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celebration
May 2008 
Celebration
Posted on Nov 22nd, 2007
by 
Spirit Eagle
Spirit Eagle
Nothing defines us more than our celebrations, and all of us in every culture, society or group of people celebrate our connectedness with others with more traditions and passion than anything else we can imagine. The power of the United States' celebration of Thanksgiving Day is its recognition of the importance of community and, to a large majority, the nuclear family itself. Perhaps the angst so many people feel when this holiday is not what we imagine it "should be" is how clearly we recognize the lack of close community and disconnectedness some of us live.
This day is the one day, almost more than any other on the calendars of U.S. residents, when we recognize the one truth by which we define ourselves. We are community beings. I have yet to see or hear a person define him/herself without at least some reference to connection with someone else. Even the Christian metaphorical description of the Sacred is one of community, the Trinity. All cultural and religious traditions are centered on relationship of one sort or another. Community, family, togetherness is what defines life itself. It is something not only to be recognized as important, but something to be celebrated as life-giving and life-supporting.
One of the most powerful examples I have observed was the life of a man whose spirit and life virtually disintegrated as he lost, one by one, all the signs of connectedness and community he valued all his life. I met him in mid-1985, a few months after returning to single living. He was an effusive, gregarious, emotionally expressive man, Jewish by birth and from Brooklyn. My experience of my Jewish friends and acquaintances tells me this is probably a culture and identity with some of the most powerful traditions we can imagine.
Over the ten years we were connected I saw a vital, intense and interesting man become someone no one who had known him before this time would recognize. Before we met in Houston, Texas, he had lived all his life in New York or close by. He had enjoyed a successful career on Wall Street until one of the severe economic downturns ended his work there. In very few years he lost his marriage, his home, his livelihood and his father. All these things were crucial to him as identification of who he believed himself to be. When he and I met on a commuter bus to downtown Houston and our jobs, he was living in an apartment in the southwest side of the city and working on the security staff of one of Texas' major banks.
By the time we went separate directions he was mentally disassociated from everyone except the rare times he was able to see his son. He lost his ability to maintain adequate employment as what had begun as depression took on the characteristics of what now is often described as bi-polar disorder. He no longer could enjoy reasonably intelligent conversations, nor could he maintain responsible behavior. He lost his ability to relate and to see himself as related to others, except his son. This last characteristic was exacerbated and hastened when his mother died. Eventually, because he knew his inability to be responsible, reliable and relational had destroyed our life together, he requested that we go separate ways. He no longer wanted to try to live in relationship because he did not know himself to be connected to anyone or anything.
We seek to celebrate our connectedness, our identities as family and community. This is so crucial to our wholeness that we build all sorts of traditions and expectations into one day in the year. It is no wonder no other celebration carries as much baggage and has so much potential for anguish and joy. Our spirits long for unity with each other and with the Sacred, and when we lose some of the connections, it is no surprise we can find this day to be so difficult. Then, if we choose, we can begin to rebuild and to rediscover the connections to others and with the Sacred Presence. Then we can again celebrate and be grateful.
This day is the one day, almost more than any other on the calendars of U.S. residents, when we recognize the one truth by which we define ourselves. We are community beings. I have yet to see or hear a person define him/herself without at least some reference to connection with someone else. Even the Christian metaphorical description of the Sacred is one of community, the Trinity. All cultural and religious traditions are centered on relationship of one sort or another. Community, family, togetherness is what defines life itself. It is something not only to be recognized as important, but something to be celebrated as life-giving and life-supporting.
One of the most powerful examples I have observed was the life of a man whose spirit and life virtually disintegrated as he lost, one by one, all the signs of connectedness and community he valued all his life. I met him in mid-1985, a few months after returning to single living. He was an effusive, gregarious, emotionally expressive man, Jewish by birth and from Brooklyn. My experience of my Jewish friends and acquaintances tells me this is probably a culture and identity with some of the most powerful traditions we can imagine.
Over the ten years we were connected I saw a vital, intense and interesting man become someone no one who had known him before this time would recognize. Before we met in Houston, Texas, he had lived all his life in New York or close by. He had enjoyed a successful career on Wall Street until one of the severe economic downturns ended his work there. In very few years he lost his marriage, his home, his livelihood and his father. All these things were crucial to him as identification of who he believed himself to be. When he and I met on a commuter bus to downtown Houston and our jobs, he was living in an apartment in the southwest side of the city and working on the security staff of one of Texas' major banks.
By the time we went separate directions he was mentally disassociated from everyone except the rare times he was able to see his son. He lost his ability to maintain adequate employment as what had begun as depression took on the characteristics of what now is often described as bi-polar disorder. He no longer could enjoy reasonably intelligent conversations, nor could he maintain responsible behavior. He lost his ability to relate and to see himself as related to others, except his son. This last characteristic was exacerbated and hastened when his mother died. Eventually, because he knew his inability to be responsible, reliable and relational had destroyed our life together, he requested that we go separate ways. He no longer wanted to try to live in relationship because he did not know himself to be connected to anyone or anything.
