oday my dearest friend - and sweetest lover - asked me: where do I find sustenance and meaning in the barrage of suffering and futility of life? She wasn't kidding: where is there a sense of what makes all of this more than a boring exercise in the circle game?Part of me answered in my deep, renewed but very childlike faith - that is a gift - and has been a gift for most of my life. This prayer gets part of it right: Holy and Everliving God, by your power we are created and by your love we are redeemed; guide and strengthen us by your Spirit, that we may give ourselves to your service and live each day in love to one another and to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
But that isn't the whole answer... part of it comes in this sweet, sweet song by Luka Bloom called "Holy Ground" - and in a whole bunch of other songs, too - that put me in touch with the deep beauty and love of creation:
When the songs flow down like a river
And the words cut through
Dreams fly around me
I'm a happy man in the world
I love the sound of the bodhran
Kicking in behind me
It heats my blood
When the trumpet flies above me
I'm a happy man in the world
It's the holy ground I'm looking for
I wake up every morning and ask for more
I'm a happy man in the world
Sometimes vultures hover
Over wounded angels lives
Black dog comes to see me
Darkness fills my world
So I close my eyes and listen
To a Jamaican freedom song
I move my body to the rhythm
I'm a happy man in the world
Then I told her in any given moment of the day - or year - I don't really know what I'm doing. And God knows if it makes any sense or difference. But looking backwards, in the wake of my years, I can see joy... and hope... and even some beauty and healing. And then I know that being awake and compassionate in the moment is the right way even when there is not a lot of immediate evidence. The Cinematic Orchestra's song, "Breathe," captures what this feels like for me: it takes a long time - the contemplatives call it a LONG, loving look at what is real - and if it mostly looks like love then... it is right. It is layered and complicated - one riff and truth building upon the next - so that all together it feels rich and healing.
I have felt this freedom and release from time to time... and trust that the Cinematic's lyrics get it close to the truth.
Oh that song your singing
Singing into me
Over everything
I used to
be
beOh that song that your singing
Singing into me
Slow and sweet
It carries me
carries me
carries me
Out to sea
And swallows me
Into the deep
and comfort me
and comfort me
Oh that weight
is lifting
lifting off me
Made me think of this poem by T.S. Eliot:
We praise thee, O God, for thy glory displayed in all the creatures of the earth.In the snow, in the rain, in the wind, in the storm
in all thy creatures, both the hunters and the hunted.
For all things exist only as seen by thee,
only as known by thee, all things existOnly in thy light, and thy glory is declared even in that which denies thee; the darkness declares the glory of light.
Those who deny thee could not deny,
if thou didst not exist; and their denial is never complete, for if it wer so, they would not exist.
They affirm thee in living; all things affirm thee in living; the bird of the air, both the hawk and the finch; the beast on the earth, both the wolf and the lamb.
Therefore we, whom thou hast made to be conscious of thee,
must consciously praise thee, in thought and in word and in deed.
Dare I also add in lament and doubt and aching, too?
2 comments:
The piece of your answer to my question that struck me most deeply at the time and has stayed with me most intently since is, "When I don't know what it all means, I just try not to put out the light." That's a fine simple answer to a big fat question, an answer that I can get ahold of and hang onto when the monotony and banality of life on earth sucks me back into that quicksand of "What's the point?" Just try not to put out the light. I can do that.
Made me think of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush singing, "Don't Give Up" which I posted for you.
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