Hold On, My Heart

Hold On My Heart

By Genesis. 1991
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Hold on, my heart
Just hold on to that feeling

Hold on, my heart
Just hold on to that feeling
We both know we've been here before
We both know what can happen

Hold on, my heart
'cause I'm looking over you shoulder
Please don't rush in this time
Don't show her how you feel

Hold on, my heart
Throw me a lifeline
I'll keep a place for you
Somewhere deep inside
Hold on, my heart

Please tell her to be patient
'Cause there has never been a time
That I wanted something more
If I can recall this feeling
And I know there's a chance
Oh I will be there
Yes I will be there
Be there for you

Whenever you want me to
Whenever you call I will be there
Yes I will be there
We both know we've been here before
We both know what can happen

Hold on my heart
'cause I'm looking over you shoulder
Please don't rush in this time
Don't show her how you feel

Hold on, my heart
Throw me a lifeline
I'll keep a place for you
Somewhere deep inside

Hold on, my heart
Please tell her to be patient
'Cause there has never been a time
That I wanted something more

If I can recall this feeling
And I know there's a chance
Oh I will be there
Yes I will be there

Be there for you
Whenever you want me to
Whenever you call I will be there

Yes I will be there...

The teaching is that the Christ will return, the shepherd collecting his flock. He realizes the importance of the devotion of the disciples and wants them to know he will be with them, to the end of time; however there is risk. The risk that they may not be loyal, they may not remain faithful to the One, the All, who makes the sun and the moon, the very heart of all the Christ has come to share. Yet he assures all that he, the Christ will remain until the end of time. -- St. Matthew 28:20

Tell her to be patient, the world is not yet ready, the place held open for all to enter is a deep, profound mystery. The Spirit makes a place for one and all. Hold on, my heart. I'll be there.

Clothing as Love

I'm In You 

by Peter Frampton

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I don't care where I go
When I'm with you
When I cry, you don't laugh
'Cause you know me

I'm in you, you're in me
I'm in you, you're in me
'Cause you gave me the love
Love that I never had
Yes, you gave me the love
Love that I never had

You and I don't pretend
We make love
I can't feel any more
Than I'm singing, yeah...

Come so far when you think
Of last fall
You can't buy what we made
You and I, oh

I'm in you, you're in me
I'm in you, you're in me
'Cause you gave me the love
Love that I never had
Yes, you gave me the love
Love that I never had
You gave me the love
Love that I never had

I don't care where I go
When I'm with you...

While it may be quite true that those who are happiest clothe themselves in the Holy Spirit alone, it's through brief moments of inspiration, that we first make the connection to Spirit and Self.
These contacts over time become more sustainable, they make an opening for a change in consciousness; our reality changes. The eternal qualities of faith, hope and charity become more obvious and relevant. And what remains is real.

Two people in coming together weave a cloth which becomes uniquely their own reality. Whether any one else understands that view or not is immaterial to the lovers. What does matter is that they have this consciousness, this opening and they between them, possess comprehension of it.

A strong weave makes for strength in each of the beloveds. It is not necessarily intellectual; in fact when asked to explain it, often they are lost for words. So they may suffice to say, ' it's just a feeling; we understand it between us.'

The poet Rumi wrote, "Love is the sea where intellect drowns."

Vera Wang's Idea: Be Real

Recently an interview with American fashion designer, Vera Wang aired on television. She made an interesting statement about her conception of design and other designers. It was an observation about the reality of matter.
She stated that designers who live in a fantasy world, who live in their heads, who do not make frequent contact with the most immediate moment-- now the present moment, are those who fail to communicate, to address the needs and wants of the consumer. 
Her clients have needs, wishes and dreams of their own and she addresses these things by attentively listening and engaging her design work in that direction. She participates in the 'give and take' of cooperation.

Wang summed up the work of some others by saying, who cares, what is there to care about? What can you contribute to society, to the world through fantasy?
A simply remarkable thought; it pinned down the reason why a film I recently viewed was so singularly bad that of the 15 persons who came to see it, all but 3 left before the film was over. From the point of the spectators, a room full of competent designers and artists, many who appeared in the film made like rubes and ingenues, not underground artists or cultural observers. This, an incredibly accomplished designer, Wang made clear.
This Simple Mind was admittedly the last out the door, leaving the few remaining to chat with its film maker, Yaghoobian.
Yes, it was that bad. Perhaps the host had not pre-viewed the film prior to offering it for a showing?

