My Denial, or Strength



My Denial, or Strength

My father was seventy-two when he retired. He came home, sat down in his favorite chair, and was dead by seventy-six.

Yesterday, after a chaotic meeting that was aimed at designing a fundraising event to raise four thousand dollars for the Sena Foundation/Quicksilver Times video transfer and Google+ On Air project, I overheard a conversation between a volunteer (who is a dear friend) and my wife who were walking behind me.

“We can get this money.” the volunteer said in sotto voce, “It’s important, especially to,” pause - gesture towards me implied , “him. Can’t let him get,”

then in super sotto, “…you know.”

Response, “I, know…”

Depressed.

How strong is my denial? I can’t get more than two or three people to read my blog, my Facebook and Google+ posts are virtually unread.

My attempt to make use of Google+ On Air has been a struggle, and I can no longer maintain belief that the folks helping me have any real interest in the project.

Then there is the book - White man Dancing - Grief, God, and a Unified Theory. Out of over a dozen readers, ranging from the closest, dearest people in my life to virtual strangers, only one person, my editor, has even finished the book. Except for my editor no one except my wife has even been able to give me feedback.

Depression? No. The real issue is my denial.

Lately I find myself taking small comfort in a Facebook post I saw a few months ago -

“Stand up for what you believe - even when you are the only one standing.”

At the moment I can more realistically adhere to another saying, one I’ll create for the occasion -

“If you stand with a group of ten thousand awaiting the rising of the sun, and you are the only one facing west, MAYBE YOU ARE JUST WRONG.”

Recently I tried to look back and remember how long it’s been since I have been involved in Resistance to what I saw going on around me.

I usually trace it to an early spring noon time when I was about twelve. I was sitting on our front porch after lunch trying to slow down time so I wouldn’t have to go back to school. (Yes in those ancient days we came home for lunch.) I remember thinking about what my Missouri Synod Lutheran church was teaching us in catechism, Sunday School, and from the pulpit. At the time they were still not totally convinced that Roman Catholics weren’t going to hell.

Then came what I later learned was an epiphany. How could I accept what they were teaching me when I knew nothing about what others believed?

That day I rebelled.

There have been periods of my life that I believed that I had turned my back on the rebellion, but I came to know that those were the periods when I needed to process and integrate what came before.

When I look back, sixty-two years now, I remember the fire. The outrage. The naiveté.

I have stashed away in a metal box in the corner of an unused closet a small format, hard covered, brown three ring binder. It’s from those early times. Poetry mostly. Some prose. All of it sophomoric, and all of it from the heart.

I never want those words to be seen. Yet, you notice, I don’t throw the words away.

One poem caught the heart of the struggle. Actually it was published in my hometown newspaper all those years ago. And even after six decades, for all that it lacks as poetry, it still defines the struggle -

To Lift The Mask

The world lives on and all its’ creatures here within,

Pass, though still as strangers,

Lost within themselves.

And man, his conquests spewed about him,

Stumbles onward,

Seeking life,

And knowing not himself.

From birth to death he totters on,

His path marked well with signs to guide his way,

And n’er a thought to lift the mask

And look within his heart.

I think perhaps that fate,

Its’ fingers intertwining men with time

And time with men,

Has cast me back ten thousand years

And set me down to live and die,

Amidst a world of modern men

With pre-historic minds.

These minds,

To which the universe is black and white

And only after self reproach and bitter qualms

Will let a shade of gray slip into view,

Will scream in mortal anguish lest they see

A bit of truth.

Their superstitious faith rewards them

Asking only for the freedom of their minds,

And who among them cries with courage,

“Life, Death. Nothing more, nothing less.”

I stand, my solitude complete within their mass,

And ask to live a life of Truth.

To love, and love to love,

To feed upon its precious goodness,

To seek it out and know its’ truth where ere the path may lead.

Then let me say in death, “It is the end,

And nothing more,

For it is only truth.”

But man shall strip me naked,

And the world will put the mark upon my head.

Yet as they strip and mark me,

Their fear will tell them

I seek truth.

Ten thousand years

And superstitions long since shed,

And morals long discarded,

Will bear the burden of my proof,

That I seek naught but truth.

But I shall lie

Now dust these many years,

And those that did destroy me

Are now dead and cannot know.

The poem seems without hope.

Now I know the paths’ direction, the nature of temporal and transcendent love. I have knowledge and experience of Love. And I have hope.

My hope is for the future.

In this moment are my reactions Denial? They are either strength or delusion. Whether my words hold promise and awakening, or are me simply pissing into a hurricane, I guess I really can’t know.

Unless, of course, one of you reallly smart folks come and enlighten me, or disillusion me, or just bust a cap in my ass.

There is a reality here too, having to do with my father. He sat down and died. The reality for me is that if I give over to the possible reality that while my words are true, I really am pissing into a hurricane and all the words are just a waste of time and effort - if I sit down - does my old buddy Death come sit on my shoulder? “How ‘bout now, Billy? God (You should excuse the expression) knows you know the way.”

I just don’t know. I want to say that if I sit down I’ll look to other endeavors, but I don’t know. I’m seventy-four. Its been a long haul already.

I don’t remember what it feels like not to be a part of this Resistance. I don’t know how to be without it centering, focusing, and teaching me. And I don’t know how to be in the Resistance without reaching out. Without trying with my imperfect and after all these years maybe, still, sophomoric words, to share.

There is also the often repeated justification for reaching out, the one I’ve been repeating for decades. The one that until this moment I’ve successfully blocked from my scattered and often less than coherent mind -

It’s not my job to convince anyone of anything, nor to get a single person to read or hear. Judging by numbers is, finally, an act of ego.

There it is then.

I can’t sit down. At least not today. So if my words don’t make sense, are without meaning, continue as you have - pay little mind. I’ll just put ‘um out here in the knowledge that to some few folks on this day and in this moment they will serve.

love,

bill