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.