Every Year, Fall Speaks to Us About Seasons of Life, and Death

Fall is such an instructive season. Of course, any season or any moment can be such, if we can allow it to be. I’m writing about the fall because it’s the time we’re living right here and now. And because the lessons are so blatant. We see the changes, see impermanence held so clearly in the embrace of beauty. Once colorful, shining flowers are now withering and dropping off their now brown, dry stems. The once lush green leaves are turning miraculous colors, only to wither and drop off, leaving trees naked to the cold. The once warm air is now, slowly, fitfully, changing to cold.

 

We can learn so much from just looking and feeling, not only the changes in the flowers and air, but our responses to it. We can learn from our joy over the colors as well as our fear of what might come next, with winter.

 

In a meditation recently, the seasons came up in dramatic fashion. Maybe it was because of the election, or the climate emergency, or my own conundrums with aging, but I suddenly felt something that is almost forbidden to speak about. I felt and saw myself buried in soil, dead. It was so frightening. I wanted to do anything I could to run away from the mere thought, or to explode the image. I considered who I could call to help free my mind from the image and get comforted.

 

Maybe the image reminded me how much we don’t know about dying. We don’t know when or how or what it might mean. It’s clearly the great unknown. But then I asked myself what could I, myself, do, right then, to help me live with this? What could help me face this? Was the season somehow instructive? Could the fear be used as a soil in which to personally, spiritually grow?

 

I started imagining doing or picturing different things. I studied my response to each imagined action and noticed if I freaked out ⎼ or felt ok. I thought of my wife’s flowers. She’s an amazing gardener. Our home in spring and summer, and to a lesser extent, in the fall, is surrounded by their beauty. And I thought of the trees I loved. There was inspiration imbedded in the flowers and trees.

 

As I pictured my body lying in the soil, I unbelievably felt flowers grow from me. Never before⎼ never ever before did I feel this thought as a comfort. Never. But maybe what turned the soil from something traumatic to something fruitful is the love I felt. Maybe there was something in the love. The flowers I saw in the dream were, after all, my wife’s. Maybe loving her right then was enough to help me realize this moment right now was enough; that nothing was lacking in my life.

 

And maybe by facing this directly, something in me flowered? Maybe the image of death was a distraction of sorts from my meditation⎼ or maybe it was the object of the meditation.

 

It’s so very difficult to accept, live fully with, the reality that I’m going to die someday… Yet, possibly, if I could simply notice and accept the reality of death, without fear making me cling to it or hide from it, I could move on without fear to face whatever the moment held for me. Facing this fear would hopefully help me face any fear. I could learn from the emotion without it clouding my mind or heart and act freely and appropriately….

 

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

A Political Sparring Match: He Lied So Smoothly the Smoothness Remained in the Air Longer than the Obviousness of the Lie

Last night, I felt like I was witnessing a boxing match, not a debate. But instead of using fists covered in gloves, they were using words, smirks, and smiles. Sometimes, it felt like I wasn’t watching but participating, or that I wish I was participating, or wish that my words could be up there. My anxiety was certainly right there. Because it felt so personal. It felt like my life was up there, the life of my neighbors and all those I loved, maybe the whole world was up there.

 

But first, the setting. Hurricane Helene, fueled by the increased ability of air warmed by climate change to hold more water, just a week ago brought devastating rains, winds, and floods, making it one of the worst and deadliest storms to hit the US in history.

 

In the Middle East and Ukraine, the wars continue. I, like so many millions, have been appalled, frightened by the violent destruction there. The violence disturbs me terribly. Not only the initial horrifying attacks by Putin in Ukraine and Hamas in Israel, but what has followed. But my feeling of horror is now focused on Netanyahu ordering Israeli forces to spread the war from Gaza to Lebanon to root out threats to Israel. But by doing so, thousands of innocents are being killed, homes and infrastructure totally decimated.

