How rare and powerful is the gift of allowing another to glimpse into our darkest, scariest truths or our beautiful longing for understanding. By showing up as a teacher, I am gifted more often than I can believe – each time the mask is pushed away and truth is sent my way, energy rushes through me and bells go off inside.
Tommy, 2nd desk in the middle row, hair green, then blue, then red, you spoke to me in frustrated tone at the very beginning of the semester and helped me to still myself to not react, but see the pain inside. I knew then you were my teacher, too.
Here is a bit of Tommy’s Credo, labeled in a folder named “Word limits Suck” 🙂
Every night, I write down the things I need to accomplish and do for the next day. However, I tend to try and keep it flexible because my girlfriend is somewhat spontaneous and tends to come over whenever she feels like it. I almost always accomplish the things I write down. Unfortunately, a dramatic event took place to cause me to rethink my approach to living life.
In November of 2013, I got in my car and got onto the Interstate. I made sure to keep my seatbelt off. I got my car up to ninety-five miles per hour, and then jerked the wheel all the way to the right. When I woke up, which I wasn’t expecting to happen, I was in the grass holding one of my headlights. Apparently, my car flipped three times and hit a treewhile I got ejected out the window. I spent a week in the Psychiatric Ward of MUSC with a broken foot and hip.
At the Hospital, the staff and I went over methods of setting goals. Ever since my stay at MUSC, I have written down my goals and gotten very industrious by doing so.
You had the courage to allow seeds of new possibilities to be planted within you while your body brokenness was healing.
I ask everyone to turn in a brief personal credo as prewriting practice for a longer essay; I tell you all that if you can explore real stories that have led you to your wisdom up till now, your writing will be more powerful. Very few have been broken open enough to share in the way you have.
Tommy, I know direct attention will make you shy away, so I write to you here, in a place you that will not see, but I know that you will feel. Thank you for trusting me with your story. Spiral out: Keep going.
And here is Cameron’s Credo, quiet, back-row surprise of a very young mystic and philosopher, well on his way, riding on a spiral:
I believe the Universe exists as an unfathomably massive organism; that consciousness perpetuates the Universe’s mind-bending ability to experience itself.
I believe knowledge drives the power of understanding; that understanding drives consciousness to the edge of the Universe in pursuit of mystifying answers.
I believe time is an intricate illusion maintained by the ageless balance of mass and energy within our field of view and may be interpreted individually.
I believe that everything we perceive surrounding us has originated in the scorching heart of resplendent stars.
I believe religion is the base of ignorance; any religion fabricating arbitrary answers in place of wonder and critical-thinking hinders progress of the species. Incidentally, most politics pave the way for religion to dominate the mind, detrimental to the progress of science.
I believe all life in the Universe is cherished, even extraterrestrials that could exist, waiting to be discovered.
I believe the four fundamental forces of the Universe can be unified to conceptualize the beginning of the Universe; however, I believe humans have a long journey ahead of them to accomplish such a feat.
I don’t believe that an all-knowing Deity exist.
I don’t believe in waging war in an effort to gain depleting resources that exist abundantly in the Universe, because I don’t believe Earth is the only haven in the heavens capable of hosting life.
I wish I could believe in an omnipotent Deity, but I used to believe in an all-powerful being to place the unknowns upon and the belief smothered my hunger for insight, for wisdom.
I wish I could believe humans could exist peacefully amongst ourselves, similarly to how I wish I could believe religion could blissfully coexist with definitive science; because I was naive, I used to believe science was a unified humanistic goal.
The most astonishing idea of all, I believe in the existence of infinite levels of order in the Universe, consequently, absent of chaos throughout.
He used to “believe in an all-powerful being to place the unknowns upon and the belief smothered [his] hunger for insight.” And so he now, at 18, has stepped away from what smothered his hunger, and he carries around a flashlight to illuminate the unknowns in the form of books.
I am coming to see a currency in play in my life that stretches in an unseen realm – that more than sustains, it lavishes buckets of soul dollars upon my head. Daily I receive energetic exchanges that shine in contrast to 3D currency. I see abundance in the soul realm that translates, if I let it, into my daily flow. Supply and demand of a soul dollar economy – it is real!
