Monthly Archives: October 2014

Donna and Pete

During the summer of 2012, Jody and I spent two weeks visiting her brother Lance, our sister-in-law Nona, and their three boys – Jaxon, Jagger and Jace. They live in the village of Longview, Alberta, in the foothills of the Rockies southwest of Calgary.

We had a great time, camping in the Kananaskis, hiking in the mountains, sitting around watching TV, and talking at exquisite length to people we love.  I wanted to spend some time on my own as well, and so dipsydoodled around Longview to see what’s what and who’s where.

I wandered into a gift shop on Main St., and was thoroughly welcomed by the woman behind the counter.  She was Donna.  We just fell into conversation as if we’d been bosom buddies since the beginning of time.  We talked Alberta and we talked art, since she was selling originals and prints done by a local artist, Bernie Brown.  I ended up buying a drawing that showed a medicine man in mid-dance, but that wasn’t the important thing.  Donna was important.  She glowed.  It didn’t matter the topic – she breathed life into every word, and the wrinkles by her eyes got a workout.  Other folks came into the store and she lighted up with them as well, drawing out their humanity and humour with ease.  Then she’d chat with me some more. Ahhh.  I went back to visit her two more times.  Such a pleasure.

One day, Jody and I were walking along a residential street when along comes a gentleman dressed up cowboy, complete with a ten-gallon hat.  He was smiling at us from way back.  And then we to him.  He was Pete.  As we got near each other, I noticed that he had a large pink price tag on the toe of one boot.  After a few minutes of good-natured Easterner razzing on Pete’s part (and a similar repartee from Jody and me), I decided to broach the footwear topic.  “Oh, that.  Still haven’t decided if I want to keep these boots so I left the sticker right where it was, for an easy return if need be.”  We laughed. He laughed.  Pete became an instant friend.

Later in the week, I was sitting on the front deck of a bar on Main St., having an orange juice (or some reasonable facsimile), when I spied Pete strolling along on the sidewalk across the street.  He spotted me too, and started waving madly.  I naturally waved back, and yelled “Hi, Pete”.  Neither he nor I was remotely troubled by the looks we received from the other sunning patrons.  Truly, who cares?

The following week, having found out where Pete lived, I knocked on his front door.  How did he respond to the unscheduled visitor?  “Come on in.” (Big smile)  He was preparing supper and listening to the day’s rodeo on the radio.  Sure, he wanted to hear the results of the bull riding and the bronco busting, but he kept me and our conversation front and centre in his brain. So very much like himself.

So .. friends around every corner?  I think so.  Just gotta say “Hi”.

 

Just So

Yesterday morning, I had just assisted Jody with personal care and had moved to our bedroom to give her some privacy.  I sat in a rotating chair and looked at my bureau.  The bottom drawer wasn’t closed  completely.  About an inch of the top surface of the drawer was showing.

I was torn.  The part of me that wants everything in its place started contracting.  A less developed section of Bruceness didn’t really care.  But I could feel the tug of the words “totally” rather than “partially”, and of “flush” rather than “offset”.  My goodness, what’s the big deal?  Aren’t there more crucial life issues that need to be addressed?  Well … yes, but something was pulling me in to its domain.  I sure wanted to close that drawer!

Larger principles beckon me, ones that present themselves symbolically to me in the objects of daily living.  Doing a job completely, for instance, before moving on.

Then there’s horizontal and vertical.  In our hallway, Jody and I have put together a collection of small framed photographs on a wall.  One montage of our vacations sits right next to a light switch, and sometimes it gets jostled.  So the others are all at right angles but holiday pics are leaning just a bit, far less than that tower in Italy.  Still though, it’s not right, says a certain version of my mind.  Down deep somewhere is the appreciation of the vertical as representing an upright life, and the horizontal as seeing all beings as equally wondrous in God’s eyes.

Dish towels need to hang loosely from the oven door handle, falling uncreased towards the mystery below.  Being bunched and jumbled somehow interrupts the grace of the infinite.  Toilet paper falls down over the front of the roll, revealing transparency, rather than descending from behind, and thus keeping hidden and unacceptable some part of its being.

“Bruce, you’re nuts.  Make sure nobody ever finds out about your questionable analogies, and the fetishes that unfold from each.”

“Shhh.”

It’s time for another great life experiment.  Let the tea towels bunch.  Let the montage lean a mite.  Let that bottom drawer show all the glory of its top edge.  Don’t fix things.  Everything’s perfect as it is.  Next week, I can always return to the appropriateness of feng shui principles.  And then return to mild disorder the week after that.

After all, as Walt Whitman said, “I am inconsistent.  I contain multitudes.”

