How Does The Garden Grow?

We are miracles of being. We are packets of life that burst into a world that is often unprepared for us, although it is furnished with the potential to serve all our needs.

As adults, perhaps we spend too much time weighing the potential of life to serve us, while not enough time in service to that integral nature that sustains miracle upon miracle, and has done since opposite somethings began to attract, in those first unprecedented moments of creation.

For sentient individuals, this span of existence, in whatever form we take, is so brief and brutally free, while filled with such inexplicable beauty in each moment that is our now, I wonder why any person would isolate themselves in the virtual.

Reality and realism are a calling. Immersion in what-is, above what-can-be, is an essential landscape I fear is missing from the lives of many. This is not to say that what-can-be is unimportant or missing from the world. What-can-be lies within a limitless field of creative potential.

Sadly, most people frame their lives, whether they will admit so or not, within prisons of what they deem are “inevitabilities.” Mortality aside, nothing is inevitable. Therefore, all things are possible.

What-can-be could be seen as that which you grow in your garden. What will your garden contain? What will you grow? From whence shall the seeds be harvested? How often will you water the young seedlings that sprout after you have the seeds you have acquired? What culture will you grow? How will it impact the world?

These odd questions are vital, yet rarely directly addressed in our upbringing—the upbringing that shows us primarily how life must serve us. Parents too seldom pass to their children the knowledge of culture—where it comes from and how it is perpetuated—beyond the mere experience of it; I think, sometimes, we haven't learned all that is required to bring culture to birth and nurture it; to build and maintain it; to pass it on to its next conservatorship.

To think this way seems beyond so many people. Artists perhaps, may have the greatest potential and sensitivity to the philosophical implications of life in service to beauty. Too many others feel that sort of dedication is someone else’s domain and responsibility. Too many others believe that culture is and should remain free, and by that they mean, existing without investment. Somewhat like parents who expect schools to train their children to be good people, yet invest nothing or little in seeing to that themselves. Somewhat like people who decide how to vote based on what they read in checkout counter tabloids or what they see on Fox News.

Is this how the garden grows, the garden of you and of all of us?

From one impulse through many impulses, from one voice through many voices, from one set of hands through many sets of hands, your life flows. Infinite messages flow through all your experiential pathways. To which and to how many shall you respond? And what will be the result of that response or interaction?

Life is a series of callings within the single, yet infinite, garden of being. Yours is to choose. “Life is all about choices,” a friend once reminded me.

The paradox of life is that it supports you while you support it.

How will you nurture what has nurtured you? This is a vital question, a real question.

Everything depends on your answer.

Reflections on Reality, Love and Family

There have been so many things, lately in the news, that have made me reflect on the concept of "reality."

For example, when you read an entire arc of written history and find that the ancient notion of Trinity has been purposely derailed from being Father-Mother-Child to Father-Son-and-[(female in name origin only) Holy Spirit], you tend to suspect that the proper order of things has been usurped to fit a human agenda that can often seem less evolved and fit for holy work than one would hope for humanity (which claims to want peace even while raising their weapons to conquer).

The historical model Father-Mother-Child really needs a more modern amendment to  acknowledge the actually exisiting model of [Responsible&Committed Parent(s)-Grandparents-Guardians-Villagers]-Child(ren—history reveals this to be the reality of what has actually happened, through times ancient and modern, in thick and thin, in times of war and peace.

I just wish that reality what actually happens didn’t have to constantly obscured, diminished, denied, denigrated, fought over and legislated, so we could all get on with the actual (and more important) holy business of loving each other—from within the sacred choices we have made about our identities—and caring for each other and our beautiful planet, which is, after all, supposed to be the whole point of this existence.

Maybe someday there will be a holiday called “Stipulation Day”, where everyone could remember the day we all said, Okay, we’re ALL so COOL! Let’s CELEBRATE that we’re all taking care of each other, and that this is the way it should be!


(sigh)

But, the problem with holidays is that we have parades where we all line up in separate groupings. We reduce everything to sentiments that are printed on cards and balloons. Over time, we forget what the holiday was ultimately all about, and why it was needed.

Perhaps a better solution is to make everyday a Sabbath day, where there is time for work, time for play, time for celebration, time for reflection and time for rest. Is it possible? Could life be like that?

Meanwhile, I feel so VERY LUCKY to live in a part of the world were there is so much more consciousness about the multiple definitions and dimensions of family and neighbor--and life.

The Vine

You didn't choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain.                    ~ John 15:16

Showers of tears,
the fruit of the vine
touched by a raging sun;
yet, still she reaches out,
season after season,
ever onward and upward.

