Faith's Journey ... Post #7

Truth … Absolutes … What’s with the upper-case letters?  It’s that language thing again – that power- hunger.  Uppercase is more powerful than lowercase.  It’s more Real and Real is Powerful.  Oh dear …

I have a whole patch of nothing but Queen Anne’s Lace in the yard this summer.  I mean, there are lots of QAL around the place, but in this one spot, only them.  Before them, it was only daisies.  It’s the sandy circle where the swimming pool used to stand, and one day I was out there and saw that white-faced hornets have taken to constructing their homes under that sand, down tunnels, through entry-holes. 

When the sun shines on that sandy circle, the hornets are out, en force.  I asked my son not to mow there because of the fear he might be stung.  So that’s how the QAL came to take over after the daisies died back - the lack of mowing.  Anyhow, I see them in 3D now, in a way I couldn’t see before my 50^th summer.  It’s pretty cool.  I’ve always loved QAL.  I love them more now – interspersed with shadow, surrounded by bug-song, wren-call. 

Woods are like that now, as well – I see them in layers I never noticed all those years long, although I’ve long loved trees, always, in fact.  The world is layer on layer, depth over depth – there is so much more, always … you may not see it one day and then one day, you do.  It was always there, yet unrevealed.  Vision changes with growth, with time. 

Culture is content with focusing much on what we lose as we grow, but what about all the wonders we gain?  The world is more completely terrifying to me than ever, but so much more infinitely beautiful.  All at once, utter terror and deep beauty. 

 I sense I am straddling this abyss.  I stretch as the abyss grows wider.  Stretch into life - an amazing grace.  In no religious sense … in a universal sense.  Stretching into life, from here to …there …

Something there matters.  It called to me for the briefest of moments …. about culture’s focus on what is lost.  That’s the end of this story … I’ve told myself what must come next.  While faith finds its way to me, if it does; while I keep my soul open to truth where I find it, it is most important to focus on what is gained.  I see more than before, which holds no power but that of beauty and wonder, if such can be labeled “power.”  I think the true struggle is – can I accept this phase of my life?  Will I accept it, embrace it? 

This loss – damn, it hurts.  I don’t like it.  Perhaps if I bother to articulate the gains … will that help me in this process?  It boils down, then, to … grief?  And healing.   Grief and healing.  The unending cycle of life ...  

Death ... rebirth ... when will rebirth come?  Today I sang a song of joy, and in doing so, I had hope ...

Faith's Journey ... Post #6

Wordlessness.  Powerlessness.  Powerlessness infers a comparison with power; otherwise, where would feelings of lacking power come from?  One wants what she does not have, or … she has, but not enough.  The connection between losing faith and losing the power of language – these are two different animals, as it were.  Apples to oranges, so to speak.  Perhaps I can set aside the powerlessness for a bit, the lack of language and context for a time, and focus on the other issue – the faith question.  Sort of like … lemme think … say I lost my shoes.  A side effect would be that I’m continually wearing out my socks now, as I never did before, and I find myself … sockless! 

Well, I can work hard to replace my socks, but they’re just going to continue to wear out.  Better to find more sturdy footwear – it’s the missing shoes that are the true issue here, the Cause, if you will.  In my case, it’s the missing faith that is the Cause.

 

Someone well known – Aristotle or Socrates, perhaps – talked about Causes.  I’ll have to look that up, maybe in my History of Philosophy …. Or is that the power/language quest popping up again – hoping to break through to some grand philosophy, to find I have a whole bunch in common with an ancient philosopher, tell myself I am truly a genius, after all … Being a genius is certainly internal power, anyhow – well, knowing one as a genius is inner power, I would think.  To be ordinary ( ie – not a genius, not “special”, not powerful) and to lose faith, when faith has equaled identity, is difficult.

Last week, I asked for faith.  I decided not to wait for a “who” or “Whom.”  I just asked the Universe. 

I thought about that for awhile, and came to this – if I’m going to believe anything, I want it to be True.  Not a fairy story or a fantasy, though I have no problem believing in the Power of such, if that’s what it is.  But whatever I pin my soul on, my life, my identity … for that, I require truth.  I have a young friend  willing to say whatever someone believes is true IS.  Creating your own truth or Reality, I guess.  So if you think you’ve got bad karma and I think God is judging me … we’re both right, but only for ourselves, as far as that goes … I guess you could call that tolerance.  Never saying someone else is wrong, per se.  I just don’t agree with you, Mr. Jones, but if it’s true for you, then I respect your reality, as it were ….

I find this unsatisfying – perhaps because I once had a Truth, seemingly rock-solid, that was Absolute.  So to pick up a belief here or there and label it with that T seems less.  I can’t do that.  I asked for faith.  And then, for Truth.  If the Universe doesn’t know Truth, then there isn’t any to know, and if that’s the case, then I think it’s okay to live, and not trouble myself further ….

Faith's Journey .... Post #5

It's a loss of language, a loss of context ... an inability to articulate what I must essentially articulate ... frustrated attempts at communing and communicating with the Divine, with ... something, with ... some One. 






It's a freefall that doesn't end and a primeval scream that rips at the soul, but silently.  It's a fabric unraveling and a fibre disintegrating.  A hunger, a deep need for a faith that eludes, that's unnamable, that's beyond reach, that cannot be found. 

The question persists - how did this happen?  How did I come to this place?  And even, what has happened?  I don't know.  I can't tell.  And if I knew, I don't think I have language to speak it ... like that old text about there being a cry of the spirit that words cannot express. 



I've come to wonder if it's possible to recapture the ability to live beyond language - I mean, once I knew a whole world without language, like, when I was born and for awhile afterwards ...

Is it possible, could I be content, could I even live if my languageless-ness isn't remedied somehow?  I don't like it.  I want words to tell what's what and who's who and ... everything.  But ... are words always necessary?  Wordlessness equals powerlessness, helplessness, lack of ability.

 

 I want so badly to understand and I can't make heads or tails of it and then I tell myself it shouldn't matter, and I should stop trying to figure it out and label things with ultimate answers and stuff ... but I never believe myself when I say that. 

 I keep seeking, and I know another old text tells me that those who seek will, inevitably, find ... but I don't think I believe it, not yet, anyhow.  How I long for finding ...