Hamlet, Meetings, Mitch, Meanings, and Morrie

We humans are fundamentally ontological.  We discern meaning from our being. We take chance and circumstance and coincidence and weave and wrap and unravel and postulate, sure that somehow there is meaning in the measure of things.

Hamlet believed the ghost. Hamlet took conscience and made out of consciousness a trap by which to catch a king. Hamlet risked truth for concealment, and in such guise of madness did so o’erthrow his Love that she, being the quintessential Ophelia of classical and o’erwraught disposition, did drown drown drown down by the river. So too for our meanings; we succumb to the truths we give them rather than face them squarely for what they are: circumstance made co-incidental with but a hint of humor

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Re-visited during my summer break in Victoria by each of the three persons playing ‘Mitch’ to ‘Morrie’ in ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’  (a play by Mitch Albom based on the truth of visiting his old professor now stricken with A.L.S.), I am struck by the coincidence of time, chance and circumstance.  We meet in reverse order of chronology, Perry, Donovan, and Jay Newman. Perry Burton, marvelously adroit as the evil King Claudius in Hamlet, diabolical on the outdoor lawns in the gloriously setting sun amongst the red and gold Arbutus trees on the grounds of Camosun College, wades in amongst the audience at the end of the play and comes directly to me, propped up in my wheelchair, to ascertain my readiness to re-assume the role of Morrie, and to re-assure me of his interest in playing Mitch. Within the week Donovan Deschner, a former student of mine who in the mid 90’s played Juliet’s father Capulet, and then played Mitch to my Morrie in 2009, arrives as a house-guest; life imitating art. But the real con-incidence arises in the same day arrival on Vancouver Island of Jay Neman, who as an actor had previously performed in several shows under my directorship, but first approached me in 2004 with the script of Morrie, and so began the saga of some 35 Tuesdays with Morrie, in many various venues, and subsequently some eight or so shows with Donovan, at the Centre for Performing Arts; life imitating art.

Coincidence? Perry, Donovan, Jay, all within a week. Saw Perry on Friday. Donovan leaves Thursday after lunch; Jay arrives that same Thursday for dinner. What meaning be there in all of this?

The cornflowers by the walkway just after the Selkirk Trestle (dubbed Purgatory Bridge) are in bloom in August. They too are a part of Morrie Schwartz, of Vic Peters, of Hank Gerlhoff. Each, had succumbed to ALS, amneo-trophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and the ALS symbol of the perseverance of hope and the triumph of care over the inevitability of the disease is worn on the lapel, flutters down down down into the graves. Vic, whom I met soon after I assumed the role of Morrie, became my friend. He was a multitalented man who ran marathons, hiked, played guitar, crocheted rugs, carved wood, made wine, and wrestled with his disease to the end. I loved him. Hank, met through Vic, became my friend too. He was a man taken on a journey by his faith. The voyages of his past are documented in photo after photo that he submitted to Google Earth. The voyage of his future lies in his belief that he will meet his wife in heaven.

We give meaning to life. We watch it unfold and in the crossroads, the interstices, the warp and weave of the straight lines and the clutch on the curves we find significance. Or is it all coincidence? Perry, Donovan, Jay, and their Mitch to my Morrie, all met within a week in August, 2011; what of that? Now, then, now?

Pin Pricks in the Dark

                                                                                    [photo by Justin Neway]


The “Victoria Splash” is very special. Forty thousand people congregated around the Philharmonic’s huge barge in the harbor, the sonorous music swelling from the cavern-like tent over the orchestra, the multiples and multiples of people with their own portable deck chairs seated in rows and rows from the dock-side edge along the ledges of the sea wall and up across the sectioned off streets and over the great lawns in front of the majestic Empress Hotel and the imperious Parliament Building. In the four-hour slowness of the Canadian setting sun, in the seemingly made to order absence of wind-gusts or broiling clouds, in the calumny of the choreographed swoop and dive and glide of flocks of silent sea-gulls, in the riveted attention of the vast and superbly polite audience, in the clarity of excellent sound, the harmony of accord and appreciation of both raw and tamed beauty all around the Victoria Splash, held annually at the beginning of August, is the island city’s front-yard celebration of a lifetime.

