Luminescence of the Ordinary

Growing Into Your Loving

I turned sixty-five in 2017 with little fanfare as has been the case since my forties. It was October. To celebrate, I went to a hot springs spa to swim laps outdoors then read in the sun. Heaven. Aging is like a favorite piece of clothing that keeps feeling better next to the skin over time but conversely shows the wear and tear of living to the rest of the world. The main character in the film The Great Beauty says, The most important thing I discovered a few days after turning sixty-five is that I can’t waste any more time doing things I don’t want to do. Time felt like forever while growing up with endless horizons of possibility. Now, the landscape has changed, the number of days less infinite and more precious.

About a year ago, I awoke in the middle of the night to the swirl and splash of red and blue lights coming from an ambulance in a neighbor’s driveway. The lights lasted for almost two hours leaving a sudden blur of seriousness. The next day over the phone, the neighbor almost matter-of-factly told me that his wife had died due to an enlarged heart that could no longer go on. I took the matter-of-factness to be an indication of shock. They had thought it was just the flu. She and I had worked together on a board for one year so we spoke almost daily during that time. Due to this one interrupted night, there’s now an empty space where I once held on to a friendship. The poet Stanley Kunitz posed a question in his poem The Layers that I keep repeating to myself: How shall the heart be reconciled/ to its feast of losses?

The only time I ever got to say goodbye to someone knowing it would be the last was with my father as he lay in a coma in his eighty-ninth year. We had a fraught relationship as I grew up. Years ago, I started to do serious inner work through reading and therapy. Seeing my parents for the first time as flawed human beings, like the rest of us, was my initiation into true adulthood. As the Buddha once allegedly said, To understand everything is to forgive everything. Will I ever fully understand my parents and their own childhoods, both living through the Great Depression and World War II and later raising a family of four children without any of the psychological and communication tools now available? Probably not, but I can try. This partial understanding is what changed my relationship with my father so that we could speak openly and with caring during the later years of his life. It was from this place that I visited him for the last time. My family has never been dramatic under any circumstances so I was not prepared for the tsunami of sensations taking place. Like an unexpected blessing, a well of feeling erupted that crystallized into gratitude, regardless of history, for my very breath and the gift of life given to me by my mother and father. I kissed my father on his forehead, said goodbye, and walked outside as I drowned in my own feelings. My world would never be the same.

About every other month, I have play dates with a dear friend. Ada was then five. She sent me a Christmas card where she wrote Ricky Roo, I love you a couple of times as practice with her new handwriting. When we are together, we really play. This isn’t about supervision but about simply having close to unbridled fun with someone who is yet to be encumbered with cultural beliefs, the indoctrination of education and the heartache of suffering. To be reminded through this playing of the joy of unconditional love is one of the great pleasures of being alive, a way to compensate for the loss of my father and friends.

It’s Christmas Eve, a wonderful time for reflection. Here’s a list of some of my favorite things in no particular order: nature, dogeared books, the scent of sage after a summer rain, immersion in the silky texture of water, children playing, the incredible softness of my young son’s hair resting against my skin as he slept, anything baked from scratch, Bill Evan’s version of My Foolish Heart, the barn raising scene in the film Witness, African dance, guitar playing, fireworks, Thai food, open roads, the salt flats during low tide on Cape Cod Bay in September, conversations with my mother (age 96) every week by phone, my sister’s easy laugh, the early morning and late afternoon light in the Southwest, the sound of a kora, ho’oponopono, Albert King singing As The Years Go Passing By, cold nights with flannel sheets, the smell of plumeria and gardenia and jasmine, the miracle of touch, a kiss on the back of the neck, my dreams, a kind word, belly laughing and the poet Jane Kenyon’s gorgeous line: and God, as promised, proves / to be mercy clothed in light (Notes From The Other Side).

These connections within ourselves and with others create the fabric of our lives. With the joy of discovering and loving who you are comes the work of discerning what gets in the way of that loving and figuring out how not to waste any more time doing things I (you) don’t want to do. Then there is the joy of loving what you do. This is your art which encompasses any creative endeavor. Sometimes I wonder if being human is just about whether one is in their loving or not. And since we all fall out of that loving, what do we do to return? That may be the real work. Even at my age, I’m still looking for clues to help with the tools I’ve already learned.

