This past Wednesday evening, I spoke by phone to a cousin who lives in California, zip code 92128. I was relieved to hear his wife's voice, and then his, and he told me that their home, although the entire area was shrouded with smoke, was two miles from one edge of the "Witch Fire," the largest of the wildfires scorching Southern California this week, and that it seemed as if they would be okay.
Okay or not, their situation, along with those of Peter and Faith, Floyd and Marion, the three-year-old with the swollen-shut eye (all from the previous three posts), and the millions of other journeys on this human path, reminded me of Ernest Shackleton's invitation to join his 1914 exploration of the South Pole. I first became aware of Shackleton's language while listening to Bill Plotkin speak at an Animas Valley Institute seminar some years ago. He joked that with a little revision, the ad that Shackleton had placed in a London newspaper would serve well for the vision quests that he and the Animas guides offered.
Shackleton's ad: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success."
Bill was only half-joking. In Soulcraft: Crossing Into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (New World Library, 2003) he offered this revision as a possible ad for a quest: "Men and woman wanted for hazardous journey. Bitter cold and intense heat, long hours of complete darkness, boredom, no food, constant danger, encounters with the unknown, return in same condition doubtful. Vision and more hardships await in case of success" (330). Anyone who has enacted a vision quest can vouch for the literal and metaphorical truths in that description.
Anyone who chooses to live a conscious life, and I mean really pay attention to all of it to the extent he or she can in any given moment, can grow into a worldview that can vouch for these truths as well. Not one of us needs to create an enemy in order to embark on a hazardous journey. No one needs to drop a bomb, crash a plane, fire a gun, throw a punch, sarcastically criticize, or passively dismiss to live a daring, challenging, attainable life worth living.
All any one of us has to do (yes, the italics are literally true and a painfully ridiculous understatement) is to fully engage body, mind, soul and spirit to commit to finding out what our unique self is called to do during the time it has to do it, and what our true identity is within and beyond this calling, and we will have the grand adventure that is already ours. But we have to pay attention because the fire and the cancer and the arthritis and the hurricane and the flood and the heart attack and the accident and the depression will try to distract us from time to time, and not one of them is the journey that we're hoping for. Any one of them can suffice as a painfully distracting detour from or an attention-holding guide on the journey. We get to choose.
That's enough for now. I need to pay attention and see what it is I'm not paying attention to right now.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Peter and Faith
I attended a memorial service for Peter this past Sunday. Although we didn't see each other regularly since we met in August 1996, I always enjoyed his presence, and, against the backdrop of our canoeing, walks in the woods, New Years Eve and birthday gatherings, diner breakfasts and poetry readings, I think it's safe to say he enjoyed mine as well.
On that August evening, I saw him seated at a table at Dr. Java's, a cafe in Bethel, CT--at the time, the home of the Wednesday Night Poetry Series (WNPS), which is now the longest running weekly poetry series in the state. I had met his wife, Faith, the month before at the Sunken Garden Festival and she invited me to check out the goings on at Dr. Java's.
With his roots in Astoria, Peter was quick to point out that although we may have a New York Italian connection on the surface, Yonkers was not quite the same as being from the city. When I suggested that many Manhattanites felt the same way about Queens, we both laughed at my attempt to bond in not being from Manhattan if I couldn't do it by being from New York.
At first I thought of Peter as Faith's husband--corporate background, now consulting, and occasionally, and then regularly and humorously hosting the poetry series. But then I heard him read his poetry, and got to read some of it myself. The first two, "Friends," about his friend 'Grif,' and "Growing Old in New York," a riveting vignette of his aging parents, beckoned me to see him in a different light. Unfair, I thought, that this fiercely bright, wickedly funny, technologically savvy, table tennis ace (yes, all that and more) could write.
And while I'm tempted to say that the emergence of cancer in his pancreas early in 2006 was unfair as well, I know that it was not. Amid the shock, disbelief and uncertainty of the diagnosis, Peter analyzed the options for surgery, treatment, doctors and hospitals with every one of his talents. He calculated each step with Faith, and made it clear that he was going to be one of the cancer survivors who beat whatever statistical odds there were to beat (which he did, though not quite soundly enough for those of us who love him).
I consider myself lucky and blessed to have known him, although as an avowed atheist, he might cringe a bit at the "blessed" part. I learned that when I feared I might be imposing after his surgery, showing up at their home to chat was exactly the right thing to do; and that when I thought it might be too much, he jumped at the chance to walk in the woods for a couple of miles and then have lunch. When Faith called me after he wound up back in the hospital with an infection unrelated to the cancer, and asked if I could visit, Peter greeted me from behind his lunch tray with a strong desire to clarify if I were there as his babysitter or playdate.
The last time I saw him out and about, we had breakfast at a diner while his car was serviced, and he offered his humble, experienced perspective as a stepdad for three when I shared my own stepdad worries and fears. In response to an email in which I expressed my intention to see him at the opening of his and Faith's photo exhibit at the Newtown library (yes, an accomplished photographer as well), he wrote back that Faith thought it might be best if he not attend, because of, in his words, "You know--germs." I can hear his voice smile, and see his face and the gleam in his eyes as he emphasizes that last word.
The memorial service took place at his stepson, Michael's, home. Family and friends from various times and places in his life, piles of food, photographs, a video, and spoken and written messages of love and remembrance, hosted in an authentic, grounded, honest, devastated and loving way by Faith. More than once, and usually with some ironic twist and a smile, the words "arrogant" and "atheist" popped up. I believe that atheism is a valid stage of spiritual development--way past fundamentalism and not quite mysticism, and that arrogance is in the perception of the beholder.
So, Peter, like it or not, we are New York Italians and poets, you're an atheist who chose to marry Faith, and I love you and miss you.
