Significance and Relevance

 Significance and Relevance

As I grow older, I find myself with more and more questions and less and less answers. The thing is, these questions have become more important, significant, and relevant than ever. All my life, I’ve felt a sense of meaning and purpose weaving throughout each day and each connection. I think it is mostly because it is right there in my face all day, every day. My family, my wife, my kids, my job, the people I serve in my job (people with disabilities), the people I live with in my home in the neighborhoods where I have lived, mostly poor, mostly non-white, mostly very different from me; these have all been part of who I am and why I am hear. I can’t forget or turn away because when I open my eyes each day, there they are. When I look back I realize how much I loved that and how much I miss that. Now my kids are not around and I work from home so I see them and those I work with quite rarely. During COVID and because I’m working from home, those social connections, coworkers, clients have been limited. 

In the stillness and aloneness, the questions get louder and the answers fade away. Who am I? Why am I here? These two main questions are becoming more and more focused because the reminders of the answers are not standing before me competing for attention. In this stillness, I present myself to life, to the universe, crying out, here I am! Hineni! Here am I! 

Here am I, wondering what it is that I might be called to next.

But more importantly is Here and Now. 

Here am I, wondering who am I, Here and Now,

in this time of life, transitioning to retirement and on to death

as I continue to wonder about my own significance and relevance. 

Who am I now? Here and Now! Why am I here? Here and Now!?!

Waiting and wondering and wandering, watching as life comes my way.

Is life worth living?

We must not ask what someone told me or

what someone else's life is worth to them.

The question is not is your life worth living

and then listening to the pastor or philosopher or public servant

tell us about life and its worth.

Albert Camus calls this philosophical suicide,

where we hand over our meaning and purpose

to some higher authority or teacher

and let our answer be none

as we adopt the answers that we are told.

The question is not, "who do YOU say I am."

It is not, "what do you say my meaning and purpose are all about."

The only real question is:

Is MY life worth living???

If so, then that is what I shall do. If not, then what?

There is an incredible absurdity in the juxtaposition of 

humankind’s cry for meaning and 

the universe’s response of nothingness. 

Even the gods stand before this cry for meaning 

in silence and invisibility.

And yet here we stand, 

looking to the skies or 

looking into the abyss, 

looking into the intimidating vastness of life

expectantly expecting an answer

to what we so deeply need

so that we can keep going.

What we do not realize is that the universe and the gods will not give answers to something so personal and important as my own significance and relevance. The answers are within each person. How dare any proclaimed external authority proclaim to know my meaning and purpose, my reason for being. How dare anyone tell me that someone over there can tell me who I am and why I am here. 

Expecting to be told answers to such deeply important and personal questions is at least a cop out, but even more so, a diminishment of creation and its wisdom of which we are part. Everything that exists, except for human beings, already knows their significance and their relevance. Meaning and purpose are embedded into all of creation. These are things we already know, but have often forgotten. They have no question about what they must do Here and Now nor about what they must do tomorrow and into the future. Significance and Relevance are built into the stuff of the universe. It is the stuff of the gods. It is the stuff of all that is greater than me. Leaving us puny humans with identity and purpose in the Here and Now if we were to pay attention. What is that which we seek? It is what it is. It is what presents itself. It is right there in our faces just like it has been all of our lives; whether it be a child, an elder, a beggar, a neighbor, a stranger, or one of the least of these. They are there each and every day before us, showing us, teaching us who we are and why we are here.

For too long, I have been overthinking it.

We are exactly where we are meant to be.

Things come to us exactly when they are meant to be there.

And we choose to see, hear, and learn… or not.

I have no great and cosmic purpose. I’m just me.

I have no great and cosmic identity. I’m still just me.

I have no great and cosmic reason to be. 

It is what it is. It is that which is before me each and every day.

And hence, my response to the silence of the universe is: Hineni! Here am I!

And my response to all that which is greater than me is: Hineni! Here am I!

Not so much, here am I, send me. 

But rather here am I, waiting, watching, 

anticipating, knowing life is what it is. 

Life is that which comes, that which shows up. 

And here am I! Hineni!

I am beginning to understand that significance and relevance is just part of life as it is. And life is that which comes, that which shows up; Here and Now. I don’t have to make myself significant or relevant because it is embedded in my very being. Just like a tree or a bee, or the air that we breathe, it is part of what “I am”, part of “I am what I am”. I think that when I start losing my sense of meaning and purpose, significance and relevance, it is because I am overlooking it, searching past what is obvious. I’m working too hard at it. It has been there all the time. All I need to do is remember who I am and remember what I already know.

