Elements of Wholeness

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing." ~ Clive James ~

While growing up, my family belonged to a Lutheran church in the Missouri Synod, a very STIFF crowd. Martin Luther set us Lutherans free (but not too far) from Catholicism. That is why I was delighted when I discovered the following written by Luther: "If you're not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there." I will take that a step farther by saying that laughing is an aspect of heaven on earth.

If I told you the truth about God
you might think I was an idiot.
If I lied to you about the Beautiful One
you might parade me through the streets shouting,
"This guy is a genius!"
This world has its pants on backwards.
Most carry their values and knowledge in a jug
that has a big hole in it.
Thus having a clear grasp of the situation
if I am asked anything these days
I just laugh!

~Kabir~

Emotions are a universal language. It has been amply documented that sad looks the same in Chicago as in Brazil, or China. Individuals will always have their own perspectives within different cultures, but emotions provide humanity with a common ground. For example, even if you think it is ridiculous that your friend starts crying at the auto dealers when saying good-bye to his or her rusted out trade-in, you keep your thoughts to yourself, tempting as sarcasm may be. Why? Though being more pragmatic than your friend, you share with him or her the experiential knowledge of what loss feels like, so you stand the common ground of emotion and offer a Kleenex.

When we honor our feelings and effectively express them, we know we are rightfully taking up space in the world and have our share of influence. It is like flying personal colors, or planting a flag that says, "I am here and I matter, whether anyone likes it or not!" An even more compelling reason to increase EQ (for me anyway) is that when emotions are quiet, that is, not tossed by every breeze that happens along, our emotional mechanism becomes an amazing sense organ, picking up subtle cues which help us read the environment. It is like having an extra nose, or a third ear, tuned into the what's around you.

If wholeness is a cherry pie, then definitions and beliefs are the different slices. Every bite from every slice contains the whole pie. From a perspective of wholeness, it makes no sense to determine which piece will taste better than another (bigger maybe, but not better) because there IS no difference. Now picture people from 6 different religions, countries or families each planting their flag in one piece of the pie, thinking their own piece is the RIGHT one, the BEST one, so they fight to make all other pieces like their own. Is anyone going to enjoy this pie? Will anyone even get a bite?

WATER

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east

A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

~ Philip Larkin ~

I wish to look at forgiveness as an attitude. Actions are accomplished at a specific time and place, whereas an attitude is a perspective we carry with us, coloring our experience and affecting our actions. As attitude, forgiveness is compassion in the present and extending into the future. It is a decision, or a knowing, that you carry fore-giveness is with you everyday.

Let's say that a ten-pound bag of flour represents some hurt, anger and/or fear in the past you cannot let go of. Everywhere, whatever you are doing, you carry the bag of flour. Perhaps you will develop a coping mechanism, such as a backpack, to free your hands. After a while you may notice the extra weight or have back pain, but that is part of life, right? You start to lose balance easily and think you are just not coordinated, that "this is the way I am." Imagine if there are five past hurts you cannot forgive. That is a 50 lb. bag! Eventually life may feel unbearable. Unless you empty the bags you're attached to, anger and fear will find an expression harmful your health.

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

~ Robert Hayden ~

A lightening rod does not work unless it is grounded. Without grounding the lightening rod serves no purpose. The ungrounded lightening rod may think its the greatest thing since the wheel, because of all the electricity it catches, but its not functioning as a lightening rod. In order for a rod to be a lightening rod, it must be grounded so the energy it receives is channeled into the earth, where it can be absorbed safely.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.

~Kabir~

One thing I like to think about is: What if the Big Bang was an explosion of laughter? (In case you have not looked at a science book since Roosevelt, the Big Bang is a theory that our universe was created when highly condensed non-stuff exploded.) No matter what creation story you subscribe to....just imagine, IF CREATION WERE, a burst of elation, a quantum mass of merriment, or a rush of cosmic confetti. What if the Big Bang was a convulsion of congeniality or a mirthful splitting of sides over paradox? What, if anything, would change if we knew the stuff of life was effervescence?

