Because of the primacy which we give to all things human, the fact that we can even coin the phrase 'the sanctity of human life,' and our concomitant fear and loathing of death, we have no real mythological basis in this culture for the balance of life.
We cannot separate our attitudes toward illness and disease from our attitudes toward death. Our complete lack of a mythology of balance of life, allows us to destroy anything that seems to threaten human life. Of course, various civilizations within this larger civilization, of which this culture represents the overarching principle, has defined human life in ways that were convenient for the continued existence and perceived dominance of its own human group.
But that aside, overall we have given ourselves absolute permission to destroy anything that seems in contradiction to the sanctity of human life meme.
"Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life. Lord Jesus, come in glory." (cf. 1 Cor 16:22). Paul of Tarsus certainly captured this meme epitomologically. He definitely drove that nail home, too, with this: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death." (1 Cor 15:26). Then we find almost this exact same phrase used by J. K. Rawlings in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, "The last enemy to be conquered is death," as the inscription on the headstone of Harry's parents.
If death is the ultimate enemy, then illness and disease, death's henchmen, are certainly not our friends.
I'm not anywhere near suggesting that the suffering caused by illness and disease and the loss of beloved friends and family by death is anything other than that--suffering, pain. But I am saying that that is all that it is.
We inflict an almost unimaginable suffering on millions of other living forms on this planet every moment of every day. . . and (collectively) we don't even wince.
Earlier this week, there was a campus-wide email sent from the campus student health service alerting everyone that a child, who had recently participated an an event held on campus, had the chicken pox. It was warning everyone who might possibly have been in the vicinity of this child, who had not been vaccinated for chicken pox, to take steps to protect themselves.
So, what's odd about that? Certainly seems like good, responsible behavior on everyone's part: the reporting of the illness, the sending of the email, the heeding of the email's warnings. We can't have something like chicken pox, which we had almost eradicated in this country via the systematic immunization of our children, being allowed to spread unchecked amongst us.
Here's my point. As a mythology-bound group, we are trying to hard to keep ourselves alive!
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
How to Make Sense of It All
Yesterday, as I was walking to work from the bus, I was in my head with my own personal troubles. I was not feeling very peaceful and certainly not joyful. Right behind Meany Hall there is a landscaped bank with tulip trees and small pines. The tulip trees' blossoms are all but spent now, so they don't as easily call to my inwardly turned eyes.
I was given one of those awarenesses just as I came to the stand of pines. I suddenly became aware that I was preoccupied, and that there was the possibility of a choice to me made about that. At that moment I looked out and saw the pines . . . which were laughing. I'm sure of it.
They were laughing flowers, and you know how contagious a laugh can be.
So, just as suddenly, I was out and laughing, laughing and amazing at the flowers just now coming out on the branch tips of these joyful pines. And I was amazed that for so many years I never even noticed that pines flower.
. . . and I was home. In that moment, I was home; and my personal troubles were not so troublesome anymore.
As the day went on, I became preoccupied again. This time with the stuff of my job. It was an exceptionally busy day, lots of important stuff that needed my attention.
Then about two o'clock, I decided to take the lost & found over to the HUB. It was just the next thing that needed doing. I don't usually do it. Someone else usually does it. But it seemed the right thing for me to do. And it was the time when we usually do it.
I walked out onto the broad brick path connecting Allen Library to the HUB, out from under the sheltering arcade between Allen's two wings . . . it had rained. All was damp and puddled. The smell of the rained on earth and grasses and trees, and maybe even the smell of wet birds and squirrels and insects and bacteria. I don't know what. It was that smell the rain brings even to the bricks and the people and umbrellas walking by. It was the smell . . . and I was home again. And I was laughing.
How strange that we live these lives so preoccupied, so lost in our thoughts and jumbled feelings, so unaware most of the time that we are preoccupied.
Then just as suddenly the awareness comes. We're home. Where have we been the rest of the time --most of the time.
How very strange to live this way.
And even stranger to be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt (most of the time) that what we are preoccupied with is more important than being home.
Hear this as it's given, please.
Not a place--home.
Being home.
Being the home that life is in us when we join in our awareness with all else that life expresses around us and within us.
I was given one of those awarenesses just as I came to the stand of pines. I suddenly became aware that I was preoccupied, and that there was the possibility of a choice to me made about that. At that moment I looked out and saw the pines . . . which were laughing. I'm sure of it.
