Hold On Loosely

Hold on loosely

Don’t let go

If you cling too tightly

You’re gonna lose control -38 Special

I love this song. If you’re ever wondering about the philosophy of Taoism, just recall these lyrics – might as well be the Taoist Rock Anthem. Sure, the song is about relationships – romantic ones – but Taoism is about relationships, too – our relationships to nature, to each other, to ourselves, and to the way things are. Instead of constructing our identities as individual billiard balls knocking against others, Taoism rightly, I believe, offers a more nature-oriented, realistic picture of a person as consisting of a meshed web of relationships, a paradigm that meets up nicely with similar anti-Cartesian (dualistic, mechanistic, oppositional) ideas developed out of quantum mechanics theory and remembered from Native American worldviews.

Yes, that was a mouthful. Which is why I happen to be so appreciative of this song – it so simply touts an idea that an academic-prone philosopher-wanna be like myself can so easily and eagerly turn into a complicated spaghetti-tangled mess, getting high off eating up the pasta-carbs of Deep Thoughts. Which is kind of antithetical to Taoism’s simple style.

For instance, my girlfriend asked me the other day how Taoism differs from Buddhism, and these lyrics have a possible answer. I wouldn’t say Taoism and Buddhism are starkly different or at all opposing, more that they strive for the same things and work within the same universe but with a slightly differing emphasis. So, while Buddhism – and I’m being overly reductive here, I know – emphasizes letting go of desire, for instance, Taoism is more about holding on, but loosely.

Life is a Highway…
If you are a rider on a horse, Buddhism would suggest that you let go of the reins and get off the horse and go meditate, give up trying to get anywhere, the effort of expending your energy toward a goal is pointless, you can’t reach enlightenment by riding your horse.

Taoism, on the other hand, would say that you should keep riding the horse and holding on the reins, but you should try to ride with the horse, not on the horse, directing and guiding, not forcefully, but in a flow that matches the pace and rhythm of the horse’s gait as well as your own heartbeat, within the context of the landscape around you. Taoism would say, sure, ride the horse, but do so knowing that it is what it is, don’t make it more than it is. The Buddhists are right, you’re not going to escape death or reach eternity, but hey, you’re alive, might as well have a good time riding the horse… (And yes, so many ancient Chinese poets were also winos…)

And that’s what I like about Taoism vs. other religions. It embraces the philosophical stance of realizing that we as individuals are not at the center of the universe and that clinging to materialistic desires is futile; at the same time – and that’s the key, at the same time - both/and - Taoism encourages the acceptance of reality as it is, with all its transience, pain, and joy.

For many Christians and Buddhists, this life on Earth is something to grit your teeth through till you get on the elevator of salvation or zapped in the microwave of enlightenment. Taoists aren’t looking to the next life or the erasing of life; they look to this life with the ease of someone who has accepted that she belongs here, that this is home.

Do You Realize?
All is sacred; all is mundane. We are made of starlight; we are made of mud. When we can hold both views of reality – seemingly opposing views – in our heads at the same time, when we can take the importance of things lightly, while at the same time understanding everything as valued and significant, then we can fully be alive, with all of our senses, with all of our hearts. This is Taoist enlightenment.

Keep on Moving
When you try to hold onto something, squeeze it to fix it in place, keep it from changing – an idea, a relationship, a person, a situation, a feeling – you kill it. Which is why the Taoist meditation is Tai Chi or Qi Gong – a moving through the world, not sitting it out. It is also why the yin-yang symbol intends to show fluidity of opposites merging into one another. They are not static categories, mutually exclusive pieces, but part of each other, in constant motion.

Finally

a) If you can correctly identify the song titles in my headings, you win a free yin-yang symbol drawn on your arm with a Sharpie.

b) Later I will actually quote the Tao te Ching, discuss the Vinegar Tasters, and rant about Niels Bohr. So watch out.

c) I’m truly not trying to bash the Buddhists.