We seek to celebrate our connectedness, our identities as family and community. This is so crucial to our wholeness that we build all sorts of traditions and expectations into one day in the year. It is no wonder no other celebration carries as much baggage and has so much potential for anguish and joy. Our spirits long for unity with each other and with the Sacred, and when we lose some of the connections, it is no surprise we can find this day to be so difficult. Then, if we choose, we can begin to rebuild and to rediscover the connections to others and with the Sacred Presence. Then we can again celebrate and be grateful.
Access: Public
Dear Spirit Eagle,
You are so right! We are so much defined by our relationships, our togetherness. There's a saying I once heard: “If God had meant for us to be alone, he would have put one person on every planet.” The fact that that isn't true points to the reality in which we live: community.
The story you told about the once vibrant Jewish man speaks volumes! When a person cuts themselves off from life and love and from all people who actually care about them, it's such a massive “cut in pay.” The human spirit can't thrive in that kind of environment, it just follows a downward spiral, cut off from all life, love, support, energy, anything that could possibly HELP. It's sad. Anyone with the eyes to see knows that we're not meant to live that way.
Personally, I couldn't live without my close friends/family. What would I do? I think I would go crazy. That's how I used to live, mostly as a loner with just me and my private thoughts to sustain me. Sure, I had some friends I talked to, but it's a far cry from the life and love that sustains me on this Thanksgiving Day.
It seems in the modern day that a lot of people are determined to cling to independence, singlehood, giving up on people, closing their hearts to one another. People like to believe that love doesn't work, that it can't work, that people are unworthy of their love and commitment. I for one hope and pray that somehow crying out in this wilderness will help at least a few people to wake up to the fact that there is SO MUCH MORE TO LIFE!!! That the dream of every heart crying out for unity CAN BE FULFILLED! And that going it alone with few friends or intimates is so totally not the way, not if you're serious about your smile…
Most sincerely,
Carolyn
Dear Spirit Eagle,
Thank you for your beautiful post, and true story.
Your telling of it is very astute and I appreciate your loving consciousness on this matter.
It is amazing that although we all need each other so much (close, intimate relationships, and the security that comes from both the giving and receiving of love) many, many people are choosing not to be in relationship or to shy away from intimate involvement. Clearly, people are choosing to be relatively alone, rather than face the challenges of intimate relationship, and deeply social life.
Obviously though, as illustrated through your friend, it is actually disorienting to human beings to be alone, to live isolated from others. We are spiritually social beings. We need love, we need TO love, we need to give HUGELY, not just minimally.
Personally, I found my life when I found my close circle of friends. I hope your story encourages others to keep reaching out for more relationship and to jump into that satisfying pool of connection.
With love,
Mati
Dear Gini,
This is so true, Gini! We ARE all connected to each other.
The story of your friend sounds like he put most of his eggs in the basket of his career, which was reflected in his idea of who he was. Because he thought he was nothing without his Wall Street job, he threw everything his heart loved away. The problem with that is every human being truly values relationship in their heart – even if they've abandoned the possibility of it for themselves in their life. This is one of those God given inbuilt mechanisms that is part of our human hardwiring system. Whether or not we choose to plug into life and love is up to our free will.
You're so right that the holidays really amplify the state of our lives. They're sort of like putting a gray object in front of a white background. The background being the true human ideal of love, family, and relationship – the object being the way we live and our identification with “what we do” as “who we are”. You really see the contrast.
Days like these are a great source of inspiration, or depression, depending on how we use it. We all have the opportunity to be constructive, and choose to press the “up button” on what we see and feel today.
Love,
Dinari
Gina,
These are some great thoughts that you have about community. You have my support.
“We seek to celebrate our connectedness, our identities as family and community. This is so crucial to our wholeness that we build all sorts of traditions and expectations into one day in the year.”
Sometimes people make their career into who they are, as your friend did. Another example that is similar is when people make their ideas or their independence into their self-identification. People live lives that are based on independence most of the time and then expect to be and act differently on just a few holidays out of the year. It's difficult to live life on one track and then expect to jump track easily.
There seems to be a certain mood of independence that has taken over our cultural values these days. It seems that our attention is more and more on ourselves, our ideas, our profession and preferences. Our self-growth seems to be at the top of our what's most important list. But because people are not really independent creatures at heart or in actuality, it really is a celebration when we break that mindset of independence and feel our inherent connectedness. It's a shame that this world seems to be placing more and more emphasis and weight on personal independence. I believe it is leading us down the wrong road.
