We Share One Life, We Are One Life
I recall my youth as a lonely time, oft painfully so. I was the youngest of three boys, the older two a year apart, I three and four years younger. Both lived in a world other than mine. So, much of my childhood and youth, I was alone, sometimes just alone and sometimes alone and lonely. As a child, one of my few vivid early memories sees me sitting in the front yard of deep white sand, playing in the warm soil, seated alone around a little pond I had dug and filled with our well water. When I have recall of the old country school that burned down in my third grade year, I see myself seated, no one anywhere, school abandoned, I alone. I still see myself often outside the high school. There, under the alcove leading into the hallway, outside on the walkway, stand alone, while others are in the lunchroom. He comes, as he did forty years ago, and leans against the red-brick wall, on which I lean ~ two silences, two alonenesses keeping each other company, for a brief time, not friends, sharing space briefly by providence or chance. We leave, as we came, apart and apart. Yet, how kind that space was and is. One can truly care and share with another for a moment, even when it lasts only for a moment. That one moment may live as a reminder for a lifetime, or more.
* * *
My family and I had no close neighbors my age in our little rural community. I was devoted to religion deeply ~ my maternal grandmother and parents fearful I would be driven insane by my ardent devotion ~, even beginning to preach at age fifteen, so this contributed to being apart. How do 'normal' youth relate to a teen who carries a red King James Version Bible to school? I was avidly devoted to my Bible, as much as they to raging hormones, rock music, pot, and, as we oft said about this or that, only God know what else.' I even had a radio broadcast, preaching Jesus on Saturday mornings for three of the teen years. I preached on Sundays, almost every Sunday morning and night somewhere. I was respected by adults and youth and children for this, but apart for this, too. You make choices, some include you, some exclude you. That is true for us all. Good choices can leave one sadly all alone, even as bad choices can leave one happily together with others. We are blessed, some may say damned or doomed, to make these choices, one or the other, even not to choose can be a life-changing choice. Life awaits a reformation, large or slight, with every choice. And, sometimes, persons are distracted from us, not for us, but for fearing to associate with the choices we made, they may need but are not ready to make for themselves. So, they have to say 'goodbye'.
* * *
I was, also, naturally shy. To survive I created an imaginary world I could enter daily, there I was surrounded by persons who liked and adored me, I was successful, not shy, not alone, a human like others, not a preacher boy or country boy. I marvelous in the eyes of others and self in the world I created, partly for who I truly am was born marvelous anyway. At that time, I did not know it, but I was trying so hard to be it, and in an adult world sharing Jesus and what we called 'getting saved.' I could not save myself from loneliness, I could, I concluded, help save the world. I was a hero when I preached, felt like a nobody among others most of the rest of the time. Decades later, I discovered I am a nobody, but wonderfully so, and so one with everyone, even when alone and lonely.
I appeared fortunate, we would say 'blessed,' to meet three other young preachers from a nearby community. I was Southern Baptist, they Freewill Baptist. We seemed natural friends with shared interests; we were Jesus fanatics. They attended a church together, two were sons of the pastor, Satilla Freewill Baptist Church. I lived less than a half mile from Philadelphia Missionary Baptist Church (thought, oddly, it was not Missionary Baptist church, but Southern Baptist), where I attended on Sundays, Wednesday nights, and all nights of a revival. So, it seemed I had found an escape from the loneliness, having other preacher friends, and we of the same age, sharing a like world ~ Gospel-dissidents together.
* * *
That was not to be. The vivid, painful memory I keep recalling is of the night I sat in my family's living room, on the couch. I had not heard from them in many days, had hoped to go out and meet with them. I wanted to see them. I hurt, longing for connection, especially seeing I did not find that closeness of sharing in the family. I had been for months contacting the three friends, inviting them to meet, they would always gladly say 'Yes,' we would have a good time together. I got momentary relief from the loneliness, like a brief connection drug. Yet, that was Intelligence, too, for I only yearned for what we each need and deserve. Sometimes we have to get what we know is not true, to let it go to be open for what is true.
On this evening, I recalled, again, how my three friends, or so it seemed 'friends,' never contacted me or invited me to meet with them. They lived on as thought I did not exist. I was naive, but wise enough to see that was not friendship. I wanted and needed reciprocal affection, to be reached out to as well as to reach out. My heart was first holding out a hand, and it felt like no hand was first ever reaching out to me. I could not see, then, there is when one move from acquaintance to friend, that is a big leap, and with it expectations and meaning and self shift. I knew I had three 'friends' who were really acquaintances, yet I needed and ached for me. I knew dabbling in the appearance of friendship left me as or more lonely than just not dabbling at all. Here, I was learning about love, though I was too youth to process that at the time. I was not able to see how Grace was at work, how my heart was leading me from what it knew, even if I did not know the words to frame it into some logical, reasonable meaning. Sometimes, we learn something long after we know it, possibly all truth is like that, known then learned once we had enough life experience and the vocabulary to put primordial, timeless verity into the syntax of here-and-now.
