So begins a poem by rumi. This human being needs to learn more about being human. Yet it is also a season of unlearning. If knowledge is about learning, then wisdom is about unlearning. There is a lot I have to unlearn. In this next season (without forethought of how long it will last), this being human will be less about doing human.
Most of my life has been characterized by a few constructs that have defined me, given my life purpose. As I cross liminal space (threshold) of 57 years of life, I do so intentionally, joyfully, and circumspectly. As happened at prison fellowship international (where I was for 25 years), I learnt the lessons of integrity and character after having sought to impart it at odyssey. That was august 2014. As is now the case, I am learning the deeper, richer lessons (which I will delineate shortly), similarly after I have sought to impart it at desert odyssey. This is now august 2021.
downward mobility ~ I thought that my leaving presidency and priesthood was downward mobility. Of discovering the clarity of my calling in the crucible of crisis. desert odyssey was to be the new purpose. After 6 years and multiple runs of desert odyssey, I have come to the realization that I have yet to learn, or perhaps more accurately, unlearn the contours of downward mobility. The paradox of downward mobility is that is in effect an ascent.
existential liberty ~ purpose must flow from meaning and not the other way around. What I do cannot define who I am. Insidiously, I have merely replaced purpose at prison fellowship international with purpose at desert odyssey. There is inherent and existing beauty to discover in this being human, this guest house. I need to stop additions and alterations to this guest house and just explore and enjoy what is already there.
liminal space ~ defined as being in a space where what is familiar has left us or we have left it, and now we stand in this liminal space, at this threshold, with no idea what lies ahead. In a word, uncertainty. I am learning/unlearning that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. What will emerge from this season of being, responsibly lived, is far from clear. Faith, that what I can otherwise orchestrate, is best left to divine providence.
ambivalence ~ ‘ambi’-both; ‘valence’-quality, strength. I am learning a new language, the language of ambivalence, but not as common usage has come to define it. It isn’t about apathy, but about holding two contrasting points of view and not defaulting to one being right and therefore the other being wrong, one being true and hence the other false. The world of religion, politics, commerce, is often consciously or otherwise, predicated on the basis of win-lose, right-wrong, a zero-sum game. I am learning to live in the uncomfortable yet comforting space of ambi-valence.
solitude ~ loneliness is the failure of solitude. I am learning to illuminate the depressive darkness of loneliness with the luminous darkness of solitude. In the months preceding this decision to disengage from doing but not disconnect from being, the covid-19 pandemic provided the means to understand solitude better. How do we maintain physical distancing but retain social solidarity and communal connectedness? The lebanese poet, kalil gibran says it well, “And stand together, yet not too near together. [For] the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
