The New Number

What did anyone know, really? When gemuliak was revealed, it swung like a cleaver through all minds, collective and personal, in the world. Stay behind or move forward—choose. The Always-Was or the Yet-to-Be.

It struck at our guts, too, of course.

Why wouldn’t it put us in turmoil? It was only natural to regard “gemuliak”—an unseen concept with an alien name—as a threat, as an arbitrary edict being forced on us by the intellectuals and theorists to whom society was just a laboratory. Governments, industry, markets, even schools, led the initial charge against it, uniting in a formidable Resistance. Denial of the “new number” was universal at first, except from some mathematicians and from users of psychotropic drugs, who managed to publish several (nearly incomprehensible) endorsements, the essence of which could be expressed as, We tried to tell you.

Those most violently rocked were the scientists. Their protest began shrill, veered into hysterical, and became physically destructive. The discovery of gemuliak was cataclysmic for their work, their worldview; it it put them all back in kindergarten with the rest of us. Their belief that the future, the Yet-to-Be, was theirs to shape through endless discovery—this was brutally brought to ruin by virtue of everything being revealed at once. The effect was as great as that of worldwide warfare, but it came from within us, not from the skies or the borders. No hypotheses, no theories could account for how human beings would live their lives when essential commonality was undermined and replaced by aloneness. Reality became very real for the scientists.

It might have gone easier for them, easier to take it in and raise it as their own, if scientists had made the discovery through their accepted methods. Those methods would have meant arriving at the fact of gemuliak through theory, through inference, not by actual observation. For them, observing the world had long ago reached its limits, and real advancement could only come through theoretical pursuits; the sensory experiences of extraordinarily ordinary people were as trivial as tabloid chatter.

But there they were: reports so numerous, related with so much factual simplicity as to block any suggestion of their being imaginary. People would see and count two birds, or two trees, or two fish, or two persons; and when another appeared, it was not three, but real all the same. These people were anything but mad, either before or after their experiences, and their unwavering assurance made it nearly unthinkable to doubt their accounts.

What was also unthinkable, though, was a newly perceived whole number, different from either two or three, as entire and fully endowed as either of them or any other so-called “integer,” and revealed in living forms to some worthy few people as a reality.

* * *

When the discovery came, word of it spread almost instantly. It flowed over the world as naturally and as undirected as clouds form. There was no need for the news media to blare dramatic announcements or authoritative exposition of the event. There was no authority to be reached for, save what each of us could find for ourselves. Before the voices trading in fear and sensationalism could take hold of it, they found their work was done for them.

The first effect was a storm of anger. Great swaths of people drew from their reservoir of rage toward any edict or restriction imposed on them from public institutions. Their anger endured, but gradually the realization that the institutions were just as unmoored by the revelation as they were transformed the familiar brand of rage into an unfocused kind of nihilism. No one was able to direct the fury onto an enemy they could actually point at. Then gradually from a fire to a flood; from high water to a shallow seeping pool, murky and tepid; from wrath to disgust; the anger evolved from something righteous into something that could only crawl like mold. That’s what people carried with them inside for a long time.

Because it seemed so incomprehensible, people reacted at first as they would to a physical calamity. Battening down, hoarding, profiteering, and widespread looting and theft followed in predictable order. They became commonplace, reflecting an unspoken understanding that shared society was a nicety no one could afford anymore.

That’s the way it stood for a drawn out, painful time. But that was only the surface; underneath, there were currents that never stopped flowing. These currents unknowingly brought gemuliak into our lives.

* * *

The fear that set in was, simply, that everything would stop working as the “new number” was let in. The concept was bound to degrade or even explode every other concept at work in the world, from elementary counting to abstract theory. Finance, commerce, global transactions; all computing from calculation to worldwide networking; and every form of measurement, from the ruler to the calendar to reckoning by cosmic events—human knowledge would be stopped in its forward course. Music, education, art, philosophy—could anyone find value in them, or trust them not to betray humanity any further? If anyone could conceive of civilization continuing at all, it could only be of the most primitive kind: holding on, subsisting for generations until an entirely new structure of knowledge could be created. And so, amid the resistance and despair, small groups were quick to grasp the moment and assert their intention to lead the way out. The population was dispirited, broken, and they offered no objection to being led by organizations with such names as The Next Millennium, Reset, The World Project, and (somewhat ominously) The Number.

The groups pledged to restore normalcy to society after the collapse of technology which would come inevitably. They would apply massive expertise and a technique named Hyper-Integrative Adaptation, essentially to restructure the known system of numbers to accommodate the newly discovered gemuliak. Most of the groups made no promises of quick results. The Next Millennium implied a timeline in their name, appealing to high-minded idealists. The group Reset was focused on making civil institutions operative again. The Number was the most analytical of the efforts, but they rose above the others by publishing frequent bulletins suggesting that some of life’s pleasures, from musical composition to football to cooking, could conceivably be reworked within the lifetimes of some of the younger generation. These bulletins were generally welcomed as reasons for hope, though hardly anyone could even pretend to understand the theoretical foundations of their projections.

