Barry Garden Path

I am grateful that there have been so many people who have been witness to my life.   I am especially grateful for those who have simply been a clear witness to who I was, and less grateful for those who told me who I should be.   A witness does not judge.  A witness simply observes.

I can only hope that I have been as forceful a witness in the lives of those who have acknowledged me and in many ways validated whom I had become.

I want witnesses in my life, but it has been difficult for me to come to grips with the fundamental reality that I am alone.    My companions can do nothing for me, I must act on my own.   What they do for me and what I ask them to do for me diminishes my life, my presence.   What they do is theirs and not mine.   I am the sole actor in my life.    The idea of coupling can be a serious distraction from the healthy independent life I must live.

Even while I choose to act along, I do not intend that to mean that I want to be alone.   I feel a deep connection with the companions who surround me with their witnessing eyes.   I have chosen to open myself and to invite my companions with an intimacy that allows them to be witnesses.   I attempt to be transparent so that they can see me as I truly am.   I offer the same in return.  We have woven a lasting web of intimate witness.

For me, these have all been invitations to acts of love.   When my companions and I open to see one another as we truly are, this is what love is about.    Being witness to the beauty of one another as we actually are is loving one another.   While I still can get distracted by an image of what I imagine, think someone could be, I am finding it much easier to pay attention to who they actually are, right now.

I’m choosing to be an aware witness of my companions.    I also want it to become more of a habit.

 

 

From time to time, I get drawn into the thoughts of physicists who argue against free will.    Great thinkers, like Brian Greene, seem to be saying that our choices don’t have an effect because all activity in the universe is simply following a predetermined law.    And that includes us.

Not wanting to contradict the likes of Brian Greene, I am ready to concede that he and his associates may be correct.    I do have my own corollary to their argument.   I think that I do have a choice on whether I yield to what is, what is going on.   I have a choice whether I align with, decide to be part of the rhythm of the universe.

Every day, maybe every moment, I seem to have a chance to choose whether to be part of what is happening.   I think I have the option to stay within the confines of my mind’s imagined world.    I would rather be where the real action is.

I remember what it was like to go rafting with my family down the wild Rio Pacuare, a class 4 rapids in Costa Rica.   At every turn of the river, I had a new opportunity to let go, allow the river to carry me out of control, up and down, over the rocks.   In that adventure, resistance was futile.   The guide pretended to have some semblance of control.   It was wild, out of control.    I had to choose whether to cling onto fear or let go to the joy of flowing with the river.

My days are like the Pacuare River.  There is very little to hang on to, even if I want.   I often reach into the future and solve problems that have yet to come up.    I watch out for dangers.   I “solve” so many problems, fashion so many narratives that never actually occur.  This usually serves me well and gives me a template for choosing how to deal with the present when it finally arrives.   Mostly it means that I spend a lot of energy that far exceeds any problem or situation that eventually occurs.

My real choice actually occurs in the moment, and is essentially about how to yield to the flow.  Even if the outcome should be pre-determined, as the physicists seem to say, it is my choice whether to yield.   That is for me to determine.   Will I align myself or not.

The mother of a close friend has died.    It is a happening totally outside of my control and experience, nothing I can effect.   It might not even have a direct effect on me.    However, I can choose to be part of that happening, I can choose to open myself to my friend’s grieving.   I can choose to yield and align myself to her sorrow.   I can absorb, even without talking with her, some of what she is grieving by yielding to the oneness that binds us.

This is for me the choice I constantly make when I decide to align myself with the rhythms of the universe, and not resist.   It is reaching for the joy of harmony.   It is a choice I get to make, moment after moment.

 

Now I see that love has two aspects, and I’ve certainly gotten them confused in my past.   There is the enduring aspect of love.    This is the aspect that, once I open my heart, love goes on and on.   In some ways, this is the “forever” aspect of love that exists outside of time.   While it may have a beginning, it goes on and on.   It is nearly effortless once it happens.

Then there is the moment-to-moment aspect of love.    This is the aspect that does not endure.    It is lost with every fleeing moment, and must be renewed as each new moment arises.    It is the aspect of love that demands attention if it is to be sustained.    It is a glowing ember that needs repeated breaths of air if it is to endure.   It can be lost, but with effort it can be regained.   It is cradeled in the embrace of the moment, and is totally caught up in the transition of time.  It requires skill and effort.

I have relied on the enduring aspect of love to such a degree that at some point that was all that was left.

The moment-to-moment aspect of love can be very demanding, even tyrannical if it is to endure.    When I am not being fully attentive to someone that I love, the moments slip away and can never be reclaimed.   An opportunity is missed and imagination moves in.   This aspect of love is nourished by my constantly renewed attention.   It requires thousands of moments of unconditional acceptance, free of expectations.    My beloved must receive the same kind of mindful attention I give to each foot as it touches the ground.