Kayaks and rowboats clustered and clumped and clanked gunwales in front of the barge; the best seats in the house. Two daring-doers, gaining attention, sat atop precarious lawn-chairs on their paddle-floats.  Around my partner and me, as far as the eye could travel in amongst the myriad people, there were no police, no authorities, yet there was no alcohol, no smoking (although the sipping of a sherry would have given a touch of sophistication to my sandwich, and the aroma afterwards of a pleasant pipe would have been peaceful), there was just a munching here and there of sandwiches, cherries, home-made cold-salad dinners. Some people had purchased hot-dogs from nearby vendors.  Later, the smell of caramelized popcorn drifted enticingly amongst us. Some people had been there since early afternoon. We’d arrived soon after four. Others were still coming, and the press of bodies around and behind us grew denser and denser toward the magical 7:30 start time of the Orchestra as the main event.

Virtuosity does not necessarily arise out of a single person; it can be a collective of thousands of fingers and movements all streaming together to arrive at a perfect accord. Yet the virtuosity on the violin of the eleven year old girl, Alice Haekyo Lee, was truly mesmerizing. It was as though time stood still as she played the first movement of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No.1 , introduced by concert-maestra Tania Miller, herself the consummate public orator and gifted synthesizer in articulating a spectacular night of conglomerated citizenry, colorful flowers, co-operating weather, and resplendent sound. The orchestral pieces of Jarre’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’; Moncayo’s ‘Haupango’; Strauss’ ‘Roses from the South’; Rossini’s ‘William Tell’; Saint Saens ‘Sampson and Delilah’, J. Styne’s ‘Gypsy’; Coates’ ‘By the Sleepy Lagoon’;  ‘The Waltz of the Flowers’ by Tchaikovsky; Richardson’s ‘Winds of Kananaskis’; Lowden’s ‘Remembering the Beatles’; Sondheim’s ‘Send in the Clowns’; and then the majestic sweep and glory and thunder of the culminating cannon and fireworks, at about 10.00 p.m. of the 1812, wowed. Virtuosity indeed arises out of the individual, and is given validity in the collective attention to which we give it accord. Seventeen-year old, Jeremy Richardson, honored by the orchestra playing his composition of ‘Winds of Kananakis,’ agreed.

And so too for the specialness of each pin-prick of light wending homewards. In a fairyland of flashlights probing the dark spaces, of small boats and kayaks with Rudolph-like noses plying the dark waters, of lit-up lampposts like isolated molecules in the blanket of the universe, we each are but a bit of light, a sole pin-prick of enlightenment in the dark; would that at once our collective and isolated home-bound fragmentation so readily re-unite in harmony and accord. Sound for sound. Light for light. Now for now.

                                                                    [photo courtesy of Mike Jablonski]

Purgatory Revisited

The road is long. The song resonates. And my regular road (dubbed “Purgatory Bridge” by a friend whose surname is, of all names, “Neway”) lies across a trestle bridge about the length of a city block, spanning the Victoria Gorge. On most occasions small boats glide to and fro through the central causeway beneath the wooden rattling of the road-wide bridge. There are the ubiquitous sea-kayakers, bright blue and red and yellow; there occasionally goes a small green pickle-shaped taxi-boat; there sometimes is a squat inboard-engine vessel, or a sleek small yacht, their tippy masts not quite tall enough to scrape the undersides of the causeway. But on the surface of the trestles, whether you are beside me in my power-chair or if on a bicycle or if running or walking or merely standing to one side to gaze down into the water you will be disturbed by the rattle of planks, the unevenness of gaps, the knots that give rise to tripping, the nail-heads that stick up for want of another pounding, and the commotion of the traffic of life. Being on it is enough to shake the fillings out of one’s teeth, to rattle at one’s rib cage, to compact one’s vertebrae, to dislocate one’s neck. And for each its very passage lies in one’s choice of going from one side to the other; we but take on the consequences of our expeditions.