Hineni! Here am I! Fully present, fully alive, Here and Now.

Such smallness. Such greatness. Such humility. Such dignity.

Leaving me knowing that I am who I am;

Nothing more, nothing less 

than anything else 

in my world and this universe.

“The meaning of life is to be alive.

It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.

And yet everybody rushes around in a great panic as if

it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

(Alan Watts)

* Hineni is a Hebrew word that has two parts. Hineh means here and Ani means I. The modern Hebrew word for here is Po, which means “here” in the sense of attendance or role call. But Hineni is “here” in the sense of a deep and waiting presence. Sometimes it is translated as “Behold!” Hineni is used in the Torah as a deeply rooted and authentic response to God in a way that is almost a form of worship in the sense of being ready, willing, waiting, and listening. Hineni has also been used by God in response to a person’s outcry. For me, it is a very profound response to life and to the universe as a nontheist, a human response to that which is greater than me.

Fate and the Absurd

 Is there meaning and purpose?

Or just fate and the absurd?

Good or Evil or both?

Beauty or Ugliness or both?

Light or Darkness or both?

Order or Chaos or both?

Meaning or Despair or both?

Destiny or Absurdity or both?

“Today I give thanks for it all,

Though I do not understand much of what I see,

I surrender anyway....

I trust in the Goodness of Life,

I open to the One that breathes me,

To the One who has given me one more day

To feel so alive and free” 

(Flora Aube)

This really resonates within me… mostly. At least, I want to believe it. 

But I can no longer trust “the One” that stands indifferent to all of the suffering in this world. 

I can no longer put my faith in “the One”, whose only response to me is the indifference of silence and invisibility.

I keep coming back to a very obvious conclusion, there is something that is greater than me that sustains life and the universe. Without naming it or giving it a personality, maybe the One is what it is. And maybe no one really knows what it is. How could they? So for me, I think the “One that breathes me” is simply “that which breathes me” and gives me life. The Breath or Force that gives Life. No naming, no labeling. It is what it is. Or if Breath could make a first person statement, I am what I am. Of course, "first person" is personification, anthropomorphism, and simply put, creating god in our image. What we do know is that there is Something Greater that sustains us.

Obviously, there is some sort of order, some sort of initiation of life and creation, some sort of unmoved mover, some sort of ground of being, some sort of intelligence that gives sustainability to life. I also see that personally, at times, there is some sort of incidental graces or synchronicity that brings things together in my life that seems close to miraculous, something that can be perceived as meaning and purpose. I also see that I am exactly where I am meant to be at every moment. What does that mean? I have no idea. I see that everything I need, I already have. Is this just me slipping back into magical thinking? Or are these senses something real? Can I trust myself and my intuitive senses or is that just another illusion nurtured by absurdity? 

In the quote at the beginning, “to the One” for me has a feeling of personification and anthropomorphism, like we are creating a god in our image that is a “friend” or an individual or a person or a projection of human characteristics that we hope for, all wrapped up in our imaginary friend in the sky.  I have always strongly believed in meaning and purpose. I think that I believed it so strongly, needed it so strongly, that I was willing to create my own god that loves me and tells me what to do and watches out for me and listens to me when I cry out or pray… with no response, ever, but deathly, suffocating silence and unsettling, haunting invisibility in response.

“Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm.” (The Myth of Sisyphus)

“This set up a disturbing problem for Camus. Recognizing that human existence is a futile merry go round with no end but death, stimulates an appetite for clarity – a desire to understand the absolute ordering principles and purpose behind the universe. But our reason is confined to the evidence from our experience, and thus when it comes to the spiritual comforts we long for, there can be no certainty whatsoever.” https://academyofideas.com/2016/04/introduction-to-camus-the-absurd-revolt-and-rebellion/ 

Bedrock of Being

 Bedrock: what’s left at the bottom?

What’s left when life’s dross is burnt off?

What’s left when the non-essentials are stripped away?

What happens when simplicity goes all the way down; leaving nothing but the essentials.

Once I go all the way down, what are the bare necessities; the essence of existence?

There seems to be a cultural prejudice against “down”

But when all of our striving is upward, we lose our essence, our source, our Ground of Being.