Died Young Stayed Pretty by aspiring Canadian film maker Eileen Yaghoobian was the film in question. Perhaps Yaghoobian  did not research her topic carefully, had little or no expertise in the subject matter, or gave over the interview process to the persons she interviewed. Those interviewed on camera about being "underground poster artists" did do 98 percent of the talking, and it wasn't all reality based talk either.
Being Canadian it may be that Yaghoobian was overly awed by American southerners who for the first time have a camera and microphone in their face and proceed to vent, or Pacific Northwesterners' regionalism.

But what about the editing process? Yaghoobian reports she spent months at it, and what she was left with is what Vera Wang presciently identified as the lack of reality for a subject that may not matter. This is a film that may be easily overlooked.

Love and the Body

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you..." 1 Corinthians:1-19
"We are like little mirrors in which God contemplates Himself."
St. John Vianney

When the Body Speaks

Depeche Mode

Listen Here

To the soul's desires

The body listens

What the flesh requires

Keeps the heart imprisoned

What the spirit seeks

The mind will follow

When the body speaks

All else is hollow...

In matters of the body, there are some who see no body-soul connection, instead they see the body only. The physical, tangible body is their reality. There is nothing intrinsically evil or immoral in things, natural in creation. The Creator has seen to that, writes Thomas Merton. In his effort to express what he sees as the good, the beautiful, the holy, Merton addresses certain issues of the human body.

While all things, natural, created by the One cannot be in any way an impediment to realizing our own true divinity, the obstacles when and where they do exist take the form of "self." It is the tenacious need to maintain a separate egotistic, willfulness that alienates one from the Creator by means of an outwardly 'false self.'
By necessity and by function, this falseness demands an equally false environment in which to operate; the false self subsumes the real; in service to the imaginary, false self we use things for the betterment of this self to the detriment of the One, true, created self, the 'original face' as some call it. Engaged in corruption, evil easily enters as we use many illusions to increase our dependence and attachment to the false self.
The maintenance of such falseness tends to turn one into a fanatic, ever on the look-out for what is not whole or unified. Those who divide themselves, distract themselves in this pursuit to maintain a exterior identity and a second, hidden identity. We all know others whom we may have referred to as 'two-faced' and this is what Merton wishes to address.

The true joy of the world is escape from this little island of false self; instead of entering into union with the One who creates, we encounter much sadness; the grief we sometimes discover is due to the demands of our desire that there be more than there is: he who does not expect, then, has all things.
In any event, the false self is not to be 
"identified with the body. The body is neither evil nor unreal. It has a reality given it by God and this reality is therefore holy... The body is the temple of god, meaning that his reality, his truths are enshrined there... let no one then dare to hate or despise the body that has been entrusted to him by god, and let no one dare to mis-use this body... Soul and body exist together," writes Merton

There are many [persons] in the world, decent and moral, and also who recognize no other reality in life besides their body and its relationship to the environment, or a physical containment within its surroundings. While they may admittedly reduce themselves to their five, discrete senses--taste, touch, sound, smell and sight, their lives are based on their senses and nothing else.
Consequently, they easily fall into illusion-- but do not find fault in the body itself; rather it is the person them self who consents, finding a sort of security in the simplest senses. They will not answer to the secret, still voice of the One, the Creator, who calls them to take a risk, to come out of themselves, making visible all glory of the Created One. This risking, says Merton, is a task for a spiritually engaged person.

A Car Accident

 "The long, winding road home. It leads me to your door... 
crying for the day... Hey Jude!" Paul McCartney

The other day I came to an intersection in my town and observed while waiting at a very long light, a car accident. There were no fatalities, no apparent injuries. The cars were in the process of being towed; the occupants stood at the side of the road, alternately being interviewed by the police and looked wide-eyed and dazed. A police officer was orchestrating the traffic around the mishap at rush hour.

Often we have a certain reality of how the world is and how it must work, how it should work. Then something jolts us, violently even, to our fuller senses, like a car crash. Even a "fender bender" is stressful. An accident such as a high speed collision, a roll over or a side impact or a tire blowout are all potentially fatal occurrences. The stress level can become very high, as a survival instinct, like fight or flight. I noticed the young men involved. Clean cut, they appeared to be university students; one was wearing clothing suitable for a Judo or Aikido class. His companion clutched some folders and notebooks to his chest and stared about vacantly. The other driver was equally vacant, seated on the grass also staring into space. The apparent passenger(s) spoke to the police.