Despite such daily assault,
no bright flames
shall singe nor harm her;
and her fruit shall nourish
the nations with the sweetness
of a love like no other.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem has been set to music by Carson P. Cooman,
in his cycle of songs for solo voice entitled Brief Vibrations, Op. 870

The Meeting Place

Here we stand,

Face to face,
Where wave and particle meet;
At the junction of all and nothing,
We stand here, now,
Caught in one another’s gaze.

We can feel time as a wind blowing through our souls,
Faster and faster, forward and back,
Converging ever now, ever new;
Time asks nothing of us, but gathers up our songs,
Like fallen leaves, and carries them to Elsewhere and Back,
So that we may know ourselves then, now or later,
And so we might be known,
In once and future remembrance,
From the beginning.

We stand, face to face,
The soles of our feet defining the holiness
That rises up from the sacred grounding,
Through our extremities of mind, soul and spirit,
Tuning our singular form to its uttermost frequency.

From within the inner knowing of the outer knowing,
And from without the outer knowing of the inner knowing,
We reach forward with the smile reserved for the beloved.

Kiss all that lies beyond us,
And know that it is good—
For that is all we need to know,
And there is no greater joy.

Blessed be the One who made all other,
For the simple pleasure of conversation,
For the delight of laughter, light and lightness,
For the recognition of all that is beyond self,
And is, therefore, the fairest expression of selfless beauty.

Standing face to face,
Here, at the Holy of Holies, now and ever,
Accept the love offerings we plant in your fertile soil,
Help us to tend them well and, knowing their potential,
Let us watch them bear us fruit most beautiful and sweet,
And let us join in the harvest together,
And may the harvest go on from this day forth,
In joy and peace, forever and evermore.
Amen.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Kindness and Cooperation: Lessons in Daily Living

We so often hear that "boys will be boys", particularly if the phrase is being offered as an excuse for episodes of bad behavior. Girls can also be mean. And so can parents be mean, as well as people of an adult age who do not have children. How much mean-spiritedness are we modeling for our children and youth? If we see our child behave badly, do we step in and say something, or hang back, because it is too much trouble?

We hear so much in the news about bullying, and there have lately been many tragic consequences. We wonder at the decline in civilized behavior, and we comment on how "those other people" should behave (whomever "they" are).

But, here is a news flash, people: we are all "them".

Kindness is a blessing, but generally not a natural gift to most people, although I have met some people who are, I think, naturally kind in every encounter. Meeting the embodiment of kindness and generosity is edifying and humbling for me.  Hopefully this is true for everyone, but perhaps not; many merely take someone else's kindness for granted. Some people meet kindness and generosity believing that is a form of weakness, and feel free (or obliged) to take advantage; little do they realize that they are the losers in such an exchange.

In a world of kindness, there is no pecking order, no top-down authority; all are equal and respected in the eyes of the observer. A world of kindness requires a specific type of engagement with the world: mutual attentiveness between any two people. Martin Buber characterized this beautifully in his book I and Thou:

The primary word I-Thou can be spoken only with the whole being. Concentration and fusion into the whole being can never take place through my agency, not can it ever take place without me. I become through my relation to the Thou; and as I become the I, I say Thou. All real living is meeting.

What he means, of course, is that real living requires that two or more engage in an activity; it takes two to tango. If one can acknowledge another, meeting that person as an equal and actively engaging in relationship, even if that relationship is only a simple transaction at the grocery store, or cars merging on the freeway, or a game at the park, that meeting is where life happens. Transcendence occurs in every action between individuals who engage to solve a problem.

In the same vein, Aldous Huxley says of love:

There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

You could easily substitute the words "live" for "love" and "living" for "loving".

What is suggested is a type of ongoing education. Goodness and compassion may not be natural, but they can be learned and taught. Teaching goodness and compassion is every bit an attentive action as that meeting that Buber describes and that love that Huxley wrote about. And it requires more than yelling across the park "hey, quit picking on that kid!"

If we want to teach our children well, we cannot avert our eyes and mouth worn phrases like "boys will be boys"--that is inattention at its most self-contained and in complete disregard for "what needs to be done."

If we want to teach kindness, we must recognize and be humbled by our own capacity for meanness. If we can do that, the next step is to engage with our children honestly about meanness and its consequences, about the inattention that leads to disregard or objectification, and likewise about attention leading to mutual engagement and problem solving.

That mutual learning experience is where life really happens; it elevates the everyday world and lifts people up.

But life is all about choices; living life attentively, with kindness and compassion, is a choice, like any other. People are not the isolated beings they like to think they are; we cannot live for ourselves alone. We live in a world that faces destruction if we do not fit ourselves into the picture that is so much bigger than ourselves, and turn our attention to solving the problems we have created from a position of selfishness. An integral world demands mutual integrity; every day introduces the opportunity for a new lesson.

Integral life must be thought of as a continuing journey in the practice of kindness and cooperation.

May we learn from our mistakes and teach our children well.