Itineraries Winter 2009
Contents:
Creating a “Compassionate Society” by Bolton Anthony
Reading Roszak in Des Moines by Cecile Andrews
The Gifts of Winter by John G. Sullivan
The Importance of Being Silly by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
Poems, collected by John Clarke
Creating a “Compassionate Society” by Bolton Anthony
Beyond “the tired ideological battles of the 1960s.”
Once again — with the election of Barack Obama — “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”
Though he was born in 1961, Obama considers himself a member of the post-boomer generation. He readily acknowledges that “the victories that the 60s generation brought about… made America a far better place for all its citizens,” and his election itself is the crowning achievement of that long struggle for racial equality which reached its boiling point during the decade of the 60s. But, in electing Obama, Americans were responding to his clear call to move beyond the fiercely waged culture wars which marked — and marred — the presidencies of Clinton and Bush and focus on “those shared assumptions — that quality of trust and fellow feeling — that bring us together as Americans” (The Audacity of Hope).
It seems likely that no member of the boomer generation will ever again wield power from the highest office in our land. In this changing of the guard we might see — writ large — the future that awaits all boomers as they move into later life. To what work will they set their hearts? Will they move on to become globe-trotting citizens of the world, or will they retreat to the ranch to write their memoirs?
To frame the choice this way is, of course, not only to stay stuck in the old caricatures and shrill discourse of the past eight years, but to perpetuate a false dichotomy. As we learn from the living example of our elder statesmen, Jimmy Carter, later life is a season for both action and reflection; they mutually sustain and enhance each other.
All of us on the verge of our own “post-presidencies” should take to heart the words Tennyson attributes to the aging Ulysses: “Some work of noble note may yet be done. ‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.” Not too late, for a generation blessed with uncommon gifts and long life to set about “to build a compassionate society” — a society where those “who no longer have to worry about raising a family, pleasing a boss, or earning more money… can think deep thoughts, create beauty, study nature, teach the young, worship what they hold sacred, and care for the planet and each other.”
These words by Theodore Roszak help draw the broad outline of the challenge before us, that of Creating an Elder Culture. During all of 2009, Second Journey will focus on that theme.
We will devote the Spring, Summer, and Fall issues of Itineraries to exploring it, inviting contributions from a range of writers. We will host webinars on the topic and seek to seed seminars and discussion groups which use Roszak’s The Making of an Elder Culture as a launching point for engaged conversation.
— Bolton Anthony, Founder, Second Journey
Reading Roszak in Des Moines by Cecile Andrews
Cecile Andrews’ work has been featured in the PBS video, “Escape from Affluenza,” and the TBS video, “Consumed by Consumption” (featuring Cecile, Ed Begley, Jr., and Phyllis Diller), CBS News “Eye on America”, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, and various PBS and NPR programs. She is the author of Slow Is Beautiful: New Visions of Community, Leisure and Joie de Vivre, and The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life and the co-editor, with Wanda Urbanska, of Less is More: Embracing Simplicity for a Healthy Planet, a Caring Economy and Lasting Happiness. A former community college administrator, Cecile has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University and affiliated scholar at Seattle University.
Some time ago I got an e-mail from Bolton Anthony, the founder of Second Journey, the nonprofit organization which first published Ted Roszak’s Making of An Elder Culture in four online installments. He said he’d read my book Slow is Beautiful (albeit while walking on a treadmill!) and had realized — by the number of times that I quoted something from one of Roszak’s books — how much I admire his work. And indeed, over the years, I’ve always come back to Roszak’s books and ideas.
Further, Bolton could see my passion for spreading ideas through conversation — my belief that social change happens when we talk together. He thought I might like to write something that would bring people together to talk about The Making of an Elder Culture.
Now, when you think about social change, conversation isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But I’ve always been inspired by John Dewey’s words, “Democracy is born in conversation.” Sociologist Etizioni said that the way you bring about social change is to start a national conversation. And I found the same theme in Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone — Putnam says that the culture in which people talk over the back fence is the culture in which people vote. In other words, conversation is crucial.
