Stillness and the Divine

I want to share with you some places that may not be of your choice or current experience. They are based solely on my interests and abilities and availability. To me they are profound.

These are places of extreme quiet, where silence and nothing are one and you cannot tell them apart. Places where only nature speaks and her sound is deafening when no other audible intrusion is near.

One place is on a silent river. Where portions neither ripple nor descend through noisy cataracts, but carry liquid volumes in the stillness of deep flows and where it is far enough away from man’s concoctions that the only thing you think you hear are your own thoughts, but they aren’t.

If you’ve never been to such a place and find yourself in it, there will come wonderment, a revelation, a spiritual attunement, a surprise appreciation of the empathetic knowledge that only stillness engenders in a singular moment of time.

The first time I found such silence was on the Green River in Utah as I rafted in a quiet eddy pool and found myself in involuntary prayer with nature whose sacristy I entered and then sustained by the choice of benevolent thought.

The second time was at night alone at the edge of a lake in the Allagash wilderness of Maine. The stars have a noticeable brilliance when civilization is far away. They also have a sound that man rarely hears for we occupy a space of things and doing in the Cosmos of life.

The third I experience numerous times for I live nearby. It is on the Wallkill River in New York. When my Kayak drifts on the silent surface I embrace the Oneness and silence of All That Is.

I know that science has learned much from the music of the spheres in the vast cacophony of the heavens. I know that religions promote silence to reach the unreachable. I know that the frigid stillness of winter creates a cocoon where sound will not enter because of density.

What I didn’t know until I experienced it was the joy that silence gives the listener and that robust laughter needs no sound and God needs no dogma. The thoughts you think are yours, but aren’t, are God’s. He talks to all of us in stillness.

Birthdays

Yesterday was my granddaughter’s thirteenth birthday and tomorrow is my birthday. One of us is old and the other beautiful. No hints.

I did get to thinking about the difference in life’s perceptions from a thirteen year old to me. There are a lot of experiential years in between that provide a knowing look on the condition of human kind and there is a lot of youthful wonderment in thirteen years of existence that I have forgotten and should probably embrace for a gestalt understanding of life and times.

When I was a youngster we still played outside. My TV-programs were on only three channels. CBS, NBC and Dumont. ABC had not yet been formed into the third national network.

At first, I watched TV at a neighbor’s home since we didn’t get one until later. We kids (I can’t even remember my young friends names) watched Howdy Doody, Gabby Hayes, Captain Video and Tom Corbett Space Cadet. They were generally fifteen-minute programs starting around five in the evening.

After we got a television a year or so later, I remember my Mother coming home from teaching elementary school and while preparing dinner Kate Smith could be heard in the living room singing her theme song, “When the moon comes over the mountain”.

My granddaughter’s TV choices are over six hundred channels. I imagine her birthday thoughts are just as profound as mine. Her gifts were colors for nails and make-up, a Kindle and goodies from friends, parents, cousins and grandparents. Her year will linger long in merriment for she has only lived one-thirteenth of her life.

Tomorrow I will get a few birthday wishes and calls, a couple of cards and a gift and a hug from my wife, but the day will pass quickly as they all do when one is in their seventh decade.

I’ll try to talk to my granddaughter about serious things a little more this year, but I’ll leave talking about boys to her parents.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once wrote that it’s good for the young and old to be together. The child then is able to acknowledge the elder in herself and the elder is able to acknowledge the child in himself and a new agreement is formed between generations. I like that.

Celebrity Failings

We revere the greatness that comes from our sports stars or any celebrity we deem to hold high. We admire their talent, their accomplishment, their beauty or their potential. We appreciate their team or individual success.

Another’s success inspires the individual in us to be better by practicing more, getting better grades, respecting our bodies, or extending a kindness to someone. When our heroes and stars have public failings it forces us to privately acknowledge our own.

When heroes fall or falter, the tendency is to focus only on the disappointment and not on the whole person. Mickey Mantle’s addiction to alcohol, for instance, while bad, both for him and as an example to young athletes, did not minimize his 536 career home runs. Alex Rodrigues is another case.

OJ Simpson seems to be a case all by himself, but he is still included in the category of sports stars gone bad or celebrities who make bad choices. Michael Vick was another, as were Jayson Williams and Mike Tyson. And let’s not forget the conviction of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska or the choices of President Richard Nixon.

Heroes and celebrities come in both genders and attain all degrees of fame and status. Parents, teachers, clergy, and politicians can be heroes and some will inevitably disappoint the admirer or society.

Human frailty is universal. Greatness comes when we learn from it.

Who Am I?

Every once in awhile we should ask ourselves, who am I?

When I ask this question to myself, I get a different answer based upon my experience and growth at that moment of asking.

Why am I me? One answer is to participate in this time and space and density with infinite choices to live in the moment. I must do this with the nearly seven billion other souls who have come to experience life together and each one of us in the purity of our spirits hopes to be an example of creative change, courage and noble character. If we get caught up in the material world of want it doesn’t always come out that way.

In each generation, perhaps in each lifetime, special souls are born to help us find, accomplish, complete, and create new paths to the Source that give understandable meaning, knowledge and grace to life.

Sometimes individual souls will manifest in science and philosophy – Einstein and Epictetus; sometimes in literature – Dostoevsky and Miller; sometimes in leadership – Churchill and Lincoln; sometimes in music –Beethoven and Berlin; or art and architecture – Michelangelo and Wright and sometimes in belief systems: Moses, Christ, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammad, Krishna, Gandhi, and thousands of others like them who taught by example that the way to The Source was through positive deeds and unconditional love.

If we look at history we find greatness and charismatic leadership in all fields of creative endeavor. We can go to any country in ancient or modern times and find individual greatness that influenced nationalistic culture and global history and we can find individual greed and cruelty.

What we choose to be is entirely up to us. It has nothing to do with where you were born or in what circumstances. It only has to do with choice. It’s a responsibility that most of us forget for it is so much easier to blame another or something for our life conditions.

Black Friday

I watched the televised rampage of shoppers pushing and shoving each other on what merchants call, “Black Friday.”

What is wrong with us? We fall for the marketing of sales when most time the price isn’t much different from other selling campaigns. We lose all sense of courtesy and grace in our desire for a deal. We are the most fortunate and pampered nation on earth and we still don’t get it.

Based on statistics, if you fit the entire population of the world into a village consisting of only 100 people, maintaining the proportions of all the people living on Earth, six people would possess 59% of the wealth and they would all come from the USA.

80 would live in poverty

70 would be illiterate

50 would suffer from hunger and malnutrition

1 would be dying

1 would be being born

1 would own a computer and one would have a university degree.

If you’ve never experienced the devastation of war, the degradation of prison, the pain of torture, if you were never close to death from hunger, then you are better off than 500 million people.

If you can worship without the fear that someone will assault or kill you, then you are more fortunate than 3 billion people.

If you have plenty of food, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are wealthier than 75% of the other 99 people.

If you currently have money in the bank, in your wallet and a few coins in your pocket, you are one of 8 of the privileged few amongst the 100 people in your condensed world.

It makes you think doesn’t it?