The Ever-Changing Body

I’ve reached a point at which I find myself really looking at my body, because one of the most incredible aspects to me of our journey through this world is living in this home that keeps changing. I suppose it’s one of the reasons why life is less boring than it actually is, because all of our lives we’re having to readjust to this constantly changing body, which went from, we are told, a single cell in our mother’s womb to an incredibly complex nine-month-old fetus that undergoes the birth process, that incredible trip from one world to the next.

I’m more convinced than ever that these pictures are there for our benefit. Going to the next world is going to be like when we came from the last one. It’s going to be quite a ride. But I don’t think it’s going to be painful at all, at least in the sense that we think of pain here. I’m beginning to suspect that there’s really no difference between pain and orgasm, that death throes is just another way of saying birth pangs, except that we are looking at it from the opposite end of the barrel, so to speak, and once we’re in this world, and all of our various organs begin not only to function, but to function together, and our brain begins to expand to the point where it can receive pictures, sounds, ideas, and eventually concepts, and then as this brain continues to change, as does the rest of our body, we begin to perceive things differently than we used to.

Our perceptions are very much dictated by the body we are living in. It’s the difference between being born into a house with high ceilings and big windows that let in the light, and being born in a house that’s small, dark, and cramped, with very few windows. How differently you must view the world from those two different houses.

Here I am looking at this body which used to be that really adorable creature that I can still remember from the age of three on. There’s all those pictures that my mom and dad took, and I look at my brother and me, and how adorable we were, with these wonderfully happy, inquisitive eyes, and in almost every picture -- and there are lots of them – everybody is smiling. I came from a very happy family, which I just took for granted, of course. When you’re that age, your world is the whole world, which is pretty much the way it is all through life, but I see what a happy family I came from, and I remember all the laughter, and I can understand why, at 66, I’m really ticked off at the world and am ready to leave.

I miss the happiness. I miss the laughter. I miss the lack of judgment. No wonder I grew up feeling so good and now feel so dry and arid. In fact, the end of our journey is like going back into the desert. It’s a hot, dry time, where there’s lot’s of solitude, lot’s of insight, but much of the love and laughter we grew up with. That all seems to have gone, along with the people through whom all that joy and laugher came, and when you really look around and realize everybody you’ve ever loved and cared about in this world is already on the other side, and there’s really nobody here you could care about that much or who could care about you, because we just haven’t been around each other that long, you see how God gets us ready to move on to the next world, by making us really weary of this one.

Getting back to the body, I’m looking at it again now and marveling at how resilient it is, despite the fact that it is just doing its own thing in so many ways, but the part that fascinates me the most are the eyes.

I look into my eyes in a mirror and gone is that wonderfully innocent, naïve, childlike glory, and it’s replaced now by a different kind of glory, of time passed, experiences lived, pleasures enjoyed, miseries endured, and boredom -- a real endurance test. I look into my eyes and see those bags under them, and I realize how confused we are when we’re younger.

We look into the eyes of someone 80 or 90 and think we see the eyes of an old person. No, they are the eyes of a person who is tired and weary after years and years of trodding and plodding through this mortal coil.

The eyes tell us so much about people – how much they have experienced, how much they have endured.

Faith

I’m sure you’ve heard people tell other people things like,”Oh ye of little faith,” or “You’re supposed to have faith.” Gee, is there a single concept in this world that we really understand until right before we leave? For example, what the hell is faith? It’s one of those words, like “love,” that we just bat all over the place as if we actually know what it means. All of our lives we’re preached to by well-meaning ministers, teachers, and parents, as if faith is something that we can will into existence. Faith, like everything else we have in this world, like every breath we draw, is a gift. It’s given to us by the Gods, the creator, whoever, according to that power’s will, and not according to our own. We go through the world carrying these huge burdens of guilt, because somebody is always telling us that we’re doing it wrong. You can’t do anything wrong. You can’t do anything right. All we can do is live the life that’s been prescribed for us, and how much faith we have at any given moment is just one more of those conditions that God either grants or doesn’t. If you don’t have the faith to believe, then don’t. Big deal. We do not move events, certainly not by our will. There is one prime mover, and everything and everyone else is just a passive vessel. Faith is put into that vessel like everything else is put in. Faith is one of those things that grow over time, over the years, without you even being aware of it. It’s God who’s doing the planning, and the nurturing, and the growing, and at some point, faith is revealed to have been there all along. It just wasn’t really needed, so it wasn’t used. Ah, faith. For ye are saved by grace through faith. Or is it by faith through grace? And that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God lest anyone should boast.

Use Words like Music

What if, right this second, the human race lost the power of speech and was forced to rely on non-verbal communication? What would our lives be like, and how much more intimate would our relationships be, if we had to communicate without words? Words, after all, are those tools we use to keep people at a distance. We can appear to be loving and congenial by smiling and saying words that tickle the ears. But how do we really feel, and how successful would we be at hiding our real feelings without words? In the next world I think that words will be things that we use like music, to adorn and enhance an already wonderful situation, not as things to hide or mask our feelings and intentions. I have many little visions and dreams these days where nobody is talking. Everything else is going on, but there’s no talking. I can hardly wait.

Sick of Words

The longer I stay in this world the sicker I get of words. Now and then, when I hear a lovely song with a great lyric, or a little snatch of Shakespeare, I’m reminded that language is a great gift, but not so much when it’s used by children. I’m living in a world that’s overflowing with children, and I’m listening day after day, hour after hour, to the gibberish of children in the classroom.

I grew up in a generation where mothers complained a lot about having to live in a world of children, because most of them were housewives. The poor dears were trapped in a world of children and talk about children, while their husbands were able to go to work and get some stimulation from adults. I can relate to their predicament, because I’m living in a world where everybody is much younger than me, and they’re talking gibberish.

