisfied with how I played, so I did some journal work to see what was present underneath.  Here is a little of what came up:

Haven't practiced much lately - chops are rusty. I need to do some   “shedding.”

  I want to step out - but don't want to be alone.  I love to play and really want to play well - share that with others, both the musicians and those listening.  It is about belonging for me; belonging to the group and belonging to the world; where my place in the mix matters and makes a difference; that the music isn't quite the same without my voice.  When I'm not alive in the music, the music is not alive.  When I feel small or diminished by the brilliance of those I'm playing with I just go through the motions.  Something is missing because I'm missing.  I think people know this - maybe not consciously but they are not drawn to it the way they are when there is "real presence" - the kind of presence that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up or evokes the memory of something you’d forgotten.

Perhaps this is a metaphor for life.  Seems like many of us are just going through the motions - just trying to make it through the gig - no aliveness there because we are not alive.  How would the world look if we were alive and present?  How would that music sound if we knew we all belonged and that our part was essential.  Perhaps if we really listened we would hear the music calling our name - like a lover who yearned for us body and soul; that our voice could bring the world alive.


As I think about this I am reminded of the words "be the change you want to see in the world."  When I'm really present I'm not thinking about how I sound.  I'm listening to or for something - though I only realized this now.  What I'm not listening to is the Wounded Child who feels small, inadequate or mediocre – although he is still there.  But rather to something that is being coaxed from me because it is needed at this time.  When this is happening there is a sense of freedom, exploration and discovery, as if I am being used for some purpose beyond simply my own agenda.

On a few occasions I’ve had the experience of being outside myself as I played.  Though still in my body, my fingers and mouth were working by themselves, and I was listening to the music and observing it all from a different place. It was extraordinary.  Almost like being inside and outside it at the same time.

I just realized the gift of the Wounded Child.  He allows me to feel deeply the pain of the world, and when embraced by Wholeness he is a resource that emboldens me to act on behalf of those in pain.  Sometimes that action may be as simple as putting my soul into a piece of music and playing it with as much presence and love as I can.  Another way to say it is he helps me to “show up.”

Recognition

Mornings are such a special time.  Maybe it is because we have just emerged from that “more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began” as David Whyte says, and the veil is still thin.  Perhaps we haven’t had time yet to become fully desensitized to the promptings of the soul, and the noise of the world hasn’t quite drowned out its whisper.

I awoke before dawn recently, present to some vague unspoken sadness.  Linda was away and I was left to my own devices for the weekend.  I seated myself in the blue easy chair in our living room with my back to the windows and stared mindlessly at my laptop.  Bereft of inspiration or motivation I surfed the Internet in a familiar sort of stupor – no doubt an attempt to numb the low level subterranean grief that inhabited my body.

We Irish are a peculiar lot.  When it comes to grief I’m tempted to say that we have a corner on the market - but perhaps that’s too broad a stroke.  Still, as Yeats famously said “the Irish have an abiding sense of tragedy that sustains them through temporary periods of joy.”  To take this a bit further, I had a good laugh recently when I heard an Irishman say “whenever God closes one door He shuts another – and if He is really pissed He’ll slam your fingers in it.”  But most poignant for me are the words, again of David Whyte whose mother, Mary Theresa O Sullivan hailed from Waterford City.  He says:  “In an Irish telling, everything is ultimately experienced through terrible grief and loss.  It is the one left singing, and the flight of song, in the midst of that grief, that counts.” (From “Crossing the Unknown Sea.” P86.)

At some point I glanced up from my computer and saw a shaft of sunlight strike the wall opposite my chair.  Something moved in me and I got up and went to the window.  We live in a two level house that is built into the side of a hill facing east.  The living area is on the upper level and the windows, which extend the entire length of the house, look out over a lake and wetlands.  I sometimes feel like I’m living in a tree house.

Approaching the window a shock of surprise entered my body as I was greeted by the presence of the early morning sun sitting low in the sky.  The impact was sudden and powerful - as if a timely utterance issued forth from the heart of the world that said “Behold!”  At the same time a gust of wind blew some lightly powdered snow, newly fallen the night before, from its resting place on the branches just outside the window.  Like puffs of smoke it cascaded to the earth backlit by the slanting light.  I gazed mesmerized at the spectacle unfolding before my eyes.  It can be easy to lose sight of the particular amidst the flourish of the collective, but I found myself watching individual flakes on their descent. 

I stayed there for about twenty minutes with a mixture of awe, gratitude and deep sadness all present simultaneously.  It was as if something had been revealed or unconcealed; something that had been hidden or that I was blind to. I was alive.

I wonder if it is the shock of recognition that awakens us; the recognition of the soul of the Other – both the individual and the collective.  Perhaps we become present to a sort of coherence that may not be so much about our own life but rather the essential mystery at the core of all life that can only be recognized by our own soul.  In such moments sometimes all we can do is gasp, or cry, or scream, or sing, or dance because for an instant we touch the abyss and glimpse the eternal.  Perhaps this can help us to remember we have been chosen

and bring us back to our everyday world having fallen more deeply in love with the ordinary – with solid ground.

We were never meant to be alone – and we never are.  It is our engagement with the world that brings us alive – the others too.