I responded with enthusiasm to Bolton’s invitation — as the fact of this article attests.
I was entranced and excited by Roszak’s vision of baby boomers finishing some of the revolutions they started in the Sixties. But I realized that there was one revolution that few people know about. Incredibly, it was this little-known revolutionary idea that helped start it all. It started in a place called Highlander.
Have you heard of Highlander? Did you know that’s where Rosa Parks was trained not long before her historic refusal to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, AL? No, her act wasn’t, as we’ve often been lead to believe, a totally spontaneous one. It was an act born in conversations held at Highlander.
Highlander was founded in the Thirties with one main philosophy: To solve the problems of our country, we must bring the common people together to talk and tell their stories — a revolutionary idea, indeed, in a culture that turns to experts for its answers. As people talk, they begin to formulate answers. They go out and take action, and return to reflect. The wisdom is in the people. It’s not the experts or authorities who have the answers— it’s the people. Rosa Parks was one of those people.
Highlander conversations helped give birth to the Civil Rights Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement helped give birth to the Baby Boomers.
I mean this. We were reborn through the passion and joy we felt as we stood in churches with our hands joined, singing, “We Shall Overcome.” We had come from the North, often from repressed, fearful suburbs, and were transformed by the Civil Rights movement. We cautious and careful people were set free.
From that experience of liberation we went on to help shape the other liberation movements — the Women’s Movement, the Peace Movement, the Student Movement, and on and on. The Civil Rights Movement was about liberating Black people, but of course it liberated all of us.
Now we need to reclaim the revolution that started it all — the liberating art of conversation. But few people understand its importance. Americans are doers. We denounce people for being “all talk.” Americans give little time to deliberation, and maybe it’s our fatal flaw — we rush after every new thing, regardless of the consequences.
Women, in particular, know what I’m talking about. Many of us participated in consciousness raising groups in which we told the truth about our lives and discovered that others shared our truths. For many of us, this was the first step in our transformation. Black people came together to talk at Highlander. Women came together to talk in church basements and homes. We all came to understand that the wisdom is in the people. Long ago we took to the streets. Now we need to take to the cafés — to talk.
So I am proposing that we reclaim this forgotten revolution that was so crucial to the formation of the baby boomers’ counter culture — that we come together in conversation about Roszak’s ideas! It’s the way to finish the revolutions we began, asking ourselves, “What have we learned?” It’s a way to harvest our wisdom.
But we need to come together not only to develop our ideas, but to contribute to our own well-being. Research has found that social ties are the biggest contributor to our health, happiness, and longevity, and many of the destructive forces, like consumerism and television, are a compensation for loneliness and isolation.
Roszak wants us to continue to spread the ideas of justice and liberation, but it seems to me that what he is really talking about is a revolution of caring. For example, Roszak talks about spreading the entitlements of Social Security and Medicare to everyone. That is a revolution of caring. When we come together in convivial conversation, we learn to care about the other, and thus we learn to care about the common good. If we can help people understand the importance of connection and social ties, that could be as significant as the Civil Rights and the Women’s Movements.
So I hope you can see how important it is to come together and talk about The Making of an Elder Culture. Not only will we transform our views of aging, but we can help complete the revolution of caring that we started in the Sixties.
//
Elder Culture Conversation Circles
It would be nice if I could just stop here and rely on your experience to know what to do. It would be wonderful if I could count on your understanding how to conduct such a group. But my experience tells me that’s not true. We’re really not that good at conversation. We’re just too competitive. We learned to debate, not converse, and the competitive drive doesn’t make for convivial conversation.
Further, we’re out of practice with conversation: In recent decades social ties and community have diminished. We have fewer friends and participate in fewer groups. So, since the art of conversation has been on the decline for a long time, let me offer some guidelines.
Guidelines
Again, this shouldn’t be like most book clubs — an opportunity for people to compete to be the most intellectual or literary. (One study found that the competitiveness of book clubs has actually driven people to therapists in order to restore their tattered self esteem!)
