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The Bleating of Sheep and Goats
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Monday, May 5, 2008
11:06:00 AM EDT
“Not all men are called to be hermits, but all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally. ... For he cannot go on happily for long, unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of this own true soul.” Thomas Merton
In His Service.
Tags: spirituality, Alan Ginsberg, Thomas Merton, Buddhism, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, sheep, personal growth, New Mexico, fires, Carlsbad, reaching out
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11:06:00 AM EDT
The Bleating of Sheep and Goats
In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. Thomas Merton
The sheep in the field across the street are bleating so loudly this morning that it is more like screaming. The goats in the fields beside me were doing the same last night, to a point I went out with my pistol to check to make sure a coyote was not in the neighborhood. I never discovered the cause of the seeming anxiety, even Movie had her head over the fence watching curiously. The weather here is trying to change, the sky this morning is gray and the humidity is up. The sheep and goats could be sensing the change.
We need a change. Our drought continues and fires have broken out all over the state. In the small section of the Southern Rockies called the Manzano Mountains, just south of Albuquerque, a fire has raged for two weeks now, driven by the wind to burn over 12,000 acres and at last count had destroyed fifty houses. On the Mescalaro Reservation in the next set of named mountains, the Sacramentos, is a 6,000 acre burn. East of here on the prairie toward Hobbs is a 2000 acre fire. It feels like New Mexico is burning and with the relative humidity in the single digits the place is a tender box. Even the irrigation of last month did not recover my pasture and I am watering with sprinklers to get the grass to grow.
I have not been out to any of these fires. I was called to the Hobbs fire but the call was canceled and we came back. That spared us a hundred mile drive and I was glad for that, I have been really tired lately. For the first time since I have moved to New Mexico my asthma has started and yesterday I seriously thought of heading for the ER but have had that type of chest pain before so didn't. I simply hit the inhalers and my neighbor gave me some stuff to help clear my lungs.
In this spiritual journey of rediscovery in this small isolated New Mexican town I have found myself and have found the meaning of my own existence and know that the daily events of life are good enough, the seeking, the desire for “I know not what” eases as I become clearer that the purpose of life just “is.” In the racket of farm animals, the hooting of train horns, the concern about the fires in the mountains of my new home state, the return of an illness so long gone I had forgotten I had it, in the ordinary is peace. It is good to know the meaning of one’s own existence and to know this is good enough.
I opened a journal site on AOL to keep these efforts at writing and I am not sure that I will use it even thought it is snappy looking once they are posted. Posting them is a lot of work and takes as much time as the writing. I think as with all things I was guided there to discover something else. In the last couple of weeks I have wondered about the point of all this writing, knowing full well that I am not to become the great American writer and that these small essays become as obscure as yesterdays news the minute I send them. In the AOL journal site I found other “writer’s” journals; a woman writing of the death of her mother, another writing of her failure at weight watchers, a cartoonist posting a daily cartoon. In reading these I realized that in these efforts is the reality of the meaning of life. We reach out to one another, we attempt to connect and share and say that our lives, our joys and our pain have meaning. And we hope someone reaches back.
I have reflected much on Merton this last week. I am finding that it is in the isolation of this desert town on a farm which is becoming my own hermitage that I find meaning and in the end I am living more like he did, a man in solitude. I understand why he stepped away from people, some of us simply need solitude.
“Not all men are called to be hermits, but all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally. ... For he cannot go on happily for long, unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of this own true soul.” Thomas Merton
I am far from a hermit but I am finding that this isolated place is slowing me down, making me change my paceand in slowing my pace allowing me to re-find “self” and beyond that become clearer on the Divine. It is not an easy journey, I give up pain only with difficulty because, like all ordinary people, I want to cling to the known.
God continues to unfold memories, though, to replay my life. I can only assume He continues to work me through a life not understood and not fully appreciated.
This weekend He brought back a buried memory of meeting the poet Alan Ginsberg and chanting with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche one night at Ohio State. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche is considered to be a driving force in bringing Buddhism to the United States, a holy man with the reputation of a bit of a scoundrel. It seems those two characteristics are never too far apart. The chanting took place in a room of the student union, no chairs but hundreds of students sitting cross legged on the floor, Ginsberg and Trungpa Rinpoche sitting on an elevated platform. At the end of the chanting Ginsberg and Rinpoche walked directly to me and spoke to me briefly. I never quiet knew what that was about but translated it through my youthful homophobia into something it probably wasn't. I bolted without much listening to what they said missing an opportunity as they clearly reached out to me.
That night I got lost in the chanting and looking back I can see why so many of my generation or any generation get caught up in “cults.” For a moment in the chant there was emptiness and life’s pains vanished. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying Rinpoche started a cult, even in the Christian tradition we have our own chanting creating the same peace of unknowing. We are drawn to escape, to leave the seeming pain of life, and the hypnotic rhythms of the chant can serve as a drug if we are not aware of what we are doing and the real purpose of chant and plainsong, to reach out to God.
I went more deeply into the Buddhist spiritual tradition after that night. Studied martial arts off and on for a while as a way of trying to figure out how to be engaged in the world and be apart at the same time. I guess that is why I was eventually brought back to this Christian faith. God does not want us to be disengaged. Yes, there is a place and a time for retreat, even Jesus retreated to the desert, but God wants us to reach out and to be engaged with one another. I look at Michelangelo’s painting, "The Creation of Adam," and see a snapshot of how God wants to relate to us and how He wants us to relate to Him. A snap shot of how He wants us to relate to one another.
To be engaged. A phrase used by us to mark the beginning of a marriage, to be more than passing strangers, the beginning of union.
My neighbor tells me I have had a full life. I know I have done a lot of different things and in the process have helped and hurt a lot of people, it has not been a perfect life, it has simply been a life. In memories like the one of the night of chanting I realize that in my own small way I have “known” people, had adventures but although that had an excitement of its own, real life for me is now taking place on this farm in this small town. Meditation has become brushing the horse, picking up the stuff the pup destroys as he plays in the yard, pulling weeds and planting flowers. Real life is writing each day and reaching out waiting to see who reaches back.
Isn't that God’s pattern, using the wind to brush our hair, growing flowers to cover our destruction of the Earth, flowing rivers to nourish our bodies and souls, reaching out to us and wondering if we will reach back. Imagine for one moment that, as in Michelangelo’s painting, that God is immanent, the same size as you, a real person, and He is reaching out to you, would you reach back? Maybe He is and maybe you should. Maybe in that moment you will find yourself, if dare to look, dare to reach out.
In the mean time I hear the calling bleat of a lost sheep, reaching out to the others. I seem to remember that Jesus referred to us as lost sheep, I guess that country boy knew himself and others pretty well.
Tags: spirituality, Alan Ginsberg, Thomas Merton, Buddhism, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, sheep, personal growth, New Mexico, fires, Carlsbad, reaching out
Written by walaw717 Blog about this entry |
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