Beyond Which Not

I’ve been reading a book by Lex Hixon called Coming Home.  In it he points to the possibility of enlightenment as uncovered through various spiritual traditions.

I don’t know what to say.  Perhaps being at a loss for words is appropriate when glimpsing … Spirit.  I know I want to say something as I grope through an unknown territory.  I don’t think it’s about achieving anything, such as a rarefied state of being.  Or about starting at A and then experiencing what I need to experience to get to B, and then C, D, …  Here’s how Lex expresses the inexpressible:

From our perspective as seekers, we may imagine that we will someday turn a certain spiritual corner, finally to experience the vast new vision of what is truly ultimate.  But this is to misunderstand the Ultimate.  Turiya is not any particular experience but is what constitutes all experiences.

He refers to the “biggest” consciousness as turiya.  It seems to me like the essence of all people and things and moments.  All of this is aglow from within.  Maybe a simple white candle burns always in my chest and yours, an eternal flame.  Maybe your favourite tree holds the same candle … your bed, your coffee, your coat.  A building, a street, a field, a mountain, a lake.

Perhaps it’s all perfect – this moment and every other one.  Today I couldn’t find my vehicle permit for Hugo.  I need to have all the paperwork in place by Sunday.  I looked everywhere, watching my frustration grow.  Perfect?  Even the part about frustration and fear?  Could be.  (Never did find the permit, but the Government of Ontario will replace it for $10.00.  Whew.)

Sometimes my responses to life’s travails are mellow.  That feels right – spiritual.  And I’ve defined the absence of such a mature (?) response as bad, as less than.  But what if I could easily get in touch with the adequacy of everything I receive and everything I send out, “positive” or “negative”?

Right now, Jody needs my help, and so I’m leaving our conversation.  In this instant, within this spaciousness, allowing myself to be shifted away from the task I’ve chosen is perfectly fine.  So I’ll see you later.

***

I gave Jody her daily injection of Fragmin, to treat her blood clots.  I get scared when I’m about to push the needle into her stomach, worried that I’ll hurt her.  Today, I did the deed while surrounded by space.  Within the fear was complete sufficiency.

I thought tonight about how to access this turiya.  If only I could think of one word that would trigger an opening.  It sure wouldn’t be turiya.  Apart from the writings of Lex and another fellow named Ken Wilber, I’ve never heard of the term.  It doesn’t shine inside me.  I’ve often thought of the word Spirit, with a capital T, but that’s not it either.  Okay.  I decided to wait for it to be revealed.

I didn’t have to wait for long.  Jody was angry with me for an hour or so. During that time together, I let a vast consciousness be there.  And a word naturally came to the surface … “candle”.  Yes.  That feels right.

Jody has now fallen asleep.  Even though the residue of her anger is still with me, so is a little white candle, and the moment is illuminated.  Plus I just thought of a song by Peter, Paul and Mary:

Don’t let the light go out
It’s lasted for so many years
Don’t let the light go out
Let it shine through our love and our tears

Works for me

Meditating with Jody

It’s 7:00 am and I’m sitting beside Jody’s bed after she’s asked for a drink of water.  She’s dozed off again.  And so I’ll meditate.  I find that I usually can fall deeply within a minute or two.  The Buddha talked about “choiceless awareness”, allowing whatever thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations that come up to be there, and just watching them as they arrive and later leave.

I used to wonder what to do with my hands, but why bother?  Now I just cup my right hand in the left, letting my right thumb rest on the left one.  I can’t hear my breath.  It’s very slow.  I’m very still.  Cozy.

I hear Jody’s slow breathing.  I smile and let it embrace me.  Sometimes there’s a break in the rhythm – a little grunt – and I smile some more.  All part of the symphony.  My breathing and Jody’s aren’t on the same beat, and that doesn’t matter at all.  Actually, nothing matters.  I just welcome the moments as they come towards me.

My stomach groinks, and then once again.  Jody’s replies with a similar sound.  My goodness, it’s a conversation.  Another smile.  I know that a small clock is sitting nearby but I don’t open my eyes to see it.  Wouldn’t do me any good in the dark anyway.  I hear the thought, “Find out what time it is. Find out how long you’ve been meditating.”  A smile and a gentle “No thanks” in reply.

Thoughts of being in the meditation hall at IMS bubble up.  Comparing this to that.  And I watch that go.  Such a blessing to welcome it all – the arriving, the abiding, the departing.

Then the itch.  A few inches below my right nipple.  “Scratch it.”  “Don’t.”  I let it alone, just observing instead.  It gets stronger but after a short time lessens to nearly nothing.  As I continue, the itch flares again (five more times!) and then recedes, over and over.

