It All Fades

The highest of highs … the lowest of lows.  I’ve had them.  I imagine you have too.  In the moment, the intensity was breathtaking.  Whether I was soaring or plummeting, blood coursed through the body, the mouth dropped open, cells were blasted apart.

***

1.  I played the cello in the huge All-City Orchestra on the square in front of Toronto’s New City Hall.  I remember the aged Sir Ernest MacMillan shakily wielding his baton, leading us through “Land of Hope and Glory”.

2.  There were four years of weekly swimming classes in high school.  Boys only, everybody in the nude.  Since I couldn’t swim, and it seemed that adults had given up trying to teach me, I piddled around in the shallow end while my friends did laps.

3.  It was a large auditorium in Edmonton, Alberta and I spoke from the heart to hundreds of people.  I was in anguish at the coming death of an organization.  At the end, they stood.

4.  High above a mountain lake, I clung to a cliff, frozen in place, seeing my death falling away.  Twenty minutes of terror.  Why did I have to die so young?

5.  On a Sunday in May, 1986, I crossed the finish line of the Vancouver Marathon.  My goal was to break four hours.  My time was 4:12.  The smile matched the outstretched arms.

6.  Two hours later, I lay down on a bench in downtown Vancouver, knowing that the chest pain would soon kill me.  A cabbie found me and took me to Emergency at St. Paul’s Hospital.  I survived.

7.  On the university track, I lined up at the start line with some Grade 6 kids.  “Ready, Set, Go!” someone cried, and we blasted off on the 100-metre run.  They were 12.  I was 68.  I finished forty metres behind the slowest kid, smiling all the while.

8.  At 3:00 am in the hospital room, I could no longer hear my wife Jody breathing.  Soon the nurse nodded that she was gone.  I kissed my wife’s lips.

9.  On the west coast of Vancouver Island, I climbed a sandy hill, the sound of faraway surf in my ears.  As I reached the peak, the glorious waves of Long Beach stretched to the horizon.

10.  In January, I was awake for 44 hours as planes took me from Dakar, Senegal to Brussels, Belgium to London, England and to San Francisco, California.  After all that, how did I survive the one-hour BART trip to Berkeley?

***

What’s left now are blurry memories, in the realm of pleasant or unpleasant.  I still smile and frown as the images return but the moments feel muted.  But I am definitely not muted.  I feel alive, surging with promise, my hair blowing in the wind.  Somehow the energies of yesteryear have found their way inside me.  They’ve settled in the nooks and crannies of my life.  And I am the better for it.

Out Of An Abundance Of Caution

It’s an odd turn of the syllables. When I first heard the phrase, it was about the coronavirus. The words gave me pause. In the US, President Trump tested positive and was heading to the hospital for a few days. Cautious. I doubted that the danger to him was negligible. If you’re hospitalized, something major is probably going on.

Someone described the phrase as “precautions taken against a very remote contingency”. I kept returning to the strangeness of the words, and asked myself if I really wanted to armour myself against remote possibilities.

Oodles of caution seem to be spreading:

1. Seventy students and staff members at a high school go into quarantine after two teens contracted Covid

2. A professional football player developed some tightness and muscle soreness in his right calf. The coaches chose to remove him from the game

3. Some college students won’t be travelling home for Christmas due to Covid restrictions

4. Hackers injected malware into some government software. The programs have been removed

5. Schools switch to remote learning after coronavirus cases in the community rise, although the infection rate in local schools is low

6. Protests in the US about the death of George Floyd lead to the temporary boarding up of some stores in Vancouver, Canada

7. Most Republican politicians in the US Congress won’t say that Joe Biden is the President-Elect

8. Some people who speak out on TV about US politics (and some election officials who keep to the rule of law) are provided with security at home, at work, and while they commute

9. Today, as the Electoral College certified the results of the US election, some states changed the locations of the meetings and didn’t reveal those locations

***

I’m not disputing the potential value of these precautions but they do point to a hesitancy in modern life. Many people are unwilling to take chances, to burst nakedly into life full speed ahead, to be publicly themselves. Whatever happened to throwing caution to the wind?

A Story

Jack Kornfield is a Buddhist teacher, and the founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California.  He shared this story with us, written by a woman.

