Don’t cling to me

(Another random collection of thoughts)

There’s a deep, energetic… almost oceanic… push and pull, breathing. In and Out. Something rhythmic to the search for one’s own path. I’ve stumbled into beauty more times than I can keep track of. Feels like a daily practice at this point. That surge of Knowing, knowing itself in and through you. It doesn’t start there, though. It’s been an interesting experience looking back recently to remember who I am back then. Back then. I phrased that previous sentence incorrectly, purposefully. Because whether we’re remembering a memory from two days ago or two years ago… or looking forward to two minutes from now (when my food will be done in the microwave) or two years from now (when I’ll have been in a stable job for awhile and Kirsten will too and…), you’re not actually where you are. You are only here. Now. You have always ever been here, now. But memories do help us. They help me to see the string of curiosity and, what some would call ‘synchronicity’, of it all. How it shaped me now. We all can relate to that. Some sequence of events that we trace back carefully like a four year old tracing their hand to make a Thanksgiving turkey art&craft. The feeling that even with all the crazy shit, it had to be this way. It gets to be this way, now. Years ago seems like a lifetime, maybe many lifetimes, ago.

On the one hand, there truly is nothing new to wandering. It’s all been done before. The getting lost. The procrastinating of one’s life. The deferring of one’s joy to a later time when things are different. Better. Easier.

But there’s something fresh within someone who has tasted this experience with foreign familiarity. Something of a rite of passage to gripping your compass, lost as hell in the middle of a huge forest as the sun is setting. Something in the air hints at the reality that you’re not alone and that this is a long and wide tradition. And still, this is new and something you’ve been invited to work through for yourself.

For a long time I asked for permission. Maybe not explicitly. Not desperately. My plea was quieter and more steady, like a hum just beneath the surface. Like the buzz of a late-night neon sign in the bar quietly singing in the dark to the few still gathered around.

I thought it was someone else’s responsibility, even their privilege to, like a sage that had just come down the mountain with the words of Life, tell me what I should be doing with my mind. my heart. my body. my life. I placed unfair expectations and unrealistic demands on others to lead me to a Source that was within me the entire time. That’s why they couldn’t do it. There were helpful hints and generous guesses. Some even actually believed they could tell me. What I was supposed to do for work. What my calling was. But it was always short-lived, always just enough gas to get out to the freeway and leave me panicked, staring back at the dash minutes later because the check engine light warned me to refuel. The gas wasn’t sustainable for the journey I needed to take. So because I kept trying to figure out the hack. Kept trying to get the codes and the instructions for what I was to do, I felt lost.

There’s a story in John 20 of Jesus instructing one of his followers, Mary, to not cling to him. To not grasp at him. To not attempt to bottle up his current form and preserve it. Jesus has just been raised from the dead. Just woke up from a little two day nap and his followers are still reeling from and waiting on what the scoop is. Mary, encountering the risen Lord, naturally wants to literally hold him. But Jesus is getting at something much deeper. He’s speaking to a natural posture we have to hold onto things. To, as the Buddhists get at, “cling” or “attach” to his human and present form. The future was so uncertain for a few days. This brought everything back into clear view. It seemed like the last few years vanished in a moment for Mary and the others. How unsettling. How disorienting.

But here’s the thing:
If they cling. If they attach to a picture/memory/vision of Jesus as anything other than the Christ of Now, they won’t be able to fully integrate all that he was teaching them up to that point. And they’ll miss the whole purpose of his displaying publicly the cycle of Life : Death, Burial, Rebirth/Resurrection.

Because nothing is the same after the cross. And it shouldn’t be. There’s newness at hand. There’s more on this side of the resurrection than there was on that side. Even if it’s not evident now. Even if the present moment is bleeding and healing still.

There’s a natural inclination to wanting things to be the way they were. That’s okay. It’s all included in getting you to today and where you’ll go. But don’t hold on too tight. To any of it — past, present or future. Find the grounding in what’s happening now and be open to how all of this is working together.

You may risk (emotionally, mentally, spiritually, etc.) holding onto a dead Jesus when there’s a risen Christ in front of you.

I guess the pain is just part of the deal
The price we pay for giving all of ourselves to those who help us heal

And I can’t stop crying, watching you so broken like this
Don’t cling to me, ‘cuz I’ll not be here forever
Is it time to quit feeling? Can I go first?

Great love and suffering
How else are we ‘gonna learn?