Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Pantheon of Higher Powers

I flipped open an Al-Anon book this morning and the first sentence I read was “When we say higher power, initially people believe that we are speaking of a religious entity. We are not. We are speaking of a loving, caring, nurturing Power that provides us with guidance…” As I began thinking about this, I realized that, while I have always identified “Higher Power” with “God”, in truth a higher power is anything that I set over myself, a power that guides and directs me, and that while ideally this higher power is a nurturing, loving power, more often what I make my higher power is job, relationship, or love. I am easily distracted by these powers, and while I think my intentions are good, the “guidance” that I receive by chasing after them, often leaves me angry, lonely, and unfulfilled. Essentially I make all the petty, material, even mundane problems of my life that power that seizes my every thought, and I bow down to these idols with an all too frequent and familiar regularity.

Later I had the opportunity to talk about this thought with a friend. I pointed out that, the statement “Came to believe” held three solutions for overcoming my obsessions with these insignificant powers that hold so much sway over me. Recognizing them or “Came” was the first part. Recognizing that there is a force over which I am powerless is perhaps the most important part of making change.

The second, “came to” is the understanding that I have a significant role in choosing these powers and the way that they affect me. It is no accident that this or that power is able to possess my thoughts and emotions so powerfully. I am an active and willing participant in choosing what I call my higher power.

Finally, “came to believe” is the realization that while I sometimes think that I have given up hope believing that I will ever be able to do things differently, the truth is that I harbor faith that even if I am not able to do things differently, I believe that these things can and will change. I am not always able to name the source of this faith, or the object in which this faith is placed, but the fact that my desire for change exists, means that hope is not dead, and that I am willing to do whatever it takes to live my life differently.

In rereading this, so much of my thoughts seem nothing more than jargon pulled directly from countless Al-Anon meetings. I don’t know that I have made the fateful step of turning my will and my life over to some higher power that truly loves me and wants to nurture and guide me towards serenity. Instead what I am choosing to focus on is the idea that I don’t have one higher power, I have many, and that the dizzying array of higher powers are a pantheon of petty grievances, fears and insecurities that I am ready to name and turn over, because they no longer serve me, and I no longer wish to serve them.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

The flower sermon

The Buddha saw a lotus blooming in the muddy water. Reaching down he pulled out the flower, stem and root and held it up high for his students to see. For a long time he stood there, saying nothing, just holding up the lotus and looking into the blank faces of his audience.

I reached my hand down between the rafters in my attic. Days before I had placed a trap among telltale dropping and the floorboards. The trap had snapped only the animal had fallen and I did not realize right way that the prey had been snared. Later, as the pungent odor began to waft down thought the cracks, I begin to understand the truth.

My hand was covered in a thick rubber glove surrounded by a trash bag. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it quick. I could feel the weight of it shift in my fingers. I snapped the bag shut around the maggoty corpse and hurried it, unceremoniously, to the trash bin outside.

Lying on the couch later I realized that I had fallen asleep. My eyes would flicker open periodically and catch the snippets of reality that flowed over me. In one moment I was lost in a fragment of dialogue from the television, in another I could hear my wife telling me she was putting the baby to bed, the children would come and go, sometimes poking me, other times trying to crawl in beside me. Finally, like Lazarus, I opened my eyes and stared into the slow circling blades of the ceiling fan, my hair damp with sweat.

Whenever I try to think about what to write next I can hear a faint tune. It comes from the back of my mind, playing as if through a broken speaker. Like the Velvet Underground song “heroin” played on a hurdy-gurdy, the tune is at once both familiar and foreign, comforting and disquieting. It is the music of the stars, an omnibus of sounds: music, prose and poetry. Moments of everyday life: seasons, moods, aspirations, dreams and stages of life.

The Buddha looks into the eyes of his followers. Meeting the gaze of his disciple Mahakasyapa, the disciple looked back and began to laugh. The Buddha handed the lotus to Mahakasyapa and said “What can be said I have said to you, and what cannot be said, I have given to Mahakashyapa.”