As I drove away from the city last night all I could do was stare at the mountain we had scaled the days prior. My lungs aching from physical exhaustion yet continuing to rise and fall to send oxygen to my toughened heart only sent a message of calm. The strongest muscle in my body was not softened by the beauty of the climb, but fortified. Made stronger and more passionate. Feeling our planet is as much a part of why I am here as is teaching and learning culture. I continue to flip through the photos of the ascent as if I am trying to convince myself it really happened. I stare at my tired smile at the summit. Not forced, but labored from the climb, true happiness. Even though my body was crying for air and rest everything overflowed with respect and joy for the world we live on.
I played a podcast on my ipod of Being (previously titled Speaking of Faith) from NPR with an interview of Joanna Macy. This woman is an eighty-year-old everything I could dream of being. Multi-lingual, worked for the CIA in Europe during the Cold War then moved to India with her husband (the head of the Peace Corps there) and worked with Tibetan refugees, became an environmental activist, and then became a Buddhist scholar.
She discussed her wild love for the world and living in the moment. When talking about her life when she was my age and I couldn’t identify with her more. Translated to English:
I live my life in widening circles
That reach out across the world
I may not complete this last one
But I give myself to it
I have been circling around god
That primordial tower
I have been circling for thousands of years
And still I don’t know
Am I a falcon
a storm
or a great song?
some quotes from her interview,
“my world itself is sacred”
“rather, not to be afraid [of grief]. Because that grief, if you are afraid of it and pave it over, you shut down … … our world stems not from callous and difference or ignorance so much as much it stems from fear of pain.”
“[Our use of the world] relates to everything… …That became perhaps the most pivotal point of the landscape of my life. That dance with despair. To see how we are called to not run from the discomfort, and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear, and that if we can be fearless to be with our pain it turns, it doesn’t stay static. It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it. But, when we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns, it turns to reveal its other face. And the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world. Our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.”
“Say you are taking care of your mother and she is dieing of cancer, and you say you can’t go in her house or her room because you don’t want to look at her. But if you love her you want to be with her. If we love our Earth you are able to see the scum of oil spreading across the golf, we are able to see what it is doing to the wetlands and marshes… … when you love something you don’t say, too bad my kid has leukemia, I won’t go near her. It is just the opposite.”
Rilka on darkness as a part of life. The last sonnet to Orpheus
“Quiet friend who has come so far
Feel how your breathing makes more space around you
Let this darkness be a bell tower, and you the bell
and as you ring what batters you becomes your strength
Move back and forth into the change
What is it like this intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there
And if the world shall cease to hear you, say to the silent Earth, I flow
And to the rushing waters speak, I am.”
As she read this sonnet I felt as if Rilka was talking to me directly through her. I often don’t present in my blog the biggest challenges here in my service as something painful. I take the challenge in my step and feed off of it. I rejoice in the ability to nurse on them. While I express my experiences with humor and delight, it doesn’t mean the vitamin doesn’t taste bitter in the moment. Volunteers couldn’t do what we do if we feared the pain, complained, and locked it away somewhere else. Instead, we are here, with the challenge and we chew on all the sustenance it has to give.
Rilka to God: “Just give me a little more time. I just need a little more time because I am going to love the things as no one has thought to love them. Until they are real and worthy of you.”
Joanna Macy, “I am not insisting that we be brimming with hope. It is OK not to be optimistic. Buddhist teachings say that the feeling that you have to maintain hope can wear you out. So, just be present, The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present.”
“is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days”
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