Follow the Leader
I found it hard to get through my morning
exercises today, as thoughts kept knocking at the door of my attention:
some smaller, some larger, some niggling, and some bullying. With all that
crowd out there, it was difficult to give myself to my practice. Like trying
to read when the baby is crying, or trying to sleep when the cat is meow-meowing
for food or to be let out, with the incessant baby's-cry cats have perfected
over long companionship with humans.
I was pretty much on top of the thoughts, since most of them were well known to me - mooching friends who always come to ask, never to give. Yeah, yeah, I'm coming...in an hour or so. There was one voice that was patient instead of petulant or petty, and because it cooed instead of cawed it caught my inattention. It simply said: Follow the leader?
~
A week ago friend and Odonatian Lyra, having understood that she really needed some fun time in good company, sent out an invitation for a Movie Night. Being in community is at least as important as working in community: not always, not only, to be laboring together. And: if we worked and worked and never played, the place where we arrive is hard and full of friction, instead of joyous and filled with arrival. That's my theory.
So last night, a dozen of us drove in or walked in, flopped down on the fold-out, curled up on couches or in chairs, and chatted and snacked and laughed together. The film itself didn't matter: it was pretext, a little container into which we could pour ourselves. That's what community is, too. Lyra and Peter were there, and PJ and Keun and Kyounghee (who gave PJ a lift, since she hurt herself and wasn't driving), and Christine accompanied by her sense of humor (or vice-versa?), and Davide and Kim (our Iowa office representative), and Becca and Mackenzie (future hopefuls from middle Mass.), and me.
Life is lighter when it is shared, and all but the most intransigent problems slink away from a circle of friends. We spoke of our "recents" and our "near futures": Kyounghee traveling to Korea to visit her homeland (well, I don't really have a homeland anymore; I live with one foot in one home and one foot in another); this weekend's literary festival, helped along by adjunct Odonatian and local hopeful Debbie Szabo; this good restaurant or that better recipe; a story from someone's childhood. The topic of community, our community, inevitably came up, and several mentioned interesting responses to our project from family and acquaintances: Well that'll never work, or Sounds like a cult to me, or Who're the people who started this thing, bet they're going to take it over.
Take it over... Now why does that phrase, or that thought, bring tears to my eyes? Partly, it is that fear seeds fear, and our hearts and our minds are fertile soil - my heart: my mind. A cloudy mirror reflects outlines, in which the eyes, squinting, make out a dagger where there was a pen, a grimace where there was a smile, and hazard in place of hope. When that seed is planted, you can have two reactions: recoil and clench into a fist - which is the shape of that black seed - or gently, carefully, you can push your fingers down into the hurt and, like a good gardener, remove the weed. I'll tell you what: whether a fist or a gardener's open hand, swallowing that seed is painful.
Another "part" is that the "take over" concept is in itself a violence, born naturally from a world where violence is common parlance... it spans all languages, leaps language to become a lack of touch, goes beyond lack of touch to become a "tragic expression of an unmet need", and finds its version of embrace in a slap. A slap in itself doesn't sadden you: it's when you know there is something better than a slap that the idea of it sickens, and aches, and plants that weed in your garden.
Mostly, though - for me - it is painful because the idea itself wants destruction. It wants gifts to be chains. It wants service to be cynical, and wants what is given to always expect a return. It wants action to be a tightening trigger, or a hand lifting the haft of a whip. It wants subordination, and for subordination to exist (that is the destruction) it needs subordinators. Someone or some ones have got to take it over, and those within their circle of influence have got to be taken over. I think that, when one of our number, one of the community of Humans on this tiny planet Earth, when one of our number cannot see a deity as a recognizable face... has not found there is Something Larger and Uplifting beyond this ephemeral self, in whatever form that takes, Christ or Buddha, Allah or Lao Tzu or Patanjali or Great Spirit (this being the order of my memory, not of importance)... then solitude is as heavy as a swallowed stone, relationship is an exchange of small stonings; and a group of people cooking good food together, or playing or writing music, or sitting quietly, or watching a movie, or building a bunch of houses (!) could be, I suppose, a cult.
I find in that seed of isolation a drop of poison so concentrated that my body instantly becomes a knot, and my heart contracts like a fist, a posture I know all too well... but with practice and as much gentleness, as patiently as I can, my trowel several paragraphs on a page, I work that seed out of me, and drop it in the dust.
I know there are more of them. Like foxtail seed blown in a Minnesota field. That's all right. Why else are we here, if not to become good gardeners?
~
Here's how the anti-cult works.
Any person who would be an authority loses all Authority; and any person who would forge chains from their gifts has those Gifts taken from them. The business of community is not as obvious as it seems: the good food, the music, the quiet companionship, the movie, the houses are all just pretext. Instead, it is Community itself which is the face of a deity, and being one arc of a circle which makes the circle whole. If I understand the teachings of ancient masters well enough, Mastery comes from surrender to something greater than the self, and leadership asks not for submission, but simply good company.
The Buddha, they say, did not call himself the teaching, but instead said "I looked out and found something. That something I now serve. If it seems, to you, that you live more gently this way, then accompany me. The road here is good." The Buddha, they say, was a master of martial arts, could wield a sword to make nations bow. Instead, he bowed, and lifted nations on his shoulders.
At Odonata we have created a vision and a mission to help us draw a Path through an open field. Each of us brings our gifts to decorate the travel. We commit to living with as much harmony as we can learn, even if that means stepping away from the comfort of habitual fear, and studying instead how to empower others, and to be supported ourselves.