The demands of this kind of attentive intimacy are so great, that once the focus is lost, it may require great effort to renew the focus.   Or, like any kind of mindful awareness, it can flourish in a habit of wakeful attention.

Actually, this is not unlike all moments of my life.   Any time I am inattentive, lost in my imagination, that moment has been lost.    The moment is only fully lived when I am alive to the encounter.    Moments of love can pass if I am not engaged, and a chance to create an intimate connection slips away.

 

Several weeks ago, I was slowly walking down a hall in Mechanical Engineering when I saw a poster on the wall titled, “Master of Science.”  That’s me, I thought.    It had never occurred to me in my many years after completing graduate school, that I was a Master.    Not only did I have a degree, but I was a Master of something.   Of course, I immediately thought of my identity as Master of Arts, and most recently I became a Master Gardener.   My  son thinks that “master” sounds pretentious and a little like a cult.   I’m beginning to think that he may be right.

I have had many names and have claimed assorted names on forms, all of which put me into a category, in an order that made sense to me and others.   My rank , role and place have made more sense when I had a proper identifying name.   I gave others names too that reciprocated the identifying gesture, “Doctor, Mister, Father, Friar, Brother, Mrs, Miss, Ms, Chairman, President,” and others less flattering.

There was a time when a person was known by their craft.   All of us today are named so that everyone can identify our paternal family of origin.   People have been named for places.

I gave an individual name to each of my sons within the first day of their birth.   It was to be a name that spoke to me of their essence, their future, and my hopes.    Actually, I think that they each gave me their name as I held them, and I put it into words I not only felt but could speak.    So Nathan, as he looked up at me through new eyes, expressed himself as “Nathan Bright Eyes.”    And he has now become a young man who sees the world with  glistening, perceptive eyes that see a special truth.

Sorin, on the day he was born, squirmed in my arms and clearly announced to me that he was “Logan Strong Heart.”   And he has now become a young man who shoulders his way along difficult paths with an intensity that is both strong and brave.

There was a time I put aside my youthful identity as “Charles” and decided that I would live as “Barry”.    I smiled with appreciation when Logan decided at a similar age that he will now be known as “Sorin.”   For me, it would be one of a string of identity changes I would make.    Sometimes it would simply be a rejection of identities others would want to give me, such as “husband, white, old.”   The one name I have enthusiastically embraced is “Gardener.”

Among all the names I could choose, Gardener is both my favorite and the one that speaks best who I am.   Like my sons, it is a name that has become a metaphor for my life.  It is an action name that both describes not only what I do but who I am becoming.

It  seems that it’s been important for me to belong to someone’s tribe.   I’ve have been alert to finding places where I fit in, where I felt accepted.   For the most part this has required my conforming and perhaps capitulating.   Gradually, I’ve been turning that focus around.

Over a period of years, I’ve slowly been forming my own tribe.   This is not at all an exclusive group; in fact it is rather open and airy.   I don’t feel like I’m at all in the center of this tribe, but I am finding myself in the midst of “my people.”

Who are these people?   As I look around me, they are the people I have fallen in love with.    For some of them, I think the love is reciprocal, but that hasn’t been a condition for my loving them.     For me, it has been a love freely and unconditionally given.   Some of the people around me have turned into specters, ghosts I no longer see face to face but definitely are connected to my heart and part of my tribe.

Some of these individuals have no idea that they are part of my tribe.   I have made them members without them even being aware it was happening.   It is something that can happen quite casually and with little fuss.    I may actually know very little about them, except that I am acutely aware of them and see them as lovable individuals.    That’s all it takes, and they are in.   They are connected to me, and they hardly know it.

There was a time when I longed for the very stones of the earth to speak and shout their love for me.  I immersed myself in the ache of wanting to be loved.    I didn’t know that, all along, it was I who had the power of speech, it was I who was unaware that I had the power to break the silence and acknowledge the beauty of anyone and anything I chose.   I just had to wake up and pay attention.

I once was ready, even anxious to fall into the orbit around someone else.   I never knew I had the power to shape the space around me and affect the orbits of others.    I never want to cause anyone to change their orbit to go around me, but I know I can affect movement in the cosmos in small and subtle ways.   That affects everyone I love.

No one has to do  a thing except be their beautiful self and they may become a member of my tribe.   If any of them ask me, “Do you love me?” I would without hesitation respond, “Of course.”

There can be no bartering in love, no initiation fee to enter my tribe.   Membership is freely given, not an exchange, not given in return.    It is good, pleasant and affirming when love is given in return.    An exchange is not part of the deal of being part of my tribe.

I seem to know who I am, but when I try to explain myself it seems that I can only reference something else.    In spite of seeming crystal clear of my presence and parameters , I can mostly explain myself only by pointing to something else, or to someone not actually me.  It is as if I have definition only by the relationships I have to realities distinct from me.   Or maybe I just want them to be distinct from me.

