In Gratitude to our Ancestors

Recently I walked through the Highland (Scotland) Folk Museum.  This is an outdoor museum with a recreation of an 18^th century “crofters” village, as well as another section with a farm, home, post office, general store, tailor shop, wood shop, school and bus from 1890-1930 era all with original items inside each.  The crofter village has holmes with three foot high stone walls and tree branch and sod roofs.  We were soberly told that in the night, even in the winter they could not keep the fire going.  People worked hard during the day to tend sheep, weave fabric, grow, gather and prepare food.  Quarters were tight and simple.  It looked like a hard life.

There is a song that Libby Roderick sings where she talks about how we are all descends of dead people: “I come from a long line of dead people.  I come from a tall pile of bones. My people lie sleeping all under the world….”  I always thought this a somewhat strange song…in fact a bit morbid.  But I now have a whole new appreciation of the song.   I suddenly realized that every one of us living on this planet is here because our ancestors worked hard to survive.  Some made it only far enough to reproduce before dying in childbirth or marched off to war, but they worked hard to survive. Because they did survive long enough to have children, and those children then also struggled forward to the next generation….here, centuries later, stand you and I.  Even many of those who did not reproduce made significant contributions to ensuring the survival of the species.

It is not a remarkable thing that we all have the capacity to reproduce.  What is remarkable are the things our ancestors have done to survive.  From early people who lived nomadically: working to find enough food and to avoid wild animals, dehydration and vicious weather in order to survive.  To tribal cultures who struggled to survive squirmishes with the neighbors, and illness born of a lack of understanding of basic hygiene.  To the countless men who were marched off to wars that they may or may not have believed in to fight for land or a way of life.  The untold generations of women who were treated as second class citizens all their lives with abuse, poverty, and hardship raised their children.  To those who were born into and lived desperate and pleasureless lives as slaves or servants and simply dreamed their children could have better lives.  To those who endured months of seasickness and storms to come to a new land: fleeing famine, war or political oppression and again hoping things could be better.  I suddenly see this long line of dead people that Libby was singing about.

When you bring it down to the generations of your grandparents, or great grandparents or those who first immigrated to this country on both sides of your family, you may know some of the specifics of the sacrifices and struggles that occurred.  Somehow we take this for granted.  We assume, I think, that of course they struggled to survive because that is the instinct that we are all programmed with deep in our DNA.  But what kept them going?  What role did hope, love, and Spirit play in their endurance and determination?   Slowly we have made generation by generation, a more comfortable life, a more humane life.  Our work is not done by any means, we have far to go….and our descendents count on that.

First I think we must acknowledge the debt of gratitude we owe to our ancestors for our very existence, and second of all we must ask how we are doing on assuring the survival of the species so that someone several hundred years can be grateful that we struggled forward?  I have written before about the River of God….this endless procession of humanity, human’s struggles and innovations; of passion, sorrow and going forth…that is the River of God.  It is the march of the eternal.   And for me when I see this march I also feel the Creator’s steady presence woven through it all.

When did you stop Singing?

Yesterday I was at a workshop lead by facilitators trained by Joanna Macy.  Joanna is a Buddhist, a psychologist, and a whole systems thinker.  Since the 80's responding to the Nuclear Crisis, Joanna has been looking at how the role of suppressed grief and denial play in our inability as a society to respond to the threats to life on earth. Originally she focused on the nuclear weapons threat, more recently she has looked at environmental threats, and the threat from climate change.  (see http://www.joannamacy.net/)

During the workshop the leader shared the following queries:
1)  When did you stop singing?
2)  When did you stop deeply listening and hearing with empathy what another says?
3) When did you stop telling stories?
4)  When did you stop coming to silence?
and to the above I would add:
5) When did you stop dancing?
6)  When did you stop laughing?

These queries to me speak to the deep zestful engagement with life.  It seems to me that in any one of these areas, where we stopped, it is time to understand and engage in healing.  I would love to have people post comments about what they realize about these queries.  For myself I see that after I left HS singing became very much more scarce, and that I need to figure out how to remember the words of songs so that I can sing them.  I realized as well that just two weeks ago this somehow came up with my husband whether we ever sang.  I think that when this sort of synchronicity of a subject coming before you in close proximity happens, this is one of the ways The Singer taps us on the shoulder to get our attention.  Ironically one of my favorite songs says  "how can I keep from singing?"  Time to start singing.

Prisons of our Own Making

For 10 years I was a volunteer in the prisons.  Ever since for some 20 years, I have had dreams where I am in prison.  This is not in a bad way.  I have not ever, to my recollection, dreamed I was incarcerated.  I simply dream that I am back in the prison, volunteering again.  Mostly these are pleasant dreams, unlike the reoccurring bad dream that I'm back in my High School.  (Now admit it, that would be a nightmare, would it not?)   My High School occupied one city block and was 4 stories high, passing period was 10 minutes because it really could take that long to get between classes.  It was easy to be lost in the labyrith of that building.  But those bad dreams usually combine some combination of being late to class because of being lost, realizing an assignment is due I have not done, or that I am horribly behind in school and may not graduate.   These HS dreams are dreams of inadequacy.