Waking Up From History

Right here, right now

There is no other place I’d rather be

Watching the world wake up from history – Jesus Jones

 

For all the terrible wreckage our world may seem at times, whether it’s our deep identity crisis as a species as we brutalize our fellow creatures and world or our cultural vacancies and familial breakdowns as our ideologies shift and sputter and breakdown in the middle of our lives, one thing heartens and excites me about this time of being alive. I feel like a lot of people are really asking the right questions, and that, in some ways, the hairy singers in Hair were right – this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. Sure, it’s not an instant revolution of flower-sniffing, but there’s a general turning over of the consciousness topsoil.

I just finished Run by Ann Patchett. The whole novel is a great read – she manages to tell a good, emotionally engaging story without jabbing at you to make you cry – but there’s this really well-done passage that serves as evidence of how the general ideas about things are shifting, little by little.

The character of the priest describes his changing vision of the afterlife:

… he had started to wonder if there was in fact no afterlife at all. Look at all these true believers who wanted only to live… In suggesting that there may be nothing ahead of them, he in no way meant to diminish the future; instead, Father Sullivan hoped to elevate the present to a state of the divine. It seemed … that God may well have been life itself. God may have been the baseball games, the beautiful cigarette he smoked alone…. How wrongheaded it seemed now to think that the thrill of heartbeat and breath were just a stepping stone to something greater. What could be greater than the armchair, the window, the snow? Life itself had been holy… this was not the workings of disbelief. It was instead a final, joyful realization of all he had been given.

Completely set within the context of a Catholic priest’s theology comes this vision of the sacredness of life that is usually find in Eastern thought, and it rings true. I love that.

And I feel like I find a lot of novels, music, art, thinkers, coming to this same conclusion. Whether or not they feel a conviction about next steps after death, people are embracing the present more and more.

It’s an exciting turn of events. If we can spread the notion of opening our eyes to each moment’s gifts, whatever they offer, a lot of changes will happen. To feel that you are witnessing, indeed, surrounded by God, changes how you treat other people, other creatures, yourself. In some ways, believing starts the seeing. As the passage concludes:

It would be possible to overlook just about anything if you were trained to constantly strain forward to see the power and the glory that was waiting up ahead. What a shame it would have been to miss God while waiting for Him.

 

Against Longevity

We are mistakenly under the impression that thing obtain value by lasting forever.

The earth, for instance, and the environment; we (especially us on the ‘environmental’ side of things) have a hard time feeling that this planet ball has any worth if one day, as it shall, it will explode, implode along with the universe and everything in it.

Heaven, some believe, succeeds where earth fails, and is the place we all yearn for, precisely because it is never-ending. Eternal life – the grail cup each of us dips into our secret hearts, drinking in the hope of it, quietly, secretly.

Relationships: We speak of them as “making it.” “Will we make it?” To which I say – “Make what?” Of course our love songs are peppered with the words of eternity – always, everlasting, paradise, forever and ever amen. A good relationship is defined by its length. My grandparents, for instance, married fifty or sixty-something years. Wow, impressive, right?

And then we speak of our individual lives, too – about “I’ve made it to 80 years” or a child dying as being “cut off too soon.”

I’ve got some bones in this whole ideology of longevity as-marker-of-value to pick, lick clean, and toss.

Time-Less

For instance: Encouraging people to stick with relationships for the sake of trying to achieve a certain amount of time put in – as if it were a job, a jail, a retirement fund? Criminal.

Is it not true?: A relationship can change you, challenge you, embolden you, crystalize and shape your beliefs, inspire your passions, awaken your intellectual curiosity – and last only a month, a year, a semester.

Of course, time affects and impacts the nature of a relationship, whether it’s a parent-child, teacher-student, colleague-colleague, or romantic relationship. And I believe in the value of intimacy and trust deepening over time.

But I also believe there is value in a thing in itself, not how it performs as compared to a model of fairytale endings. We certainly don’t feel college is a waste if it only takes four years to complete; why don’t we similarly perceive a four-year-romantic involvement?

And time is not always an indicator of character or a predictor of impact; to use it as the only measure of the solidity of a personality or the importance of an impression ignores the complexities and possibilities that occur in our lifetimes. I’ll never forget Jade Richardson, a girl I knew fleetingly for two years in high school, and our good friend Marcus, who died right before turning 18 and graduating. They mean more to me and affected my life much more than others I’ve known for longer.

