Flower Power

My first day back in Seattle I spent in the pavilion (formerly the summer house) behind the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford. From 1907 to 1973 it was the “Home of the Good Shepherd“, run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd to “rescue orphans and girls leading an immoral life.” More directly, I’d heard from a neighborhood loremaster that it was where nuns brought teenage prostitutes to Jesus. Not that that’s why I went there. I really just wanted a quiet outdoor place to begin re-writing the musical, a story which had itself gone very wrong and much in need of redemption. I asked for the blessing of those women who once lived there and strived towards something better - whatever their circumstances - as I wrote.

So I sat down at a picnic table with my copy of the KJV, and a new spiral notebook I’d purchased from Office Max on 45th exclusively for this task of musical redemption. Oh, and I made the peculiar decision to write the whole thing left-handed. I’m right-handed, supposedly, but I’ve been feeling like I need to balance myself lately. Like some part of me is just running amok and needs to be roped in before it wrecks everything else with its drama and anxiety. So sitting there taking notes on the Gospel of Mark and writing down plot points with my left hand forced me to just slow the hell down, to consider each stroke, to patiently train myself to operate in subtly new ways.

While sitting there, listening to Simon & Garfunkel on my iPod, various people would walk by with their children and I would overhear snippets of conversations which I would work into my notes. My favorite was between a mother and a very young girl. The girl begins:

“We’re not from here. We’re from another dimension.”

“Yeah.”

And the other good one happened around a teenaged boy who ran through the pavilion very quickly, but on only one leg. The other was held up awkwardly in a cast and never touched the ground. His mother following behind exclaimed, “Imagine how fast he can run on two legs!”

I am trying to make that my motto right now.

So much has happened to me these past few months. So much momentum has been built and so many radical changes have occurred within my life and my heart that its exceedingly difficult to make sense of it all, to give it some kind of order so that it doesn’t all overwhelm me at every moment. But maybe that is the simple purpose of life: to be overwhelmed at every moment by its majesty, beauty and intensity.

“…The art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.”

A House Divided

Certain themes and melodic passages have been repeating like litanies in my mind and heart. Through their contemplation the foundations for a new self and a new way of life are being laid and I’d like to share them with you so that I may further develop them. The first one is honesty, which I’ve written about already under the guise of “Truth” but which I feel like I understand on a much more personal level now. Since I’ve been doing a close reading of the Bible once again, let me offer a nice supporting passage here. This comes from Mark 3, and is where the scribes are accusing Jesus of using demonic powers, Beelzebub specifically, to cast out demons. That is, they are trying to invalidate his miracles by saying they are satanic. Jesus responds:

“How can Satan cast out Satan?

And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.”

This passage, to me, is all about unity. Unity of words with actions and intentions. It is about being of one heart and one mind. Being complete unto yourself. Being, basically, just honest and forthright.

People think that being honest is this like big moral thing. You’re supposed to tell the truth because it’s the “right thing to do” or whatever. But what the hell does that mean? What makes it the right thing? Who the hell cares? It’s very simple, actually. Failing to be honest with yourself (especially) and with others drives a wedge in between you and reality. It veils or shrouds you from the truth of who and what you are, and plunges you into endless recursion. You vanish inside yourself, plug your ears with wax and when others speak to you out of truth and love, it’s as though they are ghosts from another era or dimension: speaking, but not to you.

It has been a great struggle for me to be that kind of honest with myself and with others in my life whom I love and care about. Especially in those areas in which I failed to be all that I could be or that I said to myself that I was. But the simple admission of it, the simple acceptance, the uttering of those truths no matter how painful or embarrassing is what frees you from them. Truth dispells all illusion and clears the paths of love. A kingdom or a house once divided and now united can be shaken by nothing - not even by Satan himself - as it flows from and stands simply on the truth of its own existence. Truth is the root of all things. Nothing can exist without the truth. Morality, in this case, is completely irrelevant.

Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You

Karma, I think, fits neatly into this as well. It occurs to me that karma is not a record of wrongs which are carried over and against you from life to life (see Jesus with the money changers in the heart temple). Rather, karma are those instances when you know you didn’t live according to the truth. Where you chose recursion over honesty for whatever reason. A nice quote on that I found while looking up “honesty is its own reward”:

For if we cannot sit down alone and in silent humility admit that certain areas of a failed relationship were our own fault.. then we sentence ourselves to continue in those faults and suffer from them again in the future. If we were overly-demanding, or critical, or whatever it may be.. by denying it is in us we only guarantee we will do the same thing in our next relationship. And it will produce the same results.

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Replace “relationships” with “lives” and you have a handy way to understand karma. Further understand that every relationship you enter into - romantic or no - is a new life. Every person we meet shows us a new part of ourselves and is a new opportunity to play out old patterns or transcend them through simply being honest about who and what we are and what our expectations are.

[I love that Yoko is knitting blindfolded in the background of that video… or wait I think its crochet.]

Anyway, I have actually another big section I wanted to add to this article, but I am running out of time so it will have to wait until tomorrow. In the meanwhile, enjoy these images.