One of the first questions people seem to have is “Where do you live?”  It is one of the first things I tell them, defining for them and myself where I fit into the universe, the geographic scheme of things.   What is my place, where are I am anchored, am I anchored at all.   A lot more is signaled when I tell them that I live in Bryn Mawr, west of downtown Minneapolis. They instantly know a lot about me, and I identify myself by where I live.

One way or other people want to find out  “Are you in a relationship?”   They want to know if I am alone, dating, married, divorced, etc.   I am subtle and evasive about this, and somehow signal that “I live with my son, Sorin”   For me this is a delicate and dangerous question because so much of my past identity has been  intertwined with my close relationships.   It is not just a category for the benefit of others, but it has been a significant marker of my own sense of who I am.

I have been me only in relation to someone else, and the magnetism of that kind of defining relation can be powerful.    I have almost habitually given part of my identity over to someone else.    I might as well have their picture on my driver’s license.

Now I will not be part of a couple.   I do not want to be seen, identified as part of a couple.  I do not want to feel part of a couple.

I consider myself a Gardener, which speaks of my relationship with plants.   I am someone who attends college, which explains my relationship with a learning environment.   I am a dad, which gives an identity based on my relationship with two sons.   I am a male, which has meaning only because there are females.

The list could go on and on, as it has in my head.  It reminds me of a concept in physics that says that reality exists only in relationship.    I would like to think that does not apply to me, that I can have an identity apart from everything else.

For now, having a separate and personal identity will have to be my working hypothesis.    I want to be able to have an unattached sense of myself, and I especially want to have an identity apart from anyone around me.   However, I have a mischievous suspicion that tells me I will eventually figure out we are all actually one.

 

Today I am especially troubled that I am part of a human community that is so capable of cruelty.   I try to take great refuge in my small community of companions who struggle to be a source of compassion and human kindness.  I think of them often, turn to them for generous support, rely on them for guiding inspiration.   I also think how this small group is in turn connected to a larger group of like-minded, open-hearted people.   We have a life-link that nourishes us and penetrates the world around us.

But there are those others.

Today I am painfully aware that I have a similar life-link with those who would remove health care from 24 million of their neighbors.   I am part of the community seriously planning to take food from hungry school children.   Safe in Minneapolis, there is no ignoring that I am a beneficiary of my country’s ambition to increase its capacity for war and human destruction.   I identify with and am recognized as part of a class that secures its position of privilege by wresting privilege from lower classes.

It is discouraging that I am also companion with many who, as Claudia Schmidt once said, are  “foolish, incredibly foolish …….dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.”

I am part of an unknowing community that helps the wealthy amass even greater wealth, while blindly ignoring that this happens at their own expense.   We selfishly support the hoarding of resources by the few, in the vain hope that we too might share in the hoarding.

Even worse, we teeter on the edge,  and sometimes go over the edge of throwing one another under the bus so that we ourselves might prosper.

I take refuge in my community of humans who aspire to a life of compassion and human kindness, and shower me with the abundance of that intention.   I can never repay them with the gratitude due to the generosity they show me.   We meet somewhat quietly and hardly ever show up on the front page.   I don’t  especially like those people I meet on the front page, even though I recognize them as my own kind and still part of my community.

 

I know it is my cultural background that I have such an association with sleaziness whenever someone speaks of an “affair.”   Having lived in a Catholic environment simply reinforced what society was already impressing on me and my attitudes.  Just last evening, as I was reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing, she used the word “affair” and I noticed that it drew out all the sticky, messy feeling that the word still haves for me.

I actually think that an affair can be a wholesome experience, genuine and responsible.   The notion of an affair has gotten a bad rap because the culture has put such an emphasis on restricting love and sex to marriage, to an unending commitment to be a couple.   I’ve come to think that this is not only an error, but it is even harmful.   Thay and I don’t agree on this.  In fact, my own feelings don’t seem to agree with my mind.

I think that affairs can be an opportunity for unconditional love.   This is not the love associated with the feeling of “being in love.”   Unconditional love is freely given, expects nothing in return, is transparent.   It is based on an awareness that comes from mutual openness.   An affair based on unconditional love is not grasping, is not possessive, is not dependent on the security of promises.

Love of this nature does not come easily.   It is something I may be learning how to practice for a long time yet.    Something I have noticed its that genuine love does not end.    It does not go away, even though an affair may end.   Love is an openness that simply persists and will endure  even when a relationship ceases, no matter what form that relationship has taken.

Our culture may have many good reasons for trying to institutionalize love and make people expect a loving relationship to last forever.    I think that is not normal, even if it is possible for some.   I think setting up the expectation and illusion of a permanent relationship promises a false security that undermines love.   Disappointment is inevitable.