In a conversation, we enjoy ourselves and explore ideas — it’s not a contest to prove you’re right. Think of conversation as a “barn raising,” not a battle. No one has the “truth,” and our ideas are always a work in progress. Our minds are always open. Our approach is echoed in the words of Gandhi: Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.
You would think it would go without saying that we don’t attack or denigrate others. But I’ve been surprised over the years about how deeply ingrained our will to win is, and how often people attack each other — even when we’re seemingly political allies!
In fact, I don’t think we should even try to persuade others. It’s not that you shouldn’t make a good case for your ideas. But if there’s only resistance from the other side, drop it. I always feel that if I’m trying to convince the other person that I’m right, that I’m basically showing disrespect for them. Winning becomes more important than the relationship. So it’s enough to simply state your views.
I recommend that you use often these phrases: “In my experience…,” “I’m wondering…,” “What do you think about…?” Ask questions, but don’t challenge, criticize, or argue. There should be no speeches, no tirades. Instead, gentle humor and laughter are the hallmarks of these conversations.
I know these guidelines seem obvious, but observe conversations around you this week and see how often we violate them. I think you’ll be surprised at how combative we can be. I’m afraid this is deep in American culture, and we’re all affected. And my feeling is that congenial conversation brings about greater change than combativeness. In any case, it’s certainly more fun!
Structure
Finally, let me give you some ideas about how to proceed:
I favor having people meet once a week. When you meet once a month, you don’t form a community as quickly, and further, this book deserves a more in-depth consideration than a monthly meeting allows you.
The best size is 6-8 people. Any larger, and some people don’t get to talk. If it’s a large group, split people into smaller groups, coming together at the end.
Try to speak from personal experience when you can. Explore and discuss the ideas that affect you. Read one chapter for each session, and come with just one idea that really struck a chord for you — something that moved you, stirred old emotions and new ideas. And be prepared to explain why it affected you. Tell your story. This is how you connect with people — by being real.
Begin by taking turns going around the circle to hear people’s ideas. Usually a theme will develop that you will proceed to discuss.
When a theme emerges, define it in terms of how it affects the well-being of people and the planet.
Then, explore solutions at the level of the personal, the local, the institutional, and the political. Let me give you an example: For instance, you might be talking about problems of the consumer society.
At a personal level, our egregious consumerism puts people into debt and separates people, so learning to live more simply as a personal solution involves spending less, using less energy, finding simple pleasures, and so on.
At the institutional level, you might explore the role of the corporations — how they destroy the planet and keep people in poverty for the sake of profit. The solution here is not only regulation of corporations, but the rekindling of the local — shopping and eating locally.
Finally, at the political level we might discuss policies and laws that reduce the inequality in our country or limit work time.
Thus, we explore the problem and the solutions at many levels, not just the personal level.
First Meeting:
For the first meeting, have people talk about their experience in the Sixties. Have people tell their stories. Explore which of the movements excited them the most; talk about regrets; explore some of the mistakes we made. Finally, have people talk about what they’re doing, or want to do, today.
Conclusion
Americans have always been a people who take action. We get things done. But we’re out of balance. We don’t spend time deliberating — thinking and talking. If we’re to reclaim the wisdom from the Sixties, here’s where we start, because here’s where it all started — people coming together to talk. We must come together and reclaim conversation.
My hope is that you begin to realize how important conversation is to this revolution. We must move from a “me first” culture to a culture in which, as President Obama has said, “We’re all in this together.” To make that move, we have to connect with each other. Conversation is one way to do that.
The Gifts of Winter by John G. Sullivan
Here is a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez called “Oceans:”
I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .
—- Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?1
Among the ancient Chinese, winter is associated with the deep waters. Let the image sink in. Winter and the deep waters. Think of moonlight over the ocean in winter. Moonlight across the waters in the depth of night. Silence. Solitude. Stillness. Darkness and deep listening. Dwelling at the depth and truly not-knowing. All mysterious. “Darkness was over the deep waters and the Spirit was hovering over the waters.”2
Such vastness, such realms of the unknown, produce fear. Our ancestors felt this fear. Could we get through the winter? Would there be a new year? Would renewed life return? The clue is in the image itself. In deep waters, the surface may be stirred up, yet at the depth there is peace and calm. All proceeds according to its own nature and norms. So we may find, beneath fear, a more basic trust. “Fear not” is the biblical message.
