Wearing my new hat

Last Saturday I was wearing my new hat when I went to visit Bert in the home; I had worn it on earlier occasions, for about a month, but they were ‘test runs’, Saturday I was a guy wearing his own hat.

I have worn hats off and on for almost seventy years, but this is different, this is the first good hat I have ever worn or owned: Printed on the sweatband is “RESISTOL ’self conforming’ Made in Texas, USA, 4xxxx BEAVER”; that pretty much explains everything. I do like wearing it, it is sitting on my head as I write; I have had floppy hiking hats, berets, and those ubiquitous one size fits allbaseball hats. I have a big head, the baseball caps look like undergraduate beanies, missing the propeller at the crown; this hat is “7-5/8″, there were only two in the store that fit me, a black and a brown, I left the black. It isn’t accurate to say that there were only two hats in the store that fit, there were straw hats of the cowboy variety in my size;but this has not been a straw hat kind of winter in Chicago, this is very much felt hat weather.

I am self-conscious about wearing a hat indoors, was raised when a hat was removed in an elevator, restaurant, addressing a lady, in the house; it was with that background that I went to the second floor to see Bert.

I found him in the day-room, his wheelchair was part of a circle, with Molly in the middle, a woman in her mid-twenties, of unending energy and enthusiasm, she was dancing around while waving a stick with a piece of ribbon attached. Everyone had a stick with ribbon attached, I was offered my choice, I took a green stick with green ribbon, Bert’s was a blue stick and ribbon. Molly would go from one to another of her dozen attendees, dancing, waving encouraging; she would hold someone’s hand and dance, she would make her ribbon shiver and shimmy; looking to elicit a reaction from each and every one.

All the wheelchairs had alarms attached, the alarm would sound if the sitter attempted to rise, Bert is always in a chair and alarm, it will also go off if he comes too close to the elevator.

A couple of the women were in regular chairs, their walkers standing next to them; one woman, I think her name is Carol, is always in a special chair that looks as if it is a hinged mattress folded to be a long chair, with high, padded, arm rests. I have seen Carol strapped into this chair on some occasions, today she was not; Carol’s limbs are in constant motion, irregular waving and bouncing, jerking, twitching she seems never to be still; her head swings from one shoulder to the other, the chin near her chest or pointed to the sky, the chords on her neck visible much of the time. Carol never talks, she moans, she howls, she screams; the last time she saw me she began shrieking, a nurse had to come and assure her that I was not there to harm.

Molly pushed a chair into place for me, between Bert and Carol, sat down clasping my stick with the ribbon attached.

Bert saw me, there was that pause before that warm smile, he raised his hand a few inches so that I could grasp and shake it; “hello old friend” is how I have been greeting him, that elicits an even warmer smile. He has no idea of my name, when he last saw me, just that he recognizes his friend of several months.

Molly finished dancing, a one sitting one standing sort of dance with each of the dozen women and Bert; thankfully she did not dance for or with me. A beach ball was produced next, and a game of catch began; catch turned out to be more appreciated than the dancing, most everyone opened their arms in an attempt to catch the beach ball, many attempted to return it. There were a couple of women who were not awake long enough to complete that give and take, their wakefulness is measured in seconds.

As Molly went around the circle giving everyone a chance to play she came to Carol; Molly threw the ball, Carol caught it, and then Carol threw the ball right back at Molly; there was a pause while I understood what had just happened, while Molly understood what had just happened, while Carol herself understood what had just happened. I had never seen Carol do anything purposely before, I don’t think Molly had either; all three of us laughed, others in the circle smiled, we had all witnessed something really good.

Within the last week I have corresponded with a theologian, had my attention brought to the religious statement of Oliver Sacks, talked with a woman interested in hospice work, drove someone who has a hangar at Midway Airport: That few seconds with Carol were the most interesting, the most memorable, the most spiritual.

I have read a few books of philosophy, theology, some great novels; all of them worthwhile, but that few seconds when a person concentrated her all, invested whatever she has, to catch and return that ball, that was something really good. The intensity of that situation lasted just a short time, it cannot be sustained, but it will always be remembered.

I was glad that I was wearing my new hat, that I was now grown up enough to wear a good hat, to appreciate it, take it to important events.

