The wake we leave behind us

As we (Brian M and myself) have been hosting various memorial services for Jessica (Colker), I've been struck by the magnitude and consistency of how Jess has impacted the communities in which she lived, worked, and played..

She has been repeatedly, and simultaneously, described as sometimes quiet or maybe soft, sometimes spontaneous, always authentic, apparently (to anyone who took time to pay attention) loving, and typically present - as in grounded without pretense, and therefore, available. 

People have, of course, remarked about her physical beauty, but it's been apparent that there's more there than her smile and her looks. Her beauty is more complex, sometimes expressed  as grace, sometimes expressed as her availability. She's been described both as "graceful"; and at other times as "having grace".

And I've been struck by breadth of people's expressions. People have shared about Jess all the way back to her childhood, through her college years, and her early employment positions. They have driven several hours to attend the memorials, "just because". Just because Jess has somehow touched them, such that they would do so in order to express themselves and complete their relationship with her.

Last night's group gathered in Charlottesville, VA where Jess has both lived after college, and regularly participated in 5rhythms dance programs/workshops, dance that accesses authenticity through kinetic motion - providing opportunities for accessing transformation through structural conversations.

As described on the 5rhythms web site:

Our bodies and behaviors tell the story of our social conditioning, our belief systems, and our personal experience. In movement we embody these narratives, we give them form. We also have the opportunity to deconstruct and re–imagine our identities, every time we step on the floor.

As I listened to people sharing about what Jess meant to them, or how she had impacted them, I found myself noticing her wake - the way each of these communities was touched by Jess, was impacted by her passing through, her presence among them, and the connection she brought with her into each of these communities and relationships. It was without guile and obviously prodigious

Joy

Julia Dederer has gotten me wondering about the next 30 years of my life. GEESH!

When I started the inquiry what showed up was joy. Imagine that! Thirty years of joy! Impossible you say? My first thought was, "what a stupid notion".

Well maybe. Maybe not.

I was fishing today. It was windy so it was hard to manage the boat as it was pushed around by the wind. It didn't seem like there was a lot of joy around. Then I began to execute my down-wind drift strategy which allowed me to stop struggling with the wind and get present to where the fish were (joy).

Shortly thereafter, when bringing in a nice bass, I realized I was in a state of joy. It occurred to me that there are lots of states of joy and that if I'm willing I can maybe find joy in lots of places, with lots of people, in many moments, for many years.

Until now I sort of thought there was just one kind of joy and it was only present in special occasions or with special people.

Interesting.

I looked up the words joy and enjoy to trace the derivations. Both trace back to the Latin word gaudere which translates to rejoice. So I'm thinking that joy as a noun is grounded in rejoicing (a verb). So joy as a state is grounded in an action. The action of rejoicing. That was enlightening because it made joy something other than a state in which I might find myself. It now occurs as something I bring about by generating, by rejoicing.

Physical issues

As of this writing I am 76.

Today I decided to walk 9 holes at our golf course here at Mill Creek. The temperature was forecast to be in the low 90s and I wanted to see if I could get around 9 holes without passing out.

I've recently bought a remote controlled electric (battery powered) bag cart to carry my bag as I walk the course. It's sort of like walking the dog. Sometimes the cart leads me and sometimes I lead the cart.

According to my fitbit, walking the front 9 sets me up to walk between 6 and 7 miles for the whole day. Most of that is on the golf course. I live on the 17th tee, so I begin there, walk down to the club house, play holes 1 through 9, and then walk back to my house. That circuit racks up about 11000 steps, or about 5 1/2 miles (there's a lot of distance between holes on this course, probably accounting for 25% of the circuit).

Heat has bothered me since elementary school. I don't tolerate it well and have passed out from it maybe a dozen times through the years, so I bought this cart hoping to extend my walking golf longer into the summer. Not only does the cart carry my 45 lb bag but it's also powerful enough to help pull me up the many inclines and hills on our golf course, when I hold on to the cart's handle going up hill. Surprising how much difference that makes.

Well I started on my experiment around 1:30 - temperature clocking 90. If I were pushing my old 3-wheel cart, no way would I make this circuit. During the outing, I drank two 12oz Gaterades and 24 ounces of iced tea that I took in my thermos. I also ate a nice juicy apple walking down to the first hole and an energy bar after 5 holes.