What sort of trust lies at the depth? Not the trust that comes with sight — neither foresight nor hindsight. Rather it is a trust that lives in the darkness, that learns to navigate without sight. Relinquishing sight, we rely on hearing. We sense the subtle rhythms by listening deeply. Winter encourages the practice of deep listening — listening to what is said and unsaid, to the sounds and the silence between the sounds.
“Johnny,” said the first grade teacher, “You’re not paying attention.”
“Yes I am,” replied Johnny. “I’m paying attention to everything.”
What would it be like to listen attentively to everything? As if everything was laden with meaning. As if everything was a teacher for those with ears to hear.
Suppose that we think of the atmosphere as an invisible ocean. We might think of ourselves as already living within the ocean. Rumi writes:
Late by myself, in the boat of myself
no light and no land anywhere, cloud cover thick
I try to stay just above the surface, yet
I’m already under and living within the ocean.3
Anne Joy, the 5 year old daughter of a colleague, was sitting out on the porch with her father on a July evening. They were watching a storm come in. She suddenly said, “Sometimes I think about things.” Like: why am I in this world? I could be in a different world…”4
I would gloss my young friend’s remarks in this way: The different world can be this world seen in a different way. If we are awake and alert, we always have the choice: Will we live in a world that is conditioned and constricted by personal and collective patterns? Or will we begin to notice those structures and realize that they are just part of the story, just part of the movie? We could be living in a different world — a larger, deeper world — a world beneath the surface certainties, a paradoxical world — in time and beyond time.
“There is another world and it lies within this one.”5 So speaks Paul Eluard. I think of a deeper dimension, the inside of the inside of things. To discover this dimension may be like awakening from a black and white world into Technicolor. Or like hearing more subtle music in the midst of the ordinary. Our relentless and often ruthless certainties are suddenly understood to be illusory — lines drawn on water, pretending to be fixed.6 They fall away. Something new stands before us.
The mystics tell us that, if we shift our interpretive frame, the deeper world (or deeper dimension of this world) will manifest all about us. Here is a slight rephrasing of William Blake’s quote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to us as it is, infinite. For we have closed ourselves up, till we see all things through narrow chinks of our cavern.”7
//
Winter invites us to open the doors of hearing, to open a third ear, to listen in a new way. Suppose that we are always living in a story (which we take to be real). Seeing our life as a story invites us to take that story less literally and to live more lightly. “It is only a movie,” we say. So likewise, we can say, “It is only a story.” Here the “only” allows certitudes to fall away, or at least be loosened. Once we confront our lives as a story then we may ask: What kind of a story are we co-creating? A faith story? An emerging universe story? A tragedy or a comedy? How can we listen to life-as-story in such a way as to reveal the mysterious and liberating layers of what is said and what is unsaid, of the tones and overtones?
When I engage in the ancient art of storytelling, I ask my listeners to follow three guidelines:
- Approach each aspect of “the story” as having multiple layers of meanings.Avoid seeking one moral of the story. Let the story remain richer than any one interpretation. Indeed, what we know is incomplete, and what we can tell is even more unfinished, more provisional.
- Consider that you are all the characters in the story — the one you think of as yourself plus all the other characters, the main ones, the supporting players, even the villains.Understood in this way, the characters in the story reveal parts of you. They come to you (mostly unknown to themselves) as teachers, perhaps even as severe teachers who have wronged you in myriad ways. We might say, shifting an old aphorism: When you listen with the ears of a student, all things teach you.
- Think of the story as a commentary on your current life, as happening here and now in support of your own transformation and that of others.In this way, story becomes parable and directs us to a deeper and more meaningful life in the present moment and in the presence of mystery.