* * *

It was one of history’s greatest ironies that Augmented Humanity, the tool designed and refined specifically to analyze the most complex problems and conquer them, was among the first institutions to crumble. For decades efforts in computing theory and technology had focused obsessively on AH, first on development and later on pushing it into every field of living. The developers had seen both riches for themselves and benefits for society in AH. It was promoted as the necessary defense against the bewildering speed and complexity of business and communications—problems largely fueled by the growth of AH itself. A vision presented by one (name forgotten) AH theorist was taken up and became the unofficial slogan of Augmented Humanity in its many forms: More, Better, Faster. AH also promised the public unbounded creativity, through its ability to assemble any known information in previously unimagined ways. But gemuliak was far from known information, far as could be; and at its first glimpse of the truly new, AH buckled and froze. Like most of its non-augmented human counterparts, it fell back in helpless confusion.

The ardent supporters of AH were deeply humiliated at the failure of their creation. They held back a long time on rehabilitating it. There was, after all, the basic problem of transforming the operations of simple electronics and computers before attempting to restructure the immense, overarching logic networks built up from them. Just as humbling was the public’s apparent relief at the fall of AH, sometimes expressed as mockery as if to say, What have you got for us now, smart guys? The developers learned the lesson taught to those who go too far, too fast: Just because your product sells doesn’t mean people believe in it. No one had really trusted them as combined social visionaries and capitalists. And so the vast architecture constructed for AH creaked and swayed like so much abandoned housing. It was not dead but it was left to spoil.

* * *

Was the appearance of gemuliak engineered by a collective human subconscious? When fundamental beliefs crumbled, when even family turned against family and then against one another, was this the burning of the land that allowed new growth to emerge? Was loss the medicine we needed to turn us back, to show us to ourselves? What living wisdom brought the new number with the incomprehensible name into our world?

* * *

As I said before, amid all of the turmoil and anger, with most of the world blistering in the grip of fear, there was another reality taking place unseen. Or rather, everyone saw it but didn’t recognize what they were seeing. It was simply the resolve of people acting out of devotion that turned us around.

Such a small gesture, in the face of such a boundless problem! The coordinated efforts were propelled by the fear of losing normalcy. They shared a vision of an ingeniously crafted world which, while incorporating the new number, would exactly mirror the world we had before the number was known. If realized, their efforts would certainly have led to comfort and order being restored in the commercial sphere, in finance, in the flow of power and the turning of the gears. Nevermind the consuming unease most people would continue carrying even after their food and entertainment were provided, despair over a reality that was farther than ever from their inner convictions; this would of course die off when all the pre-gemuliak generations had passed. But we were saved (as I see it) from that vision. Instead of a world engineered to incorporate gemuliak alongside the other numbers without disruption, we were shown how to see the number itself, standing in its majesty alone. There were people, in all parts of society, who carried on with life—or, better to say, carried life forward—even in full awareness of the event. They opened their shops, cooked meals, swept their walks, made repairs.

Such people came to understand that gemuliak would alter the world not by intruding physically, but simply through our awareness of its existence. They saw that, in spite of all expert assumptions, predictions, all warnings, nothing in the physical world had yet stopped working. They had no special insight for what might happen, but until something did happen, they would continue as before. They stayed in a state of wonder; the mystery inspired terror in others but only reverence in them. Their patient example seemed to expel confusion from their neighbors and communities, in ways that were first felt and then seen. And eventually there came a turning when, without fanfare or persuasion, the majority of people everywhere could see gemuliak as they did.

I say again, nothing anywhere stopped working because of gemuliak. But many had fled technology; they had run from it out of fear and the conviction that in a short time everything would necessarily fail or become dangerous. They assumed chaos because they couldn’t conceive of a new reality not ushered in by scientific authority, and everyone could see that reconfiguring all the workings of civilization around a numeric base other than 10 would take lifetimes of effort. Those people seized what they could, while they could, having been told that all they knew would soon fall apart. Many things were destroyed in anticipation of their going away. Those who knew the world’s workings (physical, social, cultural) through belief, could not, still cannot, give up their need to master gemuliak in the same way. To this day they continue striving to solve the problems they see as necessary to bring the number under their control. They have had no tangible success, but with no timeline or milestones to meet they don’t have to feel accountable for results. The fact that gemuliak turned out to be only a change in perception has never slowed their insistence on building a form for it in the material world. In time they could undoubtedly design mathematics, measurement, the sciences, and all forms of reckoning to contain a new number—in spite of our still having but 10 fingers.

It came down, I think, to attachment versus devotion, belief versus faith. We were carried forward by people who had devotion to whatever would come and the faith to see it. It would be untrue to say they were the wisest or kindest or noblest people—there were countless strivers and technologists who made sacrifices beyond telling—but they kept faith not with the forms of their lives but with life itself. The people who led the way through the change simply shifted their love for what they’d had to what may come. They stopped demanding that the world meet their expectations of it and allowed it to speak clearly to them. That was the sacrifice which made all of the other sacrifices and untold suffering unnecessary.

* * *

What is gemuliak, then after all? Not a thing for calculation, for mapping out real or theoretical space, for keeping time. A sword, maybe, for separating truths and errors. But why appear as a “new number”?