* * *
The life-changing choice I made that night, sitting alone hurting in the bones to be shown I was important enough for someone to reach out to me, was to be painfully alone, rather than continue to be the one always reaching out. The shift occurred when I chose to suffer pain and let go of a way of relating and being related to that I knew was not what my heart longed for, and so I said, finally, 'no' iwithin myself.
I have no recall we ever met together again, or spoke. I have no regrets for this choice. I still make this choice. I prefer loneliness or aloneness to inauthenticity in relationship, for relationship is reciprocal or not a relationship, as indicated in its very name relation-ship.
* * *
Yes, it is true, simply being together creates a connection; this connection arises from before time, before space, names and places, meetings and partings. As observed by Zen Buddhist teacher Lin Jensen, "All pure juxtaposition is a gathering." Yet, yes yet, that is part of our our challenge and hope. Our heart yearns for and seeks for, sometimes in self-constructive ways and sometimes in self-destructive ways, more than a mere juxtaposition on the surface of causal relating or blatant ignoring. We long for depth, depth of sharing, not sharing merely something, for we are so much more than commodities, objects to interact on the surface of thoughts and feelings. We rightly, innately reach out for sharing ourselves and to receive the sharing of self of others, all we are, even if in only an instant of fleeting, dying time. And, really, is that not all we have ~ ourselves and time, both living and dying in every now? Do we not have only this moment to give birth to a timeless embrace that never began and, so, never ends?
please, do not apologize to anyone or feel shame
for your heartfelt, sometimes heartwrenching, yearning
to love and be loved
please, do not feel guilt
when you pull away from anyone
for your heart longs for authentic sharing
in a culture of busyness, distraction, social media
where friend and connection is thrown around like a ball of fluff be thankful you are not sedated to the ancient yearning to know and be known
that you still feel the longing for deep sharing
that you refuse to settle for less, even if that
means you are alone and maybe, at least sometimes, lonely
please, do not
pay attention to the nonsensical cliche
that in relationships there are to be no expectations ~
is it not inherent in our nature to reach out to be reached out to
is it not true our hearts are made to be held and hold
so, who came up with that foolish fabrication of 'no expectations'
and thank you
and bow to yourself ~ congratulations ! ~
for the courage to be alone or lonely
if that is what it mean
to refuse to settle for less than your heart longs for
to be true to yourself
to wait for authentic, reciprocal affection
however long it takes to come your way
~ be patient, you are not alone, you share in a grand company
of waiters for companionship not person to person
but heart-with-heart
The memory
five things about my youth, back in the wood of South Georgia USA: religion - evangelical Baptist -, work - on the farm -, basketball, loneliness, depression - no one informed me of, though, looking back, I see a thin cloud of mild depression hanging over me almost as far back as I can recall.
in the
absence
of 'God'
is
'God'
absence
presence
not the same
not separate
pour the drink
from the cup
the cup is still full
simply a different fullness
(life is always full of some form of Life)
in quietness, stillness
sink into the sense of absence
(allow movement through any felt-agitation)
what does this feel like?
in quietness, stillness
relax into the sense of presence
(allow movement through any felt-clinging)
what does this feel like?
clinging to one you miss
receptive to either
nothing really changes but the sense of
finally
you become as comfortable
with absence as presence
you discover
what you have called presence or absence
is only a passing sensation
sensations of presence or absence
form like bubbles on the surface of consciousness
from underlying causes and conditions
and disappear as naturally as they arose
now
you can explore
'what is the ground of presence and absence?'
before all causes and conditions
giving birth to passing states of body and mind
formless becoming form
if you arrive at a word
like 'God' or 'Beloved' or 'Creator' or 'Father' or 'Mother'
see that in the mind is a concept
drop deeper until there is no name or title
to hold to ~ rest there, feel there
allow the feeling of this
formlessness to surround and pervade you
welcome this as your home
where you yourself come from this and every moment
'what is this feeling not a sensation in contrast to other sensations?'
when not greedy
for presence or absence
one rests in equanimity, enjoying pure Presence
equally present always, everywhere, just forming differently,
for not subject to causes and conditions
but the Ground of all arising and disappearing moment-to-moment
we practice this
for clinging to particular qualities of experience
leads to suffering
while
living in communion with
apparently contrasting qualities of experience
leads to inner peace
and deeper appreciation of Life
and ourselves as part of that Life manifesting
then
to say 'God' is seen
to be the formless Life
creatively pervasive, the potency
before thoughts of personal and impersonal
or here or not here,
causing potential to appear and disappear
in one deathless embrace
*All material, unless another source is cited, is authored by the presenter of Lotus of Heart, Brian Kenneth Wilcox, Florida USA. Use of the material is permitted; Brian only requests that credit be given and to be notified at 77ahavah77@gmail.com .
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union, is available through major booksellers.
*Move cursor over pictures for photographer and title.
The Sacred in Me bows
to the Sacred in You