What is amazing is that even those who tout themselves as being independent thinkers that will never follow the pack and espouse a lifestyle that elevates thinking and acting for oneself as the highest ideal, even they feel the need and urge to express those ideas publicly within the Zaadz community. But that's sharing, not independence. Shame on them! They have no integrity to their own ideas and ideals, really. If that train of thought is followed to its end, those independent ideas should have never been shared, because other people should be left alone so that they can think for themselves, independent of any outside influence. Obviously that would be a real tragedy.
I am grateful for our connectedness and hope that I haven't jumped track with my comments. They feel related, though. A man may decide for himself that his job is who he is, and another man may decide that his ideas are who he is. Neither of these men, though, see that who they are is connected to the Sacred and to one another, and that they are dependent on these things to know and be who they really are.
Hanuman
Carolyn, Mati, Dinari and Hanuman:
Thank you to each of you for connecting together. Your thoughts each are of value to me. You speak of one of the characteristics it took me a long time to learn to balance…independence. Hanuman, you are so on target – on the track – with your comments regarding personal independence. This is an important quality in many respects; in that I have no disagreement. However, the difficulty with being independent can be in knowing when to recognize the value of interdependence. When we sacrifice the value of recognizing and honoring how connected we truly are to all of life for the mistaken belief we can be truly independent, we sacrifice a very basic need to all life, wholeness in community.
It is good to think for one's self and to make free, responsible and informed choices. The freedom to do these things must, however, be weighed in balance with the responsibility we have for the effects of that freedom, both on ourselves and on others insofar as the balance of the two can be weighed. It always is such a challenge to keep independent freedom and responsibility for the freedom in balance. But it's never boring.
Gini, thank you for sharing this story from your life and his today with us in this context. Reading your words, I realized a myth that I've had maybe all my life, and felt the myth begin to fall away from me a little. I realized that as a child I had noticed that some adults were more competent and reflective than others, more intelligent than others. And I decided that when I grew up I would be as much like those more able people as I could so that my realtionships with others would work out better. In this story I see that even in your life–and I take you to be one of the most competent, intelligent and reflective people I know–and would add to that list from my adult-discovered values of compassion and love also, but even being a person who lives authentically from all of this, still there is pain and loss in your life. So I guess my ideas of, “If I were only more compassionate and loving, things would work out” just aren't correct. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop operating from these positive values. I guess it does mean that I have to let go and let the results of that living be whatever they will be.
My very dear Martha, you stand at the crux of the entire meaning of living as a compassionately loving person. It is all in the releasing, letting go, no seeking to control what is beyond one's responsibility or ability to control, yet to still love, to act with compassion. You probably have read some of my other posts revealing even more of the losses and challenges of my life. So you know there are no guarantees about results. The most difficult release is that of results.
What has helped me see the value of release, (and so many things have) is a very simple illustration - the giant sequoias of our beautiful High Sierras. I don't know if most people realize the incredible life cycle of a giant sequoia, while not the oldest-lived nor even the tallest trees on the planet, is a lengthy cycle filled with peril and challenge. It can take twenty years for a single female cone to develop sufficiently and drop from the tree. Only fire will open the cone to allow the seeds to release and germinate. This happens only if all the other necessary conditions are present, and they are many. In a single cone there can be thousands of seeds. Perhaps one or two will germinate. If germination occurs, the seedling may grow if there is sufficient moisture, if it is in a hospitable locations, if, if, if. It can take up to five years or even longer for a seedling to become established enough to begin to grow into a recognizable sequoia tree. Then, if the tree manages to survive all this and continue to grow, reaching the age of twenty years, it probably will survive for over 3000 years, all things working well. That is, if there aren't too many young trees in the same area and fire doesn't come too soon before it is well established.
I think you get the point. Every step of a giant sequoia's life takes a very long time. Whomever may have been present at the beginning of each step in the cycle most likely is not going to be there for the next step. The end result of a tree over 300' tall with such glorious beauty standing for 3000 years is not guaranteed. In fact, it rarely happens, if you take the numbers of seed cones and seedlings that begin the cycle. Whomever began the cycle cannot control the results. There are too many other factors involved.
So, too, are our relationships not guaranteed. While we can give our very best, the only reason to do that is because giving our best defines who we are and brings us a measure of peace, happiness, satisfaction…whatever. But the results and the choices others make are out of our control. When others in relationship with us share the vision we have and we share their visions, it is magnificent and life-giving. It is something to be celebrated and treasured, yet left free and open without any of us seeking to control or direct from our individual egos and desires.
You have given me reason to write about why I choose to live (or try anyway) as a compassionate, loving person and what that means in my viewpoint. When I have more time (not when I should be getting dressed to go to work), I think I shall continue my thoughts.
Blessings