I would say it was never “new,” not now, not even when the world began. It has only emerged, or reemerged, newly. If it truly were new, our self-destruction would have been total; we would’ve had no way even to conceive of it, much less know it. It seems likely to me that the most ancient (we might even say primitive) peoples knew gemuliak long before formal mathematics arose. We lost that connection and forgot it as we molded the world in our own image. The other numbers yielded to our limited conceptions of them—that was their great sacrifice. Gemuliak was always of a different order from the others, and worked unnoticed until there were people who could re-form that ancient connection. Many of us now look back and wonder what we might have done to prepare for its reappearance, to recognize it sooner and prevent so much suffering.

—But suffering comes to all of us in any case, and with clearer sight we feel grateful for what we have been through and what we might do to clear the path ahead, which is still long.

Bearing Weight

If a swimming pool had steps, it was enough for me just to sit with the water to my waist.
Kicking, tossing a ball with the others who bobbed in the water, spreading my arms,
feeling both light and heavy in my hands.
My contentment was complete if no one suggested I go with them away from the steps.
I knew I would have to learn to swim someday, but I also knew I was different, and
that knowledge determined me.

Everyone was light and bouncy in the water. But would I be light and bouncy? I doubted
you or Dad could hold my weight for long. I would slip under, even with your efforts, and there might be no rescue.

Of course, I learned to swim.
In time, your determination overcame my own.
I’m sorry I couldn’t see how easily you could hold me.
I learned that even I could bear my body’s weight, and then, letting go the steps, I gave my trust to the water and air as I hadn’t done for anyone.

This is one of the things I’d like to tell you.
But now you can’t hear, and, hearing, you can’t understand, and, understanding, you can’t act out of understanding.
You knew I could leave the steps
behind because your care for me was stronger, more durable even than concrete. Even now you are trusting your feeling more than the water and air and wondering what will bear your own small weight if you let go, let go.

Late Summer

Does the leaf on the tree
feel grief, turning from green to brown?
It sees the time has come,
the time that was always going to come but now (Why now?) is here.
The green it has always been is giving way
to something it has never been.

Is turning brown happening to the leaf
or in it? Cause for anger or cause for grief?
Not for a minute should the leaf resent
changing
or fear changes. Does it remember that it was always changing? Now
the same soil that brought it
forth will carry it on. Not for a minute, not ever,
was the green that shone out wasted or even gone.
It’s become part of the world.
And will return. The leaf will hold on
to green as long as it can, and there may be
sorrow at turning, but not because anything
is lost or missing does it turn.

Elementary School Journal

Is there something I don’t know or understand that would make it easier to accept the kind of indoctrination that goes on in the classroom I’m attached to?

It may be a sort of arrogance born out of my own privileged, creative education that makes me see this place as a graveyard for young minds and souls. I have no proof that my ideals would serve these kids better than what they’re getting. And this may be a kind of toughening process that helps the children deal with the world they’re going into better than my soft, curiosity-based system.

Form and Function/Here is a sloth. State the form and function of the arms. Don’t linger on the image out of interest./Make the point and move on to plants./Review for the test: Function of each part, roots, petals, stamen, leaves, pistil, sepals. Fill out the sheet so we can be done with plants./Later we’ll finish with crawfish and be done with them. /Be still and do your work. The sooner you’re done the sooner we can move on.

Write I come to school ready and prepared to work. Write this 25 times. If you talk we’ll make it 25 more.

What I hear in this is: Boredom is the price of this thing called Education./I am as bored with this as you are. We are stuck here so let’s get through it till we’re released./Learning is important and will make you better people later on./The world is made of dead, isolated parts. The more you master these dead parts to better you are at “school.”

We ask children to obey an external authority that requires them to be quiet, still, and attentive, but we do nothing to help them develop their inner capacity to be quiet, still, or attentive. On the contrary, we paper the classroom walls with posters, slogans, rules, and isolated bits of information so that everywhere their eyes come to rest they find more random data. The sheer quantity of visual stimulation overwhelms the meaning that might be found there and actively counteracts the goal of increasing the attention span. We give students an abundance of data, but no guidance on how to find meaning.

I’ve made some notes about how I might teach these children if it were my position to do so, but I’ll hold back on writing them out. It’s easy for me to smear the well-intentioned efforts of others who have given themselves to this hard work as a career, when I am only a visitor, dropping in and out for short periods. To the extent I fail to acknowledge the affection that’s communicated by the teachers to the students, I ask forgiveness.

Like the rest of us, these children will create or discover meaning in their lives as best they can according to what their spirits, their families, the community and the times allow. If I can breathe life in the classroom, if I can hold them, their teacher, and the school in the light of love and faith, that will be my contribution.

 

The Rocking Boat

The boat is rocking. Which way should I lean?
Should I hold tight to the boat, be one
with the boat, have faith that the boat will hold us
as it was made to do?
Or should I try to level the boat? When other riders
jolt from side to side, try to direct our course, should I join with those who counter their every move
with equal force?
And the water—
the waves carrying us the gods know where,
raising, then negating what’s under us,
and water gathering around
our feet, at first a bother and now, deepening,
it becomes a third force in the boat—
it seems willing to take us down as one.

