Ahz mah (So what)

I first encountered Jane Kenyon’s poem Otherwise many years ago, in a small frame on the dining room wall of a couple who had invited Alan and me to lunch. The poem catalogues the pleasurable moments of an ordinary day in the poet’s life, punctuated several times by the refrain: It might have been otherwise. The final line of the poem floated up into my consciousness recently, as it occasionally does: But one day, I know, it will be otherwise. How would it be to hold this refrain in our consciousness as we experience the pleasurable moments of an ordinary day? It all points towards mindfulness, gratitude and blessing, doesn’t it? Oh, and that couple with the poem on their dining room wall – They later divorced. And then remarried other people, and then divorced, and then got together with one another again. It might have been otherwise.

The wealthiest, most powerful people in this country are overwhelmingly white male christians. The one percenters. Sometimes I wonder about their souls, and if there might ever be someone who could reach them at a soul level. Someone to help them heal their childhood traumas and ease their toxic fixation on material wealth. In my 61 years of experience, I have observed that most adults are children in adult bodies. “Growing up” turns out not to be what we imagined it was; for many, many people it’s primarily about the aging of the body rather than an evolving consciousness. Or I could say it this way: There is a part of us that remains childlike, regardless of our age, and that childlike part of us is in control more than we would care to admit. (I was recently listening to a teenager talk about growing up, and I thought: Oh, do I tell them the secret or let them find out for themselves? I didn’t say anything. They wouldn’t believe me anyway.) So my assumption is that these one percent...

Dream fragment: I am sitting in a row of people who are being called up one by one to receive a blessing. Suddenly I realize that I have been skipped. And then I have to assert myself and step up and claim my blessing even though it is no longer my turn. I wrote this down last week, and of course have no recollection of any other details of the dream, the feeling tone, nor what was happening in my life (if anything) that might have precipitated it. How wonderful. It feels like a gift now, to understand any way I choose. And suddenly I realize that it is a gift I can share. What blessings have we missed receiving, for whatever reason, that we might step up and claim now? What might it mean to assert ourselves to receive our blessing? I would even interrogate the image of taking turns, of being called up one by one – When did we learn that blessings are limited in time and space, doled out to the deserving like diplomas?