Sodaiho

Join Date 11/2004

+29

Becoming a Sage

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

Yesterday we spent the morning with friends at the hospital. Our friend, Ken Kessen, underwent another major oral surgery to remove areas of his mouth affected by cancer and other issues. Please keep him and his wife, Deana, in your thoughts and prayers.

Being with friends as they struggle is something we are becoming quite familiar with. I think it is a sign of our particular age and place in the life-cycle. I was talking with someone at Temple yesterday who is witnessing her parents age and deteriorate in these, their final years. She said she wished God had set things up so that we live until we go out like sparklers. I understand the sentiment. Some of us are for sure fortunate if we die in our sleep with little to no warning. Yet, on the other hand, a process of dying has its advantages, as well.

While I would not wish long periods of painful suffering on anyone, I do think, aging itself is a stage of life that can be useful to all. We learn so much from each other about the nature of life, about friendships and family, and about our relationship with our bodies. In essence, we have the opportunity to become sages.

Events in our lives, painful events, can lead us to curse God and life itself. We ask the eternal questions, all beginning with "why?!" Yet, there are no answers really, at least none that are satisfying. It is in our nature, though, to ask. We want to make sense of our experiences. Yet, the sense we can make is limited to our tools, our senses, our brain, etc. Some things are just out of their scope.

When we encounter such things, it is best, in my opinion, to see them for what they are, processes of life, rather than part of some plan of an Infinite being. When we experience without judging the experience, knowing all experience is passing, I think we can more easily attend to the experience itself. Attending to experience is the essence of life. That, friends, may be its true meaning: it is the essence of being a sage.

May we all be free from suffering,

religion

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cactoblasta

Join Date 04/2004

+48

I don't know - I think the experiences you have as a young person are pretty awesome too. Getting old and dying by inches is something I hope I never have to do.

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Hey there Cacto,

I hope as you age, you let that hope go and learn to enjoy the ride.

Be well.

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Dear LW,

Far be it from me to say that it is easy to deal with aging inch by inch. But then it wawsn't easy being a toddler or a teenager either. I believe every 'stage' of life offers us something. Learning to deal with the disease processes? A challenge to be sure. Some of us opt out of the pain and suffering and (mostly) lack of hope with a lethel option. It is horrible. OK. Yet, when we decide to continue, we must choose to deal with our lives as they are, not as we would wish them to be. Setting aside the dream of or thought of being healthy and/or painfree again is one way of directly encountering our lives.

I catch myself at times wishing I could use my left hand or swearing as I stumble in public looking for all the world as if I am drunk. I do not like the constant, ugly sores on my neck from a chroonic skin disorder. I do not like the pain I feel in the morning and through the night as my arthritis begins to ache or my legs begin their nightly spasms. It would be nice if it weren't so.

But I cannot, nor will I try, to keep a thought in mind that these should go away. They are myy life as it is. There are far too many other wonderful things to catch my attention: a sunrise over the mountains, a sunset here in the southwest, birds in my backyard, my pups loving on me.

Even in the stumbles, when I catch myself muttering, I bring my attention back to my foot. "Harvey," I say, "lift your foot, feel it as you place it back on the ground: slow down!"

I don't know, Sabrina, there are no real solutions and I do not ever want you or anyone else to think that I take suffering lightly. On the otherhand we cannot allow ourselves to get so mired in the stink of it that we do not live uprightly.

I think the word for you, BTW, is crone.

A bow to you.

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Sabrina, don't you think we have enough tangles and knots?

Lets continue to be twisted. Reminds me of one of my kiddos when he was 10. We were pretty poor and drinking some cheapo beer. The bottle caps had block letters saying "TWIST OFF!" on them. Well, Jason gathered a bunch of them, made them into buttons and sold them at a street fair in our neighborhood for a quarter each.

Thanks for the memory.

Be well.

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Pretzels. Hmmm.

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