Familiarity disassociates.  Used to the racket one can assume to be inured to the contagion of sound and bumping. Fortified by experience, one can choose the mystic pathway amongst the loom of evident contraventions, stiffen the core muscles and take comfort in the belief of the temporal nature of the enterprise. Fortified by experience, one can accommodate the taxation, the toil, the tithe, the pith and momentum of the passage, for in experience lies endurance, acceptance, integration, patience, and even success. One does reach an end.

But in the meantime is the passage always to be reconnoitered with such severity of inspection that one tip-toes amongst the hobgoblins and groans and grunts at every bruited bump, or can one knowingly steer course for the other side, look up and around, and acknowledge the sunset, the reflection on the water, the wave of the kayaker, the smile of a passerby, the wag of a dog’s tail? Having chosen to go to the other side, to journey, to progress, to passage in the way of living, where is there not a contrivance to hinder us? What might we not accomplish or comprehend should we stay immured by caution or even by cowardice ensconced in the seeming safety of our room for a womb? Independence is greatly realized in our mobility, if not physically, then at least mentally. It is our willingness daily to tackle the ruts and bumps and nail-heads and knots and rattling at our cage that determines the smoothness of our acceptance, the grace of our evolution.

We progress from now to now. Mindfulness of each moment is not about the ooh and ouch or wow and how of existence as much as it is about the way. And having chosen a path, as we know, way indeed leads on to way. Yet again and again, let me then not be a-feared of any such purgatory bridge; it too is a causeway unto yet more. And is not the striving to be born, the very call of life, not a reaching out of the dark into the light of yet more?

We need heed the things that go bump in the night, yes, but to cross the bridge of fear rather than bury oneself under the blanket is to find, more often than not, that the sound was only in the life-force of the wind. One breath at a time.  One bridge at a time. Now for now.   

Mr. P's Words: The Hero Within

Mr. P's Words: The Hero Within

The Hero Within

Convocation Address: Centennial High, 2011: The Hero Within. By R. Michelle-Pentelbury

(Wheels to microphone; gathers entire audience of some 4,000+ in; takes a deep breath: )

Hello, one and all!... My thanks to each who nominated me to give this address; I’m deeply honored.

You know, Canadians love to ask, “How are you, eh?” Well, in this thing? ~ I get to say: “I’m doing wheely well.” (Ha!) My speech is supposed to be 15 or so minutes, so, I brought my own chair. Only, mine’s better padded. (grins, raises eyebrows) Jealous?

Now then:                                                                                                                                           

Dr. Christison, Members of the Graduation Faculty, Centennial Staff, Honored Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls and Souls of All Ages, welcome to: Convocation!

Your convocation. As Justin Laverdure, one of our thirteen valedictorian nominees put it: we ought “to take in every moment.” Yet another graduate groaned, “What’s so special? Just so many names called up.” Yes, but how to make things interesting? How does one create a sense of wonder? My graduation wish for you comes from the Bob Dylan song: (sings) “May you stay-ay-ay, Forever Young”. (speaks) Inside you, that is; Dylan loves metaphors! The reality is, one day you will be my age, tall, dark, and handsome (ha!) But how to keep life interesting? Staying youthful, as we know, is not dependent on age, appearance, or the amount of one’s struggles. Already, despite many untoward struggles, I know so many of you that remain vibrant, giving.

When I was a little boy of six or seven in Northern Rhodesia, central Africa, where I was born and raised, a lesson of dealing with struggle came to me in the form of a long black snake. It was a deadly African cobra. Limp, with a thumb behind its head, it was held up to my face in the thick fist of a hopeful tribesman. My Guardian Mother was indignant. “Ag no man. The thing is dead. We do not pay for dead animals.” The man became defensive: “Isee not my faultee, N’kosika. Aikona! This snakee; it too much struggle.”