I turn my head way to the left, and then to the right, enjoying the crackle sound.  “Don’t turn your head.  Be still.”  Later I turn again.  “It’s okay, Bruce.”  No right or wrong when I’m meditating.  No deficit.  And increasingly, no yearning.  I like it.

At some point, with Jody continuing to saw logs, I open my eyes in the dim light, get up from the chair and lie down again on the foam pad beside her bed.  I don’t look at the clock.  Everything is fine.

Lost

Sometimes my consciousness is “normal”, with me addressing the daily tasks of life.  Sometimes it’s spacious, as the flow of awareness and compassion holds me.  And sometimes there’s a jolt of disorientation as something completely new floods my being.

In the early 70s, I travelled with my girlfriend and her dad from Vancouver to the slopes of Mount Baker in Washington.  They were skiers.  I was not.  I strapped on my snowshoes and set off up a hill on my own.  Partly I was thrilled to be exploring solo, but there was an itsy bitsy parcel of fear as well. Soon the lodge was out of sight and it started to snow.  Gosh, what a winter wonderland!  I plodded onward, being careful to make my steps wide so that one snowshoe wouldn’t overlap the other.  At one point, I looked up and saw that the nearby trees were dimming … and then some more … and then gone. Everything was gone, in all directions.  I had walked into a whiteout.

There I stood.  Nowhere to go.  Not knowing uphill from down.  No idea how long it would last.  Stunned to silence and immobility.  All my insides were stunned as well – mind, heart and soul.  Would I survive this?  Is this the end of Bruce as we know him?  All the structures I had built around my humanity were gone, irrelevant.  It was like A, B, C, … Ψ.

I stood for at least twenty minutes.  Then the snow cleared.  But I was changed.

In August, 2010, Jody and I were driving back from Nova Scotia through the States.  After crossing back into Canada at Buffalo, we headed west on Highway 3, a secondary road.  I knew that sooner or later we’d catch a glimpse of Lake Erie on our left.  A couple of hours more and we’d be home. That trip was a lot of time behind the wheel, and I was tired.  On and on we went until there was a huge lake up ahead … on our right.  I pulled over and gazed out the window at the blue.  Huh?  Does not compute.  Actually, I wasn’t doing any computing.  I just sat there with my mouth open. Completely fried.  All functions having ground to a halt.  Stunned again.

There was a big empty space where brains should have been.  It had to be another planet I was on.  All thoughts of reason, of a gradual accumulation of life experience, frittered away.  Only many minutes later did Jody and I figure out how to get back to Earth.  For a short distance, Highway 3 curved to the right and headed north.  The idea was to turn left at a certain intersection to resume the westward trip.  I missed the turn.  And continued until I came upon … Lake Ontario.

A total break in the head
A discontinuity of consciousness
A plummet into the unknown
Lovely

Our Children

On one level of existence, we don’t have any young’uns.  But hey, why stick with just one version of life?  After we got married in 1988, Jody and I decided that we wouldn’t have any kids.  Instead we would do a lot of travelling.  But I can’t help imagining how it could have been …

Fifteen years ago, our reality snapped, and lo and behold, we were parents.  I don’t know how it happened.  Divine introspection perhaps.  Jody and I were blessed to welcome our son Dollop to the planet.  Such a fine lad, and he’s grown to be a quality dishwasher and lawn cutter.

Just before Dollop was born, I remember thinking that having one child was just the right amount.

Two years later, along came our darling Puce.  A brother needs a sister, right? She was so sweet, and still is.  From Barbies to boys, it’s been a long road, and such a pleasant one.  Someday, I’m going to walk her down the aisle.

Just before Puce was born, friends and neighbours told us they were green with envy that we were about to have a daughter.

In 2010, we were both super busy, but gosh – there’s always time for childbirth.  I was holding Jody’s hand in the delivery room as Inkling emerged into the world.  Soon red hair and a fiery personality joined us at the breakfast table.  One of a kind you are, my dear.

Just before Inkling was born, I had an idea that there was a princess on the way.

With the foundation of a really good housekeeping team in place, Jody and I were delighted that Squirm decided to join us … out of the blue.  Unexpected but not neglected, we loved her to bits.  A very active child, she’s always enjoyed life’s twists and turns.  Lovely.

Just before Squirm was born, I remember feeling really antsy.  How would we cope with four kids?  As it’s turned out, no problemo.

We both thought that was it.  For years the Kerrs were a scintillating sixsome.  And then just last week, Santa, the Easter Bunny or maybe David Letterman plopped a new being in our laps.  Imagine – Jody at 54 and me at 65!  Thank you, Somersault.  Seven of us.  Aren’t we a lucky family?  And who knows what this young boy will become?