They were laughing flowers, and you know how contagious a laugh can be.
So, just as suddenly, I was out and laughing, laughing and amazing at the flowers just now coming out on the branch tips of these joyful pines. And I was amazed that for so many years I never even noticed that pines flower.
. . . and I was home. In that moment, I was home; and my personal troubles were not so troublesome anymore.
As the day went on, I became preoccupied again. This time with the stuff of my job. It was an exceptionally busy day, lots of important stuff that needed my attention.
Then about two o'clock, I decided to take the lost & found over to the HUB. It was just the next thing that needed doing. I don't usually do it. Someone else usually does it. But it seemed the right thing for me to do. And it was the time when we usually do it.
I walked out onto the broad brick path connecting Allen Library to the HUB, out from under the sheltering arcade between Allen's two wings . . . it had rained. All was damp and puddled. The smell of the rained on earth and grasses and trees, and maybe even the smell of wet birds and squirrels and insects and bacteria. I don't know what. It was that smell the rain brings even to the bricks and the people and umbrellas walking by. It was the smell . . . and I was home again. And I was laughing.
How strange that we live these lives so preoccupied, so lost in our thoughts and jumbled feelings, so unaware most of the time that we are preoccupied.
Then just as suddenly the awareness comes. We're home. Where have we been the rest of the time --most of the time.
How very strange to live this way.
And even stranger to be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt (most of the time) that what we are preoccupied with is more important than being home.
Hear this as it's given, please.
Not a place--home.
Being home.
Being the home that life is in us when we join in our awareness with all else that life expresses around us and within us.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
We Expect Too Much of Ourselves, Continued
What impact does all this human-is-all-that-matters meme have on our relationships with each other?
We seem to have a genetic proclivity to seek out otherness. Here's what David Abram says about this:
I've heard a story that in China the nandina plant (aka heavenly or sacred bamboo) was once planted outside every home, so that the head of the household could go to it to complain and share his problems. When I was a child, there were certain moods (usually a sadness or acute aloneness, I think) that could only be addressed by my climbing a tree. Have you ever found in yourself the very real feeling-need to be outside, to see the mountains, to see and feel and smell and taste the ocean, to be in the woods?
Does this not sound (and feel) intimate, when you stop and think about it?
It's a warm Summer's day. You're lying on your back in an open meadow. The grasses are tickling your bare legs and arms, as are the insects traversing your skin. The earth supports and holds you. You take in all that there is with your nose and your eyes and ears and skin. The clouds drift slowly across the sky. Insects and birds move through the space between you and those cottony forms of earth breath.
You feel, smell, hear and see all this.
Does it occur to you that what you see also sees you? What you smell also smells you? What you hear also hears you? What you touch and feel also feels you? You feel your body against the grass, against the earth. Does not the grass and the earth also feel you? Do the insects and birds also see you? Might not the clouds, which are in part vapor of your own breath, also have some awareness of you watching them float through your field of vision?
Notice how difficult it is to allow that other entities (things that exist) have awareness, too, especially those which, in our inveterate anthropomorphizing, we call inanimate (without life. Really? Without life? What incredible arrogance!).
If we don't allow ourselves to know this, to allow this reality to be real to us, then we continue to cut ourselves off from the awareness that our lives are intimate with all else with which we share this planet. We bring all these very real and biological needs to our relationships with each other, both casual and otherwise. We become incapable of real intimacy with each other because our needs are too great. We are not allowing ourselves to be nourished by the all the otherness which surrounds us and instead continue to suckle at the sore and weary breast of our emaciated version of humanity.
We seem to have a genetic proclivity to seek out otherness. Here's what David Abram says about this:
Humans are tuned for relationship. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears, and nostrils--all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness. This landscape of shadowed voices, these feathered bodies and antlers and tumbling streams--these breathing shapes are our family, the beings with whom we are engaged, with whom we struggle and suffer and celebrate. For the largest part of our species' existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of the sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every flapping form, with each textured surface and shivering entity that we happened to focus upon. All could speak, articulating in gesture and whistle and sigh a shifting web of meanings that we felt on our skin or inhaled through our nostrils or focused with our listening ears, and to which we replied--whether with sounds, or through movements, or minute shifts of mood. The color of sky, the rush of waves--every aspect of the earthly sensuous could draw us into a relationship fed with curiosity and spiced with danger. Every sound was a voice, every scrape or blunder was a meeting--with Thunder, with Oak, with Drangonfly. And from all of these relationships our collective sensibilities were nourished.