To feel that you have failed because a relationship ended is to negate the worth of the time that was spent. So instead of leaving a marriage richer, you leave it feeling poor. Instead of appreciation for the joy of a life lived, you weep for the fact that it didn’t continue ad infinitum.

I’ve noticed about myself that I experience a twinge of social shame when recounting episodes from my first marriage, which ended in divorce. It took me a while to realize I was hesitating to say “my first husband” or “my ex-spouse,” because it was like waving a flag in front of my face: “Failure! Divorced! Unstable! Disaster Area!”

But these judgments have little to do with the sum total of that relationship, which had many positive elements and good memories within it. Why does the fact it ended cast a shadow over the length of time it endured?

Considering My Dad

My father serves as a good case in point, on many counts. He was married three times, but it’s the one that lasted 8 years, not 15, that meant the most, that surged and bubbled with love.

He canceled a lifetime commitment to his ministry, but not because he was unsteady in nature or failed to live up to a promise; he left because he was being true to an even higher duty, to truth and to his faith, which continuing in that particular ministry had started to compromise.

My father died when he was 52, certainly before anyone expected. He was too young. And yet, when I think of his life, it encompasses a full range of experience and expression. My father lived.

And after he died, we received hundreds of emails and letters from people, many who had not known him very long at all, but all of whom had been touched by his jocularity, charisma, and warmth. He had a singular ability to make people feel listened to, appreciated, and loved.

I didn’t get enough time with my dad. What I wouldn’t give to soak up hours, days, years of him.

But having lost him when I did hasn’t lessened my love for him. Death did not diminish him in my heart. Leaving marriages and a ministry did not lessen his religious conviction. He was not perfect or unwavering in all things, and he didn’t “make it” to any invisible finish line.

But oh, to watch him run! He did it with all his heart.

The Secret Imagination: Part II

In the recent edition of Yoga Journal, Sally Kempton writes:

Imagination – our ability to create images not available to the sensory system – is arguably our greatest faculty for evolving human consciousness. In order to transform ourselves and our world, we need to be able to leap out of the familiar and into the unknown. … the imagination can help us begin to replace our internal patterns, especially the ones that keep us limited and stuck. If we can reimagine our sense of who we are, we can change our experience of life. If you can imagine yourself, say, free of suffering, you’ve taken the first step toward that freedom.

Later in the article she connects our internal imagination with external acts, pointing out that:

If you’re spending time during your day imagining yourself as filled with compassion, it doesn’t take you long to notice that you speak to people differently and even treat yourself with much more subtlety and kindness.

So yesterday, for “shits and giggles” as a favorite person used to say – (I won’t go into the images that comes into my head when I hear that phrase – don’t want to sully your imagine and bring about the wrong kind of transformation!) – I “tried” “The Secret.” Caveat – I have avoided the book and movie or any other description of this completely – I only followed the vague idea I heard from my therapist – who was also skeptical, but did wonder what would happen if I tried it.

Item #567 you can do when you don’t have a job: Experiment with New Agey psycho- hijinks (next week, Tarot cards and a colonic cleansing).

I performed a kind of meditative visualization exercise and wrote down five things I wanted to happen that day. They were:

1. To be told “I love you” by a certain someone

2. For someone to offer a job or job interview

3. For sandalwood perfume oil to reappear in my life

4. To have a stranger flirt with me (reassure my ego!)

5. For someone from my past to warmly contact me and inquire as to how I am doing

The Results

Now, here’s the funny thing. Basically, all of these items “came true” or came to fruition – but before you get excited about the possibility of a magic recipe, let’s recall the insights from Kempton, summarized above – the act of the imagination in the mind can have force and expression in the body, transferring from the world of ideas to the world of actuality a wish, a possibility, a desire.

Example: The basketball player envisions the perfect slam dunk before the game, and her chances of actually performing that slam dunk “in real life” go up immensely.

So here’s basically how it went down.

1. I arranged coffee with the certain someone and though I had no expectations, the love was indeed reciprocated.

2. From the networking I’ve been doing through Facebook, a person I hardly know connected me to others I don’t know, and it looks like at least one of them will need me for work.

