Time Tunnels and Meditating Lions: Searching Beyond Memories for Who I Was Then, And Who I’m Being Now

There is a lion, a leonine version of a Teddy Bear, sitting on the back of the couch in my den. When I look at him, I don’t know what to make of him.

 

When I was young, maybe 5 or 6, my parents gave my brother and me stuffed animals. I thought my lion had a very dignified expression and so I was a bit reluctant to cuddle with him, even though I was of an age when cuddling with stuffed animals was the way of things; and where the imagination was so powerful that simply holding something in mind made it real. The lion resided at the end of my bed, absorbing not only my presence but my dreams, pains, and wishes.

 

And although I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, it spoke to me of my parent’s love. I was so engulfed in it then, I didn’t distinguish it from the home I lived in, my brother, our cousins and neighbors, our dog, the flowers, the rose bushes my mom had planted, the maple tree in the front of the house. It took a while for the maybe inevitable separation to occur.

 

I certainly didn’t realize when I was so young how many people didn’t have the love and resources in their lives that I did, or how much my parents had given me. I was deeply disturbed by but didn’t understand the lack of loving care in many lives, and certainly didn’t understand the poverty, hate and violence that too often plagued the lives of so many. But when I was in college and 3 friends came home with me and stayed overnight, they woke me up to how privileged I was. They joked they wished they had had my parents, and my dog, and maybe the lion, for themselves.

 

I don’t know exactly when, and I don’t know to where he disappeared, but for many years the lion was gone from my life. Probably most of us let go of childhood creatures of comfort, as we no longer feel a need for them– or don’t want anyone else to know that we once felt a need for them. But sometime about 10 years ago, after both my parents had died, my brother found him amongst their possessions and returned him to me.

 

And as I look at him now, I don’t know what to make of him. He’s certainly an artifact of my deep past and is somehow larger in meaning than anything I could say about him. Sometimes, he seems to be me, or to be my 5-year-old self, sitting there on the couch. And he’s trying to talk with me from down a long tunnel made of silence, trying to share some secret, or some game we had played. Or maybe to share what life felt like back then. When I see him, my mind and emotions often jump back and forth, searching beyond memories for the sense of who I then was.

 

We’re all surrounded by such time tunnels, of people, images, buildings, trees, and maybe little lions and bears or the equivalents. Their silence takes us back to memories, feelings, or just to presence. There can be love and joy there. There can be fear, pain, and terrible loss there, not only in the memory but in the journey.  And by taking time to stop and just focus on what’s around us, or on a breath, the feel of air on our face; acknowledging what’s there, noticing as best we can in that moment what lives in the tunnel without feeding it, our lives benefit greatly….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Example of Minneapolis; Our Needs are Only One Line in a Song of Everyone’s Needs

The world, and not just the human world, looks so threatened right now. One thing that gives me hope when hope seems impossible or seems like more of a blindfold than a clear viewing, is the response of the people of Minneapolis to the violent attack on them by our own federal government.

 

Every day in this country, we experience the supposed leader of the “free world” causing new threats, new horrors and shocks. So many lives are being upended and destroyed. This is what DT brings to us. Yet, to change this and survive the assault, I think we must look to what’s happening in Minneapolis. There, in eye-scorching detail, is the affliction– and the cure.

 

The affliction: we see it daily. So many injured and arrested. Two innocent, caring people dead. The US government invading an American city, attacking its own citizens, and lying about what they’re doing and why. 3000 members of DT’s personal army roaming the city streets, obstructing the lives of people, not arresting supposed criminals but anyone brown, black, or anyone who gets in their way. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the US. ICE is ripping people from cars, schools, hospitals, places of work and worship. Acting as if the rule of law never existed or didn’t apply to them. These actions cannot be forgotten or excused just because the DT administration has finally announced they will soon end the ICE invasion in Minnesota.

 

The murders of ICU nurse for the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Alex Pretti, and poet and loving mother of 3, Renee Nicole Good, wake us up to the danger every one of us now faces. Every one of us. But reading about the response by the people of Minneapolis to such violence gives me hope and direction; it rescues me and could possibly rescue all of us from the fear and depression DT seems to purposefully instigate. This is the cure. The people of Minnesota are our neighbors. By nonviolently standing up, in a disciplined and caring manner, to oppose this government ordered violence and destruction, they are standing with all of us. But they aren’t just protesting in the streets.

 

A mother of a newborn baby and a 16 year old girl was picked up by ICE on her way to work, leaving 2 children at home, uncared for by any government agency. The 16 year old did her best, but her sibling was used to being breast fed. She called a neighbor, who was breast-feeding her own child, for assistance. The neighbor stepped in, helping the children with food and sharing her own breast milk with the baby.