What happens when we attempt to satisfy all our relationship needs via the human realm? What expectations do we bring to our relationships with each other--expectations we have about ourselves and expectations we have about other humans? What are the consequences of exclusive intimacy with each other and with those animals we've humanized and incorporated into our families?- David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, Vantage Books, 1997, page ix
I've heard a story that in China the nandina plant (aka heavenly or sacred bamboo) was once planted outside every home, so that the head of the household could go to it to complain and share his problems. When I was a child, there were certain moods (usually a sadness or acute aloneness, I think) that could only be addressed by my climbing a tree. Have you ever found in yourself the very real feeling-need to be outside, to see the mountains, to see and feel and smell and taste the ocean, to be in the woods?
Does this not sound (and feel) intimate, when you stop and think about it?
It's a warm Summer's day. You're lying on your back in an open meadow. The grasses are tickling your bare legs and arms, as are the insects traversing your skin. The earth supports and holds you. You take in all that there is with your nose and your eyes and ears and skin. The clouds drift slowly across the sky. Insects and birds move through the space between you and those cottony forms of earth breath.
You feel, smell, hear and see all this.
Does it occur to you that what you see also sees you? What you smell also smells you? What you hear also hears you? What you touch and feel also feels you? You feel your body against the grass, against the earth. Does not the grass and the earth also feel you? Do the insects and birds also see you? Might not the clouds, which are in part vapor of your own breath, also have some awareness of you watching them float through your field of vision?
Notice how difficult it is to allow that other entities (things that exist) have awareness, too, especially those which, in our inveterate anthropomorphizing, we call inanimate (without life. Really? Without life? What incredible arrogance!).
If we don't allow ourselves to know this, to allow this reality to be real to us, then we continue to cut ourselves off from the awareness that our lives are intimate with all else with which we share this planet. We bring all these very real and biological needs to our relationships with each other, both casual and otherwise. We become incapable of real intimacy with each other because our needs are too great. We are not allowing ourselves to be nourished by the all the otherness which surrounds us and instead continue to suckle at the sore and weary breast of our emaciated version of humanity.
Also, and perhaps all the more, all the others which are our family here are starving for the lack of us and our intimate awareness and conscious reciprocity.
Monday, April 19, 2010
We Expect Too Much of Ourselves
Referencing where I left off in the last posting: when we started down the path of human primacy (actually, down the human-is-all-there-is path) one of the inadvertent effects has been that we expect too much of ourselves and of each other. We've come to expect that humans can (and should) provide whatever is needed for humans.
Let's look at this particular error for a moment, as though it could stand alone under our scrutiny, without having to take every other error or our kind into account. At the deepest level, our cultural mythology has told us that not only do humans represent the pinnacle of evolution on this planet, but that we, in all likelihood, represent the pinnacle of evolution in the universe. I mean, come on, after all this time have you ever actually met an extraterrestrial being or seen irrefutable evidence on television that such really and truly do exist? (I don't know the emoticon for sarcasm.)
But wait, there's more. We're not really even sure that we as physical beings are the pinnacle of anything. It's our minds, our thoughts, our ideas that represent this ultimatism. The body, after all, seems to be the great limiter of our imaginations. If only we didn't have to have one. (Look deeply now. It's not your own personal beliefs I'm calling into question here. Listen for the cultural voice silently speaking inside your own head about all this. Try to hear what that voice says about this.)
Our bodies, we know, are made up of the same stuff as the rest of the planet. Even without science we believed this to be true.
Ah, but then there's our mind, our ideas and our ideals. Oh, what we could be if only this earthy stuff didn't hold us back. If only there really weren't any rules, any limitations, anything other than our ideas to be concerned about, only the stuff inside our heads.
So, let us spend all our nows looking only at the projection of our collective thoughts on screens of various sizes. Let us only listen to the audio representations of these thoughts over speakers great and small. Let us only taste the tastes manufactured by us, the smells we've created, and feel only that which we've created as comfort. In our eyes. In our ears. On our tongues. In our noses. On our skin.