Deep listening opens a world that is soul-size. Here we might think of soul not as an individual possession but as an individual participation in the World Soul — something our ancestors glimpsed. Imagine this “soul of the world” the way our ancestors did — as Sophia, a wisdom that connects through love. In this fashion, the “ocean” in which we dwell is an ocean of meaning and value, an ocean of insight and love. We might speak of living in and from the Soul of the World. We might speak of living in the nurturing Spirit. Whether called soul dimension or spirit dimension, we come to it through letting go of old identities, old opinions (personal and collective), and listening to what lies deeply within and around us.
Sometimes, in whatever way it comes to us, we may have a sense of the glory all round us.8 Blessed are such times. At other times, we may feel, as the opening poem said, that nothing is happening. Then we practice a trust even in the dark times. A trust that each event has many meanings. That each being is a teacher in disguise. That our living is in service of our transformation and that of others.
Winter encourages the discipline of waiting — in trust, in faithfulness, in hopefulness, in love. Silence. Solitude. Stillness. Soul. Spirit. Signs of the deep waters.
//
T. S. Eliot teaches that again and again we return “to where we started and know the place for the first time.” We return to the beginning, to “the source of the longest river, the voice of the hidden waterfall and the children in the apple tree.” They are “not known, because not looked for but heard, half-heard, in the stillness between two waves of the sea.” “Quick now, here, now, always — a condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything). And all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well . . .”9
The true gift of winter, I am coming to understand, is unknowing. This unknowing is very different from ignorance. It is more like the ability to hear the story anew — with loving attention to the concrete details, with awareness that all the details and all the characters have something to reveal to me. And further, this listening is a holy listening. For I am not in the story passively; I am with the storyteller uncovering insight and renewing life in the ever-surprising present. For example, part of my story may be the view that my colleague Paul is rude to me. Yet as I live more deeply and symbolically, I may play with what the wonderful Byron Katie calls “the turn around.” How am I rude to Paul? How am I rude to myself? How is Paul not rude to me?10
Then a part of my story re-forms, deepens. Perhaps laughter and lightness return. Perhaps the sage-in-us appears as the Fool, happily deconstructing old certainties and allowing new possibilities to shine forth.11
//
The gifts of winter are always available — to listen deeply in unknowing to what is unfolding at the surface and in the depth. Yet they have a special place as we draw closer to death. Earlier in life, we live through the death of each season, as we live through the death of winter into spring. And we may neglect the downward and inward side of life in a rush to define ourselves by outward “doing.” We may fail to honor the winter energy of stillness and silence and solitude and simplicity as we rush about seeking to construct our life. Yet these very qualities beckon more insistently as we move closer to death.
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi speaks of life in a biblical perspective of seven year intervals. And he maps those intervals onto the months of the year. In this fashion, October looks to ages 63-70, November to ages 70-77, and December to ages 77-84 and beyond.12 These are the Winter years or Autumn–Winter years in a lifetime. In his eighties, Reb Zalman is in his December years. And he speaks these days of being drawn to solitude and the contemplative life. In these later years, contemplative practices call us. It does not mean that we need to withdraw from the world. It does mean that we cultivate, more and more, a different world. Being silent, we listen and, even in speaking, we can speak in a listening mode. In action, we have the opportunity for what I will call “trim-tab living.”
Buckminster Fuller called our attention to the trim tab. He was thinking of a great ocean liner like the Queen Mary. He remembered that the ship is steered with a rudder and, at the edge of the rudder, is a kind of miniature rudder called a trim tab. A small movement of the trim tab causes the rudder to move and, as the rudder turns, the entire ship turns. Fuller thought of himself as a trim tab.13 I would say that any of us — by attunement to the currents — can engage in trim-tab living.
In “trim-tab living,” we live more simply and yet more powerfully because we do not rely upon our own powers alone. Listening to what is unfolding in the deep, in the “not yet manifest” realm, we say a word. Or omit a comment. And we do this with loving intent. As we align our thoughts and words and actions with the deeper life we sense, as we participate in the great story unfolding, we bestow winter’s gifts and are at peace.