“It too much struggle” got me thinking. We collected wild animals for distribution to zoos. Many came to us badly wounded. The struggle of life if you pushed back too hard, I learned, hurt too much, could kill you. Work with things, bend with things, but stay yourself! Go along with the pressure, but keep alert for your own opportunities. As John Wheler, our valedictorian nominee so eloquently put it: “It is about taking action to develop the potential within.”

Well, you’ve done that! You’ve taken the squeeze of some thirteen years of schooling and soon are about to be free! As valedictorian nominee Christine Liddell, of Student Voice, asks: “What’s your power, what’s your passion; what do you want of life?”

The theme of this graduation, as you know, is: “The Hero Within”. Well, heroism itself is usually a most public thing. We see a hero. But, The Hero Within?  We all have to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Sometimes, endurance has to happen in the personal and private grace of our own space. We sometimes hurt where others do not see, and where the loneliness of suffering, and more importantly, enduring, is managed by our greater sense of accepting, including, integrating, and persevering. As the saying goes; pain is inevitable, but suffering? That is optional. Now, we all know that living life is about choosing our attitude. And now you are here! You! You. You made it. You surmounted all difficulties and YOU are here. Congratulations![app!]

Still, like a microcosm of graduations all over the world, here we sit in our gowns, looking rather like so many similar tadpoles. Ha! Well, despite our individual potential, are we each aware of making our own change? Do we consciously choose our changing? Or do we just let our natural metamorphosis into fully fledged adults just happen? As valedictorian nominee, Courtney Hockaday challenges: “Take risks, have courage, use your potential!”

Unexpected things will and do happen. Back in ‘64, as I turned twelve, we had to leave Northern Rhodesia before it became Zambia. A year later, in the Junior High graduation assembly of my poor-neighborhood school in Pretoria, South Africa, the headmaster said something that has stuck with me all my life. Ready for it? He said: “A gentleman, or a Lady, is defined not by what he or she does in front of others, but by what one does and thinks when all by oneself.”

“What one does and thinks when all by oneself!” That might have us checking into our private thoughts! To think about one’s thinking. Meta-cognition. Now, [snap!], thinking about one’s thinking is an evolutionary process. It prevents us from merely mimicking those around us, precludes us from becoming an unquestioning part of the group, the club, the clan. As nominee Natasha Baziuk puts it: “The world needs differences; each of us is unique.” That sentiment was also echoed by nominee Samantha Forsyth, as she stated: “Each and every one of us is special.”

Special. Yet we work well with partners, the team, others. This is what graduates from the Art Department did for so many Charities. Team spirit is why Centennial won the gold for Band and for Choir festivals. Gold for Robotics too, with graduates Zane Olson and Kevin Luttman, according to Coach Brown, being excellent ambassadors. A team! That’s why we won Provincial Gold for Volleyball and for City Basketball, thanks to coach Zelez, Lewis, and assistants. As valedictorian nominee Jessica Newman stated: “We follow coach Hebb’s tool-box theory; we use different tools for different situations.” Thanks to coaches Riddle, Sandbeck, and Weimer, wrestler Ryan Burns won the City Championship. In cross country, Matt Galea won City too. And thanks to coach Al Holm, Emma Morgan won gold in the triple jump and relay, along with team mates Thea Batel, Daniel Coy, and Meghan McKay. Nominee Jaclyn Olson reminds us, thanks to coaches Hebb and Cartier: “We won the rugby last year!” In Badminton graduates Crystal Lamb and Logan Man won Gold, thanks to coaches Hill, Doerksen, and Wong! Yet as Coach Wong so humbly put it: “It’s not about us teachers, it’s about the students.” The Art Department’s multi-involved Mr. Wolski said: “I just provide and hold open doors for students.” And you, and you, and you are those students! Indeed, once a dream has been attained, whether as a team or an individual, have yourself another, and another! Only, choose carefully your dreams! They should be much bigger than just your next date! Ha! In fact, at my age, if there was one thing I would caution you about your future lives, it would be always to make a careful choice, for way indeed leads onto way.