It was Sunday.  Christmas, our family spent the holidays in the Bay Area, but in order to be back to work on Monday we had to drive the four hundred miles back to LA on Christmas Day.  Normally an eight-hour drive but with kids it can be a fourteen hour endurance test.  When we could stand it no longer, we stopped for lunch in King City – a little metropolis of six gas stations and three diners.  Road weary, saddle sore, I sat Eric, our one-and-a-half-year-old, in a high chair and looked around and thought “What am I doing in this place on Christmas Day?”  It was nearly empty.  We were the only family.

My reverie was interrupted when I heard Eric squeal with delight and glee.  “Hi there!”  Two words he thought were one word.  “Hi there!  Hi there!”  He pounded his fat baby hands (Whack!  Whack!) on the metal high chair tray.  His face was alive with excitement, eyes wide, gums bared in a toothless grin.  He wriggled and chirped, and then I saw the source of his merriment, and my eyes couldn’t take it in all at once.  A tattered rag of a coat, obviously bought by someone else long ago; dirty, greasy, worn baggy pants; the zipper at half-mast over a spindly body; toes that poked out of the old shoes; a face like none other – gums as bare as Eric’s, whiskers too short to be called a beard, and a nose (varicose) that looked like the map of New York.

I was too far away to smell him but I knew he smelled.  And his hands were waving in the air, flapping about on loose wrists.  “Hi there, baby!  Hi there, big boy!  I see you, Buster.”  My husband and I exchanged a look that was a cross between “What are we doin’?” and “Poor devil.”  Eric continued to laugh and answer “Hi there!  Hi there!”  Every call was echoed.

I noticed waitresses’ eyebrows shoot to their foreheads and several people were going “Hmm … umm” out loud.  This old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby.  I shoved a cracker at Eric and he pulverized it on the tray.  I began to get upset.

Our meal came.  The cacophony continued.  Now the old bum was shouting from across the room “Do you know Pat-a-cake?  Atta, boy!  Do you know Peek-a-boo, Peek-a-boo?  Hey look, he knows Peek-a-boo!”  Really loud.  Nobody thought it was cute.  The guy was drunk, and a disturbance, and I was embarrassed.  My husband was humiliated.  Even our six-year-old said “Why is that old man shouting and talking so loud?”

We ate in silence, all except Eric, who was running through his repertoire for the admiring applause of a skid row bum.  Finally I had enough.  I turned the high chair.  Eric screamed and clamoured around to face his buddy.  Now I was mad.  Dennis went to pay the cheque, imploring me to get Eric and meet me out in the parking lot. 

I trundled Eric out of the high chair and looked toward the exit.  The old man sat poised and waiting, his chair directly between me and the door.  “Lord, let me out of here” I thought, “before he speaks to us.”  It soon became obvious that the Lord and Eric had other plans.  As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back, walking to sidestep him.  And as I did so, Eric, all the while with his eyes riveted to his new best friend, leaned far over my arm, reaching with both arms in a baby’s pick-me-up position. 

In a split second of balancing my baby and turning to counter his weight, I came eye-to-eye with the old man.  Eric was lunging for him, arms spread wide.  The bum’s eyes both asked and implored “Would you let me hold your baby?”  There was no need or way for me to answer since Eric propelled himself from my arms into the man’s.  Suddenly a very old man and a very young baby consummated their love relationship.  Eric laid his tiny head upon the man’s ragged shoulder.  The man’s eyes closed.  I saw tears hover beneath his lashes.  Aged hands full of grime and pain and labour so gently cradled my baby’s bottom and back.  I stood awestruck.  The old man rocked and cradled Eric in his arms for a moment, and then his eyes opened.  He said, in a commanding voice as he looked directly at me, “You take care of this baby.”  Somehow I managed “I will … I will” from a throat that contained a stone.  He pried Eric from his chest – unwillingly, longingly – as though he was in pain.  “God bless you, ma’am.  You’ve given me my Christmas gift.”

I said nothing more than a moderate thanks.  With Eric back in my arms, I ran for the car.  Dennis wondered why I was crying and holding Eric so tightly.  And why I was saying “How could I have forgotten?  How could I have forgotten?”

What People Like

Christopher Graves is the president and founder of the Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science in Washington, D.C.  He’s done work concerning people being hesitant to take vaccines.  This is certainly a current topic, since various polls show up to half of North Americans aren’t willing to take the coming Covid vaccines.  Some of them worry that corners have been cut since these vaccines have been developed so quickly.  Attitudes centre on both effectiveness and safety.

