My wife and I have been spending a lot of time lately with Elders and older friends; visiting, taking care of them, participating in ceremonies with them.
And one of the things that’s pretty obvious is that people are starting to get older – ourselves included. We’re starting to move a bit slower; starting to do a little bit less.
But things are getting deeper. Conversations are getting deeper. Ceremonies are getting sweeter. And the prayers are getting more honest…
A few years ago, I was talking with someone about intention. We were having a discussion about what it means to set sacred intention – or sacred intent – when you’re getting ready to do ceremony.
And so I picked up a pebble and I said to him, “What is this?”
And he said, “It’s a pebble.”
And I said, “No, it’s an altar. Say it.”
And he kind of shrugged, and said, “It’s an altar.”
And I said, “No, believe it. What is it?”
And he said, “It’s an altar.”
And then I said it, and then I put the pebble down on the ground
– the altar down on the ground –
and I said, “Now just sit.”
When we sat there for a few minutes, and I saw the look on his face, I could tell he was feeling it. The energy in the room completely shifted. We were totally grounded.
And then I picked it up again and I said, “This is a pebble. Say it.”
And he said, “This is a pebble.”
And I threw the pebble over my shoulder, and the energy of the room completely changed.
And he got it.
For that short period of time, we were bound together in a sacred space specifically created by our intention, by our belief that that space was sacred.
I am very grateful for everything that’s happened in my life, because it has brought me to those places. It has given me the gift of being able to sit with others without judgment.
And I can say, “Well, that’s the price I have to pay for this privilege.”
Or, I can say, “That’s part and parcel of the privilege. That was my school.”
You don’t get to pick one without the other.
It doesn’t mean you have to like every single aspect of it. It doesn’t mean you’d want to go back and repeat it again, because for love or money, I wouldn’t…
I’ve been talking with several people lately about the way things are in the world, and there seems to be this general consensus that even though the external world – the social world – seems pretty chaotic right now, there’s this feeling that the ground we’re standing on spiritually, even emotionally, is pretty solid.
It’s as if we’re being asked to bear more weight, so we’re given a solid foundation to stand on while we do it…
What’s your alone time feel like?
Does it feel like Isolation?
Like you’re cutoff from everything and everybody.
Does it feel like something you’re sentenced to?
Like you have to stuff every minute of it with something to do, otherwise you’ll go crazy in the silence; just staring at the walls, living inside your own head.
Or does it feel like solitude?
Does it feel open, spacious…quiet, in a gentle kind of way?
Does it feel like it heals you?
Like it refreshes you; gives you time to be with the things that you’ve lived through on the other side of it…
When you spend your life with people – and you watch them getting older -and you look in the mirror and there’s an old man staring back at you, it tends to put things in perspective.
There’s a certain clarity that’s come with aging. It’s the clarity of knowing what’s important and what’s not; of realizing that the energy that we have is limited sometimes, and it’s up to us where we put it.
But as the wrinkles start coming on – and the hair starts falling off – it gets easier to put that energy into the things that matter, and to let the ones that don’t fall away.
One of the great blessings of my life is that I have found myself in the presence of some absolutely phenomenal people…Elders that I have respected – and continue to respect – to this day.
I have learned so much. I’ve laughed with them. I’ve cried with them. Worked hard. I’ve seen their humanity, and they’ve seen mine,
and they’ve loved me anyway...
One of these elders, someone whom I admire very much, said something one time that really cleared a lot up for me. We were sitting in a circle in a living room, getting ready to do some ceremonial work, and he said, “If any of you have any questions, ask me. Ring me out. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re always going to have me. Don’t even make the mistake of believing that it’s guaranteed that we’re going to be together again…”
Statements like that can be a little unsettling, but they can also be liberating. They can free you from a lot of bullshit, if you’re brave enough to take them to heart…
Bonja the Bodger 