Choice. The South African Army gave me none. Conscripted into the army in 1970, after graduating High School, I was repeatedly drafted in and out of service over the next five years, call-up after call-up. You see, South Africa had this ugly and legalized system of racial discrimination called Apartheid. Communist backed guerilla-fighters were infiltrating the borders, so graduates like me, boys your own age, were conscripted to war. Conscription. We had no choice. Remember the lesson of the snake? Get trapped, squeezed too hard, go with it, don’t fight back; wait your opportunity. Well, after five years I went AWOL, absent without leave. (And no, it’s not quite the same as skipping school, ha!) I stowed away aboard a ship bound for England, the S.A. Oranje, then bicycled up Britain, hid in the Orkney Islands above Scotland, and eventually came to Canada as a political refugee. But there were serious consequences. I did not see my mother again for over 25 years. I missed my dad’s death by ten days. The price we pay for our choices can have huge ramifications; they affect others. Am I saying I should have stayed in the strife of Africa? No. But I might have been more considerate, more forgiving, more compassionate, and altogether less self-righteous toward my family had I not just thought so much about myself.

It is difficult for a young man and woman all on one’s own, as you may think you are about to become, not to think chiefly about one self. As you get ready to leave your families, please, think of your choices. Think of the consequences. Choose carefully, even as you go out from here today, and you perhaps want to party until you drop, or you perhaps are tempted to do things you may not ordinarily do; please, for all our sakes, please, think about the possible consequences to others. Always! Just this last October, at my South African high school’s 40-year Reunion, I saw my old friends again for the first time. Forty years ago we each had gone our separate ways. So many of us wished we’d stayed in contact. Close friends, John van Niekerk, Nick Hedenskog, had died; I did not even know. Indeed, the things one does, privately or publicly, affects others.

Back in 1994, here’s what a most forgiving Nelson Mandela, coming out of 27 years in a South African political jail, quoted at his inauguration as President of a Racially Free South Africa:          [by Marianne Williamson]

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.                                                                                  

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.                                                     

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.                                                       

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?           

Actually, who are you not to be?                                                                                              

You are a child of God.                                                                                                   

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.                                                                                      

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. 

As we are liberated from our own fear, our very presence automatically liberates others.

“Liberating others.” Well, does it signify that despite constant pain I very seldom take even an aspirin? All movement, the slightest bump, costs me. My mother was bedridden with this same chronic degenerative condition from her mid-twenties. Her need for more and more drugs frightened me. Now, I’ve had several surgeries since I was thirteen, but then weaned myself off the drugs afterwards. Think about it, does someone else’s reliance on drugs and substance-abuse frighten you too? As graduate Mico Migilarese [Mill-ya-re-say], our Italian Stallion, imitating not Centennial play’s Mr. Darcy, but Rocky Balboa says it: “Adrian… you have to go the distance.”

Every one of us here has a story to tell. Each of us is pulled from within to become something yet more.

Yet where would we be without a little help from our friends? Valedictorian nominee Ledja Pengu, with gratitude, mentions: “…our families, all of our teachers, administrators, secretarial staff, teacher-librarians, guidance department, caretaking staff, teachers’ assistants, and student teachers too.” In fact, where would I be without Mr. Ed. and Mr. T.? Or all of us without Ms. Schaffer? Nominee Kaitlyn Kerr said that each of us is like a gemstone, and that inner “heroism lies also in being good listeners, supportive friends.” Indeed, as good friends we sometimes have to persist beyond our own self-interest. As good listeners we sometimes persevere beyond our own impatience. Like right now, ha! Patience. Remember that trapped snake? It reminds me of a thing I like to teach: We can only practice patience when we’re impatient; practice courage when we’re fearful; and given the freedom you are about to experience, I trust you’ll really find this one interesting: We can only practice responsibility… when we’re free. 

