At the Centre of the Compass

Pukaki 1

I wonder how many of us spend time exploring ourselves and why we do things. I wonder how many of us spend time looking at our own journey and the direction our life has taken.

I think things begin to change when we look beneath the surface and especially when we realise that in a way we are icebergs drifting on the Ocean of the Infinite, with most of who we really are below the waterline. We like to think we are who we experience, that the daytime, when we are consumed by living, defining and achieving our goals is reality.

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Jesus Christ at Saltwater Creek

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. ~J.R.R. Tolkien

Faith… must be enforced by reason…. When faith becomes blind it dies. ~Mahatma Gandhi

Just north of Christchurch, perhaps 20 minutes or so out of town, is a place called Saltwater Creek. It is called that, because, after some reason, it has significance. State Highway 1 crosses on a bend in the river. As you pass, there is a small picnic area, perhaps a few houses, and the remains of what appears to have been a service station and automobile repair facility. Nobody appears to stop there, and in fact it’s perfectly understandable. There is very little reason to do so. But, after some reason I’m still attempting to understand, it has been sitting there in the background for most of my life. For the last 48 years or so, and one guise or another, I’ve driven through Saltwater Creek. Curiously, in all those years, I’ve never stopped, to stretch look around or consider my response to that place.

Until last week.

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Icarus at the crossroads-2

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”

– Antoine De Saint-Exupery

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

It isn’t easy being Libran.

I think that there may be some things for which we Librans have an instinctive loathing or perhaps fear. One of those would have to be the crossroad. We get to a crossroad and we must  make a decision. We must choose.  This of course throws most Librans into a spin, for making a choice implies committing oneself to a particular course of action and living with the consequences. They may work out well. Or they may not. We may have made the ” right” choice or we may have added up two plus two and given ourselves an answer of five. We will set out, confident we’ve made the best possible choice, only to find out later on that it was not the right one. And then we are faced with either being told we are wrong or, worse still, sitting there in the darkness, telling ourselves we were wrong, that we should have taken an altogether different route, made another,  in hindsight, wiser choice. Perhaps the fear lies not so much in the act of choosing but rather in the consequences of the choice and the possibility of a future self-beat-up.

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Kia ora tatou:

Icarus chasing his own shadow

The day I received this e-mail for a good friend who chooses to remain unnamed. Well, at least I think he does. From time to time I receive e-mails like this, and I simply cannot let them lie. On the one hand I feel an obligation to provide a considered response to what has obviously required a considerable amount of effort. On the other hand, I suspect, the e-mail is pushing my buttons and demanding a response of me.

This is a longish response, so you may want to curl up with a coffee and some time…

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Kia ora tatou:

As a number of you know, my life journey has continued to evolve, particularly over the last few years, as I have made my way to a place where I can be of maximum service. To do so has meant making some scary decisions, investing in an uncertain future. Now it has reached another crossroads. After a period of travelling and learning, of stumbling and falling, then getting up again, I have now come to a new awareness of who I am and what I would seek to achieve in the time remaining to me. These things are not set in concrete. They continue to shift.

Welcome to Life.

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Years ago, when I was a boy, I used to devour the western novels of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. I used to imagine what it must be like to ride day after day across the Great Plains of the United States, where there was nothing on the horizon. Later, when I studied American history, I read how some of the early pioneers, travelling across the grasslands in their Conestoga wagons who, when faced by the vast emptiness, had gone mad and committed suicide. I wondered what such emptiness could be like, what sort of experience it would be like to drive for hours across roads where, for 360°, there were no features, no mountains, no…nothing. how would I feel? Would I love it? Would the space cause me to rejoice or would it terrify me?

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As I were a shepherd on a lemon sea..and then the dream shifted.

I had a vision. In that state I saw myself lying, a dragon atop my Eggs of Memory. I saw suns, stars and moons. I grew beyond. I saw the universe expanding, slowly, consistently. And I saw that for all its change, it was a single entity. It was a moment of revelation. Time appears to move but remains still. It expands but just is. It is mobile and immobile congruently.

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Some form of spirituality, it seems to me, is the basis of all our lives, whether we choose to accept this fact or not. I begin to wonder also whether wandering away for a time from the tradition of our birth may be a natural part of spiritual growth, that it is OK if that happens. It is a thing not just confined to Christianity, which is the basis of my tradition for this life. In fact I have heard Hindu parents complaining that their young people are just not as interested these days. I would imagine that there are some Moslem parents who say the same thing. Going walkabout may be vital and perhaps the opportunity God-given.

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What is it that binds us all together, what is that that joins all living things?

It is breathing. Hau.

When I breathe, I am sharing the air that circles our planet and infuses everything. When I breathe, I am sharing the air that all livng things need to sustain their lives.

When I breathe, I am sharing the air that all men are breathing. Not only that, I am sharing the air that all those before me have breathed, have inhaled and exhaled, have taken in, absorbed, transmuted and then exhaled. I am breathing the past and all that has gone before me.  I am thus physically connected to my ancestors, my tupuna, along with the descendants of all those around me, seen and unseen, known and unknown. I am also breathing the same air that those who follow will breathe. I am therefore physically and directly connected to the future. For this reason, because I breathe, I am part of everything, connected to the All, connected physically to every thing.

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Day after day alone on the hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still,

I imagine all the people I am and I am all the people I imagine.

If I was to sit, my back pressed against one of the trees in the middle of Fitzgerald Avenue and watch the traffic, to be amongst it, what would happen?

For a time, I suspect, nothing much. People would drive past, on their own journeys. Whichever way I faced, I would have my back to one stream and my face to the other. Some would come from behind, while others would come toward me. Some might look up or to one side and observe me. Others would not. They might wonder why a man was sitting there. They would, no doubt, draw their own assumptions about why I was there and a few might wonder who I was. Almost all would make some kind of judgement. He is a nutter; he is homeless; he is a druggie or he is mad. In doing so they would affirm their own beliefs. They would pin their own illusion on me, or attempt to do so.

I might do the same. but I would try not to.

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