3. I went online and ordered the sandalwood.

4. I went out to a social gathering; someone flirted with me.

5. I spent a large part of the day beefing up my Linked In profile by writing recommendations for past colleagues, and indeed, someone from my past did warmly email me, as a result.

So, we’re not talking about mystical alchemy here. We’re talking about how writing down the things I wanted from the day in a positive manner – as in, I wasn’t thinking “here’s my goals to accomplish,” which would have pressured me with onerous tasks, but rather “here’s what I want, deep down inside, but who knows” – provoked me to take steps that made the things I desired occur. I wasn’t really focused on the outcomes I had listed. I just acted out of desire – to connect, to be near a loved one, to smell better.

This isn’t magic or rocket science. It’s kind of the principle of the book Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow – ridiculous, but really when you engage in what you love and desire, when you – yes, here I go again! Joseph Campbell alert! – follow that stinkin’ bliss, but not for the accomplishment or the reward but for the love of the thing in itself – then you truly enter into the kind of fruitful relationship with yourself and your work/art/relationships that allows you to be fully present and ultimately fully satisfied.

One of those paradoxical laws that is so simple and hard, it must be true.

So, no: I’m not a “The Secret” convert. But this experiment did underscore for me

• the importance of giving so that you can receive – without expectations;
• doing what you love out of love;
• and sometimes, when you want something – well, you can go online and order it.

Notes on Desire

I have to address desire – it gets such a bad rap with religion – it causes suffering, etc. But you have to add a dash of Rumi to your Buddha, I believe, to round out your understanding of desire in the context of spiritual awareness:

Let yourself be silently drawn

by the stronger pull of what you really love.

Rumi

For Rumi, love and desire pull us to the Love with a capital L – the rapture of union with the All. When we are following our heart’s arrow of true desire, our path, when we are doing the things we love to do and loving the people we love and embracing the identity that feels right – when we are honoring our deepest self – then we are, simultaneously, honoring and celebrating the whole, the larger truths.

True love, I have found, requires sacrifice of the selfish, ego-driven love.

True faith requires the sacrifice of the illusion of control.

This is not easy stuff to maintain, master. But it is getting to the heart of where the imagination and reality meet. Through our desire we create a vision of true love and faith that changes us and leads us into the experience and presence of truth.

Desire withers the heart.

The Master observes the world

but trusts his inner vision.

He allows things to come and go.

His heart is as open as the sky. [Tao te Ching, 12]

I guess I think that perhaps desire leads to delight or suffering depending upon its root and its object.

If we want only for the happiness of our small egos, no matter the suffering of others, no matter the well-being of the world, then that is when we are full of the desire that ruins us, for we are falsely seeing our Self as separate from the world, and we are placing its importance above that of others. If we desire to control, to go against things as they are, we are setting ourselves up to battle the whole of which we are apart, and we will suffer.

But if our desire includes the happiness and well-being of the world, includes caring for the suffering of others as well as our own, if our sense of compassion and love places our individual selves within the proper context of the whole, then our desire is divinely inspired.

A good example is romantic love. The ego-driven desire wants the beloved to fill the self, to love the self, to complete and satisfy the needs and wants of the self. The self likes the way the beloved’s attention feels.

But true love views the beloved for who he or she is, and desires that person’s happiness, whatever the cost to the self.

See the world as your self.

Have faith in the way things are.

Love the world as your self;

then you can care for all things. [Tao te Ching, 13]

If we love our neighbors as ourselves, then we can find the right balance. If we lose a lover, but he or she is happy, we can accept the reality of the loss and our sadness – but we can also delight in his or her happiness. This happiness can remove the sting of loss and is the way to true peace.

Death Will Ease Your Suffering (no, really, it will!)

I’ve been experiencing a great deal of grief, sadness, and loss lately, and sometimes, the loneliness feels intense.

It was pointed out to me that I seem to want others to fix it for me, comfort me, soothe my misery.

And yes, I have to say that as I walking today, exposing myself to sun, hoping to walk out the sadness, I realized that I do so want someone – my estranged mother, my dead father, my friends, anyone – to wrap themselves around me and tell me I am loved, and it will be okay.

Of course, the desire is understandable. But it is desire, and you know what that does to you, of course. And I’m trying to learn to comfort myself.

It’s not so easy.