True, only some of us get big breaks. Awarded persons. Awarded teachers. Awarded students. One valedictorian, thirteen nominated, over 500 graduates. One excellence in teaching award winner, well over one hundred teachers. Mr. Minaz Janmohamed, who received an excellence in teaching award this year, noted how dependent it was on someone nominating him. Coaches and players too: like our Mr. Rob Hunter, winning the Prestigious Lawrence King Baskeball Coaching Award. We all know so very many great teachers; we could nominate them for so many awards. Valedictorian nominee, Amy Leedham, would have us find gratitude for each and every teacher here. That truly includes our triple-H organizers: Team Hovan, Hep and Haney!

Yet as it says in the poem, Desiderata: “Above all else, do not compare yourselves with others, for always there will be lesser and greater persons than yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees or the stars, you have a right to be here!” Indeed, recalling Natasha Bazuik’s words: “Each of us is unique”

Unique. Like Robert Zimmerman. Back in the 60’s he would have been like one of you, sitting here. He most likely was told that he cannot sing; that his style was lousy; that he’d never amount to anything. But he persevered. He believed in himself. He found his authenticity and practiced his gift and gave of himself, to all of us. And he has become legend. Robert Zimmerman, known by all, as: Bob Dylan. His 70^th birthday, in fact, was yesterday. Some here, I know from my drama classes do not recognize the name, but almost all will recognize his voice (sings Dylanesque-like):     Yeah, and how many times must the cannonball fly, before they’re forever banned? The answer my friend, the answer my friend, the answer is… blowing in the wind.”

Well, imagine if Dylan, really Robert Zimmerman, had allowed his light to be hidden, sublimated, or himself to be affected by the naysayers and gainsayers around him? His believing, or perhaps even more importantly, his accepting of himself gave license to all of us to be. This is what is meant by the famous Hamlet quote: “To be, or not to be?” To be you! To be authentic. To have the courage to live ~ with heart! Remember Christine Liddell’s words? “What’s your power; what’s your passion; what do you want?” After all, for each of us, there is no one like you! When you were born you beat out a billion other hopefuls. You made it to the golden egg and your very being, your very soul eventually found the light.

A quote I just have to share comes from a play called, “Man and Superman,” by George Bernard Shaw. It is a title quite appropriate for our theme of “The Hero Within”.  Written in 1903, a whole 30 years before the comic book Superman was invented, Shaw said:

“This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown out on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

True, you and I may well have to cross the jungles of Africa, swim the seas, fight off the lions and tigers and bears, oh my, but we have to take it step by step, and in each step we must find the purpose. It would have helped that poor struggling snake to know the famous prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” And your purpose? It is to do well. Or as our valedictorian, Suraj Sridharan, so succinctly puts it: “I don’t mean do well; do GOOD.”

Good, like the honest and fearless graduate, Naomi Eaton, who re-created the script, Pride and Prejudice, and involved over one-hundred students in the performance. Good, like graduate Janai Haupapa who midway through grade eleven came from BC, and keeps giving with her music. Good, like the always contributing graduate, Jacob Parris. And good, like the continually contributing Chelsea Herman, Anna Heiter, Ashley Haimila, Sarah Schultz, and Jess Cooper, who always give and give without looking for recognition. So do graduates like Sidney Fleury, Dani Paulich, Caitlin Black, and the ever helpful Duncan Hendrick. They do Good; like the constant contributions of graduates McKenna Stewart, Charlotte Myles, Brenna McIvor, Connor Chisholm, and Zlata Fridman. Good, like graduate Caitlyn Kashman, who this year published “Words of a Journey,” her book to help out teenagers. Good. It’s in your hands, for in such an act or thought lies the real hero within. As valedictorian nominee Dan Hansen put it, “to be the person who helps; to make the choice to help.” That is what the gentlemanly graduate, Steven Barber, always does. That is what our continually caring graduate, Amy Totten does. Good. It is in the acts and thoughts of a true Lady, or Gentleman. That’s what Danica Power, graduate and lead role of next week’s musical, Once on This Island, means by her Facebook listing of the essential qualities of a Lady or a Gentleman; it is a quality, you’ll recall, defined by what we think and do… when all by ourselves. Could I not keep on naming virtually every one of you?

