Tag Archives: Aliveness

Standing O

Sometime around 1980, I walked to the podium at the annual meeting of the Order of the Eastern Star in Edmonton, Alberta and talked to about 800 delegates about the need to rejuvenate the Star in order to attract younger members.  I received the only standing ovation of my life.

I was so scared on the way up and so shocked on the way back.  I did it.  And it definitely felt that a huge serving of well-being had been added to my life.  Decades later, I’m not so sure.  In 1980 and 2014, I was and am complete.  Perfectly okay.  Acknowledging the value of goals and achievement but not needing them (except when my wayward mind convinces me momentarily that I do).

Here’s another standing o and its accompanying ego rush:

He found that his heart was suddenly full of happiness and simple gratitude.  It was just good to find out you still had a heart, that the ordinary routine of ordinary days hadn’t worn it away.  But it was even better to find it could still speak through your mouth.

The applause started even before he finished his last sentence.  It swelled while he gathered up the few pages of text which Naomi had typed, and which she had spent the afternoon amending.

It rose to a crescendo as he sat down, bemused by the reaction … Then they started to rise to their feet, and he thought he must have spoken too long if they were that anxious to get out, but they went on applauding.

I don’t need multiple representatives of the human race to say “Bruce is good”.  I just need to keep expressing myself, letting the world’s reactions be as they are.

There’s another side to standing ovations, of course – me as an audience member either getting up at the end of a great performance or staying glued to my seat.  If the singer, actor or speaker truly deserves accolades at the end of their presentation, there comes that moment of choice for me.  If I want to stand up, do I wait for other folks to elevate before I do?  Do I glance furtively to the left and right to gauge how I should act?  Or am I the source of my behaviour?  This is what I choose in my better moments, occasionally suffering the embarrassment of rising and clapping before the person is done.  Oh well.  I can live with that.

It’s just such a pure experience to reveal myself to the assembled multitude
“Here I am.  Love me or loathe me.  It’s okay”
Naked visibility

Space

We live in a nice little solar system with our local star – the Sun.  For a long time, mankind didn’t know that there were other solar systems.  Now scientists tell us that we reside within the The Milky Way Galaxy, which has between 100,000,000,000 and 400,000,000,000 stars.   And … there are about 200,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe.  Somehow that gets last night’s two-hour power failure in perspective.

My tendency is to read a paragraph and then zoom on to the next, having merely touched upon the truth therein.  Not this time.  I just reread the words above.  And I’m now going quiet, except for my fingers, and letting in the immensity.  It’s not time to get out the calculator and do all the things my busy little mind wants to do.  It’s not time for closure.  It’s time for silence, and for opening to a reality that’s just so … big.

How do I write a post when words fall so short of the experience?  Do I stop right now and call it a day?  Less is better?  I don’t know.  Guess I’ll stumble through a few more sentences that may point towards the infinite.

If material space is so huge, can my spiritual space be any less so?  And what does that mean about how I should lead my life?

Where does the universe end?  It seems like it doesn’t, and what exactly does that mean?  My small reality has always had boundaries.  What if there are none?  What is outside of the universe?  What is outside of Spirit?  What if I’m really everyone and everything, for all the moments of now that have ever been or ever will be?

Do I now just plop down into my personal pile of protoplasm and lie there forever?  Or do I engage my day, fully conscious of moving through infinite space within and without?

Yes

 

 

Human beings have lived on Earth for 200,000 years

The Earth is approximately 4,000,000,000 years old

That’s 1/200 of 1%

Plato’s Cave

Plato was a Greek philosopher from around 400 B.C.  Another smart guy from history.  He reflected on what is real in life, and has shown us a new possibility using a powerful metaphor.

Plato asks us to imagine a cave, with a group of prisoners facing the back wall, their bodies and heads chained and unable to move.  Talk about a restricted view of life.  Behind these folks, near the entrance of the cave, is a massive bonfire.  Between the prisoners and the fire is a walkway on which other people walk by, carrying a varety of objects in their hands.  They cast shadows on the back wall, the only things that the immobilized humans can see.

If you can only see one thing, that has to be what’s real for you.  What if so much of our present day lives is just a shadow of reality?  Like gossip, small talk, complaining, winning and losing, better and worse, succeeding and failing?