I wandered into a cemetery – I was ambling, walking down dead end streets, not exactly lost but I couldn’t tell you where I was, exactly – one of those patches of grass and stone that feel like some kind of abandoned city with no historical texts to tell you what happened. Names and dates, but no storyline. Just a lot of silence.

My heart felt swollen, tender, like an injured foot.

I thought about dying (go figure).

And then it dawned on me, there among the ruins, that when I die, I won’t have these awful feelings anymore.

Oddly, like nothing else, the thought calmed me.

Not because I want to die – truly not looking forward to it, kind of angry about it, but that’s a whole other story – but because this suffering is indeed going to end, and life, even with this intensely acute suffering, is much preferable to feeling nothing at all.

This isn’t some earth-shattering revelation – but I truly felt it, not just as an abstract consideration, but as a solid reality.

the goddess Kali

Hope, you know, hasn’t been really possible. I can’t hope that I’ll ever have a family again, with love and comfort; even if I get it, it will go away again. Everything dies, changes. So hope has not been a comfort.

As Pema Chodron says:

If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be
exterminated, then we can have  the courage to relax with the
groundlessness of our situation.  This is the first step on the path.

My problem has been that I’ve been getting lost in the groundlessness, sinking in the quicksands of my despair.

But death has been a rope out – and lead me to remember Kali. Years ago when I first started reading about Tantra and goddesses, I had a hard time understanding the rituals surrounding worship of the goddess Kali, who is alternately the most fierce and the most loving of deities. Some Tantric practices involve digging up corpses; Kali is often portrayed having sex with the body of her dead husband, Shiva.

There’s this odd mix of comfort and utter destruction mixed into this figure, and I didn’t quite get it. She’s a mother goddess – but she represents the absolute dissolution of all things?

But I get it now. When we face death, we see life with a precision and clarity that provides the sustenance of reality, truth, — and comfort.

To confront or accept death… is to realize a mode of being that can delight and revel in the play of the gods. To accept one’s mortality is to be able to let go, to be able to sing, dance, and shout. Kali is Mother to her devotees not because she protects them from the way things really are but because she reveals to them their mortality and thus releases them to act fully and freely, releases them from the incredible, binding web of “adult” pretense, practicality, and rationality [from exoticindia]

As I walked home, I smelled the rosemary from someone’s garden, saw the brilliant clouds, tasted sun, hurt but alive, and glad to be so.

call me baby girl

As I stop to talk with my neighbor, a long-time resident of our neighborhood, he is parked next to the park with a truck and with a couple of other guys, all decked out in hunting camoflage; he and his pals intermittently yell out hellos and hays at the trucks that drive by. Almost every one of them. The feeling I get is: Joe knows everybody. Everybody knows Joe.

When I first moved to Fluvanna County several years ago, it was the same thing: People had been around a long time. Waving on the roads – one or two fingers would do if you were driving – was customary, the presumption or norm being that somehow, everyone there knows everyone else – or their kin.

What’s interesting to me, though, are experiences I’ve had where the friendly gestures extend to strangers on what seems like outstretched good faith. I’ve noticed that in three distinct places:

1) in the cockney areas of East London, where I lived as a child – women at the fruit stands calling everyone “Love” and “Ducks” and “Duckey,” brightly inclusive, even of us odd Americans

2) in some rural areas of “the South,” where the cliche of “Southern hospitality” has its roots, perhaps – “Honey” applied to me, an obviously nonnative with a Californian accent -

and now, 3) I’ve noticed people on the bus interacting with familiarity, even when I know they are meeting for the first time. The thing is, though, my “stranger” status seems more problematic than in the other two examples. I feel very, very conspicuously white.

Yesterday, on the bus, the chipper lady next to us similarly seemed to know everybody on the bus, and called one of them, a woman as old as herself, “baby girl.” “hey, baby girl!”

This made me want to call other people baby girl and to be called baby girl, even though I’m clearly not a baby or a girl, because it seemed so loving, so sweet. I have it as one of my goals to always see other people as former infants, to remember how we all start off and retain in the core of us very innocent, tender beings who want to be held and crave love.