And it is only from a downward position that I can “occupy my life to the edges.”

"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people." (Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline)

For me, when I began blogging 15 years ago, little did I know that I had begun such a journey, that it had become the beginning of my unraveling, unlearning, uprooting of everything that I thought was tested and true; the ending of life as I knew it. Today, as it continues, I had no idea how far it would go.

But I’m still committed to follow the truth, no matter where it leads. 

I am left with a profound groundlessness that I am still getting used to; 

a groundlessness that is not rooted in other people’s stories of the past, 

a groundlessness that is not rooted in other people’s graven mental constructs and images of god, 

a groundlessness that is real and not conjured up for the sake of comfort, security, and certainty, 

a groundlessness that is now my "ground of being" that has set me free... to be and to live in a reality consisting only of "what is".

Into the Abyss

Aging in Place

More deeply, broadly, and honestly

Into the Abyss

The longer I am here on this earth

The less I am content to exist on the surface

The more I need to descend into the abyss*

The more I must see and live beyond and below the surface

As I grow older, I see more deeply, broadly, and honestly

I see less clearly, less distinctly, less further away

I see less down the road and more here and now

I see less possibilities and more limitations

I see less answers, and yet more questions and mystery

I see less righteousness and yet more sacredness

I see less certainty and yet more hope, more wonder and awe

I see a smaller world that I more fully inhabit

Letting go and living the questions, loving the mystery

Letting go and living the wonder, embracing the uncertainty

Letting go and living the sacred where nothing is ordinary

Letting go and living here and now, in place, without worry.

Seeing all things with new eyes...

Settling into My Abyss

I feel like I have lived 3 very distinct lives and am beginning my 4th. I have been through some form of my own abyss each time. So what I’m expressing here is more of a matter of “settling into my abyss.” I’ve learned over the past 14 years while entering and emerging from the Dark Night of the Soul (My Abyss) into the light, Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth speaks to me everyday. Life is quite a journey. I still struggle to see myself as the hero he depicts in all of us, but I guess we are all the heroes of our own lives. Whether a triumphant hero, a hero that barely survived, or a hero stuck in the muck of addiction or depression or self deprecation, either way, we are the main character of our lives. No one else is going to endure your journey. And no one else is going to discover and recover your treasure buried in your abyss. And no one else can tell your story. But it is in the telling that we find meaning and come alive.

Die Before You Die

“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

It is one thing to know this is truth.
It is another thing completely to actually live it.

A few years ago, I chose to live it in a very different sort of way; by stepping out of the rat race, slowing down so I can focus on what is most important in my life.

And that has made all the difference.

Enough talking about stress and the rat race.
Enough talking about wants and desires, longings and hopes; inaccessible stuff that is out there somewhere.

Inner peace and joy are already within; accessible by choosing and doing.

Time to reconnect to life and people in a whole new way.

 Die Before You Die

Life is less about the living
and more about the day by day
quality and depth of our dying.

For it is only when a seed
lets go and is let go of,
falls to the ground and dies,
is buried and cracks open,
It is then and only then,
that transformation and birth
of new life can come forth.

“The Mystery of ‘Die before you Die’ is this:
That the gifts come after your dying and not before.
Except for dying, you artful schemer,
No other skill impresses God. One Divine gift
Is better than a hundred kinds of exertion.
Your efforts are assailed from a hundred sides,
And the favor depends on your dying.
The trustworthy have already put this to the test.”
(Jalaluddin Rumi)

For from the very moment we are born
we begin to die.
All of life is a day by day process
of letting go… and letting come…

“Do you know what it means to come into contact with death, to die without argument? Because death, when it comes, does not argue with you. To meet it, you have to die every day to everything: to your agony, to your loneliness, to the relationship you cling to; you have to die to your thought, to die to your habit, to die to your wife so that you can look at your wife anew; you have to die to your society so that you, as a human being, are new, fresh, young, and you can look at it. But you cannot meet death if you don’t die every day. It is only when you die that there is love. A mind that is frightened has no love, it has habits, it has sympathy, it can force itself to be kind and superficially considerate. But fear breeds sorrow, and sorrow is time as thought. So to end sorrow is to come into contact with death while living, by dying to your name, to your house, to your property, to your cause, so that you are fresh, young, clear, and you can see things as they are without any distortion. That is what is going to take place when you die... So one has to live every day dying, dying because you are then in contact with life.”

– Krishnamurti, The Book of Life