To solve this problem, Graves recommends … a lottery!

In behavioral science, almost nothing works as well as lotteries to incentivize behavior, for a lot of reasons.  People overestimate their chance of winning (optimism bias) and prefer $5 of lottery tickets to $5 cash because of the asymmetry of the cost versus the large payout … Why not enter each person who gets vaccinated into an exclusive lottery?  “Get a shot to get a shot at a million.”  Make it easy, make it fun, make it rewarding.

I smiled as I read Graves’ words.  “Why not, indeed?  Worth a try.”  But then …

The way our brains work, we just love lotteries.

Wait a minute.  I don’t love lotteries.  I wonder if that says something important about me.

In the interest of thorough research, I scoured the Internet, and found “Ten Surprising Things Successful People Like”.  Unsure if I really wanted to be “successful”, I read the article.  A few of the assertions did resonate with me, such as “Helping those who need and deserve it” and “Quiet time”.  However, there were things I didn’t like:

1. Working my tail off (to the tune of 60-hour weeks)

2. Control (squeezing until you say “Uncle!”)

3. Mundane hobbies (such as building models or playing cards)

4. Winning (I get to be king of the mountain, with all of you looking up at me)

5. Giving advice (You need my wisdom because you don’t have much)

No thanks
This human being doesn’t want those things

Perhaps it’s true that within the North American population of 370 million souls I am in the minority.  That’s fine.  My eyes do not go wide with the possibility of winning a jackpot or being better than you (smarter, wealthier, more enlightened …)  All this comparison stuff doesn’t ring my chimes.  I don’t care what other people like.  I have a Bruce song to sing.

Being Still … Moving

I’ve been meditating since 2007 and have been going on silent meditation retreats since 2010, including two that lasted three months. I learned many things, including the value of being still. Just as the Buddha was still under the Bodhi tree for hours … until enlightenment said hello.

I have no interest in enlightenment but the stillness remains with me. At the retreats, feeling “in place”, immersed in the truth of the Buddha’s teachings and immersed in the moment, was contrasted with “leaning forward”. As in never quite staying in this second, being so eager to rush into the next one … and missing them both.

My more recent work with the Evolutionary Collective has shown a different way. Being unchanging and centered doesn’t draw me anymore. Instead, I feel a pull to move forward into the future, which like the present is evolving. It’s not like I’m at Point A and saying “I’m going to Point B!” Rather, I’m roaming around what seems like Point A, and I’m just going. I don’t know where but I feel that the path is good.

In the 1970’s, I read Carlos Castaneda’s book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. It records conversations Carlos had between 1960 and 1965 with an aboriginal mystic – Don Juan Matus from Sonora, Mexico. No doubt Don Juan knew all about stillness, but his life moved. There was a path.

Before you embark on any path ask the question: “Does this path have a heart?” If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question. And when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy. It does not make you work at liking it.

Thank you, Don Juan. You helped me forty-five years ago and you help me now. Despite not seeing a destination, I’m at ease with the journey. I simply walk and smile with my friends. Hearts and smiles go well together.

New

Can I, one human being among 7.8 billion, create something truly new?  Something that has never been here before?  The Population Reference Bureau estimates that 108 billion humans have lived on Earth in the span of time.  That’s a lot of people!  What are the odds that Bruce Kerr could, in effect, create a new colour, where people would look at it and say “What is that?”

I don’t know about odds, but I admit the whole idea seems outrageous.  Couldn’t I just settle for coming up with a “new and improved” version of something that someone else had created?  Well, sure, I could do that, but the prospect of Brand New is really enticing!

I’m smart but would I have to be brilliant to bring forth the “unpreceded”?  My intuition says no.  I don’t have to be the world’s most intelligent, creative, witty, empathetic and beautiful person to create something from nothing.  I can do this … and so can you.  That sounds irrational to say, but perhaps reason should take a back seat here.  Perhaps we don’t need to reflect on the accumulated knowledge of millenia either.  Maybe the magical number sequence is worlds away from “1, 2, 3, 4 …” or even from “1, 2, 4, 8 …”.  Maybe the new is in the realm of Nicolaus Copernicus, who in 1543 declared: “At rest, however, in the middle of everything, is the sun.”  Not the Earth.