I don’t come from a class/race background that sprinkles conversations with the sweet nothings of Honey, Ducks, or Baby Girl. In fact, I was coming of age in a time when terms like that were suspect – elements of a patriarchal system we were being taught to resist. Don’t call me Baby.

But man, I like the loosness, the casual aspects of these cultures. I’m sick of the uptight middle class brigrade of Appropriateness and Reserved Respect. I would like to request that everyone start honking and waving and calling each other tender names. Next time you see me on the street, wave, will you?

To Save or to Savor

wintering

My view of the park these days is from far away – inside my house. You know – it’s so darn cold. The kind of cold that slaps your face, but it’s not bracing or refreshing – it just hurts.

That’s kind of how I feel about all the things going on in the world – the war, pain, suffering – it seems far away – because I’m In Here and it’s Out There. Even if, like the park, the reality is happening just across the street.

Our minister told this story yesterday in church – that Martin Luther King, Jr., shoved his plate of food away from him at a meal after seeing a photograph in the newspaper of a dead Vietnamese child killed by an American soldier.

“Does it not taste good?” someone asked.

King replied, “No food will taste good to me until I’ve done everything I can to stop this terrible war.”

Damn, and Oh dear. I think of all the tragedies occurring on this globe in the name of my country, both here and abroad – I consider the children dying in Gaza right now – I look at the food on my plate, product of blood and tears and sweat, poorly paid workers, truckers doing overtime – my bed filled with the down of a wrung goose – how can I dream on such a bed, how can I warm myself in these clothes, how can I find sustenance in this food, when all of it came to me through such suffering?

I’m currently reading a book by a Unitarian Universalist minister, William Murray, called A Faith for all Seasons, and in it he quotes another UU minister, Richard Gilbert:

I arise in the morning torn between the desire

To save the world and to savor it -

To serve life or to enjoy it -

To savor the world or save it?

The question beats in upon the waiting moment -

To savor the sweet taste of my own joy

Or to share the bitter cup of my neighbor;

To celebrate life with exuberant step

Or to struggle for the life of the heavy laden?

I love this, because it articulates a very personal inner tension of mine about how to live – I’m often like that Atari games ping-pong ball, plonking incessantly between the options of Enjoying Life, not taking things too seriously, going with the flow (which can feel selfish, indulgent, irresponsible) and Trying to Make a Difference, conscious and aware, (which can also feel myopic, self-serving, fake, self-righteous).

Murray answers this poetic question by suggesting that our lives are made meaningful when we savor and save the world – both.

But I find myself suspicious that even a mix is too easy, and all of it too abstract, and yet my own ability to toss a plate of food away in distaste, with disgust at my role in the chain of exploitation hard to address because I am supporting two small

children, and I need to eat in order to be a mother to them.

Is that a cop out?

I am also aware that extreme, dramatic acts are sometimes easier to perform than small, daily practices that go unnoticed and unpraised.

Someone once told me that King wasn’t such a great parent or husband to his kids.

But I wonder about that, too – maybe great people just can’t be asked to be everything.

Today, during Obama’s inaugural speech, I thought about his daughters, and how, despite the reports that their father makes it a point to spend quality time with each of them everyday, however brief, they are probably going to get some kind of short end of the parenting stick. I mean, come on – leader of the free world isn’t going to be helping them with their homework every night after dinner.

But is that necessarily bad? Following one’s bliss requires sacrifice. And when it comes to children – who end up sacrificing with their parents, usually without a choice about it – how does a responsible parent ask that of his or her children? Or do they not, and then just deal with the children’s feelings later? Is there something to be said for the calls to service for the greater good that do justify the sacrifice of an individual family, whether they choose it or not?

But I’m digressing.

I heard so much during the Obama speech that infused me with a new hope, my cynicism about this country and our prospects a hardened carapace cracking – but my heart was snagged by something he said (paraphrase) about not being faint-hearted and settling for the easiest way out – and I thought, oh lordy cakes, I often settle for the easiest route, I don’t strive for greatness; he’s talking about me: I am faint-hearted.

It is easier to stay indoors.