Just before Somersault was born, I woke up in the middle of the night, absolutely flipping out.  I’ve calmed down since.

So there you have it, folks.  We’re very proud.  I’ll send you a photo sometime.

 

ta-pocketa

It was 1964 and I wasn’t liking much of Grade 10.  A notable exception to the muddy flow of life was Miss Bruce (no relation).  She was our easy-to-look-at young English teacher.  The source of many a fantasy for Bruce Archer Kerr. Plus we got to read a lot of cool stuff in her class.

These days I ask myself what I remember from high school studies.  Not very much of a pleasant nature, I’m afraid.  But there was a short story by James Thurber that has stayed with me all these years: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”. Now it’s a movie, and I read recently that it doesn’t keep to the story very well.  I don’t know … haven’t seen it.

From the very beginning, I’ve yearned to be a hero, and in Grade 10 Walter was my guy.  Henpecked by his semi-lovely wife, he sought solace in his mind.  As a navy pilot in the heart of a hurricane.  As a renowned surgeon inserting a fountain pen into a damaged anesthetizer.  As a World War II flying ace in a pitched battle with the Germans.

And in each desperate situation, there was the noise of a machine in the background, urging Mitty/Kerr on to victory.

“I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the Commander.  “Throw on the power lights!  Rev her up to 8,500!  We’re going through!”  The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.

I stood taller after selected English classes.  Never mind the acne.  Never mind the monosyllables with girls.  Never mind the nude swimming classes for a terrified non-swimmer.  Inside, Kerr of the Yukon forged his way through the great northern wilderness.

In 2000 or so, Jody and I bought titanium road bikes.  I had the choice of keeping the frame’s metallic sheen or having it painted.  I chose a blended red and yellow.  The bike shop owner also said that I could have a name printed in black on the top tube.  So yes to that too.  Not “Bruce”.  Not “Road Warrior”.  Certainly not “B Kerr”.  You know what bubbled to the surface of my latently heroic mind.

As senior citizenship has somehow snuck up on me, Walter is alive and well. A spiritual teacher speaking to hundreds in Boston’s Beacon Theater.  A humble Canadian author stepping onto the stage in Stockholm, Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Roger “Bruce” Bannister circling the Iffley Road Track in Oxford, England four times on May 6, 1954, hitting the tape in a time of 3:59.4, the first human being to break the four-minute mile.  The crowd went nuts.  Bruce acknowledged them with a tiny wave.

I love being in the here and now.  There and then isn’t bad either.

 

 

Laughing with Kabir

Kabir was a mystic poet in India during the 1400s.  He rejected the rigidities of Hinduism and Islam, and wrote ecstatic poetry about experiencing union with God.  He also chuckled a lot, sometimes enjoying the presence of others, and sometimes gently mocking the world’s foibles.  Here are a few choice quotes:

The caller calls in a loud voice to the Holy One at dusk
Why?  Surely the Holy One is not deaf
He hears the delicate anklets that ring on the feet of an insect as it walks

Why should I flail about with words
When love has made the space inside me full of light?

I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty
You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house
And so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

Do you have a body?  Don’t sit on the porch!  Go out and walk in the rain!

It is time to put up a love-swing!
Tie the body and tie the mind
So that they swing between the arms of the Secret One you love

The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words
I looked through their covers one day sideways
What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through
If you have not lived through something, it is not true

Don’t go outside your house to see flowers
My friend, don’t bother with that excursion
Inside your body there are flowers
One flower has a thousand petals
That will do for a place to sit

Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines but inside there is no music
Then what?
Mohammed’s son pores over words and points out this and that
But if his chest is not soaked dark with love
Then what?

Then what, indeed.  Not what this life is intended to be.  I have so many spiritual books but they only touch me if I in turn breathe life into them. Along with Kabir, “if you have not lived through something, it is not true.” Each day, then, I listen inside for the sweet ring of “yes”.  If the package I hold in my hands sings to me, then I place it gently on my shelf so that I may enjoy it another day as well.

And as for the lightness of life, where do I find people who laugh and laugh and then laugh some more?  Who open and open and open some more?  I bet Kabir would say …

Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of money
Maybe we’re ragged and funny
But we travel along
Singing a song, side by side

Oh, we don’t know what’s coming tomorrow
Maybe it’s trouble and sorrow
But we’ll travel the road
Sharing our load, side by side

Many Over the Land

I was driving back from south London’s Costco this afternoon, having accumulated a good share of groceries and meds for Jody.  After rounding the Glanworth Curve, I saw some dots of white far up on the right.  As I got closer, I saw that the dots were seagulls, feeding on the dark brown of a farmer’s field.  Perhaps a thousand of them.  I was struck by the beauty, by the white and brown contrast, and by something else.  Something unspoken but so clearly present in the moment.  All these beings on God’s brown earth.

