100105 07:19 {unknown at the time - this is the first meditation of three}
I believe in love.
I awoke after 4 hours of sleep, rested yet in turmoil over a dream in which I experienced apocalyptic rage wrath astonishing in that it went both ways; a dialog. Typically when I have dreams of such severity I arise like a . . . well there is a speed, we are capable of, that surpasses all analogies, similes, metaphors, similitude. The speed of sound, or light, is nothing compared to the speed with which we address/assess threat and respond to it.
The speed of thought?
I have an experiential method of assessing the truth of my dreams, carefully constructed from infancy. But I am not concerned with dreams now, since I was lead through the past 7.5 hours to this moment of writing up a postmortem/after action report.
We are about to be divorced from our Parent, God.
Our relationship is being abandoned as a hopeless failure. I know God will be fine but we will suffer tragically, as do all the children of divorce.
I know this from my childhood being abandoned for the agenda of my parents. I know myself, not alone in this, for the Second World War made many of us orphans and thus we are in the majority seeking safety where none is available. The world made safe from holocaust became unsafe for all children afterwards.
Written within us is certainty of love and terror of never finding it.
I advocate that we can find safety together. Considering myself a steward attempting to make passengers comfortable in the final moments before the crash and our mutual, meaningless, death--inevitable. I have no authority, long to be wrong, yet having been trained by everything in my life, up to this moment, am certain that this is what I have life for.
Understanding one’s self--“An unexamined life is not worth living”--is a primary task for we who want a life and love--of value. In, of and for itself.
I know, and can argue, the defense of life’s right to exist and thrive through the agency of many belief systems and philosophies. The best defense is within you yet it has no meaning definable in our communal life about to be extinguished.
“ 21:52
I have looked for signs, omens and portents that I was in error in what I previously wrote. I have been gently reproved through the agency of friends, further study and a decision to use my “school of hard knocks” education to minister to the dying in our local Hospice, where they may only need me to be a door person.
Continued . . .
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Let the shadowless light bathe and immolate us in love for one another incandescent.
100105 21:55
When Randy died I experienced relief, not for me, or him, but us both.
I continue in my awareness and gratitude the gifts of The Cranston Funeral Home. Dave carrying Randy down, cruciform--arms outstretched--down a narrow, corkscrew stair--the last time I saw Randy’s face. He was finally in peace.
We requested no embalming his body since he’d been, in life, a human pincushion.
Patty Cranston called, later on, to say that he was dressed and she’d set candles around him. We didn’t go. They, the Cranston family, donated a burial plot, and head stone, in their family grave site. Gave a Styrofoam coffin, and buried him for free; we were that poor then. I have always found peace in cemeteries, I still do. Yet the next day when he was buried I fell to the ground in uncontrollable grief. I remained in grief for 33 years until, at or around, his 43rd birthday, had he lived.
I will spare you the farther details of my life and instead dwell upon ours about to expire.
It may merely be my death song, this concern the world’s end, mine alone.
An event un-remarked since there will be none left to sing the eulogy.
As for my last request I will be cremated and my ashes spread upon the desert--no words requested or required--no marker unless my beloved friend is otherwise occupied and places the plain brown box with my ashes in a plastic bag in the nearest dumpster.
We are born alone and die alone in the final equality of death, and no marker significant will withstand the sands of time grinding it back into dust along with us.
Death slow, swift, meaningful or meaningless, does not diminishes the nobility I experience in all of you and all our life here and now.
The Gifts of God are magnificent as you are, or allow yourself to be; generous or penurious. I curse no one now yet know the wrath of myself too well to forget it. Forgiveness is a wealth that few give and fewer receive and acknowledging the author.
Let the shadowless light bathe and immolate us in love for one another incandescent.
In closing I can only record, this date, this hour, that I was lead to read John Donne’s “Meditation XVII”
‘for whom the bell tolls’ it tolls for us. Now. Tomorrow. This year or next, inevitably, life has no meaning without death.
Continued . . .
When Randy died I experienced relief, not for me, or him, but us both.
I continue in my awareness and gratitude the gifts of The Cranston Funeral Home. Dave carrying Randy down, cruciform--arms outstretched--down a narrow, corkscrew stair--the last time I saw Randy’s face. He was finally in peace.
We requested no embalming his body since he’d been, in life, a human pincushion.
Patty Cranston called, later on, to say that he was dressed and she’d set candles around him. We didn’t go. They, the Cranston family, donated a burial plot, and head stone, in their family grave site. Gave a Styrofoam coffin, and buried him for free; we were that poor then. I have always found peace in cemeteries, I still do. Yet the next day when he was buried I fell to the ground in uncontrollable grief. I remained in grief for 33 years until, at or around, his 43rd birthday, had he lived.
I will spare you the farther details of my life and instead dwell upon ours about to expire.
It may merely be my death song, this concern the world’s end, mine alone.
An event un-remarked since there will be none left to sing the eulogy.
As for my last request I will be cremated and my ashes spread upon the desert--no words requested or required--no marker unless my beloved friend is otherwise occupied and places the plain brown box with my ashes in a plastic bag in the nearest dumpster.
