Monday, December 18, 2006

Monday, December 18, 2006

The dog food incident

I stood on line for five or ten minutes, patiently awaiting my turn. There were two lovely young women- both in their twenties- doing the register and packing. I know them both by sight, having seen them many times.

The girl on the register is very attractive but given to wearing a bit too much makeup. This reveals a certain hidden insecurity. From her posture, however, I routinely see that she thinks quite highly of herself- she knows she's a beauty (at least with the right makeup, anyway) and is selling it. The fact that she's selling it, unconsciously, in the service of biology is immaterial. She thinks what she has belongs to her, and at that age it's normal. Only when time begins to visibly strip it from her line by line- in growing old, it's always the mirror that delivers us the cruelest of betrayals- will she realize everything she had was only out on loan.

The other one, the packer, is a blonde. She has things wrong with the way she looks: her nose is too big and it's crooked. She has that condition where one eye wanders off in its own direction, making her look wanky, and she's gawky, awkward and self-conscious. All in all, however, she looks remarkably sympathetic; her collection of flaws oddly trumps the standard aesthetic.

And those flaws bring wisdom, too: I think this one already knows a bit more. Life cheats us with the illusion that we're beautiful, and superhuman, but we're all just clumsy bags of skin and bone, grasping for things we cannot see with eyes that don't point straight.

As the opposing impressions of these two young women struck me I was overwhelmed by an emotion I cannot describe, and tears came into my eyes. I was touched by their youth, their innocence, and by the temporary nature of the moment. Here we all are, after all, the rich, the poor, the beautiful, the gangly and the middle aged, all participating in this mass event called life, and none of us really know what it is. It's drab, colorful, reassuring, confusing, alluring, and repelling, all at the same time.

And it all ends in death.

It was this temporariness that struck me the most, struck into my very bones in a tremor of inner gravity. From the moment we are born, each of us is a leaf hanging from the branch of life, just waiting to drop. I could feel the ground shaking under me, the branch shaking over me. Everything was somehow perfect, but there was no security in the midst of this perfection.

Incongruously, I began to sing the doxology softly, spontaneously, to myself.

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow

I don't know why I began to sing that but it seemed necessary when faced with this brief vision of perfect beauty so irrevocably rooted in the shadow of the valley of death.

My own mortality- the mortality of all that we are and everything around us which looks so vivid and alive- it weight upon my soul then. Somehow I briefly tasted not just my own death, but perhaps even- impossibly- death itself, in that moment.

I can't describe what it tasted like, but it called something forth from the depths of my soul, and that something was not despair, or fear, or horror.

It was praise.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Filling those cracks

There are days when everything seems very daily and ordinary. For me, today was one of them. I didn't have any superbly profound thoughts or ideas. I didn't collect any amazing world class experiences. I didn't achieve any special goals or write any excellent words or climb any steep hills. I just went ahead and lived my little old life.

So today wasn't special in the way most of us want days- and life in general- to be special. Sparse moments of stimulation separated by big cracks of ho-hum. Know what I mean?

But wait a minute. What's this about ho-hum? By now, surely I know better: ho-hum is hokum. It's my sleepy, inattentive self that ho-hums. The parts in me that work can always find something profitable to extract from time. They have to become pointed, however.

Directed.

There is a solid, saturated value to the day if I refer myself to the body I inhabit: the breathing in and out of air, the impression of colors- colors are quite remarkable, really, if I take the time to try and see them a bit deeper than just surface value- and the sensation I get as I touch things. Hey, even the green of the road signs on the New Jersey turnpike can be pretty darned interesting, all things considered.

This delicate sensibility, this immediate sense of contact with my life- that's special. But I need to do a number of things to help make that available for myself in a day.

First, I need to spend at least 30 minutes in prayer and meditation every morning. As it happens I have a quite structured routine for that but any routine will do as long as it includes having a routine.

The alternative to routine is chaos. Chaos is the enemy of discipline, and discipline is the architect of spiritual life. Yes, it means getting up early- but that's a good thing, because every waking moment, no matter how sleepy-eyed, is an opportunity to work on my response to my life.

Second, I need to have reminders during the day. Reminders to stop myself and come back to specifics. Now, that could take a lot of forms, but anything that works will do. The trick is to have ways to remind myself at least once an hour to stop for a moment- and then actually do it. I say that because to think of this is easy, but thinking does not constitute action. Instead, it convincingly poses as action, and if I am not careful, I buy right into this decoy and waste the precious ammunition of my attention on a wooden replica.

If I want to shoot the ducks, I have to point my attention in the right direction. I must demand this of myself- it takes a little extra. The more often one demands it, the more often it becomes possible.

The important thing to do here is to remember to make the demand and then act on it.

Third, I have to believe in my possibility, to want it. I must tell myself, I can take responsibility for my life. This idea of assuming responsibility is very important because for as long as my inner dialogue is one of negation, of believing that everything is impossible- or at any rate far too difficult- I'm not going to even bother trying very much.

I have to believe in myself.

So with some preparation, even the daily grind doesn't grind so much. Every day becomes an exercise in right valuation, beginning within. Its encounter with the outer may be tentative or tenuous most of the time, but it is at least a beginning.

All the centers inside us have their own individual ability to value this being, this life, so there is a terrific amount of support available if I learn how to solicit it. It takes time and effort to awaken those "extra" senses, but as more of my parts participate, ordinary life becomes much richer, more tangible.

On days like this, as I participate, gratitude seeps into the still moments.

Check it out: Gratitude is the best cement for filling cracks.