The prisoners decided that the highest status holders among them were those who could best predict what shadow would come along the walkway next, or … seeing a particular shadow, be able to identify all its details of shape and size.  Those were the champions of life, similar to the ones today whom so many of us worship in the realms of sports and entertainment.  Could this all be false?

What would happen if someone released a prisoner from the chains (or they magically figured out how to set themselves free)?  No doubt they would turn around and see flesh-and-blood human beings walking in front of them, entities with a vibrant aliveness that they had never experienced before.  Would these beings be honoured and loved, or reviled and condemned?

And what of the fire?  Would the intense light blind them?  The heat fry their circuits?  Or would awe transform their faces?

Beyond the fire is the mouth of the cave, and past that the big, wide world … infinitely beyond those shadows.

What transcendent realities am I willing to let in?
What’s just too scary to accept?
Will I let my life be transformed?
Perhaps

Home County

I drove into London today to listen to some of the workshops at the Home County Music and Art Festival.  It was a gorgeous sunny day in Victoria Park – ten acres of mature trees and wide spreads of grass.

Here are some moments from the folk festival that took me beyond the world of form:

***

A woman leaning back against a big tree, her head nodding to the music, and her backside caressing the bark

A young black singer deep into a gospel song, standing at a stationary microphone without an instrument, opening her mouth so wide as she sang, her fingers opening and closing in the air

James Keelaghan telling us that his dog died last Friday and then singing “Sinatra and I”, an ode to his four-legged travelling companion.  All in a deep baritone

Nathan Rogers moving forward and back in his chair, as he channelled the storytelling energy of his dearly departed father Stan, with words such as “The mountains moved inside of him”

A young woman guitarist, resplendent in a white fedora, Shirley Temple curls and an all-black outfit, sending the melody to heights unknown with the vibrato in her fingers

The audience clapping and smiling after each fiddle, mandolin and electric bass solo

Connie Kaldor singing a song about a nightclub in France for dogs, and a woman in the audience standing up, moving to the stage with her white terrier in her arms, and dancing big circles with her doggie

The fingers of a bass guitar player making love to his strings as he took over from the vocals

A woman crooning the lyrics “With my aspirin, my soul begins to slip” (or so I thought), when she really was saying “With my last breath, my soul begins to sleep”

And more words from elsewhere:

The way she sang was magic
Of the things we know are real

Riding the dark train to heaven

It was a winter of record-breaking lows for me

***

The music lies within us all, and seeks to open our hearts.  May we listen.

Sing Me a Love Song

“Play your guitar.”  Although the request was from my lovely wife Jodiette, I gulped.  It had been so long.  But why had it been so long?  I took group lessons in Ottawa in 1972.  During the spring of 1974, I often took my guitar out to the beach in Vancouver.  And in the summer of 1975, when I was managing the laundry at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton Lakes National Park, me and my guitar were pretty much joined at the hip.  I played in a staff talent show, and later that year sang “Hello In There” to folks who were with me on Vancouver Island at a workshop called “Coming Alive”.  So why did I let the musical zest seep away?  I don’t know.

A few nights ago, I played “For You” for Jody, complete with not-quite-right-on chords and a questionable approximation of the melodies.  Jody loved it.  She cried.  And I loved hearing my voice again.  I went to the Internet and found the lyrics and chords for some old favourites:  “The Mary Ellen Carter”, “How Can I Tell You That I Love You?”, “Help Me Make It Through The Night”.  And somehow I made it through the songs, with the finger burn making me stop eventually.  But it was a very sweet hour.

Over the last few days, I’ve forgiven myself for having let the guitar go, for not singing to my darling all these years.  I vaguely remembered having a thick file folder full of songs but I had no idea where it was.  Jody said, “Look in the piano bench.”  And lo and behold, there it was.  I also found eight sheets of paper, dated February, 1997, with the title “Songs I Want to Learn” … 115 in all (sadly, none of them learned).

Such a strange journey we’re on, full of imperfect choices and odd diminishments of aliveness, having had no intention of doing so.  It’s as if I’ve been asleep at times, in some sort of trance, walking the expected walk through the events of the day.  Jody has asked me to wake up.  And so I am, with many stories, melodies, harmonies and chords to come.

May ABBA teach us all:

Thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing
Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me