Five minutes later, far up on the left, was an orange stippling of the ground. Soon I could see that pumpkins protected part of another field.  The contrast this time was orange on brown, but no less lovely.  The gourds were another type of being, resting gently on the soil, waiting for pies and Jack O’ Lanterns.  Struck again.

Why did these displays draw me so?  And why did they happen one after the other?

My brain transported me back to 1992.  October.  The sixth game of the World Series, between the Atlanta Braves and my beloved Toronto Blue Jays.  I and 47,000 other faithful showed up at the SkyDome to watch the festivities. Except there was no baseball in Toronto that day, nothing happening on the field.  The game was in Atlanta, and we were watching it on the JumboTron.  I spent a lot of time looking at my fellow parishioners, worshipping at the shrine of the slider and the long ball.  Look at all of us, watching TV!  I loved them a bit.  They were my family of the evening.  And the moving sway of multicoloured dots filled nearly every seat.

As Mike Timlin threw the ball to first for the final out, we rose as one body, cheering and high fiving … the Blue Jays had won their first ever World Series.  Minutes later, maybe 20,000 of us were walking noisily up Yonge St. Such a flow.  Such joy.  And no looting, no overturned cars.  I walked north for the seven miles it took to get home, feeling the loss of the folks who turned left here and turned right there.  Family.

During the summer of 2008, Jody and I took the train to Quebec City to help celebrate the city’s 400th anniversary.  We decided to go see an evening concert on the Plains of Abraham, the site where the British defeated the French in 1759.  “Simple Plan” was playing.  We started up the trail which left the boardwalk by the Chateau Frontenac Hotel.  As we climbed higher, we could hear the band above us.  Finally it felt like the next rise would be our last … and it was.  As we reached the peak, we gazed down at a tiny stage very far away.  Between us and the band sat and stood and danced 100,000 people. So said the paper the next day.  Knolls of folks.  Meadows of folks.  A rolling blanket of humanity scattered on the plain.  I was struck dumb.  The music was fine but the spirit among us was … big.  So infinitely big.  I rocked and rolled inside my soul for hours.

Seagulls, pumpkins, baseball fans and concertgoers – spreading out to cover the planet.

Comforts

Especially now that Jody is sick, I grasp onto the little pleasures that come my way.  It’s almost like sucking my thumb when I was a kid.  I did that until Grade 5, accompanied by my teddy bear Teddy.  I remember the overwhelming sadness I felt when Teddy’s head fell off.  Soon after that, my thumb started morphing into other pursuits – showing appreciation, creative twiddling, and eventually hitchhiking.

Today, I still need my teddy.  The first one is the London Free Press sports section.  I start on the front page, looking for stories that show human beings being human.  Let’s say it’s an article about the London Knights Junior A hockey team (young guys between 16 and 20).  If the article continues on page 3, I go there to finish it.  Generally though, I start on the first page and proceed on from there in order.  A lovely ritual or a deviant rigidity?  Who cares?  It makes me feel cozy.

I also love rows of sports stats, usually printed in the tiniest of fonts.  Jody has always called this particular passion my idiotsyncrasy.  Hey, it’s okay if it is.

I have a favourite ceramic mug.  Actually, I’m looking at it right now.  It’s tall and blends from a dark blue glaze at the bottom to a delicate pink one at the top.  And it feels just perfect in my hand.  Once my coffee or tea cools down a bit, I like wrapping both hands around.  The warmth spreads through me.  Ahhh.

I’ve mentioned my man chair before in these posts.  It’s a green upholstered Lazy Boy.  (And I just remembered that it’s featured in my photo for WordPress.)  I love pulling the lever to get the footrest to push out and the head to go back.  I get my knees up and prop my book against them.  More bliss.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been sleeping on a foam pad next to Jody’s hospital bed.  I lay a flat sheet on the pad and cover myself with a second sheet and a blanket.  Then I arrange things by my neck just so.  The edge of the top sheet has to curl back over the blanket so the sheet is what I feel.  Since the sheet and blanket are loose at the bottom, I then throw my legs into the air, so the covers fall over my toes.  When I bring my legs back down, I’m snug as a bug in a rug.  Yum.

That’s all the symbols of soothing I can think of right now.  I’ll let you know if other ones float down upon me.