On that August evening, I saw him seated at a table at Dr. Java's, a cafe in Bethel, CT--at the time, the home of the Wednesday Night Poetry Series (WNPS), which is now the longest running weekly poetry series in the state. I had met his wife, Faith, the month before at the Sunken Garden Festival and she invited me to check out the goings on at Dr. Java's.
With his roots in Astoria, Peter was quick to point out that although we may have a New York Italian connection on the surface, Yonkers was not quite the same as being from the city. When I suggested that many Manhattanites felt the same way about Queens, we both laughed at my attempt to bond in not being from Manhattan if I couldn't do it by being from New York.
At first I thought of Peter as Faith's husband--corporate background, now consulting, and occasionally, and then regularly and humorously hosting the poetry series. But then I heard him read his poetry, and got to read some of it myself. The first two, "Friends," about his friend 'Grif,' and "Growing Old in New York," a riveting vignette of his aging parents, beckoned me to see him in a different light. Unfair, I thought, that this fiercely bright, wickedly funny, technologically savvy, table tennis ace (yes, all that and more) could write.
And while I'm tempted to say that the emergence of cancer in his pancreas early in 2006 was unfair as well, I know that it was not. Amid the shock, disbelief and uncertainty of the diagnosis, Peter analyzed the options for surgery, treatment, doctors and hospitals with every one of his talents. He calculated each step with Faith, and made it clear that he was going to be one of the cancer survivors who beat whatever statistical odds there were to beat (which he did, though not quite soundly enough for those of us who love him).
I consider myself lucky and blessed to have known him, although as an avowed atheist, he might cringe a bit at the "blessed" part. I learned that when I feared I might be imposing after his surgery, showing up at their home to chat was exactly the right thing to do; and that when I thought it might be too much, he jumped at the chance to walk in the woods for a couple of miles and then have lunch. When Faith called me after he wound up back in the hospital with an infection unrelated to the cancer, and asked if I could visit, Peter greeted me from behind his lunch tray with a strong desire to clarify if I were there as his babysitter or playdate.
The last time I saw him out and about, we had breakfast at a diner while his car was serviced, and he offered his humble, experienced perspective as a stepdad for three when I shared my own stepdad worries and fears. In response to an email in which I expressed my intention to see him at the opening of his and Faith's photo exhibit at the Newtown library (yes, an accomplished photographer as well), he wrote back that Faith thought it might be best if he not attend, because of, in his words, "You know--germs." I can hear his voice smile, and see his face and the gleam in his eyes as he emphasizes that last word.
The memorial service took place at his stepson, Michael's, home. Family and friends from various times and places in his life, piles of food, photographs, a video, and spoken and written messages of love and remembrance, hosted in an authentic, grounded, honest, devastated and loving way by Faith. More than once, and usually with some ironic twist and a smile, the words "arrogant" and "atheist" popped up. I believe that atheism is a valid stage of spiritual development--way past fundamentalism and not quite mysticism, and that arrogance is in the perception of the beholder.
So, Peter, like it or not, we are New York Italians and poets, you're an atheist who chose to marry Faith, and I love you and miss you.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Floyd, Marion, Major League Baseball, et al.
With Marion Jones's coming clean this past week regarding her steroid use, and with Floyd Landis's illegal performance enhancement stripping him of his Tour de France title, and with the gradual, persistent, layered and labyrinthine implosion of the big muscles in Major League Baseball, and with the ongoing problem with steroid usage in interscholastic and intercollegiate athletics (especially, but not only, in football), and with whatever other substance abuse is going on in sport that has yet to surface in the media, perhaps genuinely concerned parties need to look at the issue not more closely, but in a different way.
In The Quality of Effort in 1991 I made the following general points about drug-enhanced performance in sport:
It is possible that one's loyalty to team, tribe, or greater good might be so strong that cheating appears on the horizon as a viable option, but it is within that second motivator above, that self-centered desire to do what it takes without guilt or remorse, that drug-enhanced performances emerge. Understanding the issue requires a more complex, integral approach than many sports administrators and journalists have taken. I do not mean this in the sense that we should feel sorry for those who cheat; they should be held accountable according to the relevant criminal and civil laws and organizational bylaws. I mean it in the sense that anyone who is truly interested in addressing and stopping this type of cheating in sport needs to understand the array of individual, cultural and social factors that lead athletes to cheat.
The above five "motivators" are loosely based on the values research done by Clare Graves and continued today by Don Beck and others.
In The Quality of Effort in 1991 I made the following general points about drug-enhanced performance in sport:
- Such performance cheats the athlete of ever knowing what he or she might have achieved without the drug.
- It burdens the cheater with the knowledge that he or she does not deserve the honor, although this burden may not be felt immediately, and may only become conscious if and when the athlete develops ethically to the point that such behavior is wrong.
- It also cheats opponents, irreversibly, of much more than a ribbon, medal, trophy or plaque. To use track and field as an example, this type of cheating is also a theft that steals from others the unique experience of crossing the finish line first, taking the victory lap, and standing on the winner's stand in real time to be acknowledged by those who witnessed the victory.
It is possible that one's loyalty to team, tribe, or greater good might be so strong that cheating appears on the horizon as a viable option, but it is within that second motivator above, that self-centered desire to do what it takes without guilt or remorse, that drug-enhanced performances emerge. Understanding the issue requires a more complex, integral approach than many sports administrators and journalists have taken. I do not mean this in the sense that we should feel sorry for those who cheat; they should be held accountable according to the relevant criminal and civil laws and organizational bylaws. I mean it in the sense that anyone who is truly interested in addressing and stopping this type of cheating in sport needs to understand the array of individual, cultural and social factors that lead athletes to cheat.
The above five "motivators" are loosely based on the values research done by Clare Graves and continued today by Don Beck and others.
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