It was striking how they appeared so befuddled, so vacant, these competent, intelligent, university men. Their world as they knew was suddenly altered; their stress and ability to cope was challenged. In the blink of an eye, their everyday existence, their ideas and values were laid out on the pavement. Their (former) car was destroyed. Taking it all in so suddenly was extremely stressful. Who could think otherwise? In an instant they were forced to speak about their vehicle in the past tense, their intended activities were possibly quite lame. It was suddenly a greater, wider reality: survival.

Reminded once again about how small and fragile each one of us are in this vast world, under great, blue skies, I thought about no matter how we get there, to the place of ungroundedness, there is always some help to secure our foundations, to establish our mooring; we have one another and each other. It is love that makes the day liveable and love that brings us close once more.
For those men involved in the accident under great, sudden stress, no doubt their loved ones were most on their minds, and they, those loved, were soon to express their own horror at the possibility of the loss of each other.
The tow truck finished its work; the policeman re-opened all lanes now that the debris was removed. The traffic moved on. It was all in a day.

Before We Were

I hope he's not like me. I hope he understands. That he can take this life And hold it by the hand. And he can greet the world with arms wide open..." -- Lyrics for Arms Wide Open by Creed

Arms Wide Open
By Creed
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Before we were the occupants of today, of this moment, who were we? Where did we come from? How were we brought into today? If there is principally the day, to-day in our lives, if this moment and each and every moment is what truly comprises our lives, then what does that day contain? May we, 'greet the world with arms wide open...?'
Always, so very often we rush about, scurrying here and there in the course of the day. As the days mount and as we meet each new day, the sun arises lighting the way; other days it is darkness, cold or gloom. Technology increasingly diverts us from our moorings, giving us an altered sense of time. Computing and communicating with others literally a world away, as though they have not traveled beyond a common realm; they have, and we can forget, or not reckon with the day that is without them in it because of the falseness of technology and its skewing of our senses.

Eons of existence, days upon days of living have made humankind the social, communicating animals that we are and continue to be. But it is ultimately the reckoning with time that we cannot escape. While others are sleeping, still others are awake and engaged in the active part of their day. Each day, as we grow older, is replete with experiences over-worn with other experiences. Experiences of all types and stripes; each imparting a message, some consciously retained, others less so. They are all lessons of one type or another.

This week I heeded an urge to 'play hooky' from my usual daily routine; it proved to be a tour of memory, a review of selected past, connecting me today. With the emergence of some very fine spring weather, I drove my usual East-West direction but by a different route. Spending some time by myself, it took most all afternoon. Despite my recollections of experiences past, some 20 or more years ago, I traveled parallel to the Interstate and saw so much new, adding to my previous memory. The old route in the days before the Interstate was the route.

There are towns, villages and farms along the way as there have been during my lifetime. The bigger towns, especially, may not have altered their boundaries, but their content continues to evolve with new buildings, new zoning, new populations, new attitudes reflected by their community environment. The country parts of the routes were perhaps the most geographically or visually stable, the farmsteads nearly consistent, a new barn or shed here or there. But the most surprising were those places no longer farming, their buildings in disrepair; their owners engaged in new functions, no longer attending them. The homes built upon former farm fields; the little country subdivisions sprung here and there. There are new windmills, buildings burnt and businesses closed.
Memories revised with new information.

But the most, for me, personally was to retrace the route of my 25th year and the paths it took me into a new family and a new life, a community life. The days, it seem, have traveled into a wink; they have been in the thousands but save for gray hairs on my head, I would not have known. It seems my beliefs and my feelings have withstood many of the other outward changes life has imposed upon me. My hopes, my future dreams, my energies placed at that moment towards the services of that 25th year, now in review, are wistful. Moments of choices taken and others rejected.

It was, on that breezy day, golden sun, an arrival. Not just a review but a clear view of where I sit now. Today. I arrive at my destination today with a fuller and greater sense of just this moment, and all the moments I have lived and survived to get here. Age does improve many things and many things grow into focus while others dim, their importance perhaps misplaced or even lost on a spring day.