If community is taken over, then there is no Community. If companions walk with you, it is a good road.
I was pretty much on top of the thoughts, since most of them were well known to me - mooching friends who always come to ask, never to give. Yeah, yeah, I'm coming...in an hour or so. There was one voice that was patient instead of petulant or petty, and because it cooed instead of cawed it caught my inattention. It simply said: Follow the leader?
~
A week ago friend and Odonatian Lyra, having understood that she really needed some fun time in good company, sent out an invitation for a Movie Night. Being in community is at least as important as working in community: not always, not only, to be laboring together. And: if we worked and worked and never played, the place where we arrive is hard and full of friction, instead of joyous and filled with arrival. That's my theory.
So last night, a dozen of us drove in or walked in, flopped down on the fold-out, curled up on couches or in chairs, and chatted and snacked and laughed together. The film itself didn't matter: it was pretext, a little container into which we could pour ourselves. That's what community is, too. Lyra and Peter were there, and PJ and Keun and Kyounghee (who gave PJ a lift, since she hurt herself and wasn't driving), and Christine accompanied by her sense of humor (or vice-versa?), and Davide and Kim (our Iowa office representative), and Becca and Mackenzie (future hopefuls from middle Mass.), and me.
Life is lighter when it is shared, and all but the most intransigent problems slink away from a circle of friends. We spoke of our "recents" and our "near futures": Kyounghee traveling to Korea to visit her homeland (well, I don't really have a homeland anymore; I live with one foot in one home and one foot in another); this weekend's literary festival, helped along by adjunct Odonatian and local hopeful Debbie Szabo; this good restaurant or that better recipe; a story from someone's childhood. The topic of community, our community, inevitably came up, and several mentioned interesting responses to our project from family and acquaintances: Well that'll never work, or Sounds like a cult to me, or Who're the people who started this thing, bet they're going to take it over.
Take it over... Now why does that phrase, or that thought, bring tears to my eyes? Partly, it is that fear seeds fear, and our hearts and our minds are fertile soil - my heart: my mind. A cloudy mirror reflects outlines, in which the eyes, squinting, make out a dagger where there was a pen, a grimace where there was a smile, and hazard in place of hope. When that seed is planted, you can have two reactions: recoil and clench into a fist - which is the shape of that black seed - or gently, carefully, you can push your fingers down into the hurt and, like a good gardener, remove the weed. I'll tell you what: whether a fist or a gardener's open hand, swallowing that seed is painful.
Another "part" is that the "take over" concept is in itself a violence, born naturally from a world where violence is common parlance... it spans all languages, leaps language to become a lack of touch, goes beyond lack of touch to become a "tragic expression of an unmet need", and finds its version of embrace in a slap. A slap in itself doesn't sadden you: it's when you know there is something better than a slap that the idea of it sickens, and aches, and plants that weed in your garden.
Mostly, though - for me - it is painful because the idea itself wants destruction. It wants gifts to be chains. It wants service to be cynical, and wants what is given to always expect a return. It wants action to be a tightening trigger, or a hand lifting the haft of a whip. It wants subordination, and for subordination to exist (that is the destruction) it needs subordinators. Someone or some ones have got to take it over, and those within their circle of influence have got to be taken over. I think that, when one of our number, one of the community of Humans on this tiny planet Earth, when one of our number cannot see a deity as a recognizable face... has not found there is Something Larger and Uplifting beyond this ephemeral self, in whatever form that takes, Christ or Buddha, Allah or Lao Tzu or Patanjali or Great Spirit (this being the order of my memory, not of importance)... then solitude is as heavy as a swallowed stone, relationship is an exchange of small stonings; and a group of people cooking good food together, or playing or writing music, or sitting quietly, or watching a movie, or building a bunch of houses (!) could be, I suppose, a cult.
I find in that seed of isolation a drop of poison so concentrated that my body instantly becomes a knot, and my heart contracts like a fist, a posture I know all too well... but with practice and as much gentleness, as patiently as I can, my trowel several paragraphs on a page, I work that seed out of me, and drop it in the dust.
I know there are more of them. Like foxtail seed blown in a Minnesota field. That's all right. Why else are we here, if not to become good gardeners?
~
Here's how the anti-cult works.
Any person who would be an authority loses all Authority; and any person who would forge chains from their gifts has those Gifts taken from them. The business of community is not as obvious as it seems: the good food, the music, the quiet companionship, the movie, the houses are all just pretext. Instead, it is Community itself which is the face of a deity, and being one arc of a circle which makes the circle whole. If I understand the teachings of ancient masters well enough, Mastery comes from surrender to something greater than the self, and leadership asks not for submission, but simply good company.
The Buddha, they say, did not call himself the teaching, but instead said "I looked out and found something. That something I now serve. If it seems, to you, that you live more gently this way, then accompany me. The road here is good." The Buddha, they say, was a master of martial arts, could wield a sword to make nations bow. Instead, he bowed, and lifted nations on his shoulders.
At Odonata we have created a vision and a mission to help us draw a Path through an open field. Each of us brings our gifts to decorate the travel. We commit to living with as much harmony as we can learn, even if that means stepping away from the comfort of habitual fear, and studying instead how to empower others, and to be supported ourselves.
If community is taken over, then there is no Community. If companions walk with you, it is a good road.
Comments
Thankyou for that wonderful amble. I have never questioned the sincere intent of Odanata. It is that lovely delicate impression which has drawn me to the pond of its community.
Peace, Cleone
by CLeone at 05:23:51 PM On 04/26/2009 | - Website - |