Our technology has become the realest expression of this human-centered mind. We now only interact, by and large, if not exclusively, with ourselves, with each other, and with our creations. We have, in that very real sense, become our technology. You've heard or made these comments: I need a memory upgrade. I wish I could reboot myself. I need to download my/your brain. And the beat goes on.
Go outside now (or soon, very soon).
Listen around.
Smell around.
Feel around.
Taste around.
Look around.
Allow yourself to notice that which is not human or human-related.
It's there, even in the most densely populated and built-up part of a large city: growing in the cracks of the pavement, drifting in the air between the human-produced smells and tastes, underneath, above and between the human-made sounds, close-up and beyond.
Allow the relationship that already is with all these things be felt and known by you.
Let's look at this particular error for a moment, as though it could stand alone under our scrutiny, without having to take every other error or our kind into account. At the deepest level, our cultural mythology has told us that not only do humans represent the pinnacle of evolution on this planet, but that we, in all likelihood, represent the pinnacle of evolution in the universe. I mean, come on, after all this time have you ever actually met an extraterrestrial being or seen irrefutable evidence on television that such really and truly do exist? (I don't know the emoticon for sarcasm.)
But wait, there's more. We're not really even sure that we as physical beings are the pinnacle of anything. It's our minds, our thoughts, our ideas that represent this ultimatism. The body, after all, seems to be the great limiter of our imaginations. If only we didn't have to have one. (Look deeply now. It's not your own personal beliefs I'm calling into question here. Listen for the cultural voice silently speaking inside your own head about all this. Try to hear what that voice says about this.)
Our bodies, we know, are made up of the same stuff as the rest of the planet. Even without science we believed this to be true.
Ah, but then there's our mind, our ideas and our ideals. Oh, what we could be if only this earthy stuff didn't hold us back. If only there really weren't any rules, any limitations, anything other than our ideas to be concerned about, only the stuff inside our heads.
So, let us spend all our nows looking only at the projection of our collective thoughts on screens of various sizes. Let us only listen to the audio representations of these thoughts over speakers great and small. Let us only taste the tastes manufactured by us, the smells we've created, and feel only that which we've created as comfort. In our eyes. In our ears. On our tongues. In our noses. On our skin.
Our technology has become the realest expression of this human-centered mind. We now only interact, by and large, if not exclusively, with ourselves, with each other, and with our creations. We have, in that very real sense, become our technology. You've heard or made these comments: I need a memory upgrade. I wish I could reboot myself. I need to download my/your brain. And the beat goes on.
Go outside now (or soon, very soon).
Listen around.
Smell around.
Feel around.
Taste around.
Look around.
Allow yourself to notice that which is not human or human-related.
It's there, even in the most densely populated and built-up part of a large city: growing in the cracks of the pavement, drifting in the air between the human-produced smells and tastes, underneath, above and between the human-made sounds, close-up and beyond.
Allow the relationship that already is with all these things be felt and known by you.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Personal
It seems to me that one of the hallmarks of this culture of ours is this idea of the personal.
The personal.
In my private counseling practice there have been a number of occasions when I heard myself say to someone, "You know, regardless of how it feels to you, life simply isn't personal."
But let's not argue this point philosophically now, lest we get lost in an intellectual exercise (and I love a good intellectual exercise).
Instead, think about yourself. Think about the people you know, the people you see, the people you interact with. If we were somehow able to be completely honest with ourselves, how would be answer the question: what is the greatest overall preoccupation in your life?
I would aver that the most honest response would be: my life, how I'm doing. When you see someone you know, and you say hello to them, how often do you say, Hi. How you doin'? Or, How's it going? (I always assume that 'it' means my life.)
Look at the words we use so routinely: your life, my life. Consider the very fact that the only pronoun we always capitalize is 'I.'
I think this is one of those cultural memes that is very difficult for us to get outside of. My grasp of it feels very slippery to me even as I try to write this piece.
If we did not take life as personal, if we were not concerned with ourselves, our own lives, what would we be concerned with.
In The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, he discusses the evolution of the written alphabet, a thing we all generally take completely for granted. I mean, what are you and I doing right now if not taking a written alphabet for granted?
