Me and one of my new friends, Colorado ACIM/ACOL teacher, Earl Purdy
I’m less than a week home from Colorado. Tomorrow night it will be a week strictly speaking. Since getting back, I’ve been having to deal with the feeling of “getting serious.” I can’t exactly tell you what I’m getting serious about. I wrote a friend eight pages in two emails trying to answer that question for myself. I spent the day today pondering it in my cabin in between the hot spells that I spent cleaning.
Before I left for Colorado it was about 40 degrees in the morning, 60 by mid day if we were really lucky. Today the high’s in the 80’s and the low in the 70’s. And I picked today to clean my office and the patio it empties onto. It’s one of those things you do when you get serious. You start cleaning up.
You always have to do it after a big creative push anyway, or at least I do, and at least one of my friends is the same way. While you’re creating you let it rip. Books and newspapers and the crusts from peanut butter sandwiches and coffee cups and water jugs and pop cans and pens all pile up. The stack of papers near the printer starts to look like a ream. The dust gets thick.
On top of one of my bookshelves I’ve got a memory box. On top of it is a bamboo plant and a P E A C E thing made from nails. You could hang it or mount it, but I never did. It just sits there. When I cleaned today, the word P E A C E was clearly etched in the dust. I thought of taking a picture of it. Before and after pictures of cleaning would be a kick at such times. But I didn’t take the picture and I’m not done cleaning yet.
Two cockatiels sit in the corner of my room – it’s a four-season sun porch with windows on three sides. Any of you who have, or ever have had birds know they create a bit of bird fuzz. I’m not sure what the proper name for that is, but it added to the dust. The rags still sit on the floor. I got too hot to keep at it and went down in the basement to get the fan and stayed to watch the end of “The Breakfast Club” with Donny. Now I’m back in my semi-clean room and it’s still hot, and I still don’t know what I’m feeling so serious about.
I really stopped the clean-up because of the filing though. I shoved everything from my trip in an expandable file (a used one – also from the basement – I think the heading I crossed out said “Election 92” but I can’t tell for sure anymore). Then I looked at the rest of the paperwork and left the room. I did throw away a lot of paper, but the stuff I’ve got left is that annoying – “What should I do with this?” kind.
When you get serious you start thinking of all those things you don’t do, like file stuff away so that when you need it you can find it. You start thinking that kind of thing is important. It’s as good a reason as any for retreating from “serious.”
But I want to write about the feeling because it’s so damn paradoxical or something. If you’re somewhat aware and listening you get these feelings once in a while that tell you something like, “This is important.” Such feelings are never straight-forward. You can hardly ever answer the question about just what it is that is so important. You can ask and pray and get still and ponder, and still not have a clue. There’s no proof. No evidence. Oh, you could say my gathering was a success if you wanted to, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s not a feeling like that – none of that – “Oh this was so great I should get a few more talks scheduled” kind of thing. No. It was broader than that, and at the same time more personal. It’s got that thrilling, sort of excited, sort of confused feeling energy…an… “I don’t know what’s coming but I’d better get ready” feeling. Cleaning your office is what you do when you don’t know what you’re readying yourself for.
It’s a fine feeling, though. It really is. Sort of like stepping off of a cliff. That kind of fine. A tolerable, weak-kneed, mystery-in-the-making. The unknown.
I’m an advocate for letting ourselves feel the big deal nature of things when that’s the way they feel. Again…the big deal wasn’t the event. It’s the feeling itself. Not a thing, not a circumstance, not a culmination of things. It’s nothing more than a subjective feeling…well…with a few ideas attached that haven’t formed up yet.
One of the things I’ve gathered keep us from calling our feelings what they are, especially in times like this, is “What if I’m wrong?” What if this intuition, gut instinct, sense that I’ve got, is not the real deal? You don’t want to disappoint yourself. Or don’t want to share the “getting serious” feeling because you imagine you’ll disappoint someone else if they expect something to come of it. Or you just think you’re making too much of the whole deal – a mountain out of a molehill.
I got this journal as a gift while I was in Colorado. I don’t know what it is about me and journals that I get as gifts. It’s like I take “them” seriously. They get to me. Make me put pen to paper. This one has three words on the cover. It says, “Make something happen.”
I just don’t know if you’d ever do that, if you’d ever create, in any of the many ways we do, if you didn’t get a sense every now and then, that it’s important that you do.
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