So while I acknowledge that few affairs might be ideal, I think an affair is an opportunity to learn to be totally in the moment.   It is an opportunity to tap into the energy of desire without grasping.   It is an opportunity to be totally focused on the individual present without expectations of return.   Experienced this way, affairs can be timeless.

I’ve decided to create my own monastery.   There will be two resident guests, Sorin and Nathan.   But I will be the abbot, novice, cook, gardener and choir.   I will welcome visitors, even visitors who might want to stay a short while.   Except for my resident sons, I intend my life to be a solitary one.

I once lived the life of a monk,  for about twelve years a long time ago.  In a practical sense, it was a monastery without walls because we all came and went, our lives intermingled with the outside.   The monastery was a place of refuge, reflection, rule and community.    I’ve since lived outside any kind of monastery and have no intention of going to a community of monks.   However, I want some other aspects of monastery life.

In my mind I have already drawn the perimeter of my newly-founded monastery.    It extends to the margins of my home and as far as my flowers grow and bloom.   In a reverse of monastery tradition, the garden surrounds the dwelling, and not vice versa.

I will live by the Rule of Barry.   No one else will determine how I think or live.   In time, I expect to color outside the lines of my own Rule.   My life will truly be a time of reflection and gardening, and those will be subject to change.   It will be a time of exploration, so the Rule will have many open and fuzzy edges.

Yes, there  will be candles and incense.   The food will be wholesome.   Some clothes will be soft and hooded.  I intend to turn my mind inward, independent of my imagination so that I may see outward in a more discerning manner.

The senses will play an important role.   My monastery will be a place of sensory delight.   I will enliven sensory experience by creating new brain pathways, allowing my mind to become aware of sensory experience in a deeper, more realistic way.   This is different from being immersed in the realm of the senses.   It is giving intense attention to what my senses encounter.   I intend to be aware of the real world that lies beyond my senses.

So what of the traditional aspects of a monastery:  Poverty, Chastity and Obedience?   I am already reducing my dependence and attention to material things.    While not austere, I want my life to be simple.   Chastity will be lived not in abstinence, but in being sexual only with someone with whom I share love and awareness.   I will be obedient only to my inner vision and its voice, and not follow directives from others.

I intend my monastery to be a place of simple beauty, wholesome love and free of external constraints and expectations.   It will be a garden of compassion and a fountain of loving kindness.    I hope many will visit and share it.

 

 

I feel the urging of culture to put my life in order, to over-ride the reality of randomness and probability of it all.   There is no certainty about me or any of us, but my fellow citizens want the comfort of order, the comfort of knowing where I fit in.    It is upsetting for most of them if I attempt to blur the lines, to change the hard outlines into dashed lines.

My culture is constantly asking me “Are you married, divorced or single?” (“Are you spoken for, do you belong to someone, are you available”)   My culture wants to know “Are you christian, jew or muslim?” ( “or are you one of those crazy other groups?”).

Surveys constantly ask me “Are you male or female?”  (“Make a choice, there’s no opting out?”)   I have to routinely answer “Are you white, black or hispanic?” (“So which caste do you belong to?  How much respect do you deserve and get?”)

Many routine forms want me share “What is your level of income?”  (“Are you with privilege or without privilege?”)    I am asked to reveal “Which age group do you belong to?”  ( “Are you young and vital or old and of little use?”)

All my life I have resisted my culture wanting to know where I fit.   Maybe it is simply to keep things in order, maybe it is to comfort those who are nervous around uncertainty.   I’m not immune to it all.

I am aware how I put all my screws, electrical plugs and many pieces of hardware in identical containers with labeled categories on accessible shelves.   I know where each of these tiny items fits in my workroom.   I get a measurable amount of comfort from that.    I can more easily navigate the workroom and, in spite of the other chaos, find most of the things I am looking for.

I think my culture wants a similar level of comfort by imposing order on each of us, of wanting to know how I fit in.   I’ve begun resisting this pressure in a small way by not checking the appropriate boxes.   I no longer claim my right to privilege by declaring I am “white.” (“I’m, thank God, not one of those other groups.”)

My claimed religion has been easy since I think most religions no longer offer me inspiration or refuge.   “None” or “other” is an honest and accurate declaration.   I never have liked the defined institution of marriage, so I think single (unconnected) best identifies my singularity and individuality.

I am going to be checking a box for an income not my own.    I’ve kind of liked being “male”, but since I really am somewhat androgynous in gender, I’ll probably check both options.   For my age, I think it should be more than a calendar reference to how many years this body has been alive, and capable of use.   A measure of mental age may be more appropriate, in my case much younger, and very much of use.

I know I’m not helping those who want to be comfortable and know how I fit in.   But I don’t like their sense of order, and if they want to know about me they will have to come up with better forms.