Carrie Newcomber, a song writer I love, has a line in a song...."most of our prisoners are of our own making".  I certainly agree with that idea and think therefore of these reoccurring dreams where I am in prison.  Most people think of prison as a bad place and yet in these dreams I am volunteering, I have come to do something good, I have come to a place where I experienced community and even love.  What if we could all recognize that we are volunteers to our own prisons?  That we can leave them or convert them whenever we want to places of love and community?  When my dreams tell me that I am in a time of inadequacy - when the HS dreams start again - could I see that it is a prison of my own making?  Could I break out of those old feelings, out of the illusion of inadequacy?

Moving Towards the Light

Yesterday was a beautiful first day of spring.  I went outside to survey the garden.  In the fall my husband and son had replaced some logs that held a bank in place.  They had dropped cut of pieces on the ground were months before flowers had been.  However, now in spring those same bulbs had tried to come forth only to find their tender buds under boards.  I moved the offending boards to find that the plants sensing a small crack of Light had grown sideways till they reached the edge of the board and then up - in a sort of backwards L.

Hmmm,  I thought: Life is kind of like that we sense the Light, even when it is only a small glint of it and we grow towards the Light.

Recently for our anniversary my husband and I were looking at the photoes from our wedding 4 years ago.  Everyone is familiar but older.  In the kids cases they are a foot taller now and more "mature" looking, but for most of us it means more grey hair and more wrinkles.  Yes I thought the slow march towards death.  Huh, how does that fit with my previous thought that all life grows towards the Light?

Then I realized - oh yes, it is the same.  Our slow march towards death is also the path back to the Eternal Light.  It seems some of us will live shorter lives than we thought we would and others will live much longer than they thought they would.  So what of the march - does it matter if all our days our numbered how we spend those days? How do we make our days count?  I think it is not some "productive doing", but rather have we lived those days with Love and with Light?  Have you grown towards the Light today?

The final Goodbye

In the past year a college friend dropped over dead at age 48 of a massive heart attack, another friend of mine as they say "woke up dead one morning".   Right now as I write another friend of mine lays dying, a dying that came about so quickly only a half dozen people got to speak with her before she slipped into a morphine coma.  She went to the emergency room with what she thought was pnemonia and after some imaging was diagnosed with a huge aggressive cancerous mass in one lung.  The doctors said it was too late to do anything and ordered hospice - even so it was shocking that by three weeks later she was in a coma.

These collective experiences have found me once again reflecting upon our collective relationship to death.  We all know we will die and that every person we know will die.  Most of us try not to think about either fact very much.  I think more people die slowly with some warning, than people who die suddenly - and thus we assume that there will be some time, some warning around dying, some chance to say goodbye.   Those who are elderly live with different odds and assumptions, but most Americans I think assume you have to go past 65 before your chances of dying become very great.  And yet none of the people I mention were close to 65, and lots of people of all ages die every day.

I have heard it said and believe it to be true that death serves to place a useful limit on life.  It serves to make us make choices, to value our time and our days, to prioritize and to value what we choose.  If we lived forever would there be a terrible epidemics of procrastination?  Would people ever create deadlines?  Would people feel their choices mattered or were important?  Would we ever forgive others?  Would we work at our relationships?  So I know my death enhances my life and my relationships, and yet it seems impossible to live in the present with a simultaneous awareness of some approaching ending.  So we weave back and forth between a now that is all and a future that is finite.

In that crazy weaving how do we honor our relationships.  I think I do a pretty good job of telling people I appreciate them, or that I like them, or thank you for things.  But this is not the same thing as coming to completion with somone.   Have you ever talked to someone when you knew it would be your last conversation?  (Which I guess is to say have you ever said goodbye to someone dying - its just that in long distant relationships sometimes we say goodbye to an ill person and we suspect we will not speak again, but we don't know for sure.)  What is important to say in that last conversation?  I love you, this is what you have meant to me, thank you for being in my life, cross over without pain.  So that is fairly clear if we get to say goodbye - but what if we don't?

So many people live without really feeling their importance.  What I have always loved about the movie:  "It's a Wonderful Life" is the beautiful way we are shown the small common acts a man does and takes for granted that touch everyone he knows and actually change the world.   We don't get to have angels to show us these things - only our friends and family.   So how do we hold that mirror up to others and help them see their life as George Bailey did?

Does it matter if a soul dies without knowing these things?  I suppose on some cosmic level they come to know it all at the moment that the join the Great ALL.  I like to imagine that in some great review of the events of their life, that like George Bailey they will both see the events that were significant that they took for granted, as well as hurts they may have inflicted and discounted, that they will see both the themes, the highlights and lowpoints,  that some meaning can emerge from this lofty perspective that perhaps eluded them during this life.  I hope that they also can see into hearts were words did not illuminate- that they can see again or perhaps for the first time how deeply they were loved by all those who loved them -see for the first time where they made a difference when they did not know they did.

Years ago I had a practice on friends birthdays of writing them a card saying that I took the opportunity of their birth to say how glad I was that they lived.  I would tell them the traits I saw they had and what they brought to my life.  People loved these birthday cards and even started to continue the tradition with others they knew.  However, after a few years I started to feel like I was just writing the same things each year (after all people's most precious traits really don't change they endure over time.)  So I fell out of the habit.  I think now that was a mistake.   I think perhaps with a little less emphasis on traits and a little more emphasis on this is what you have meant to me this year that the sudden deaths will not feel like a conversation abrupty ended without the final goodbye. I think I have a lot of birthday cards to write this year.