A researcher in brain development, Paul McLean writes, "From the standpoint of human evolution, no behavioral development could have been more FUNDAMENTAL than the CAPACITY TO PLAY...it set the stage for a family way of life with its evolving responsibilities and affiliations that has led to worldwide acculturation." Is that not cool?

Appreciation is not just an airy virtue, its practical. Its a solid investment in quality living. Like a bee heading for clover, appreciative awareness hones in on elements of enriching value. Why would a bee dock at a dried up weed when clover is available? Unfortunately, when it comes to "clover", bees are smarter than humans. Humans have a talent for setting down in the weeds and making weeds their reality.

Since there is ample reason to suspect that all things are of one fabric and thus connected, an APPRECIATION OF SELF IS AN ACT OF UNIVERSAL LOVE because it involves tending to the integrity of a reality we share.

Dependency (blaming, victimhood, etc.) can only take us so far. Self-responsibility is a built in requirement of maturation. My first bike had training wheels. That was a positive. I was not ready to pedal on my own. However, training wheels are limiting. Have you ever seen a child zipping around the neighborhood with them on? Do you remember how exhausting it is to pedal while teetering from one training wheel to the other? Sooner or later, having a desire to ride with the big kids, we deep-down choose to take responsibility for our own balance. Remember what a freedom that was?

Many of us think of responsibility in terms of being guilty of something. I am writing about responsibility in terms of THINGS WE GET TO DO in order to create and recreate our lives. Play and responsibility are two sides of a waffle. Unless you're mandibularly gifted, if you've eaten the syrup side of a waffle, you've also consumed the plate side. Play and responsibility complement each other. There is no need to choose between them.

THROW YOURSELF LIKE A SEED

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don't turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what's alive in the furrow, what's dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

~ Miguel De Unamuno ~

A few years ago I had a jaw infection. My right jaw and throat area was swollen to the size of a small cantaloupe. It was so painful. Swallowing was excruciating. For days I ate nothing but yogurt and oatmeal. My calcium and cholesterol levels were probably excellent, worthy of a report in a medical journal or maybe my own Quaker Oats commercial. I digress. At one point during the great jaw adventure, I was standing in the x-ray department of a hospital because I had to pick up copies of x-rays that had been taken a couple days before. The doctor I was going to see that same morning needed to look at my "pics".

I had allowed plenty of time to get the x-rays and then make it to my appointment but, I showed up too early for anyone in the x-ray area to do whatever they had to do to get my x-ray copies. Between looking crestfallen and my super-sized jaw, the woman at the desk took pity on me and asked a technician going off duty if he would help me out. He was tired looking, probably hungry and anxious to get home so was not especially moved by my predicament. But he shuffled off and 15 minutes later came back holding my x-rays. When he walked through the door carrying what I needed, I realized that at that moment, he was the most important person in my life. I am sure he didn't feel that way but I left the hospital with a deeper gratitude for the bazillions of little (and big) things we do for one another everyday.

The fascinating news is that the science of chaos tells us first, there is an UNDERLYING ORDER within chaotic systems, such as rolling cloud formations, that can be detected via computer calculation. Second, that chaotic systems can SELF-ORGANIZE. Huh? With the right kind of feedback, the energy of a "random" system, like a river, can organize itself (ever notice eddies or vortexes?). So why do things sometimes go "from bad to worse" for us, why don't we just self-organize?

Natural systems have an advantage. They are not bent on repeating how they flowed or rolled yesterday, or 30 years ago. A river does not have to produce the same flow as August 1st, 1904 just because that day's flow was "good". Catching my drift? (ha - pun intended). We often fear chaos because we are used to the crazy-making "faux-chaos" that results when fear prompts us to control the uncontrollable. We try to keep the river of life in check with our habitual responses (rigidity, passivity, anger, etc.) and create for ourselves a pseudo chaos that may go "from bad to worse".

PEOPLE LIKE US

There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,
And greatness has a defender, and even in death you're safe.

~ Robert Bly ~ (for James Wright.)