We are born alone and die alone in the final equality of death, and no marker significant will withstand the sands of time grinding it back into dust along with us.
Death slow, swift, meaningful or meaningless, does not diminishes the nobility I experience in all of you and all our life here and now.
The Gifts of God are magnificent as you are, or allow yourself to be; generous or penurious. I curse no one now yet know the wrath of myself too well to forget it. Forgiveness is a wealth that few give and fewer receive and acknowledging the author.
Let the shadowless light bathe and immolate us in love for one another incandescent.
In closing I can only record, this date, this hour, that I was lead to read John Donne’s “Meditation XVII”
‘for whom the bell tolls’ it tolls for us. Now. Tomorrow. This year or next, inevitably, life has no meaning without death.
Continued . . .
. . . for whom the bell tolls . . . John Donne
Meditation XVII
XVII. MEDITATION.
PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.
XVII. MEDITATION.
PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.
Be that now . . . having something of love’s energy now
100105 22:51
We are made of such stuff as the stars are made and have significance in the Universe.
This is my truth and for that I celebrate all my life knowing now that the suffering seasoned my tranquility the end of us all, now or in the latter future.
I have gratitude for publishing records of my surprise and delight in words and images. Yet I am now lead to fully immerse my life in the flowing torrent around me through community. To walk the walk instead of talking about it is a greater wealth, and I am now hungry for that. Where I once thought myself terrible, bizarre, gimp, unacceptable for a host of things. I am reminded of the daughter whose death I sailed through, overtly, with ease.
In my imagining, then and now, I see myself naked carrying her into the elements for her peace and death without indignity. To die with her would have been better than the choice not to. Perhaps better yet would have been to attend her life, such as it was, given Spina Bifida and a brain tissue paper thin. To allow her the grace of my attention and touch. For that choice I linger in grief unassailable. It is nearly impossible for me to give or receive forgiveness. Yet I remain alive and do not know why?
I am especially conscious of my adopted daughter and her daughter, my granddaughter. Their silence is at times crushing. Squashed I arise time and again knowing my love is unconquerable.
Turn and turn about, chasing my tail in confusion, at times enraged, enslaved and deaf, dumb, silent, a victim . . . churning myself into butter melted and disappeared. Yet I remain advocate that there is safety, sanity and tranquility available for all.
We can do that together.
I will soon be the dust I have, for a lifetime, longed to be.
The language will change, possibly disappear, along with our species to witness anything in bodily form. Yet the truth of God will remain and all is well in that.
For me?
Yes!
For you I am uncertain, and at times, in anguish, cry out against injustice masquerading Truth.
There is no fear or waste in the effort to seek yourself as created. Once revealed, or discovered, there is no reason to hoard that since to give is to receive more.
The math is simple. We use and live by 10% the other 90% is idle . . . of course I refer to our individual internal wealth. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you” I believe, have faith in, and love through that truth and experience. I have heard, but make no reference to, other than to report, you can be blessed either way.
Why wait? Be that now in life, having something of love’s energy now.
We are made of such stuff as the stars are made and have significance in the Universe.
This is my truth and for that I celebrate all my life knowing now that the suffering seasoned my tranquility the end of us all, now or in the latter future.
I have gratitude for publishing records of my surprise and delight in words and images. Yet I am now lead to fully immerse my life in the flowing torrent around me through community. To walk the walk instead of talking about it is a greater wealth, and I am now hungry for that. Where I once thought myself terrible, bizarre, gimp, unacceptable for a host of things. I am reminded of the daughter whose death I sailed through, overtly, with ease.
In my imagining, then and now, I see myself naked carrying her into the elements for her peace and death without indignity. To die with her would have been better than the choice not to. Perhaps better yet would have been to attend her life, such as it was, given Spina Bifida and a brain tissue paper thin. To allow her the grace of my attention and touch. For that choice I linger in grief unassailable. It is nearly impossible for me to give or receive forgiveness. Yet I remain alive and do not know why?
I am especially conscious of my adopted daughter and her daughter, my granddaughter. Their silence is at times crushing. Squashed I arise time and again knowing my love is unconquerable.
Turn and turn about, chasing my tail in confusion, at times enraged, enslaved and deaf, dumb, silent, a victim . . . churning myself into butter melted and disappeared. Yet I remain advocate that there is safety, sanity and tranquility available for all.
We can do that together.
I will soon be the dust I have, for a lifetime, longed to be.
The language will change, possibly disappear, along with our species to witness anything in bodily form. Yet the truth of God will remain and all is well in that.
For me?
Yes!
For you I am uncertain, and at times, in anguish, cry out against injustice masquerading Truth.
There is no fear or waste in the effort to seek yourself as created. Once revealed, or discovered, there is no reason to hoard that since to give is to receive more.
The math is simple. We use and live by 10% the other 90% is idle . . . of course I refer to our individual internal wealth. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you” I believe, have faith in, and love through that truth and experience. I have heard, but make no reference to, other than to report, you can be blessed either way.
Why wait? Be that now in life, having something of love’s energy now.
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