I don’t know how to have integrity and strive for greatness and follow the rugged path toward my bliss – or maybe I do but am afraid of what such a journey would require. But I know that I am inspired by the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. and by the poem today about Love, and by Obama’s speech to address my heart and ask it to be braver and louder with its truth. Part of me wants to go out and start building bridges and digging ditches – but I know I need to actually dig right here, to hear what it is I need to do.

Maybe by learning to save the part of the world that is mine to save, I will learn to savor it, because it is part of the act of love.

Maybe I will find a way to eat what is before me, knowing my privilege, my heart breaking with sorrow and gratitude and humility and joy, maybe there is a way to be here that is not the easy way out, but the right way in.

I feel more hope today that there is.

The Dog

The dog runs off constantly, any time he can. There’s too many smells – and squirrels – in the world for his poor soul to resist it – when the leash goes slack, or a weakness in my grasp, when the door is ajar, when a jerk will unjam his body from my arms – he’s gone.

And usually I’m spitting curses between my teeth.

The dog reminds me of this poem, “The Invitation,” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer (I know) which says:

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

It’s not that he doesn’t love us. Sometimes he does saunter back home of his own accord, paws the front door, wags a tired tail like a ragged flag to say Hello. But our damn dog’s allegiance has and will always be to himself, not to us.

I have several thoughts about this – beyond the first flush of crass cursing, that is.

#1: Born to Be Wild: I truly wish I could let the dog come and go as he liked all the time. Animals aren’t meant to be yoked at the neck, regulated by a master’s desires. I hate how we treat “pets.” Not to disparage or demean the intimate and mutually beneficial relationships built between many animals and their ‘owners’ – just to say that part of me cheers my dog’s disobedient bent because really, he didn’t ask to be cowed and cushioned. He wants to chase squirrels and piss on plants. Laying around on our bed all day, lounging under the dinner table waiting for tidbits to drip down in the waterfall of baby drool, obviously depresses him.

But what’s the current realistic alternative? I wish he could be wild and free. He can’t, because he’d get stolen or run over. Or would he? What if I took him to a field in Iowa, let him go? Would I be unleashing him into a fantasy dream of thrills and real living? Or would I be abandoning him, crushing his heart? Are those his only options – to live alone and free or together with us and jailed?

Thought #2: It’s called “domestication” and is also used by us humans when talking about things like marriage – that living with other people is much like being leashed, imprisoned, dominated, coersed, like a dog.

Yikes.

What do I think about the other humans with whom I live? Is freedom antithetical to living with others?

#3: If our dog had been better, more thoroughly trained, he might have actually achieved more ‘freedom’ by being more trustworthy. He could maybe go off leash here and there. Let out in the porous back yard. Sometimes discipline and training are tools for the kind of strength and endurance that true freedom requires.

I was made aware of this in my ballet training. To become strong enough to go on pointe, and then to be good enough to be amazing going free-form, required years and years of rote, routine, highly structured, disciplined exercises.

Or: If you want to fly on a basketball court, better tie your shoelaces nice and tight.

#4: I wish we had a dog park in our park. That would make life so much easier.

#5: We need to fix the holes in our fence. Good fences make good dogs.

#6: As a metaphor for my own life, what calls to my wild heart so that I break free from all other ties? Am I brave enough to risk disappointing others in order to satisfy the needs of my soul? Will I dare to be labeled as bad and disobedient because my behavior upsets others’ expectations for me? And if I do – if I can – won’t that be a wild romp – and don’t we all need these moments to break away and chase down our bliss?

Grace and Karma: Mix, Match, Mush

I’m a young Unitarian-Universalist.

So I don’t really know a lot about the theology.

I like the idea of not just comparing religions side by side, but of seeing what happens when you intersect them. (Bahai?)

I was thinking about a person I know who really needs some miracles – or grace, I should say – gifts that he doesn’t earn. I believe in the laws of karma, in that I think if you want a friend, for instance, you have to become a friend; if you want gifts, you have to give. But sometimes people just aren’t capable of making those first inputs into the system; they haven’t been trained, they aren’t aware, they’re so low and down they can hardly move.

But grace is a Christian concept. Can it occur within or with the context of karma? What would that look like?

i lack faith and patience
like waiting for a fish
the one time there’s a bite
and i pull it out, wet and frightened and
it’s grace, and i throw it back to
keep the karma going -