Letting go of meaning

For the last day I knew that I had to put down here what follows, it comes from saying goodbye to a new old friend, from the understanding that I am starting a new epoch, from that special insight that sets us apart from everything else that is alive. Any embarrassment I feel about writing this comes from my inability to put down just the right words that express what I know, what every one of us knows within.

My path led me to find meaning for who I was and what I must be about, “what will you be when you grow up?”, the route that took me everywhere but to peace. I don’t know why I never questioned the mission, never followed the clues that pointed to a wrong end; I searched and searched for the thing that would make me valid. Depression and terrible anxiety were all that I found.

There is being and knowing, that I am, everything is built upon this. Out of this came, comes, the knowledge of the mystical that I first experienced when Lydia Aello loved me and I loved her in return. Various experiences were of the mystical nature, mostly they happened when hearing a certain piece of music, looking at a picture, that kind of thing; most intense was when I believed that I was about to die, when I could see the deep black of the edge. It was from that intensity that came my daily exploration of the Spirit, the presence, etc.

I felt the need to put all of that down here again while we are at this new place, this beginning, this New Year. Intuitively I know that this direction is unlike the others, the goal a better one.

And I know that I have spent enough time analyzing and writing this: And that the bird feeder is empty, that the rent check needs to be delivered, that there is a cable for the new television that needs to be exchanged for the on that will do the job. And so it goes.

More on why Jesus is not God

That so many worship Jesus, and yet fail to have a spiritual experience, should lead to realize an important truth:

Jesus is not God, God is God, and Jesus understood this.

That God is ineffable been realized from the beginning, it is the reason that everything written about God must be a metaphor, a way of understanding and passing along that knowledge; whenever a description is taken literally there is trouble, defending the interpretation, aggressively promoting it all end in ignorance and suffering, there are innumerable examples of this, this is a principle reason that so many leave the church.

Even the label ‘God’ is a metaphor.

When Jesus asked why God was not protecting him he came to know this great truth, God is not about the mundane, it was then that Jesus left the worldly and came upon infinite transcendence. He knew intuitively that he must be rejected and killed, he had assistance to have this take place; he had to carry the cross each step himself, had to feel torture and his own murder in order to get to that place:

This is the great truth that may assist us in transcending, to understand the holy.

I don’t see God as a noun, more of a verb, the Wellspring of Being; Tillich’s term the ground of being led me to find my own; I cannot ignore another term of his ultimate concern.

The search for the right term is proper, it is a tool for looking within oneself for the truth, taking that kernel of intuitive knowledge and making it relevant for the self.

Our intuitive and ultimately true task is that search, it has always been so.

Memorizing and repeating the writings of those who have had the spiritual experience doesn’t work, it has never worked, but it is easier than introspection, and so lies the reason so many do it.

Without man God is irrelevant

That powerful notion of Tillich’s came to my mind as I walked out into the cold morning after visiting Bert in the nursing home; there is just a sliver of Bert there today, a thread of the mind unraveled, repeating the same phrase, nothing I said could derail that circular train.

That fundamentalists don’t have the courage to embrace atheism, that atheist don’t have the courage to recognize what is inherent in them, what causes the change from animal to man, that the spiritual example of Jesus is more overlooked than not.  All of these notions and mixed metaphors ran into the raw spot of my soul, that place scratched by the experience of being with a man who was almost not one.

I wanted to write this while still feeling all of that experience, to put down without politeness the insight and profit I gain from this hospice visit; I grow when the callous of my soul is rubbed away, I have an opportunity to see and be a little bit more than I was because of what happened this morning.

And that’s really all that I have for now, time to rest.

About God, Jesus & the Bible

This in response to something from a week or so ago:Of course Jesus was and is Man, how else could He be relevant for these two millennia? Another definition would involve magic, the supernatural, a suspension of reason, and that has always been a weak theological line.

And yes, anything other than God is blasphemy, that is the definition of blasphemy; what Jesus did and does is enable us to transcend the mundane, to assist us in joining the Spirit.

The whole point of the spiritual journey is to become one again, to become more than we were, to get as close to the ineffable as possible.

And, as a last note: The bible becomes holy only when it assists us in going to where we ought to be. If it is just a recipe book to be memorized and followed mindlessly, it remains merely a book.

I think that how I understand the Spirit, the direction along the Path, that it is in the spirit of Luther, that he showed us the courage to know directly.