Spirituality

gaudium essendi

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The day I walked into the woods above Lake Chickacoo, Thoreau under one arm and a canvass chair under the other, with an entire day lounging before me like Lauren Bacall, was the day I again found the sweetness of being. There among the High Bush cranberries (viburnum trilobum) and old stands of birch (betula) I found bottom. And under the spell of a Spring sky I knew that I knew more than I could tell.

walking stick and birch 2 On some level we will always be without words for such experiences, perhaps even struck dumb. What, after all, can you say about the ineffable? But to be struck dumb is also to be at risk of forgetting-by-not-naming. And here, forgetting is a small act of infidelity towards life.

So to "mindfully tag" a meaningful experience is not only to remember it, but in some way to surround it with your flesh–to recall it through your cells. Just as naming a fear clears a way for at least its partial management, so, naming a sublime emotion opens a pathway for its return. And wouldn’t it be glorious if we kept that path clear of debris? God knows–even though these are transient slices of time and therefore underscored by incipient melancholy–how all of us need far more emotionally sublime moments…moments that is, of gaudium essendi, "the joy of existing."

And we’ve all experienced gaudium essendi…that "joy of existing" that comes in the ripple of time when you notice yourself catching of your breath at the smile of an infant. That gaudium essendi you feel in the warm shiver that spreads through your nervous system while listening to a particularly fine melody progression.

Philosopher/playwright Gabriel Marcel, (I’m indebted to John Toren for this reference) went so far as to call gaudium essendi a primordial fact. Raising "the joy of existing" as potentially an existential proof of the Divine. And I think it’s also possible then to notice that even that wake of emotional twilight following the prow of joy, points to God. Because it’s part of the experience. That we sometimes use that inchoate sadness to (unconsciously) block gaudium essendi is of course our loss on many levels.

It’s against this potential loss, and toward the health of our souls, that we can employ the Latin gaudium essendi. (It seems to me that Latin somehow lends itself to this particular process.) When next the time comes, name and remember…so to keep the path open for many returns.

Poetics

Musical Invitation

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The whistling of the bottle-picker at the dumpster this morning was strangely comforting. It was a tune that at that hour, or in that context, I couldn’t recognize. Most likely it was his own tune. His up-before-the-birds tune. His early round-making tune. No matter that it couldn’t be named. The easy melody was charming enough to evoke a small delight and I caught myself smiling, even at three AM.

loaded shopping cart(sm) I contrast that to the self-conscious sub-woofers that use the eternal duration of the adjacent red light to showcase a bass riff that assaults my resting ribcage turning it into a kind of snare drum. There is no hour or context for that. Music that oppresses cannot be justifiably called music. Can it? Yes, I know, ear of the beholder and all that. Still–and of course I might just be showing my age here–but when it comes to tunes, I like to be invited in, not invaded.

And that is what the bottle-picker did. Invited, I accepted, and hardly noticed the rattle of his shopping cart or the dumpster lid dropping on its metal self. All was eclipsed by his tune and tone. And after all, I could hardly begrudge him his three AM stop, it was the middle of his work day.

Politics

Muttering

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Local Edmonton poet, Michael Gravel, offers this gem about people we’ve all observed. Those dissembled beings who owe their other-worldlyness to some kind of inner or environmental slippage. But then, slippage is a perspective.

Muttering

A man at the front of the bus
is talking to himself.
Not just muttering,
as some do,
but having a good discussion.
He does not look crazy,
well-dressed in fact.
He rags on his wife.
His lamentable youth.
His last stand at last call.
He raises his voice a bit.
His hands gesture to someone.
He is ignored by all
(all noses in other business).
The city lights trail and
the route drags on.
He pulls the cord and talks some more.
His jaw waggles to the street
and the bus pulls away.
For a moment, in the city dark,
I see him,
index finger to lips,
shushing and walking,
speaking truth
only when nobody listens.

© — Michael Gravel

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Freedom/Poetics

Ruts of a Monday

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

A stout man, coffee carefully in hand, takes the entire allotted walk-time to cross Jasper Avenue. It’s his right of course, but his exaggerated caution is just an irritant to commuters. No one shares his approach to the morning–a Monday at that. I understand the auto-emotion and thank civility for showing up and saving his seatbeltless life.ruts

Sometimes, more than manners, it takes a fundamental movement of the heart to see past the ruts of a Monday–the day we naturally know to be born under a bad sign…the day that’s down even before it has learned to crawl. Sometimes, to see your way to a manageable spirit in the perpetual ruins of a Monday it is necessary to employ certain strategies.

For some, counting upon shear endurance, plunging in works; for others, it seems, a new hair colour is an imperative. For still others, me included, it’s within the spark of a caffeinated second, that we see how a small change here, an adjustment there, a new habit or a dropped one (not coffee) might, over time, reach that wellspring of not merely Monday but daily contentment. And so we resolve a correction while convincing ourselves we won’t add to all the previous choked out resolutions. And under the fuelled flirtatious spell of sanguine intentions we envision ease-of-handling coming over us like a breaker on a beach.

But when this passes, remembering that it takes effort to get the emotional combination right to live out even a single day, we go back to experimentation. Like painters, we layer our feelings until the feel is right, or at least close. We’ve learned, even before we entered work-a-day life that there are no pure colours. We just try to find our best shade and stay under it as long as we can. And then live in the hope that the birds of suffering will not be able to snatch away the seeds of meaning.

Perhaps however, the stout man, attentive to his allotment of time, mindful of what is at hand, already has this all figured out.

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