Sometimes I think about speech and its purpose in this world. It’s so inadequate. It’s used by most of us to cover up the truth, not to reveal it. Sometimes I think that words are the best tool that we have to describe something that’s no longer present, or never was present. According to the old truism, a picture is worth a thousand words, so why don’t we extend that and say that a living encounter or experience is worth a million words? You can’t begin to describe what goes on over the course of just one fabulous dinner, let alone a trip or a love affair.

Words are pathetic substitutes for the real thing. Then again, isn’t that a metaphor for where I am in my journey? I’m so tired of the substitutes. The most wonderful times that we can have here are only snapshots -- not even color, just black & white snapshots -- of what’s coming.

I’m convinced that this world’s not real. It’s convincing. It’s a good movie. But it’s still just an image of the real. Imagine being in a world where we don’t have words like “good” and “bad,” because if there is no “bad,” then why would you need the word “good.” You wouldn’t have words like “beautiful” and “ugly” because everything’s perfect. How wonderful to not even have those words. They would have no meaning in the world that I’m sure that we’re returning to, and again, this is one more reason why I’m anxious to leave.

This world is not my home, and I’m just passing through, along with the rest of us. My treasures are somewhere else, and they’re real, in that they’re eternal. They’re not temporal. I’m not going to lose them as soon as I’ve fallen in love with them, which is what happens in this crazy womb.

More and more, except for this lovely exercise on my tape recorder, I’m dispensing with words. I’d rather be alone in my garden, where the sounds that I hear -- wind through the trees, birds chirping, water gurgling, even the sound of the fan -- affect me more profoundly than any words can and are experiences not requiring words, bless them.

The World is Not My Home

I’m lying here on my couch in my garden. What a beautiful day. It’s getting warm, but I have discovered a little evaporative cooler fan that I inherited with my place. I put it on the patio, fill it with water, and boy, I can just lie here and think that I have died and gone to heaven.

The feeders are out, so the birds are coming and going. Most of the time, they’re chirping and feeding and everything’s just fine, but every now and then I have to stand and shoo them away, because there get to be too many of them. In fact, when there are a lot of them in a small area, they can be really nasty. I’ll look down at my patio floor and see bird shit everywhere, mainly from the mourning doves.

The mourning doves are large birds who have the most wonderful, plaintive coo. They sound as if they are in mourning, hence the name. They are charming and lovely, but they are filthy. Most of the other birds stay in the garden area and shit on the bird feeder and on the ground, but not the doves. They to wander onto the patio and sometimes light on my couch and shit on my blankets.

I look around, smile sardonically, and think, “Oh boy, and people wonder why some of us are so anxious to get the hell out of this world.” You know, folks, there are many things about the world that are so lovely, but in the end, it all turns to shit.

You fix a fabulous meal. Everyone sits down and enjoys it to the fullest. Then . . . it turns to shit. People have to go into little private cubicles to get rid of all that food that was so tasty going in, but going out, it’s another story, isn’t it?

Folks, be patient with those of us who get impatient with the world. It’s a nice place to visit, but really, we don’t want to live here forever. There’s something better coming. All of the beautiful images that we get in this world minus all the shit. Isn’t that a place where you’d rather go? I know I would. It’s like the blues/gospel song.

This world is not my home.
I’m just a passin’ through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from heaven’s peaceful shore,
and I cain’t be at home in this world any more.

This world is not my home.
I’m just a passin’ through.
My treasures they’re laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me,
they say John come on to heaven’s peaceful shoreline.
Cain’t be at home in this world anymore.

The World is a Playground

The world is a playground for children. If it is true that we are in a kind of a womb during this journey, not unlike our mother’s womb, then we are in some kind of a dream state, and the world as we perceive it is not real. While we’re in this dream state, we are, essentially, children. We are children of the creator and as such we are in process, moving toward maturity, the entire time we are in this world. The world is therefore full of children, the blind leading the blind, and that’s why everything about this world seems so childish.

What do children like? Well, let’s see. First of all, they like lots of violence. As a teacher and principal, I can vouch for the fact that violence is at the heart of this dream world that we live in. Kids really like blood, gore, and lots of noise, and this is why Halloween is the most popular holiday in the year for kids and also a lot of adults I know, including me. Halloween is a scary holiday with lots of blood and hatchets and skulls and blood oozing out of mouths. Kids love scatological humor and pratfalls, and they love to see other people get in trouble. And there’s the world, all of it, right there, because it’s for us kids.

God has given us this amazing diversion, which you get to take seriously, or not, depending on where you are in your journey.

When you reach the idiot stage, as I have, the whole thing is ludicrous, absurd, and delightfully funny. In fact, one of the side effects of growing older is your quickened sense of irony, until it dawns on you that it’s all irony, and that none of it can be taken seriously. I guess that’s about the time they lock you up, because you spend all your time laughing at everything. I’m pretty much there now. I find myself laughing in public at times when nobody else is laughing and I catch myself thinking, “Oh, come on, people, lighten up. This is hilarious.” Of course, the rest of the kids, who are still taking it all very seriously -- or at least pretending to take it seriously -- get highly offended if you laugh at stuff like war and morality and obeying the law.

But it’s a world of kids, and I can handle it since I know that Big Daddy is right here, unseen but ever-present, keeping the whole thing going, smiling as we go through our little antics and tantrums, because he just loves us all so much. I can handle it, especially as I lie here in my little garden, my little piece of paradise, my promise that we will soon leave this trance-like state, be back in the real world, and really start to have some fun again.