I remember how I once loved being in a boat.
I knew fear then, too, but greater than that I knew
a trust in my companions. Together,
balancing, moving in and on the waters
which held our bulky forms so lightly we
laughed, and had to wonder….

 

 

Alchemy, of a sort

Now that  _____  has posted his news on Facebook and I can see what he’s feeling about the ordeal he is going through—or what he’s willing to share about it—I’m feeling proud and grateful for the family I was born into and the families we’ve made.

I’m proud of these people for their equanimity and acceptance and for the generosity they’ve shown throughout their lives. I’m proud of the way they’ve done what every person has to do in this lifetime, which is to piece together and craft a way of living that serves other people and tells a story that is worthy of passing on.

I’m especially in awe of the people who have found a way to give a warmer kindness, love, and attention to others than was given or modeled to them in their younger days. That’s a form of alchemy, turning humble ingredients into something higher and more refined. That people still do this, in a time when all the worldly forces tell us to celebrate the lower self, to grab what we can and go—this is proof of spiritual powers to me. I’m thankful for those powers and for the people around me who express them so gracefully.

I haven’t made peace with the circumstances leading to this realization, not at all—but sometimes people remind you why you not only love but admire them, and the world feels like a better place in spite of the circumstances.

 

Lah ti dah, la la laa…

Our job at this stage of our development, says R. Steiner, is to transform our feeling life through the I.  Huh?  What what?

The “I” is our higher ego, the one that outlives our physical body. The feeling life is the entire body of likes and dislikes, identities and aspirations, tastes, judgments, attachments, and impulses, both noble and low, that we tote around with us. And the work of the I in transforming that body of feelings is somehow connected with the deepest part of the original Christian message. That’s about as far as I can see into that.

Oh, and to get there we’re supposed to work with imaginations. These are the little (or big) insights we receive about the way things work, or thought pictures, or events we bring to life through our thinking, and through our thinking we bring higher consciousness down into the world.

As for me, I know I’m not good at any meditative discipline. Maybe in the fall I can take something up again. All spring and summer I’ve been taking grace for granted—spending from my savings so to speak—and turning away from meditation with a will. I feel like there may be a reckoning for this at some time to come; but I also know at some level I’ve chosen it and will learn a lesson from whatever the consequence is. Of course, if I’ve done harm, or failed to do some good, through my lack of a practice, I hope for a chance to restore things in this life. (More grace, please?)

Even without a practice, I’m hungry all the time for a glimpse behind the curtain. So I’m hungering and at the same time refusing to do the main thing that might feed me. The hunger, or rather the eagerness for the experience of growth and living, tells me I’m not completely asleep, and I’m trying—trying, not mastering, but trying—to be silent more and let the world speak to me through its forms. I’m trying to observe things without naming them or explaining them. That is a kind of practice, more of an abstaining than a doing, and I know it’s like scattering seeds—some will grow, but only to the degree I’ve given them good soil to grow in. The rest are not wasted, of course, but their effect is much less than it could have been.

There you have it—Summer.

The Hill

Let us turn and look another way.
We’ve been staring at the flag on the hill,
longing to possess it, make it our own.
Our task is so much greater. The hill
when it has gone to dust will be replaced
by what our wisdom creates today.

If that line of thought doesn’t thrill you,
just know that we agree on the
absolute need to love
more greatly, more actively, more broadly,
more generously, more anonymously, more
in all directions till we are stretched
beyond our limits, because love is more than a model,
it is a tool we are entrusted with, it is
both the sword and the plow. Someday
the world will be something we wouldn’t recognize now,
and all the errors we have made will be
etched upon the earth—sing Praise—
but no one doubts that love will be just
as great and living then.
They may be different, your love and mine,
your will and mine, but all the open-hearted love we try
to plant into the earth today
may give our far-away descendants a better light
to see by, a reason not to
look back at us and mourn.

 

Fear Feeds Itself

If I say love operates in the world as a force, what does that say about fear? Or is that the wrong way to ask? It assumes that love is an emotion, which makes it easier to view as a sentiment or even a chemical byproduct of our bodies. It also makes it on a level with simpler emotions.

So let’s say Love is a fundamental force, like gravity or magnetism. Fear, then? They say fear is the absence of love. But I don’t feel like love has gone from me even though I have fear.

It’s asking a whole lot to say we should live in these times without fear. Fear comes out of attachment and the longing to preserve things the way they are, or used to be. Maybe it comes from a lack of faith in the power of love, or in the spiritual helpers who work and weave in subtle ways around us. It may also mean we don’t really understand the gift of freedom, which we reduce to material, legalistic terms but don’t respect in a broader, spiritual way.

Whatever the source of fear is, we have to ask now whether we can be free of it. It has begun to look like we should fear Fear itself, as though fear is being used as a weapon or a tool to keep the people in a state of emotional unrest. In this way it doesn’t matter which side you’re on, like them or despise them, pro or con, you’re resonating with fear and high-strung emotions and thereby easily manipulated. It feeds itself.

There are going to be a lot of changes that we can take as gut-punches in the coming few years: unchecked assaults on the environment, on social supports, on civil rights, on human dignity and (if we go back to war) on human lives. The effort to return America to greatness masks a desire to go backwards, to undo what modest progress we had been making toward being responsible, accountable people. We can take these all at the material level and live in a condition of chronic despair, or we can cultivate the seeds of all the higher impulses that were, and always will be, moving us forward.

