of bumper cars and big-mouthed whales

“I realized that I was in something’s mouth and I had been eaten.”

That’s from a Chilean kayaker who was “swallowed” (not quite, but still…) by a whale. Unexpected. Horrifying. Could not be prevented as the whale was just doing what whales do, as was the kayaker doing what kayakers do, and yet their separate lives collided.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the randomness, chaos, and utter unpredictability of life. We all have free will, of course. But alas, so does every other being we encounter. I may plan for a direct, sunshine-y, drama-free path, yet there all y’all are, out there in your bumper cars, driving all crazy and slamming into things.

As I will also surely do, because plans are really just hopes and we didn’t decide to do human again for the bliss of it. We had that before we ever left Home. We plan for, hope for, this or that and the majority of the time, for most of us, our plans work out and it’s all great. Hooray!

Then, eek! Here comes life.

All is well until all is not well and I’m swallowed by a whale. Or by events beyond my control, personal or communal. But then ~ oh JOY! ~ all is well again when, maybe, the whale rejects me as a snack or the neighboring bumper car misses me by a hair.

I wrote the following on another long ago blog, and I still believe this:

“… terrible things happen to people every day; I’m no Pollyanna. Dreadful, unexpected, unplanned for events happen with fair regularity and we are none of us immune. I don’t think anyone can live sanely with a real time awareness of that second life, the swirling, fetid undercurrent below the good life we all expect and hope to live in. Down there lies sudden, severe illness and death, natural disasters, wars, murders, personal crises of every stripe, and devastating world events. It is mostly silent, this tandem reality, yet as true as the one we live in most days.”

Ugh. How depressing, yes? But maybe, as I’ve written before, maybe the monster only wants to be acknowledged. Maybe acceptance really is, as the AA Big Book says, the answer to all of my problems today. There is a middle ground somewhere between the primrose path and the challenging one, and in that middle ground is where we can find peace.

Given all that’s afoot in the US right now, I’m encouraging everyone I know (and myself! daily!) to disengage as needed, to go inside, to take exquisite care of their tender hearts. This crazy, wild, out-of-control chaotic world, where we’re slammed every day with things new and unwanted, is not all there is.

And there is so much more going on than we can possibly know while wearing our human suits

Right now I’m in the process of writing about what I think of as my “spiritual rescue kit.” It’s made up of bits and pieces of this and that ~ meditations, mantras, prayers, practices, pieces of stories, music ~ all of which have saved me time and again, and much of which I’ve shared for years with others who are struggling.

One of those is a short bit from Tony Woody’s experience of “fractured consciousness,” which occurred in the midst of a plane crash. This short little piece of his bigger story has truly become a touchstone for maintaining sanity:

“The plane is now leaving the runway at a 35 degree angle, throwing up all this dust and debris, and I started seeing that and the next thing I know, my consciousness is fracturing such that anything that was floating in the air, any piece of debris, doesn’t matter what it was, I could see everything from that perspective too.
 
“You would think that would be very chaotic, and it was in its own way, but it had this feeling of sublime perfection where I knew every piece of debris was exactly where it was supposed to be, doing what it was supposed to be doing, and there was this absolute calm effect going on.”

“Sublime perfection.”

“Absolute calm.”

Unimaginable from this human’s viewpoint much of the time, and yet that permanent reality is also a mostly invisible fact underlying everything we experience in this world.

There. is. so. much. more.

Echoing Tony, my dead father’s message to my sister Karen, who was in sorrow over the destruction of the environment:

“If you could only see things from my vantage point, you would know that it is all beautiful, all perfection.”

It takes a certain kind of faith to even begin to move toward accepting this as actual truth if we haven’t yet experienced it ourselves. AA again: if you can’t yet believe, just be willing, and if you can’t yet be willing, believe that *I* believe. Over time, my own faith that there is more to this world has again and again been supported by irrefutable evidence it is so.

It’s a gift of the spirit, that evidence, and I’m deeply grateful because it’s led me to directly knowing the greater reality. In that state of knowing-there-is-more, there is also the truth of these beautiful words from Hafiz, which I found just this morning in Father Greg Boyle’s magnificent book for these times, Cherished Belonging.

They are a reminder from centuries ago that not only is life life ~ is, was, and ever shall be ~ but there is always more happening than it may appear.

“I have come into the world to see this: the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height of their arc of rage because we have finally realized there is just one flesh we can wound.” 

Just the one of us here, a seemingly impossible concept given the divisiveness evident all around us. And yet the ultimate truth. In the quiet, eyes closed, asking to be shown… that’s where we can find it. My prayer for these times: And one day, the swords will drop.

___________________

One of my rescues is making art (and making it without judgment because I’m no artist). Yesterday I began a painting of a wolf in honor of the upcoming release of Wolf’s Message, a documentary about Michael “Wolf” Pasakarnis and his astonishing story, as written by Suzanne Giesemann. As I was painting, I was asking that divine, perfect, troubled human / magnificent soul, to send me a sign that he’s around. Yesterday was busy busy with a family member dying, another in crisis and needing care. Is that why the little gifts were unmissable right in front of me? 1-2-3, one after another after another. We are always loved and supported and cherished beyond our imagining. Always. Even when we don’t feel it, even when we don’t (yet) know.