 

Despite the raids by ICE interfering with business, ripping shop owners and workers from their stores and homes, several individuals and businesses have been doing what they can to help their neighbors. A family was seized by ICE and held in a facility in Texas. Upon their release, a Minnesota bookstore raised $6,000 to help the family return to their lives. A café in Minneapolis has been offering their neighbors free food until ICE is gone from the state. Doctors are making home visits to those needing medical assistance and who fear exposing themselves to ICE on the streets.

 

As the BBC points out, “Operation Metro Surge,” DT’s invasion of Minnesota began after his racist rant against Somali immigrants. He called them “garbage,” said their country is “no good for a reason.”  The political purpose of his comments and the invasion that followed are revealed by his vicious attacks on Somali Democrat and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, an outspoken critic of DT. DT divides and divides, setting one against another. No community can exist peacefully inside a wall of hate….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Hitch-Hiking the Unknown: The Intimacy of Night

It’s 3 am, no moon, just darkness. I’m sitting in the living room in a la-Z-boy and turn on a lamp to provide just enough light to write by. And it feels like a whole universe fits under this canopy of light. It’s so quiet. So alone. Nothing yanks at me for attention, except maybe the hands of sleep. They almost close my eyes, almost.

 

There’s this woodblock print by a prolific and fantastic Japanese artist named Kawase Hasui. It’s of The Sanggye Pavilion or temple, located by a body of water in Korea. The structure is so strong, but bare. In the background, trees, of beautiful oranges, reds, and yellows. A man stands alone by the bright trees and water, just like I sit alone by the dark.

 

We might often think of ourselves as alone, especially when it’s night, and we’re in pain of some sort, or afraid, have suffered a loss; or we feel the breath of death on our face. Maybe that’s why the man in the woodblock gets to me. He’s clearly not young, but still very upright. He’s looking off to the autumn trees. Is it autumn in the woodblock because it’s late in the man’s life?

 

It’s so hard to look directly at our own aging and to understand it. It sneaks around all the seconds of life until suddenly, it’s just there. A pain, a sickness, a lost friend. How do we come to realize we only live because we age, and that our constant changing is what carries us through life? And when we’re awake to these changes, like we can be in the quiet dark of 3 am, so much becomes clearer to us. Our mind and the world feel so intimately here for us.

 

And when we’re awake like this at 3 am and we’re lucky enough to be relatively pain-free and open to consciously focusing on our existence in this very moment, we can better discern and decide the great matters of our lives. Consciousness was created just for this purpose, to see who we are, see ourselves both here, alone, and in a greater context, carried by the entirety of life, so we can better make decisions about what we do next with our life.

 

When I was 24 or so I hitch-hiked from NYC to San Francisco and Berkeley. It was the 1970s, a very different time than this one, and soon after I had returned from the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. Hitch-hiking was never the safest way to travel. But I was trying to figure out what to do with my life.  And when we’re out there like that, on the road, thumb out, so blatantly in the realm of the unknown, with little to serve as protective walls between us and the vagaries of what we might be exposed to, anything can happen at any time. We can get arrested, attacked, run into people from our past. Run into insights and beauties of all kinds.

 

I ran into someone from college, who had been in the theatre group I was once part of, and we spent a wonderful afternoon together. I met and stayed with one cousin and by chance ran into another. What I needed, I found.

 

One day, I decided to hitch-hike north, to Mendocino, California, to find a friend I had grown up with. All I knew about where she lived was that she was part of a commune in northern California⎼ and there were communes in Mendocino. I got a ride to a small town most of the way to my destination. But then nothing. No cars, no rides.

 

I was beginning to think my whole plan was crazy. How could I imagine I could just set off without knowing my destination and actually arrive there? Then a car stopped on the opposite side of the road and a woman emerged from the car. She had a small backpack and soon put out her thumb. After maybe a half hour of doing little but standing on opposite sides of the road wondering about each other, we smiled back and forth. I crossed the road, and we started to chat.

 

She asked where I was going, and I told her I was looking for a friend (I’ll call) Jo, who was living in a commune somewhere in northern California. My new acquaintance said she lived in a commune in the area. And a housemate of hers, named Jo, had just left for New York to meet up with a friend who had just returned from the Peace Corps. Me.

 

Just then a car stopped for her. She told me the name and location of the commune and then left with her ride. I eventually got to the commune, stayed for a few days, and then returned to Berkeley. It took a few months before Jo and I could get together….

 

**To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.