Inspired by "The Way"

Sara and I watched "The Way" over the weekend. A very non-typical movie. It stars Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez.  Produced also by them. It is the story of a man who decides to walk the Camino del Santiago... I won't give any more away. It made me think of the importance of community and the mystery of a person's life.
It inspired me to write a poem...so enjoy a little something new.

Stomping down the road
silent amid the walking sea
holding tight to something that
separates
but which once made one from two
A mixture of love, special-ness, pain,
loneliness, sorrow and passion. A passion
which outruns flesh and time. Bursting
into the time when apart-ness is.
Trying to guard the heart
from finding again what it
seeks and experiencing the aftermath it fears.
But the heart tires of not loving.
It forgets and of a moment falls
into the eternal habit of unity.
Fires rekindled work dried fuel
Heat mounts without smoke- light
betrays transformation.
Lips may not their fellow pilgrims meet,
but sharing unasked for bridges
chasms and renews memories. Every
story has its companion. Every road has a
detour that becomes a highway.
Each moment its travelers and its
bystanders. Dreams bursting through
time-bound eyes trying to find
their dreamers. Walkers slow and
then stop as others begin their orbit.
Fear becomes a memory. Two tracks
join and become a path. Companions
become sharers of their hearts'
breath. Together they whisper to others
,"Come forget with us."
Heaped up fuel more easily
sparks even damp skeptics.
Thread the eye of the needle
together. Find your way through
the torturous windings of pain, along the
side-roads of loneliness,
explore the back-alleys of sorrow,
push into the thickets of passion
until the dross is burned out of the mixture.
Lightening- lightning- the walker until
not stomping
he floats
 beyond where he once was.
At the edge of the sea
adding a voice to the whispering
 of waves.

Peace

Bumped into a Mystic...

I opened up one of my favorite books last week and stumbled upon a mystic.  The writing had always attracted me with its immediacy. The plot and the description drew me in erasing the separation between story and experience.  Fiction and non-fiction blurred as the writing nudged me toward the truth.

           

“…Afterwards we will be as one animal of the forest and be so close that neither one can tell that one of us is one and not the other. Can you not feel my heart be your heart?”

            “Yes. There is no difference.”

            “Now, feel. I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other. And I love thee, oh, I love thee so. Are you not truly one? Canst thou not feel it?”

            “Yes,” he said. “It is true.”

            “And feel now. Thou hast no heart but mine.”

            “Nor any other legs, nor feet, nor of the body.”

            “But we are different,” she said. “I would have us exactly the same.”

            “You do not mean that.”

            “Yes I do. I do. That is a thing I had to tell thee.”

            “You do not mean that.”

            “Perhaps I do not,” she said speaking softly with her lips against his shoulder. “But I wished to say it. Since we are different I am glad that thou art Roberto and I Maria. But if thou should ever sigh to change I would be glad to change. I would be thee because I love thee so.”

            “I do not wish to change. It is better to be one and each one to be the one he is.”

            “But we will be one now and there will never be a separate one.” Then she said, “I will be thee when thou are not here. Oh, I love thee so and I must care well for thee.”

The matter of fact-ness of the dissolution of personal boundaries had slipped by me in previous readings.  I had dismissed it as “just love.” But there was more here.  Martin Buber’s I- thou distinction appears here, but is muddied in the mystical haze we are each called to enter. The subject-subject relationship here takes on a meaning familiar to lovers and mystics alike.  There are no longer ideas or philosophies between the two. The relationship takes on an ontological immediacy. Being joins being.   It is more than emotional intimacy. It is more than physical closeness or union. It pushes further than words.  It moves into eternity and spirit that offers a glimmer of the resurrection and the symbolic key for the meaning of the book and the events that unfold.

Further on in the book the main character shows a similar dynamic in a dialogue with himself.  It demonstrates insight into self-awareness and the perduring nature of the I-thou relationship. He has become aware of himself in a new way while the relationship with his beloved continues within him.

“And you, he said to himself, I am glad to see you getting a little something back that was badly missing for a time. But you were pretty bad back there. I was ashamed enough of you, there for a while. Only I was you. There wasn’t any me to judge now. We were all in bad shape. You and me and both of us. Come on now. Stop thinking like a schizophrenic. One at a time, now. You’re all right again now…”

A relationship is a mystery and an adventure.  A real relationship with God is an adventure which most people are unwilling to undertake.  To relate to the divine you must be willing to encounter what philosophers would predict. It is omnipotence. It is omniscience and omnipresence. For the Christian, encountering our God takes us into a darkness beyond even the philosophical power of the omni-ness of God.  He takes us to a place where we are called to relate to God.  To open ourselves to one that seeks us. We are called to love one that suffers and dare to seek union even there. 

When is the last time that you followed God’s whisper to come along on a divine adventure?  All I did was open a book, and I found myself dropping inside the Universe and falling in love all over again.

Who do you think the author is?  Have you bumped into a mystic lately?