There is a physical narrative and there is a spiritual narrative. Everything we do and see has a corresponding story that unfolds invisibly. In the material world we see the battles as Right vs. Wrong, but in the invisible world the stories play out between Love and Less-than-Love, Wisdom and Less-than-Wisdom. The more we seek our news in these stories the more we will be free from despair.

Today’s announcement:

I don’t fear You

 and You are welcome.

No Screen

I’m looking at the news coverage of a man in solider’s camouflage who got in a scuffle with the pro-immigration marchers here in Louisville. Hoo boy, I think, this’ll be good. I can’t wait to hear what idiot hate-speak comes out of his mouth! But then they put the microphone to him and pffft, he turns out to be intelligent. He actually makes sense; he just disagrees with the other people there. How disappointing!

 

Can we take some time to see ourselves in a different way from our common view? Let us see if having our faith inform both our attitudes and our actions can give us that elusive sense of hope we look to for sustenance.

Taking some time: Even the act of stepping back from the urgency of opinions to look for another viewpoint alters us.

The question we are used to asking ourselves is, “What do I think about that?” We look at a situation–something in the news, for instance–and form an opinion on it. To a greater or lesser extent, then, depending on our interest, we develop a “stake” in the situation. We develop a greater or lesser concern for how the situation comes out. Having views on the conditions of the world becomes part of the structure of our lives–part of the dwelling we construct for ourselves. Forming and holding views becomes a ritualized habit that contributes to our very identity.

A different question shifts the focus from an idealized view to one of participation: “What do I do?”

The atomizing effects of our cultural evolution, and of our mass media and technology choices, reinforce a tendency to see the world as something “out there” that happens to us, around us. We tend to retreat into our minds and view the world as if on a screen. Asking “What do I do?” helps to lower the screen and put us in the scene with all the other players.

Mother Teresa famously said, “There are no great deeds. Only small deeds done with great love.” Deeds done out of love have the immediacy of impulse because love is brought forth in the moment. Yesterday’s calculation, or the opinions I formed of the people around me and their actions, do not produce the effects of love in the present. In our time only the conscious application of our will to love can have a transformative effect.

“What do I do?” means, “What could my impulse to love do to make this situation better?” Rather than separating people through our judgments, and in doing so defining ourselves as “different” and “other” from them, we might look at the healing power we have right at hand at every moment. And what happens in these moments, when we consciously apply love in our interactions in place of judgment, takes place within ourselves.

Let’s not mistake love that arises from our identification with other people for a kind of pitying condescension that comes from moralistic judgment. Moralism only reinforces our separation. It’s through our ability to see “the others” in ourselves, and ourselves in them–an ability that’s cultivated–that the screens come down. It’s then that we open ourselves to something not of our own creation. When we sacrifice our will to judge or correct others in the moment, we enact love and generosity.

Likewise, in looking to faith to inform our actions, let’s not consider faith as merely the dictates of our particular religious creeds. We will not embody faith by falling back on rules or recitations. Rather, we look for the fruits of these within us and hope to express them in what we think and do. Rudolf Steiner talked about faith as not just a sufficiency of love, enough to fill the heart, but an overflowing of love. I think the emphasis is on the action.

The question I feel I should pose myself every day (many times) becomes: “What would it feel like to stream love out like a burning sun, to everyone I encounter?” I will try to construct a new dwelling out of this.

 

Old poems never die…

Here is a poem from two decades ago that still has some resonance for me as I try to pay my debts with love. I’ve posted a bunch more of these old soldiers and am making them march around again (see the link to Poems up near the top of the page). If you’re interested, please go see them so their efforts won’t be in vain. (Thank them for their service, you know, that kind of thing.)

 

       After the Demonstration
Nothing makes me as lonely as being told
how unified we are. The cell swirls
in jubilation and I am expelled into orbit.
There is great freedom in wanting different 
from anyone else. In my life, I have evolved:
First I despised the haters. Next I looked down
on those who despised them. Now, adrift and rolling away,
I have the next person trapped in me, and I despise 
my righteous isolation, my mirrors, my need to judge.

The Pentecostals (whom  I now love
for their holy separation) cut through the rain
seemingly on their own band: He made a change
in my life. He made a change in My Life.
My wheels keep beat for me, as if pulling me down
will make it so. For a moment I slip back to the world
and am jarred by the normalness of myself,
a man in a jacket. Possibly a complete vessel.

If I could prolong that motion--grow
from human to artwork--I would long
to drop in the world's pocket, wait
there to be found and judged, yes, held

in the sweet above and below of the human world.
But I am away, untethered, again--
Adam. Where a word would have saved me, I veered
toward loneliness. It seems this will not 
be the day my wary heart finds
a back door to its categories, lets in
the next person, the one for whom
no body has been made yet.

Am I That?

The voices we need to hear now are the voices of compassion. We have to move past detailing our differences in ways that isolate us.

