Saturday, May 7, 2011

Reflections on Sorrow and on Love

I have gotten away from the original goal of this blog it seems--that life has lessons, whose profundity does not rest upon whether a given set of events are big or small in themselves.  We give events their significance, usually without regard to their intrinsic importance.  This blog was meant to be a point of sharing--in the hopes that others might find some solace in some of what is written.

Perhaps you, dear reader (certainly I haven't had many readers), have experienced heart break.  Perhaps you have known the deep solitude that comes from standing at the brink of the ocean--where sand or rock meets salty water.  And you brace your being for the wide expanse--the endlessness of what is not known.  Heart break is like this.  And I wonder whether it helps others for me to write that heart break is like this--a standing at the brink of your being, wondering whether anything at all will become clear, wondering whether how you feel in this moment will ever end, whether the horizon will ever come.  It never comes--because it was never there to begin with.  And you ride your loneliness, your self-doubt, your tears and sadness like waves where suddenly the vastness and the unknowableness becomes comforting.  Because if there is no horizon, if there is nothing that will ever be totally certain, if there is nothing that could come close to meeting the human condition, then why wait around trying?  This is what makes life rich.  It is also what makes life shit.  It is why God invented crying.  And weeping.

Have you ever wept?  Like, really wept?  Like, your entire selfhood or subjectivity burrows itself into your chest and you scream it out--you howl at the moon?  It is likely that if we all wept at little more, we'd have a  better time of things.  I can count on one hand the amount of times that I have wept--deeply, profoundly let go of my sorrow and let it fill me so completely.  Afterwards, I cannot recall ever feeling anything other than relief. 

Have you ever wanted to confess?  To confess your sins, because so many things have gone wrong?  So many things will go wrong.  It must be vestiges left over from when Catholicism reigned.  The guilt, if it were water, that I feel for some things could quench an entire dessert.  So many components of sorrow.

Does it feel better now, that I have written what is true for each and every one of us?

Of course there is also joy.  The joy of connection and intimacy--of partying and raucous laughter.  There is nothing quite like laughing and laughing and laughing.  There is nothing quite like deeply felt safety--the kind of safety that at once fills you with such relief and at the same time sings such beautiful rejuvenation into your soul.  Do we make enough safe spaces in our lives?  We need people and places with whom and where we can, as they say, take off our jackets and remove our shoes, and nuzzle and burrow and be held.  Where are these places for you?  Are they with a lover?  Are they with friends?  Are they in your home?

Does it feel better to know that in the midst of our mundane despair we have companions?  People who will walk with us, as their best and worst selves, and with whom we also can walk as our best or worst selves, these are the people we must keep.  These are the people who should form your inner circles, the lifeblood of your being.  We are innately social--incomplete without others.  We cannot be alone for too long or we will get sick and die--for realz.

In the midst of all the change in my life--starting a year ago and before, to now--I have never been so thankful for the many loved ones in my life to whom I can say, "I love you."  This simple act, in itself, makes all the difference in the entire universe.

For Now,
and with much more love to give and to receive yet,
Zachary

Thursday, May 5, 2011

The Peaceable Kingdom: Waaat?!?

When Edward Hicks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hicks represented the Peaceable Kingdom (Isaiah 11:6-8) by painting wolves lounging with lambs and leopards with goats, he reinforced the idea that a peaceful world is an impossible world.  And of course: because wolves do not lay with lambs nor leopards with goats.  Simple facts of life demonstrate that leopards would rather eat goats.  Ostensibly, we cannot escape this fact, one of life's simplicities.  By equating peace with an unreachable transcendence such as Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom we condemn ourselves before even beginning. 

Isaiah 11:6-8 (New International Version, ©2011)

 6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
   the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
   and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
   their young will lie down together,
   and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
   the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

No, child!  Do not put your hand in the nest of a snake.  Snakes are beautiful, venerable creatures.  They can also kill you, and thus they call for respect rather than demystification.  The tension here emerges between what is, on the one hand, the idea that lasting peace isn't actually possible--it is something that will emerge in heaven or when Jesus returns.  And what is on the other hand: the idea that peace is possible, and we are not waiting for Jesus to return; he is already here in our hearts waiting to be actualized.  Jesus needn't always be thought of as flesh and blood for his message still to permeate, for his radical love still to bring the salvation for which he seems to have died.  But Jesus preached a message we did not want to hear--that salvation doesn't come from military might, but from love, compassion and companionship.  We killed him because we didn't like what he was saying--then we made his story into exactly what he did not mean it to become.  We concocted an explanation that in its essence made it impossible for us to understand that robust peace is a possibility for right now.

While Isaiah 11:6-8 might be homely, nice and tranquil, it is not realistic.  It leaves us with the earlier impression.  If we are defining the criteria for the emergence of peace as a time when little kids can stick their hands in viper nests and not get poisoned, then we should give up now.  If we are defining peace, rather, in terms of pragmatic techniques, changes in cultural frameworks, changes in linguistic categories, and changes in the manner in which we manage conflict, then peace is not so out-of-reach.