If we dwell in the story told by the religions of the book,14 we image the ultimate in a personal manner. Then we can say in listening to the deep story anew: “Ah, you appear like that. Ah, you appear like this. Everywhere there is the face of faces, veiled as in a mystery.”15
Here also we might say with Dante, “And His will is our peace. (E sua voluntade è nostra pace.). It is that sea to which all moves that it creates or nature makes.”16
//
In the East, one can also image the ultimate in a non-personal manner and call it, for example, the Tao (pronounced “dow”). The Tao is the Way of the universe. We glimpse the Tao in meditative mind, in nature and in the appearance of the Masters, the large-souled ones. Here is how the storyteller (Lao Tzu) speaks of these masters in the Tao Te Ching (the Classic of the Power of the Way):
The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable,
All we can do is describe their appearance.
Watchful, like those crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like men and women aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests,
Yielding, like ice about to melt.
Simple like uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools.
Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?
Who can remain still until the moment of action?
Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfillment.
Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by change.17
Have we not here other pointers to winter’s gifts? To a way of dwelling at the depth of life?
So, in light of these reflections, hear anew the poem with which we began —Juan Ramon Jimenez’s “Oceans:”
I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .
—- Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?1
//
Notes
1 The translation is by Robert Bly, see Robert Bly, ed. The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1995), p. 246.
2 See Gen. 1:1-2<
3 See The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne (San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, 1995), p. 12.
4 The young philosopher was Anne Joy Cahill-Swenson, daughter of Ann Cahill and Neil Swenson. The incident took place in July of 2008 when Anne Joy was almost 5 years old.
5 Paul Eluard quoted in John Tarrant, The Light Inside the Dark (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), p. 4.
6 I owe the phrase “ruthless certainties” to my friend, Robert Knowles. It echoes a theme that the cultural critic Ivan Illich sounded throughout his writings.
7 See William Blake’s poem: “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”
8 Some experience an opening of the sense of sight; others, a subtle hearing. Perhaps all the senses can be activated in new and different ways.
9 The lines are the closing lines of T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.”
10 For more on Byron Katie and the turn around, see Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell, Loving What Is (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002).
11 For more on Winter and the Fool, see my Living Large: Transformative Work at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality (Laurel, MD: Tai Sophia Institute, 2004), chapter 12.
12 See Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller, From Age-ing to Sage-ing (New York: Warner Books, 1995), pp. 271-272.
13 Buckminster Fuller’s remarks can be found in the February 1972 issue of Playboy magazine.
14 I am thinking here of Judaism, Christianity and Islam which all accept and respect the Hebrew scriptures – what Christians call the Old Testament.
15 I am echoing here St. Nicholas of Cusa’s remark: “In all faces is shown the Face of Faces, veiled and as if in a riddle . . .” Quoted in Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1973), p. 81.
16 See Dante, The Paradiso, Canto III, lines 85-87.
17 See The Tao Te Ching, trans. by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1972), chapter 15. Passage modified for inclusive language.
The Importance of Being Silly by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
FOOL: If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’ld have thee beaten for being
old before thy time.
LEAR: How’s that?
LEAR: Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 5
Every time we see an ad touting a product designed to raise the libido, increase potency, and stimulate eros, the conviction gets ever more imprinted on the eldering population that the only fun you can have is in the bedroom. When you get older, however, more subtle and more deeply joyful possibilities arise..
Mardi Gras and Purim are approaching — seasons of rejuvenation. It seems to me that there are a number of ways in which elders can create possibilities for fun for themselves that not only will delight, but will refresh, stimulate, and heal the cells of the body. Norman Cousins healed from his illness by watching funny movies. You have surely heard the phrase, “Laughter is the best medicine.”
This is the season in which we can allow ourselves to be silly. My friend Bernie DeKoven is known as Dr. Fun. He is helping people find delight in win-win games. In fact, we had a conversation the other day. He is starting a play community. A play community! For years we have talked about how to let Silly out of the cage. Both “Serious” and “Silly” coexist within us. Bernie thinks Serious has Silly imprisoned in most of us.
These two forces operate in our consciousness. Silly can’t take action because the force of Serious — who likes to think of itself as the Great Manager — overrules. Silliness gets bound up by the business-like approach of Serious, whose first question is always, “What’s the use?”
