laughing at ourselves...

One of the things I notice now about growing older is how carefully I must walk on the ice. Not that I was careless before, mind you. But having taken two excruciating spills on the wet deck in one year, I am clearly not as spry as I once was. Or thought myself to be. And when my friend from the desert suggested I contact the local agency on aging for ideas about how to prevent a fall... Well, let's just say, the humbling presence of reality was given shape and form in a wisdom that became incarnational. 

The medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart, is reported to have told his congregants that, "reality is the will of God." He added, "It can always be better, but we must start with what is real." Fr. Richard Rohr wrote something similar recently, too. So these days I walk with a little less zip than before - a bit less speed, too as the NYC family will attest. But my hunch is that there is also a greater overall awareness in my gait as I continue making peace with aging. My heart was pleased to read that the late David Bowie said that, "If you are pining for youth I think it produces a stereotypical old man because you only live in memory, you live in a place that doesn’t exist. Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been."

So, beyond moving more slowly and noticing smaller things more often, what I am discovering is that there is a unique give and take to the wisdom born of aging with humility. If you fight it, you become cranky and cynical. If you deny it, you play the fool. If you give up, you shrink from life before your time and spend all day in your sweats. But, if you negotiate each change the body presents as a small adventure into curiosity rather than resistance or despair, I find that the pay-off is more laughter. I just can't take myself as seriously as I used to. The surprises are just too goofy. Or unexpected. Like the way right now I have to squint, pull off my eye-glasses, and close one eye completely like my father did in his later years because I need a new prescription. I used to wonder why in God's name he did this? It was so scary! Only to find that now I know: one eye is better than the other when it comes to seeing small print.  So when I saw myself in the mirror the other day doing just what Big Jim used to do, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. (NOTE: the amplification of this laughter ought not to have hit me so hard. After all, my favorite part of the "Mary Poppins" movie is the "I love to laugh" sequence. (And the "feed the birds" scene because I love a good cry, too.) These days laughter has become a prayer of sorts.

Self-deprecating humor has often been a spiritual guide for me. Not sarcasm or mockery, that's veiled cruelty and impotence. But laughing at myself? That is pure grace. There are times when we're watching TV and my modest hearing loss takes me into the realm of the absurd. Thank God for close captions while watching shows from the UK! (NOTE: Once we get back from Tucson, and my new insurance plan kicks in, I will be addressing this with tests and hearing aids.) Over and again I am finding that humility truly is the font of wisdom - and a ton of fun.

In Robert Bly's, Morning Poems, my favorite small volume of his work is one he calls "Bad People." I have his autograph on it from a Tucson Poetry Festival that hangs in the guest room. He understands the importance of all that seems troubling to those who want a safe, antiseptic life.

A man told me once that all the bad people
Were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails
You need; they are really claws, and we know
Claws. The sharks - what about them?
They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced
     men
In black coats who chase you for hours
In dreams - that the only way to get you
To the shore. Sometimes those hard women
Who abandon you  get you say, "You."
A lazy part of us i like tumbleweed.
It downed move on its own. Sometimes it takes
A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.
They blow across three or four States.
This man told me that things work together.
Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new idea;s
And a careless god - who refuses to let people
Eat from the Tree of Knowledge - can lead
To books, and eventually to us. We write
Poems with lies in them, but they help a little.

Moving slower, forgetting things from time to time, mishearing and all the rest has not only helped me slow down, but also get better organized. Now I plan for surprises rather than sputter when they happen. (Most of the time.) Now I take two or three days to get ready for a journey. (It helps that I do the laundry now too.) And, the Lord be praised, I talk about the anxieties I am feeling rather than pretend they aren't real or let them pop up as anger. I think David Bowie was right - but it takes some real negotiating - and a ton of laughter. O Tucson, dear Tucson, O Tucson here we come.