By the time I got to the 9th green I was feeling a light headed, so after finishing, I found a bench in the shade and sat (and hydrated) for about 5 minutes before making the trek back home. When I got home the thermometer registered 92. I was soaked, bushed, and feeling woozy, clearly just on the limit of what I could physically tolerate.

So while the cart is making a difference and will expand my walking season, I'm clear it won't allow me to walk throughout our typically blazing NC summers. My summer golf will be relegated to riding in a golf cart, and even that gets iffy in August and September - until the heat breaks.

Political Ruminations

I’ve been thinking back over my politically conscious life experiences (I wasn’t politically aware as a child) and pondering the swings back and forth between what we now call “left” and “right”. My first conscious recollections were from conversations between my parents when Truman was president in the early 50’s.

He seemed to be respected but not particularly exciting. When Ike came along the mood seemed to change to one of relief. We expected our “general” could keep us safe so we could get into action, building our infrastructures and developing new economic opportunities. Despite the nagging fear that we could at any moment, be bombed into oblivion, it seemed to be a period of prosperity - such that I grew up thinking that was just the way the world was. Prosperity was an “is”, a guaranteed future.

Kennedy came along and defined a new set of hopes. And after he forced Russia to stand down during the Cuban crisis, we sighed relief that maybe we could actually somehow no longer fear a nuclear holocaust. Hope and optimism were front and center again. This is about the time when I remember the terms “right’ and “left” coming into use, mostly on TV.

When Kennedy was assassinated it was a psychological blow to our solar plexus. The lesson seemed to be that hope and optimism were emotional inventions and were subject to instant eradication. The mood was sadness. We mourned.

Although he tried, Johnson could not stem the downward emotional spiral we had fallen into. We weren’t just morning Kennedy, we were mourning the loss of our hopeful innocence.

When Nixon entered the picture the mood of the country went even darker. It wasn’t just a shift to the right. It was a shift in what had constituted the purposes of our leaders. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson had all seemed to be organized around serving their country. With Nixon, I remember being worried, perhaps for the first time, that our prosperity was threatened not just by foreign “enemies”, but also by the very politicians we had elected to lead us. It now seemed clear that they put themselves before the country they aspired to lead.

Ford seemed to stem that drift as he seemed decently organized around the good of country before himself. Carter turned our attentions back toward the values and hopes of the left, followed by Reagan and Bush (1) who seemed more centrists and less about themselves. Maybe we hoped, it could be that the intentions of our leaders were once again trustworthy.

Clinton wanted to be, and clearly was to some extent, a resurrection of the Kennedy hope, now labeled by journalists as “the Left”. Noticeably he also reveled in the notoriety and adulation. Even so, we enjoyed a period of relative safety and prosperity.

Bush (2) then swung our attention back toward what we needed to be afraid of. We now faced enemies all over the middle east and learned through our media that we needed to fear and be suspicious of Muslims, jihadists, and weapons of mass destruction.

Then Obama swung us right back to the hope theme, now not just for white-middle-class-America, but also for African-Americans and other minorities. We now hoped we could finally all get along together. Still there was, and remains, a festering unspoken undercurrent of bigotry and covert fear-based righteousness. These fears were finally given voice, given a political theater from which to act out, to resist, and hopefully, even defeat that nascent hope and innocence of Obama's presidency.

And now Trump seems to be telling us we need to turn back to the right, to hunker down and defend our shores against all kinds of enemies some real, many imagined, all fodder for dramatic narratives, and wildly invented realities.

And so it seems, we swing back and forth between a national mood of hope, then fear, then hope, then fear. The hope survives briefly until we invent a new threat to its future, then we dive back into the fear syndrome, righteous about our need to protect ourselves.

What’s so interesting is that none of machinations ever seem to be fully realized. The mood of the majority swings back and forth. We’re either certain of our impending doom, or our next revived optimism. Now, our mood is fearful - looking for some hope to grasp upon, wanting to invent our next calling.

Of course, I have my personal preferences.  And even though they seem to be under assault right now, I’m reminded, we have until now, and I expect will in the future, survive. Whether for four years or eight years, Trump is by his very actions and behaviors, laying the ground work to swing the pendulum back toward “the left”, whatever the hell that is. A little drama gets the blood flowing again, yes?