In making caring choices, in overcoming difficulties, in supporting and giving to others beyond our own interests, we are indeed exercising the hero within. Each of you sitting here has done that. You each are busy climbing a personal and private ladder to the stars.  Imagine if good old Robert Zimmerman had felt “less than”? Imagine if his parents or teachers or friends had persuaded him not to sing? And so, to close off, as Bob Dylan would wish for us, let us indeed stay, forever young. In fact, (looks over). Mr. Boutin, my guitar if you please.

(Mike Boutin sets me up; I don hat, sunglasses, and sing, using Dylanesque voice:)                         

 May God bless and keep you,                                                                                                                                                               May your wishes all come true,                                                                                                                                                        

May you always do for others,                                                                                                                                                         

 And let others do for you…. [stops, takes off hat and glasses}

Wait a bit. Let’s have others up here to help. (calls to back) Ready Mr, Edmonds? (Mr. Edmonds gets choir ready at back) Ladies and gentlemen: Mr. Mike Boutin! Mr. Jorge Ramirez! and Mr. Stan Sibbald! (they each come up with their guitars, plug in, while I sing, in my voice:)

1)       May God bless and keep you,           May your wishes all come true,                                        

May you always do for others, And let others do for you,                                                         

May you build a ladder to the stars, And climb on every rung;                                 

May you stay, forever young            (x2; on repeat Stan, Jorge, and Mike join)                                                     .

2)       May you grow up to be righteous, May you grow up to be true,                                              

May you always know the truth, And see the light come shining through,                             

May you always be courageous, Stand upright and be strong:

May you stay, forever young (x2 on repeat Stan, Jorge, and Mike join)

3)       May your hands always be busy, May your feet always be swift,                                            

May you have a strong foundation, when the winds of changes shift,                    

May your heart always be joyful, May your song always be strong:

May you stay, forever young (x2) [calls: Mr Edmonds!]

            (Choir repeats verse 2) May you grow up to be righteous, (etc.)                                                                                              ….. (I pick up last repeat): May you stay forever young.

4)      (me) May you have a sense of wonder, keep up your interest too,                                

        (Stan, Jorge, and Mike join) May you stay, forever young                                               (me) May you stay-ay-ay-forever young!  

Diamonds Take Time

 

Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 10:49pm

So, you wanted to know how one deals with continuous pain? Well, we take on our karma with grace, or we cry.

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional," the Buddha said. Well this journey for some of constant pain is debilitating, frustrating, enervating, and simply seems unfair. And like most things in life, we're left having to make sense of it all by ourselves, for another person's sense is not necessarily ours. It is the isolation of being in pain when there is no-one around to sympathize, empathize, or even bear witness to our endurance that pain really tests us, for in those long lonely hours, of what USE is our endurance and the suffering and the immobility and the harshness of our distinctive and seemingly unique reality?

It is precisely in those moments that the trick of minimizing the present reality becomes a personal practice, for I know that my own little clod of reality, as Shaw* would have it, is very much diminished in comparative perception of the universe, and of what I can do for it by honouring a larger totality than myself, by contemplating its vastness of potential, and of focusing on the creative, the generative, the mystical, the pragmatic, the absorptive, assimilative, inclusive and integrative potentiality that is the gift we all have, to whatever degree we realize it.  And so, like the choice of opening or closing the icons on a computer desktop, I minimize the pain window, open up and explore the other icons of my cognizance, and rather than pushing against pain, or being annoyed by its perseverance, I dial up some other icon and overwhelm the pain with some other aspect of my unlimited potentiality, given that I grant the same unlimited-ness to each and all in the essence of our being yoked to everything. And the more adept I become at minimizing my response to one set of provocations, particularly pain, and maximize the choice of my chosen direction, whatever creative or focused endeavour I turn my mind to, the more I become accepting of the moment by moment by moment. Move but slightly and the stab indeed brings me back to the painful reality of physical nerves rubbed raw and sudden jabs of agony, but then the journey resumes; it is a constant journey of voyaging with my senses focused on the next destination, rather than on the rattle and squeak of the bone-based vessel in which my being travels.