The crisis is ours to work with. There is no one to take care of it but us, because we ourselves are the crisis! We can’t look at our politicians, our “leading class,” with contempt and despair, because we have allowed them the power they have. And that is as it should be. They may be an expression of self-serving and corruption in our own souls, and truly when we look at them we are looking at ourselves.

We look at ourselves, too, when we look at each other in the common run of life. The heroic or saintly people who give freely with no expectation of return, or conniving cheats steeping in greed and malice, or everyone in between (all those whose basic decency we recognize but whose actions we are eager to condemn)–each is a version of our humanity that we have brought into being.

The message “Thou art That“–the call to see yourself in the other and act out of a feeling of shared humanity –is more than enough to occupy our thoughts with for a lifetime. But consider it as more than a call for compassion and fellowship. Consider that, in your reaction to these words, “Thou art That,” you contribute something, however small, to making the world the way it is. If your thought is, “No, there’s nothing in common with that and me,” or “Yes, I admit I can see something of myself there,” you enact a small moment of either separation or union, antipathy or sympathy, between yourself and the world. This doesn’t have to be called good or bad, but it occurs. Knowing that it matters, then, we can act as if it matters.

Omnipotence

Gather round, campers, our discussion today is about God allowing suffering and evil to exist. The fact that terrible things happen all the time leads many of us to reject the idea of God on the grounds that no loving deity could permit such misery to occur.

But is God a puppet master? Or an unfeeling entity who observes us dispassionately?

Because we assume God is omnipotent, we let our definition of the word govern our concept of God. Our model is based on our own social constructs, such as the Boss or CEO–unlimited power but also ultimate responsibility for what happens.

If God is not other in the same way we perceive other people to be, then different rules apply. Think of “God” not as a huge human with superpowers but as something that experiences existence through us, through this world. Then God is a fellow sufferer, sharing in the experience. But that is still a separation; it’s still describing God in human terms. So–don’t cling to that definition, which is false, but continue to accept that we can only approach the divine through human understanding, precisely because we are humans.

Do not personify God (define God in human terms), but know that the way we perceive our existence by its nature leads us to see ourselves as separate and discrete; meaning we don’t easily come to a way of apprehending “God” except as another discrete being, separate from us. This aspect of our perception–the separation–is a necessary product of our freedom.

The prime value of our existence is freedom. It’s what separates us from the animals and the angels. Love is the transformative, active element–the medium in which we move. It is more than mushy, nice stuff we’re supposed to spread around. Love is the ground of all existence–mineral, animal, human, spiritual. Freedom is the uniquely human piece, and our charge is to exercise it with care for others and ourselves. To see God as puppeteer, or as controlling everything and all things, is to deny humans our purpose in existing.

There to be Seen (fiction)

Is it possible? As happens in dreams, I watched the strange demonstrations carried out by my office mates with the kind of dulled surprise that suggests I knew about all of it before, unconsciously, and was reacting not to the fact of the thing but to the marvelous details of it now revealed. So that now, the more troubling question for me is not, How did such disturbing creations come to exist, and be in our possession, but rather, How did I already know about them and remain quiet?

I’ll grant that my workplace is a polite one, where we go along without raised voices or outbursts of emotion. This condition prevails without external compulsion; I think it reflects the maturity of our group members, and, if I can express this properly, the benefit of education on one’s ability to restrain the unhelpful impulses that naturally arise. I don’t imply that we are a simmering cauldron of repressed resentments, either, waiting for release. We are amicable, and we hold amicability as a value. Remaining considerate of each other, then, is more of an exercise of our values than a rankling constraint.

That some of my colleagues should have knowledge—secrets, even—held in small groups, to be used as needed—this I accept as a matter of course. I do not need to feel the least misused if I learn that A., B., and C. have been collaborating on a new procedure that will soon be put into effect, or that Z. was selected to give a presentation instead of me. I trust, and believe the others do, too, that all our efforts will be directed toward the good of the department and our mission. The exception—an understandable one, I used to think—would be if I found myself being the only one in the department excluded from knowledge that was circulating among all the rest.

The event I speak of doesn’t bear that stamp precisely. But because the only aspect of it that I can lay claim to understanding, or fully recollecting, is my own self-perception, I will try to lay out in their subtle distinctions the shades of my reactions. While this may seem a thin soup for subject matter, compared to the fantastic things witnessed in the event itself, still I make it a condition of your admission to this spectacle that you enter through me and I remain with you as your lens.

My first reaction, upon looking up from some work rather late one evening and seeing the startled faces of two female colleagues in the doorway, was this: They were not expecting me to be here at this time, and as a result I am about to be given knowledge too soon. Said another way, my colleagues neither willed it not withheld it, but they would now have to show me things I had not been fully conditioned to see.

And so it was. Wordlessly, or rather with unspoken words, my colleagues B. and C. moved to a file cabinet and bent low to open the lowest drawer. Then, with a solemn, practiced movement, C. extended her hand at the edge of the drawer. Though the movement was unfamiliar to me and hardly suggestive of anything in itself, the first pangs of expectation arose in me.

In less than a moment the first miniature pair of hands appeared over the edge of the drawer and draped over C.’s long, outstretched finger. Another pair immediately followed, and another in identical fashion. When C.’s finger was filled the pairs of tiny pale hands still came up and fell over the open drawer’s edge until it too was filled.

