This discovery saddened me but didn't surprise me, since i've felt for quite some time that i've become an increasingly repetitive 'broken record' in my writing. But i'm also wondering if the illness (the 4th 'bug' i've had in the past 5 months, including my first case of COVID) is a manifestation of a deeper, underlying fatigue of feeling caught in a neverending cycle of crises & challenges in our world and my community and life in general (especially over the past 5 years or so). That sense of feeling stuck appears to be manifesting itself in my Body (in the form of a bug that renders me mostly listless) and my Psyche and Spirit (in the form of a general sense of mindless malaise). And it is heightened in the knowledge that so many more Beloveds are suffering so much extremely and viscerally than i am (which has only led me to continue staying focused on and connected with those Beloveds, to the detriment of my own health). And since the best (read: only) way for my Body to recover is by simply resting, i'm wondering if this illness is a way my Body is trying to communicate with my Psyche and Spirit as if to say it's time to stop writing/speaking/articulating/achieving my way out of this sense of distress and exhaustion, and start simply listening to the Silence in rest and reflection.
So, for once, i'm attempting to listen to my Body...and give It (and those increasingly repetitive words) a rest.
i'll still be working with Words (Living and spoken and written) as a part of my vocation (including an attempt to cobble some meaningful, less repetitive ones together for this Sunday). But my hope (maybe a 'resolution'?) for 2025 is that i would learn to follow an old Ouaker adage (at least i think it's from the Quaker tradition...feel free to chime in if i'm misguided on this)...namely, that in the midst of living life in as centered and healthy way as possible, i would write/speak only when and if it would 'improve upon the Silence'.
Here's to a 2025 where Wisdom and Inspiration emerges from that deepest, most essential and sacred Silence in ways that center our Spirits and still all the incessant white noise of oppression, injustice and violence.
i appreciate ALL of you...your Infinite patience and persistent encouragement in friendship and kinship are precious and cherished Gifts in our world and my life...and i Love you all...b.
P.S...i'm also thankful that in the midst of a 'fog', sometimes a spark of piercing Light breaks through from ages past to bring some clarity and remind me of what is essential amidst all of the ephemeral and peripheral stuff that has seemed to keep me distracted and unable to center my Self and focus my attention. And this came to me in the form of these miraculously Wise words from the inimitable Annie Dillard...
“I was standing lost, sunk, my hands in my pockets, gazing toward Tinker Mountain and feeling the earth reel down. All at once, I saw what looked like a Martian spaceship whirling towards me in the air. It flashed borrowed light like a propeller. Its forward motion greatly outran its fall. As I watched, transfixed, it rose, just before it would have touched a thistle, and hovered pirouetting in one spot, then twirled on and finally came to rest. I found it in the grass; it was a maple key…Hullo. I threw it into the wind and it flew off again, bristling with animate purpose, not like a thing dropped or windblown, pushed by the witless winds of convection currents hauling round the world’s rondure where they must, but like a creature muscled and vigorous, or a creature spread thin to that other wind, the wind of the spirit that bloweth where it listeth, lighting, and raising up, and easing down. O maple key, I thought, I must confess I thought, O welcome, cheers!
And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense... Now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I see a photograph of earth from outer space, the planet so startlingly painterly and hung, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes, I will think two maple keys. If I am maple key falling, at least I can twirl.
Thomas Merton wrote, 'There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.' There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It’s so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simple to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.
Ezekiel excoriates false prophets who have 'not gone up into the gaps.' The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once blind man unbound. The gaps are the cliffs in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fjords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock - more than a maple - a universe. This is how you spend the afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.” (from 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek')
(Sculpture © Albert György, on Lake Geneva, Switzerland)
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