And … it could be that it’s not an individual, but rather a group who will foster the infinite.  Bruce will be included but it will have nothing to do with his ego.

***

You may be wondering if I can put my finger on what I (or we) will bring newly into the world.  I have a glimpse, barely visible through the mist.  It has to do with moments, with stretching them beyond their apparent point in time.  It has to do with the eyes as organs that not only perceive but evoke.  It has to do with lingering, and hearing the final note of all the orchestral instruments hanging in the air.

Something new is coming

Impossible

Forty years ago, Exhibit A knocked on my door
Four days ago, here came Exhibit B
Who am I to say there’ll never be an Exhibit C?

***

It was 1978 or so. I was the instructor of Project Insight at Lethbridge Community College in Alberta. It was a life skills course for young adults who wanted to get into regular college programs. These folks had seen some tough times, with low self-esteem linking the twelve people together.

I decided to take my students on an outdoor education day trip to the mountains of Waterton Lakes National Park. We’d drive the Red Rock Canyon Road and snowshoe up the trail to Crandell Lake, then back down the other side to the snow-covered Cameron Lake Highway, which was closed to traffic. Then we’d walk back down the road to Waterton townsite, where we’d pick up one of our two vehicles. Adventure!

Some in the group were fit and keen. Others had never been on snowshoes before. We obeyed the good wilderness rule that the faster ones would stop for extended breaks, allowing the slower ones to catch up. Like a caterpillar, we were together.

We were maybe a mile from our vehicle rendezvous when “John”, one of the students, came up to me. “I can’t find my glasses!” John didn’t need them for walking in the wilderness but they were essential for near vision tasks. So many years later, I don’t remember how long it took me to act, but I did. Leaving my friend Cam to be responsible for the other students, I turned around and headed back up the road.

It was irrational. I shouldn’t have been doing that alone. John had no idea when the glasses fell out of his pocket. And what were the chances of finding them? The snow hung well above our snowshoe prints. I could walk right by the glasses as they lay in a snowdrift. And I couldn’t just keep going and going. Darkness would become an issue.

What in heaven’s name possessed me? Good question. In any event – well up the road – I found the glasses.

***

Last Friday was far less dramatic. After two Evolutionary Collective Zoom calls and an afternoon of errands in St. Thomas, I’d returned home for supper. Time was running out to do a blog post since I’d bought a ticket for the James Bond flick Spectre in London. Besides I couldn’t think of anything to write. “That’s okay … mañana.”

It’s a short drive from Belmont to London, and I got in Ruby half-an-hour before showtime. As I was heading north on Westchester-Bourne, and then west on the 401, something strange was building in me. Something non-physical was pulsing. Really weird. I found my seat in the theatre ten minutes before the announced time, and immediately whipped out my phone and the WordPress app. “What are you doing? The movie’s going to start. You sure don’t have time to do a post.”

Someone else was tapping on the keys. The title was “Power” because power was coursing through me. “Where are these words coming from?” I didn’t know, but they kept coming. (I just looked back at the post – it was 219 words long) The theatre had darkened halfway and the future attractions were entering my mind. Undeterred, my lovely brain and lovely fingers kept going. I was proofreading as the manager’s message about Covid precautions came onscreen. It was perhaps a minute away from total darkness and then the surge of Bond action. “Please turn off your phone” reverberated at the back of my head.

I tapped “Publish” in the WordPress app
I tapped “Share” and chose Facebook
I typed “In the middle of …” as a title
I tapped “Post”

And the Bond music began

True

Last night I watched the movie Mulan on Disney Plus.  It’s a story of ancient China.  Invaders from the north are threatening the country and the Emperor declares that each family must give a son to the war effort.  Mulan is a girl of 16.  She has no brothers.  Out of honour, her hobbled father says that he will join the fight.  To protect him, Mulan disguises herself as a boy and leaves home under the cover of darkness.

Mulan and her fellow recruits are trained not only in skills and strength but also in values.  At one point, the General has them unsheath their swords and raise them to the sky – being loyal … brave … true.  Mulan’s arm reaches straight up and she yells the word for the first two, but not for the third.  Despite her commitment to family and country, she is living a lie.  Later in the film, she reveals that she is a woman.

I loved the movie.  After going to bed, I laid back and replayed my favourite parts on my phone.