All this unfolded in a matter of seconds, if our measure of time can be said to apply there. Something about the cooperative regularity of their movements suggested that the little beings to whom these frail hands belonged were no more part of our world of time than they were part of our usual physical reality.

With slow assurance C. lifted her hand from the drawer and stood. I saw then that the beings, which hung without protest from her finger, were nearly as human in form as their perfect little hands would suggest. Nearly, I say; their bodies, slender and apparently identical, had a liquid quality, an infantile simplicity that was not hardened as much as human bodies are.

I’m sorry that one of my first reactions was one of envy. What it was that I envied, I don’t know, but I felt in a subtle way visited by an animal presence within me that if left unchecked could erupt in scales on my skin. It was not merely envy of my friend’s long, graceful finger, suited by nature to this purpose and so unlike the fat, knobbed fingers of my own hands. It was that and something more besides.

I suppose it was in like manner that all the lithe, liquid beings were carried from their drawer in the cabinet. In truth, I can only recall that my envy had yielded to concern for them. It was plain that they could not survive long in the environment we are accustomed to; indeed, it must be caustic to them.

My relief came in another instant when I witnessed the pool in which they were being laid. From then, each astonishment tumbled over the one before: a swimming pool, as narrow and long as a banquet table, and lanes, and tiny pennants dangling above; and the undine beings, avidly swimming, noiselessly chopping the water; and most paralyzing of all the wonders, a presiding master of the games—a mermaid; larger than the others and solidly formed, which, because of her vivid color and material solidity, arrested my vision more than any of the surrounding spectacle.

A brief description of her will suffice, because you already have in mind what a mermaid must be. She was no different from the storybook mermaid with crayon-yellow hair, glinting emerald-green scales, and a recumbent posture suggesting that gravity, not the atmosphere, was her primary physical opponent. She lay either in or on a cordoned area near the pool’s center, at a right angle to the lanes, and her actions consisted entirely of quick motions of her head and chin, her shoulders, and her eyes, which served variously to alert, check, or instruct the swimmers. By way of describing her role, I offer only the poor comparison to a brisk head of servants operating in a large and tightly run household.

You must condemn or forgive me now for my failure to provide details of sequence, or for the abrupt changes that leave scenes unresolved. I warned you at the beginning that we would follow a map not of events in my memory but of their imprints in my soul. I now fear you won’t be able to answer the question I started with, Is it possible? with the direction I am taking; but we will see.

What of my office companions? They—the ones present—watched with a knowing intentness; they were interested without being fascinated by the spectacle of beings from fairy realms made manifest and enacting a most human kind of ritual. Surely the creatures gained nothing from this unless it was the joy of service; yet my associates displayed not the least enjoyment nor any other emotion. I describe their general look as one of expectation born of experience.

And what of me? I hovered—perhaps swayed in the better word—both figuratively and in truth at the doorway to this discovered world.

It would never be true to say that if one is half crying, half laughing then one is on the whole at rest. The mixture, rather, will swirl like water and oil until two parts separate. I swayed; I held the mixture together; and I felt more watery and transparent with each moment I stayed.

Here is what happened then: There was a racetrack, and, like the pool, it was all in order, sized to the room, completely unlikely and complete. The creatures were set in their lines. Already they were nearly dried. We watched with keener interest than before. There was something like eating in our interest now. The creatures ran the track on legs that became more bent and desiccated as they went. Some did not finish but came to a halt in mid-stride. Two of them reached the finish line and froze in place—wrinkled and crisp, bent, cryptic, light as insects or the skeletons of birds, not recognizable as anything that had ever had beauty.

My friend M. was next to me, though I hadn’t known it before. We saw each other. Looking at the creatures, the track, our companions, together we began to come solid again. In silent companionship we chose something, and in doing so I felt myself again in my form. The whole perplexing scene was again outside of me. It burned away as does water on a heated stone. As I left I was looking at my own skin, even as the memory was evaporating from me.

Now I take back the question, Is it possible? For you, I hope it is not. For me, it is. I feel the grip and gravity of the world and have abetted it. I’ve seen sacrifice, the consumptive powers of salt and air, and taken them lightly. Though nothing has changed in the outward manners between my coworkers and me, I am wary now, wary that we will take too much; that I may let down my guard and not love them well enough, not give, out of myself, enough; that because I could fail to try, I, and we, could do a kind of harm we had no suspicion of, though it was always there to be seen.

 

Radio

The radio plays —

quiet now –Mother will come in

to tell us to turn it off.

Lower still. Maybe it’s off already.

We’re hearing memories. We’ll let them go too, and still

hear the memories of them.

Who is this Mama who listens for us,

and does she really care for us?

Stay away now, Mother. The radio

is off. The music all around us —

and you, and your mother, and hers,

going back —

will be there when we wake.

No receiver, no Mother, no ears.

Traveling by night.

The starlight will come in and

go out, now, and still, going out, coming in.

Doing Without

Can I say that I reject hate as a response to killing, to deceit, greed, exploitation? If I do I’m being false–no attitude is called for. I will either hate or not in the moment; there is no position to adopt or uniform to put on to establish a side.