Now, I'm not going to do this justice, so you'll simply have to read the book: When humans, in our attempt to be able to write what we say, developed a system of symbols which were completely abstracted from the real, physical world, and only related to the sounds the human voice can make, our language became totally and completely human-centric. We were not using symbols that in any way signified any real objects or natural sounds (other than the human voice). Our written, then our oral speech became something that was only human-related. It no longer in any way, other than by abstract reference, connected us with the rest of the world.
Moreover, our ability to write our voice meant that we could also read what we (and others) wrote, but always as a monologue within ourselves. Whenever we read something, we are essentially talking to ourselves, even if we 'know' that someone else wrote what we are reading. It is our voice, inside our heads that is speaking silently what we are reading.
More than ever before, speaking, writing, and reading humans became abstract from each other and even from themselves. There were no longer any real external reference points for our lives. We were relative only to ourselves.
Prior to this universal abstraction of ourselves and the world we live in, our languages, our communications, our thoughts were not quite so personal, not all the time, not obsessively. They were relative. They related to the real, physical world in which we were inextricably embedded and at home in.
The personal.
In my private counseling practice there have been a number of occasions when I heard myself say to someone, "You know, regardless of how it feels to you, life simply isn't personal."
But let's not argue this point philosophically now, lest we get lost in an intellectual exercise (and I love a good intellectual exercise).
Instead, think about yourself. Think about the people you know, the people you see, the people you interact with. If we were somehow able to be completely honest with ourselves, how would be answer the question: what is the greatest overall preoccupation in your life?
I would aver that the most honest response would be: my life, how I'm doing. When you see someone you know, and you say hello to them, how often do you say, Hi. How you doin'? Or, How's it going? (I always assume that 'it' means my life.)
Look at the words we use so routinely: your life, my life. Consider the very fact that the only pronoun we always capitalize is 'I.'
I think this is one of those cultural memes that is very difficult for us to get outside of. My grasp of it feels very slippery to me even as I try to write this piece.
If we did not take life as personal, if we were not concerned with ourselves, our own lives, what would we be concerned with.
In The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, he discusses the evolution of the written alphabet, a thing we all generally take completely for granted. I mean, what are you and I doing right now if not taking a written alphabet for granted?
Now, I'm not going to do this justice, so you'll simply have to read the book: When humans, in our attempt to be able to write what we say, developed a system of symbols which were completely abstracted from the real, physical world, and only related to the sounds the human voice can make, our language became totally and completely human-centric. We were not using symbols that in any way signified any real objects or natural sounds (other than the human voice). Our written, then our oral speech became something that was only human-related. It no longer in any way, other than by abstract reference, connected us with the rest of the world.
Moreover, our ability to write our voice meant that we could also read what we (and others) wrote, but always as a monologue within ourselves. Whenever we read something, we are essentially talking to ourselves, even if we 'know' that someone else wrote what we are reading. It is our voice, inside our heads that is speaking silently what we are reading.
More than ever before, speaking, writing, and reading humans became abstract from each other and even from themselves. There were no longer any real external reference points for our lives. We were relative only to ourselves.
Prior to this universal abstraction of ourselves and the world we live in, our languages, our communications, our thoughts were not quite so personal, not all the time, not obsessively. They were relative. They related to the real, physical world in which we were inextricably embedded and at home in.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Posting from Mark Kelly
Mark is a co-worker here at the library, someone with whom I've had many conversations that would feel right at home in this blog. He helped with exhibit that spawned this blog; he helped to conceptualize it. Mark is assiduous in his attention to detail and in his love for getting it 'right.' In keeping with all that, he was helping someone who had inquired about the poster of various quotes that were part of the exhibit. Here is his email about his work on preparing those quotes for that person and a link to the wonderful results of his work.
I added more details to the quotations to indicate their exact source when possible. There are two major corrections. Gary Snyder's poem is widely misquoted so I journeyed to the source (we have a copy of Songs for Gaia in Special Collections). I have provided the correct wording and formatting. Also, the quotation widely attributed to Theodore Roszak about technology destroying human community is actually taken from the book, The Sibling Society, by Robert Bly.
A patron had stopped by the information desk and requested copies of the quotations about a month ago. That inspired me to compile them together on one sheet and to find their sources before sending them on. It was a task that gave me great pleasure, as it allowed me to further ponder their original contexts and their meanings. Here's an excerpt from the email I sent to the patron referring to our discussions of the quotations: "I hope you enjoy revisiting these thought-provoking quotations. We have enjoyed exploring their meanings and resonances, even though many of them are sobering and heart-breaking."