Our Sphere of Influence

I still believe in the handmade world. I don’t own a smartphone and only use a flip phone while traveling. I have no subscriptions to television, streaming or otherwise. I never have the feeling that I’m missing something in the current zeitgeist. My news comes through the radio and online where I can scroll down a page to see where there might be something uplifting. As Paul Simon sang, I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.

While growing up in the Hudson Valley, there were just a handful of news outlets: three network television stations, a local newspaper, a local radio station and The New York Times. Only so much information could pass through these six outlets. Now it’s a cornucopia of news from hundreds of sources. Today’s news alone included flooding in California with casualties, ongoing war in the Middle East, record temperatures in Australia and the good news that North and South Korea are speaking to each other once again. I’ll be honest; there’s just too much information for my emotional body to take in, much less handle. How does one find relief?

My parents met and fell in love through ballroom dancing. This was the time of big band music when everyone moved to the sounds of jazz. Their love of dance may have been the seed for my own life. A community of friends was created through waltz, cha-cha, fox trot and swing. A world based on joy. I don’t know if I ever saw my parents happier. I used to teach African dance because I love the form and the energy that emanates from live drumming. Because Africans have never been hung up about perfect poise, the possibilities for delight are endless. People always remark about how I’m usually smiling when I dance. I’m never conscious of the fact but a smile is always infectious. To paraphrase the poet Gregory Orr, if the Divine didn’t want us to move, then why all this music?

I help coordinate a small organization which is involved with a new healing modality. One member had been complaining about the obsolescence of using snail mail to send checks to pay dues. He calls this old way of doing things the dark ages. I explained to him recently that I know all of my postal workers on a first-name basis. Through these relationships, I also know about their aches and pains which gives me the opportunity to use the Hawaiian practice of ho’oponopono and to practice kindness. Spirituality through connection.

One of the great pleasures of the post office is the world of stamps that was taught to me by my grandfather. He used to collect whole sheets whenever a new stamp was released in the 1930s and 1940s. I still love the artwork, the histories and the imagination involved. Where else can one find beautiful art put to use on something as functional as paying a bill? Lately, I’ve been buying the stamps with Love spelled as skywriting and have been thinking about those stamps in the same way that Emoto Masaru used words like love and peace placed on a container of water to impact the structure of that water.

Beyond the stamps and the relationships at my post office, I can go one step further by mailing cards I’ve created with my photographs. Yes, I’ll still write notes by hand to a ninety-five-year-old friend who is not interested in owning a computer or using email. In a sense, we get to touch each other’s lives in a palpable way. My mother still sends me a note every week in her print style of correspondence. What a wonder it is to be able to walk in my mother’s words. A few years ago, I received a card from a woman with exquisite script writing. I’ve kept that card as a memory of a time when civility equalled that quality of that kind of penmanship. Does anyone write love letters anymore?

I’m not averse to technology at all. But I think that discernment needs to be used when it comes to all of the electronic tools at our disposal. I post my photos of nature on Facebook to remind my friends of a world that is much larger than politics, economics, disaster and celebrity. For me, the shot of a beautiful landscape, sunset or flower is like using a pause button on our busy lives. To my elderly friends, this window helps them to keep in touch with places that are no longer physically accessible. Nature is a wonderful antidote if you might be addicted to technology.

The handmade world isn’t interested in outcomes as much as slowing down to savor the moment. This mirrors the natural world which moves to its own rhythm regardless of technology. These worlds share their beauty without reservation. What are you doing to share your gifts with the world? The opportunities are unlimited. Through those gifts, a sphere of influence is created that impacts more than any of us can ever know. Even if we can’t see immediate results, seeds are being planted all of the time. I have great faith in those seeds and their potential to blossom into spheres of connection, blooms of loving.

Where Do You Put Your Attention?

We live in a time where our culture demands our attention, through catastrophic news, politics, economics, social media and entertainment. This has been amplified through the use of computers and smartphones. Since much of this information is external, the negative impact from this barrage on our individual inner lives has been profound. More than ever, sanity requires a healthy sense of discernment so that one doesn’t become overwhelmed. How many people do you know who answer the question, How are you? with anything other than Fine, Good, OK, Busy, Stressed, or Exhausted?

"(A)nd no one says How aren’t you?" (Rumi, Say Yes Quickly)

This information deluge is due not only to the connectivity of our devices but also to the larger fact that many of the older paradigms are changing drastically within