 

And I don’t know but wonder, as some news sources do, whether Netanyahu is purposefully prolonging the war to serve not his people but his own personal motivations. For example, to avoid possible prosecution, and to stay in power by satisfying his religious conservative base, (like his friend, DT?) and frustrate President  Biden’s continuing efforts to negotiate peace and free hostages.

 

And, in the U. S., of course, there’s this extremely contentious election, where one candidate has been indicted or convicted of several criminal charges, with new evidence of wrongdoing and court filings being revealed even today. And in retribution, threatens to imprison his political rivals if he gets elected to office.

 

So, this is background. Some commentators remarked on the relatively tame or civil proceedings. J. D. Vance on one side, slickly, sickly throwing words and lies like punches, trying to knock out the more neighborly Tim Walz. But Walz would not go down, physically or morally. In fact, he seemed to feed on the attacks, getting stronger and stronger as the night wore on, trying to counter lies with facts. At times, he seemed so filled with ideas he couldn’t get them out fast enough. Or he seemed shocked by Vance’s ability to lie so smoothly the smoothness remained in the air longer than the obviousness of the lie.  And so Walz sometimes stumbled. But he always rose up again. And by the end, he dealt a blow that woke up the world, I hope.

 

And I feared some people would forget that lies, no matter how often repeated, are still lies; that threats, no matter how smoothly repeated, are still dangerous.

 

The last topic of the debate was the 2020 election and DT’s refusal to admit he had lost and peacefully turn over his office to the rightful and obvious winner, President Biden….

 

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

Don’t Miss the Meditation Bell of Crickets: When the Nerves of Life are Fully Sensitized, and the Song of Life is Played so Beautifully

Every year, the sound of crickets acts as a reminder. They’re almost like a meditation bell for me. They bring me here, to this moment. When I was teaching, and it was a late August evening, I’d go out on the deck of my rural home and just listen. I’d feel the summer ending⎼ the time of warm weather and flowers, the time of my youth when summer meant vacation; the time of my adult and teaching years when it meant relaxation and renewal⎼ this time was getting short. It was passing so quickly.

 

It can feel like we didn’t make the most of it, so we need to make the most of it now.  Maybe every day, every moment, we can have this sense. This moment is our only time, maybe our last time, to just relax⎼ to hear the song of crickets⎼ to hear the song of life played so clearly and beautifully. We don’t want to let distractions steal too much of the day from us.

 

So, maybe we can sit quietly with ourselves or our children, and listen not only to the crickets, but birds, and other voices. We can hear the earth breathing in the wind, the rain, and in the expanding and contracting of our lungs, or in the hum of cicadas or traffic.

 

Henry David Thoreau famously said: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.…. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”

 

This was quoted by the main character, a teacher, in the movie The Dead Poets Society, which my high school English and drama students embraced one year. Questioned. Sucked out the marrow of meaning. Chanted Carpe Diem.

 

This is distinctly different, even opposite to FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out, which can cause us such anxiety. It involves, yes, a type of seeing, understanding, and experiencing, basically on social media platforms. But it arises from constantly comparing our self with others; comparing what I am, know, have and have experienced, with what I imagine others feel, value, think of me. And then our sense of self-worth becomes dependent on that comparison, so we always come up short, lacking. There’s a sort of commodification of one’s life here, an adding up of one’s experiences as one would add up money in a bank.

 

With Thoreau, who lived from 1817-1862, there was no such comparison involved, and a notable reduction in anxiety. He lived about 140 years before social media was introduced. And if he was alive today, I can’t imagine him spending much time on a cell phone. He favored ponds, lakes, and forests as his soul places. Each moment of life was to be lived for itself, for quality and depth, with no separating of oneself from the reality of ourselves, of others, or from the woods to make comparisons with others.

 

The crickets also remind us of all that might pass if we don’t notice it and act⎼ and not just of summer. Each noticed ending is the now of a beginning.

 

This fall is particularly poignant, frightening, and intense. Our minds, our nerves are fully sensitized and awake….

 

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