Thanks again to you, Adam, for choreographing the images and thoughts in the exhibit posters. If one has an appetite for the truth and desires real food for thought, these quotations are nutritious morsels of reality!
----------------- Mark
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Birthdays
I've made several references in this blog to time and the central relevance of this concept to our culture.
This is the time of year when many people I know celebrate (or simply have) birthdays. A couple of weeks ago I attended someone's 99th birthday party.
When I was a child, and perhaps into my young adulthood, I looked forward to the celebration of my own birthday with some excitement, wanting the recognition of friends and family and the usual gifts I could anticipate.
As I've gotten older, the idea of celebrating a birthday, mine or anyone else's, has just made less and less sense to me. Now, as I've become able to question more and more the mythology of our culture, I understand the context for why we acknowledge birthdays as we do; and it seems very much to be a tradition worthy of our doubt-full scrutiny.
To celebrate the time of one's own or someone else's birth, the historic fact of a person's being born, really seems to serve the ulterior purpose of perpetually placing our lives in time. I, you, we were born at a certain point in time which gives our lives a time-determined trajectory--counting the years, moving ever forward in age (time), ever moving away from birth toward death. As I get older (have more birthdays under my belt), I become more and more aware that there will also be a death date.
Now there's certainly nothing wrong with that...if ours were a culture that also celebrated death.
What to celebrate, then, that would not keep us locked into the march of time?
I had an interesting experience the other day while walking through Lincoln Park with my dog. We were just passing under a canopy of firs and cedars when quite suddenly a big flock of crows descended into the branches only 15 or 20 feet above our heads, cawing loudly and making all kinds of wonderful crow ruckus. It felt very personal to me. I didn't think about it. I just felt intentionally included in this amazing event. I felt invited. My heart jumped up and down. I laughed out loud...like the crow I was at that moment.
Some days later we found ourselves walking along the same stretch of path. I remembered what we had experienced there. It was different, though. I wasn't remembering it in terms of time. It wasn't important when it happened, just that it happened. I was remembering it, celebrating it, in terms of the place where it occurred.
What are the ways we can challenge the hold time has over our lives? We can allow ourselves to begin to remember, celebrate the place where something happened that changed us... not the time when it occurred.
Imagine someone asking you one day how old you are...
and you honestly don't know.
This is the time of year when many people I know celebrate (or simply have) birthdays. A couple of weeks ago I attended someone's 99th birthday party.
When I was a child, and perhaps into my young adulthood, I looked forward to the celebration of my own birthday with some excitement, wanting the recognition of friends and family and the usual gifts I could anticipate.
As I've gotten older, the idea of celebrating a birthday, mine or anyone else's, has just made less and less sense to me. Now, as I've become able to question more and more the mythology of our culture, I understand the context for why we acknowledge birthdays as we do; and it seems very much to be a tradition worthy of our doubt-full scrutiny.
To celebrate the time of one's own or someone else's birth, the historic fact of a person's being born, really seems to serve the ulterior purpose of perpetually placing our lives in time. I, you, we were born at a certain point in time which gives our lives a time-determined trajectory--counting the years, moving ever forward in age (time), ever moving away from birth toward death. As I get older (have more birthdays under my belt), I become more and more aware that there will also be a death date.
Now there's certainly nothing wrong with that...if ours were a culture that also celebrated death.
What to celebrate, then, that would not keep us locked into the march of time?
I had an interesting experience the other day while walking through Lincoln Park with my dog. We were just passing under a canopy of firs and cedars when quite suddenly a big flock of crows descended into the branches only 15 or 20 feet above our heads, cawing loudly and making all kinds of wonderful crow ruckus. It felt very personal to me. I didn't think about it. I just felt intentionally included in this amazing event. I felt invited. My heart jumped up and down. I laughed out loud...like the crow I was at that moment.
Some days later we found ourselves walking along the same stretch of path. I remembered what we had experienced there. It was different, though. I wasn't remembering it in terms of time. It wasn't important when it happened, just that it happened. I was remembering it, celebrating it, in terms of the place where it occurred.
What are the ways we can challenge the hold time has over our lives? We can allow ourselves to begin to remember, celebrate the place where something happened that changed us... not the time when it occurred.
Imagine someone asking you one day how old you are...
and you honestly don't know.
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