I do have sympathy for the following monologue that was performed for me in real time on Friday:
Why can’t you be like other moms? Why don’t we have family friends like other families? Why don’t you have plans for the 4th of July? Why don’t we have a group of family friends who all get together for like bar-b-ques and vacations, dinners and stuff? Why doesn’t my life look like my friends on Facebook?
I should have stayed out of town. Why did I come home where I am unhappy? Why are you so happy being alone? Why can’t you find a step-father for me?
(Oh good lordy, on that last one.)
The 4th of July, so american, every holiday, really, brings up the pull of normalcy, the old and insidious lie of fitting in – and standing out – at once. To be like everyone else will bring happiness. To be liked. To be good-looking. To dress well – to say the right things – to have activities and people to surround us – to have photo opportunities every few hours – to package our lives in an understandable and compelling form. To be desired. To be outside of the flow of normalcy feels wrong. To be in the flow of normalcy feels wrong. It is an interesting place, to be comfortable with the flow, finally, now, but to live with others who are still in the searching mode, wishing all were different, wondering, Where is the postcard version of our lives?
I listen to the storms of discontent of teenagers who feel free to express themselves. The storms are dramatic and loud, but they pass. I offer a freedom that is so close that it is not even perceived. I offer a large space for the sound and fury, for the rage not against the machine but to be more part of the machine…
I am present and still – and content, even so (quietly so as to not intensify the suffering by the contrast).
Despite my lack of normalcy, the 4th of July dilemma works out beautifully! We jog/bike to the river, where the fireworks can be view from 240 degrees – and after our arrival, with no car to park – we find a spot on a floating dock inches from the rapid current – families, smiles, colorful explosions reflected in the dark water, together with our american brothers, yet doing our own thing, too. In serendipitous wonder, we stumble upon a restaurant with a young woman singing with her guitar and we split an appetizer and relax and talk before our jog/bike back home, late at night. We are whistled at from a car of boys and I question, Who are they whistling at? I know the answer, but it is funny to throw myself in the mix 🙂
Stepping out of the role of parent, teacher, wise one, can be tough when the voice of complaint wants a response and there is no response that pleases – I’ve tried them all.
When I talk, I imagine my voice often sounds like this:
Years move on in measured beats, bit by bit, ever changing, chinese water torture/pleasure drops; something new is coming around. Even if I think it is the same, it is not. A malcontent teen has to experience on her own, and her movement and turning may be slow and then suddenly fast – any snapshot is not the whole story.
Shift shift shift the angle of your boom and watch the wind fill up the sail, let the line go slack and watch the stillness hold you there at sea – never motionless even then. Learn along the way. Go below, stay above, jump overboard and swim with sharks, burn your skin, drink salt water, eat ramen and sardines for days. Drown and watch another avatar appear. Never Game Over – never never never – hell or heaven, every second, burn and rise, burn and rise – bread as flesh, loaves and fishes, fisher of men, age of pisces, dawning of aquarius, summer, fall, winter, spring, repeating yet never the same.
Stay in this vessel from ballast to the top of the mast, bow to stern, move throughout the river of time, see the full buffet – and do not skip dessert. Today, Chocolate Mousse for breakfast, pleasure in the unplanned days that bring bike rides and frog symphonies, and cheeky waiters, and organizing rooms, and found lost items, and rolling thunder, and fertile silence.
Ah life, said Emily Webb, you are too beautiful to imagine. Oh no, here are the actual lines: Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
― Thornton Wilder, Our Town
These words – a wave rising, not original, not profound, just a mass of water that wants to move up, then sink down again, again and again, for no reason. Living life, in the moments, in the sensations, hello.
A couple of days ago, I was gifted time with my friend on a beach in a chair under an umbrella, but it doesn’t stop there. My friend, S, immersed in a new book find, Reality, by Peter Kingsley, also gave me the gift of reading aloud to me from this book. The shade, the water, the sky, the sand, the searing words: what have I ever done to enjoy such richness as this?
Here is an interview, but the part (starting about 12:00) about our senses is crazy good for me in my now. Peter Kingsley’s descriptions here gave me a recognition of a dullness of my awareness. I sat for a moment just now and felt a heightening from being in 5 senses at once. The rest of my flow suddenly felt like black and white, comparatively. Am I often anesthetized to my senses? Can one maintain an awareness at this level in a moment to moment?
Life as Improv 