I once said to my son, “That was a stupid movie.” He replied, “No Daddy, it wasn’t stupid. It was silly, and I like silly movies.” That’s very, very discerning. Silly doesn’t get out often enough— so there’s this conspiracy not to let Silly out because Serious says Silly is stupid.
We need to re-learn how to play and let Silly out so that we can simply have fun. Sometimes the child in us does play, but we feel guilty. Sometimes the parent in us scolds us for gambling with or wasting our time. Very seldom does the adult in us get to play with high consciousness: High play facilitates the kind of communication in which my heart can communicate an emotion with your heart. Imagine that I put some music on and, with all my eighty-plus years, I look in the mirror and begin to dance. Objectively, I’m not a ballet dancer. But subjectively… OY! Am I a ballet dancer! If can make a leap, if I can make eight scissors on the way up! We don’t have a chance to use Silly in this way often enough. Someone once told me that people don’t stop playing because they get old:. But no, people get old because they stop playing.
Silly brings us lots of vitamins! I once read of a research study in which they took samples of T-cells (cells which indicate immune function and general health) of elders before and after the experiment and got folks to wear the clothes they wore in the 1950s. The researchers then played the music of that era in a room decorated from that time and had them dance to the tunes they danced to in the 1950s. They then took T-cell samples again and showed an increase in T-cells after the merriment. It seemed to the participants that the burdens of the serious years had been lifted from their shoulders. They experienced more vitality and energy.
My suggestion is that you invite some friends over who would like to play silly with you. Dress up in funny clothes, play games in which everyone can win, and make time for fun and hilarity. Chances are that you will like the experience and that you will want to repeat it with your friends at least once a month. I suggest full moon times as the best time to invite Silly as a Master of the Revels. Now go have some fun with this!
//
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi was an internationally recognized loving teacher who drew from many disciplines and cultures. He has was at the forefront of ecumenical discussions, enjoying close friendships with the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, and many other leading sages of our time and was the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement which laid out the foundations for 21st-century Judaism.
He was instrumental in inspiring the convergence of ecology, spirituality, and religion and in his later years put special emphasis on Spiritual Eldering, or “Sage-ing” as he called it in his seminal book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older. Reb Zalman’s “Sage-ing” work — work which commenced after he was 60 — was seminal in the emergence of a conscious aging movement in America and the inspiration of our own efforts with Second Journey. He died on July 8, 2014, at the age of 89.
Poems, collected by John Clarke
Depression in Winter
by Jane Kenyon
There comes a little space between the south
side of a boulder
and the snow that fills the woods around it.
Sun heats the stone, reveals
a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,
and tufts of needles like red hair,
acorns, a patch of moss, bright green….
I sank with every step up to my knees,
throwing myself forward with a violence
of effort, greedy for unhappiness–
until by accident I found the stone,
with its secret porch of heat and light,
where something small could luxuriate, then
turned back down my path, chastened and calm.
//
from Memories of My Father
by Galway Kinnell
Those we love from the first
can’t be put aside or forgotten,
after they die they still must be cried
out of existence, tears must make
their erratic runs down the face,
over the fullnesses, into
the craters, confirming,
the absent will not be present,
ever again. Then the lost one
can fling itself outward, its million
moments of presence can scatter
through consciousness freely, like snow
collected overnight on a spruce bough
that in midmorning bursts
into glittering dust in the sunshine.
//
Ask Me
by William Stafford
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
//
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert E. Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early and
put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
//
Winter
by John Clarke
Camus found
invincible summer
within himself
in winter’s deep.
Now in arctic night
a newborn polar bear
— barely inches long —
floats in the mother’s
great fur cradle.
The stream of blood
below your temple
flows as the stars
dream across this
vast December night.
Together now, we
sound earth’s pulse
ever deeper. As
dark, then light,
lengthens.
Invisible snow
settles, drifts, cups
intangible skin,
planet’s crust.
No melting.
Still, fallen
sun and heart
pump warmth into
the world, our hands,
as we drop asleep.
No ceasing.