Yet, I don’t have children or relations who have been killed or suffered harsh deprivations. These words, or anyone’s, don’t prescribe a treatment for hatred, anger, or grief. The choice we have is what to put into practice, judgement or receptivity.

The change that may come about will be known for what it is not. It won’t bear the marks of premeditation. It will not advance hatred or vengeance as its motive. It is not a model of forgiveness being put into action, but a continuing experience of withholding any judgements that isolate us from anyone or anything else.

Yes, we want it darker

Here are a couple of disgorgings from after our elections–blaarrghh. I’m posting them here only because I want to show the mixture of feelings, thoughts, associations I’ve had, and to be honest about the anger that was so strong at the beginning. None of this is final realization; it’s all just cups of water scooped from the stream at various points.

*************************************

Time for confession: I feel angry now over the injustice of having to struggle among uncaring people. I’ve been angry at the voters who, out of their reckless sense of anger and deprivation, struck a huge and spiteful blow that will break, for some time, our country’s spirit. Even allowing that such a break may bring about changes for the good that we never would’ve achieved through the old ways we were pursuing–and that’s my hope–it was done by people with spite in their hearts and that was irresponsible.

(Step out: As I write about why these people shouldn’t have done this thing, I get a whiff of my own arrogance. What qualifies me to say whose version of change is good and whose is childish? If I embrace freedom–not just freedom to vote etc. but spiritual freedom–then I have to be all-in with it.)

Now I’m thinking of Gollum and how we’re told that the ring quest never would’ve succeeded without him–greedy, grasping person, stuck in the past, inflicting pain and danger on everyone for no reason except his own inability to take up his own life–and yet “he  has a role to play.” And, in sympathy to Gollum, he was deeply torn within himself, though he couldn’t overcome his dependency in the end.

I shouldn’t slam the voters as sick creatures. We are all caught up in the material world to different degrees at different times. My anger, now I look at it, is over the hand we were all dealt: that there will be people who think and care about the consequences of their actions, not for themselves alone but for the world, and others who cannot look beyond their own feeling of injury and who let someone else do their thinking for them. It’s the resentment of having to be the designated driver.

I can see full well that love is absent in this view. I hope not to spend much time here. I won’t completely turn my back on the gift of being human and being free, or deny other people the same.

(Later:)  Analyzing these feelings today, but not feeling them like I did when I started writing it down. I’m getting more sanguine with the thought of what may come over the next few years. I don’t want it to feed my ego, i.e., further lock me into a set of packaged opinions and reactions, but there is a potential for me to grow into a more trusting, open-hearted relation to the world and the powers of love and faith.

So, more darkness by which to know the light.

First Response

Try making your first response to news you hear, things you see, “Hmmm… that’s interesting.” Then look for what is genuinely interesting in it.

Don’t name it; stay with the act of finding interest. The goal is not to form a reaction or an opinion–try to break the dependency on those–but to experience your attention. Observe how the world operates without your reaction. What’s different?

First Kill (fiction)

Well, I killed my first man today. We were going hand-to-hand in an inhuman, bestial throng, worse than I’d possibly imagined, in Electronics. I truly didn’t know if I would have what it takes when it came to the moment of truth, but when it came–him or me, right there–the prime directive was front and center, the only lesson that matters: Commit. Don’t leave anything in the tank. Down he went, and I’m relieved to say there was no imploring in his eyes, just a kind of cold respect, before the barely audible whoosh as something like his soul left him.

I can’t say glad is the word, but I’m feeling fortunate to have my first kill on my first Black Friday. I suppose if I were a veteran of these things I would develop a hard shell, maybe even a strategic approach beyond simple raw survival instinct, and it would roll off me more quickly. But I was frightened–no shame in admitting it–and to lose my innocence early is super-preferable to waiting and wondering another year. I could even lose my resolve in another year–okay, it’s out there now–and have to force myself out into the fray from a need to prove myself, rather than in pursuit of a true objective, such as the deeply discounted floor model 42″ plasma screen with game console and surround I carried off today. That kind of self-doubt can erode you over time, and there’s no room for inner conflict in the heat of battle. The floors are littered with the bodies of those who had inner conflict. (I mean literally–just try carrying a 42″ TV and accessories, out of box, over people in various stages of exiting this world, who think nothing of clutching your leg or a dangling power cord in hopes of being dragged closer to the door and a final gasp of that chill outside air, the same air they cursed so bitterly all night while amassing by the entrance.)

I will confess, too, I’m relieved it wasn’t a woman. Mark this down, I will take on a woman, but I’ll say it out loud, they don’t fight fair. They will shiv you with a sharpened SUV key while using a toddler as a human shield, and then if you drop them, look up at you in a kind of surprise that says you cheated. I’ve seen that, and it is haunting, and a little disgusting.

So, like I said, first time out, first kill. I’m not one to attribute my successes to some divine favor, but I can’t help saying I feel blessed. I understand the deeper meaning of Thanksgiving now.

I expect the feeling to grow even stronger. I won’t lie, this was hard, and I think it will take weeks or maybe months for the memory to go away. In the meantime, I feel a great urge to do something nice, to pass the feeling along, even to someone I don’t know, maybe someone who doesn’t even deserve it.