Morning came.  Lying amid sleep and wakefulness, words started tumbling from me.  “Sweetness and light.”  “There is love in the world.”  “Simply this.”  I wasn’t thinking … the words just bubbled up from Nowhereland.  As my mind began to focus, I thought of tonight.  I thought of what I might write in my blog.  I remembered reading someone’s turn of the phrase that made me laugh: “loose in the vowels”.  Yes, my vowels were loose in the hour before sunrise.  That’s what I’d write about.  Besides, it was a clever title (not mine, however).

After showering, I took out a piece of paper and wrote down the phrases that I told you about.  “A good start.  Every time there’s another flow from my mouth, I’ll write it down.  Maybe I’ll have twenty of them by suppertime – plenty for a blog post.”

Now, here’s the rub.  During the day, I tried.  I’d sit in the meditation chair and allow my mind to quieten.  It was a classic means to an end: Meditation → Quiet Mind → Bubbling Words → Post.  So much for spontaneous.  As I lay in my bed again an hour ago, accompanied by my trusty sheet of paper with eleven examples, I returned to Mulan.  What I was doing wasn’t true.  It was narrow and strategic rather expansive and mysterious.

No thanks

I got up, placed the sheet in the recycle bin, and smiled
Now I know what I’m going to write about

A Simple No

Ten days ago, a friend sent me a link to an online concert, featuring a bevy of undoubtedly melodic singers, wearing long black dresses and tuxedos.  I remember thinking how kind of her … and then I gently placed the e-mail on the back burner of my life.  “Maybe tomorrow.”

Several tomorrows came and went and once in a while I’d imagine a time slot when I could sit back and enjoy the music.  But then that intention would fade away.  Occasionally the concert would return to consciousness and I’d engage in a little self-talk:

Just sit down sometime, Bruce, and listen.  You don’t exactly have a full social agenda, you know

I wonder what kinds of songs they sing.  I bet I’ll like some and not others

C’mon, Bruce … get your rear in gear.  It’s probably just an hour or so

A few more days, and then the unaccomplished would rear its head again.  Then disappear once more.

And now this evening.  I was lying on my bed in the dark, soaking in the quiet and watching the lights of highway traffic do their magic on my bedroom wall.  My smile was interrupted by a jolt of words:

I don’t want to!
I don’t want to listen to the concert

Thoughts of being a bad person followed, along with disappointing my fellow woman.  Of refusing a gift.  Of being shallow, callous and just not nice.  And then, like magic, those thoughts floated away.  It’s no big deal.  I simply don’t want to listen to a concert.  I want to put my energies elsewhere.

I e-mailed my friend to tell the truth.  It would have been braver to phone her but it was okay not to be brave.  With tenderness and truthfulness, I sent my message off into the night.  The smile returned, knowing that other experiences will beckon.

Naturalization

It sounds like a strange word.  It refers to the process of a non-citizen becoming a citizen.  In the US, an applicant needs to take a naturalization test.  Here in Canada, we refer to it as a citizenship test.  I was reading today about some sample questions in the US test, which requires written answers rather than multiple choice responses.

It got me thinking about what’s important when selecting someone to come into the country as a full citizen.  Number one for me is the values of the person, the ethics.  I’d be looking for you-and-me folks rather than me-first ones.  People with empathy and kindness as well as smarts.  I’d also try to sense if the newcomers will contribute to the well-being of my country – with their skills and leadership.  And although formal education is great, it’s overshadowed by wisdom.

Farther down the list for me is knowing a lot of stuff about the new country.  And then what sort of knowledge is important, and what types are irrelevant?

And so to the questions.  Here are three that I like:

What is one reason colonists came to America?  What did people sense about the USA from a distance, such that they wanted to live there?  I feel some good answers are economic opportunity, freedom of religion and escape from persecution.

What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?  Assuming that the applicant has studied to know which amendment is which, I like these responses: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press.

Name two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy.  Cool answers include: voting, giving an elected official your opinion on an issue, writing a letter to a newspaper.

These questions point to the soul of America, something that the newcomer needs to deepen into.

And then there are other questions, which I find useless – simple memorizing of facts:

Name three original states of the USA.

How many members does the House of Representatives have?

When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?

What are two Cabinet-level positions?

Name one war fought by the USA in the 1800’s.

Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II?

***

What’s important in citizenship?
What’s important in the home?
What’s important in life?