Wisdom would have us realize our journeys are at once for ourselves and others; we are cells connected to every other cell in a continuous process of covalent bonding, osmosis, and essential evolution. We are learning, voyaging, taking on a sea of troubles. Impatience with the process is among our many difficulties. Diamonds take time. How do we slough off the entirety of the old as we progress through to the new? How many times shall we pass the travail? How do we make the transition permanent by choosing to let go of the past habituations, by truly metamorphosing to become the butterfly from our own caterpillar-like crawling toward our larger destiny?

We move with grace and gratitude, or we cry. And crying too, has its place. Choice is our privilege. What part of everything is not?
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* This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown out on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
                                                           (Shaw, 1903, Man and Superman, Penguin Plays, p.32)

Still Up for Acceptance

Our problem originates in sperm. You and I were the first. We beat out a billion others. We journeyed more vigorously, more purposefully, more competitively than all the others, or if not, then by some accident of time and space we were the first one to meet the Glorious Goal. And now it remains in us; that deeply imbued atavistic sensibility that continues to invigorate us with a need to be better than others. So we judge and disparage and disassociate and condemn. We compete and deplete and disavow and dismiss. We claw, clutch, calumniate, confound and confuse. And we each want to reach Heaven, a heaven, the heavens.

Ignobility vies with nobility. There is intention and honour and integrity. We espouse the five knightly virtues, those of Frankness, Fellowship, Courtesy, Compassion and Cleanliness. And by cleanliness we connote purity of thought and deed. And by purity of deed we denote right intention, right action, and righteousness of spirit. And spirit is essentially evolutionary, we presume, or what’s a heaven for? We aspire to progress, to be pure, to be better than we were before, or why proceed through the lessons of life? Yet we innately understand that we or others are O.K. at any given grade level, at any given age, at any given level of development, at any given rung of hierarchy or of insight, enlightenment, progress or pilgrimage. Or do we? Therein lies the rub.

The friction between us persists. Judgment reigns. Differentiation fragments, apportions, divides, quantifies, equivocates and then dispenses with us. We clump in small groups, flock into larger groups, coagulate into clubs, name, nationalize, civilize, and condemn. The other is less than, or worse, more than. And the degree to which we perceive ourselves measured, apportioned, relegated or approved of, matters. It matters not only to our selves, but also to others. Why else would we choose schools, neighborhoods, cities, and even countries? Us versus Them. We versus They. Me versus You. Let’s compete! And who indeed amongst all of us herein shall be first? Shall win? 

Integration is not completeness; and it is. The paradox is in integration’s complexity of seemingly being too accepting of the status quo without sufficient attachment to a preferred outcome. Between left and right is the metaphorical fence, and the fence-sitter can hardly perch without some or other instigation to have him declare himself. Passion, plans, preferences, and powerful actions are still the purveyance of being integrative; it is non-attachment to the product that apparently gives others the problem. Sew then wisely the seeds of instigations. Acceptance of the ongoing totality is not easily comprehended, it seems, or we would surely not be so contentious. Integration absorbs, assimilates, includes, incorporates, and accepts all of everything, infinitely. Yet in each of us, in the now from moment to moment, integration is a journey of enlightenment, a journey of awareness, a journey of evolution.

Evaluation or Judgment? Preference or Need? Heaven or Hell? It’s all really up for complete acceptance.

Still?