I have long been aware of “rules”. For example I know that the rules of manly behavior do not include alternately crying and laughing/giggling while listening to the spiritual teacher/author/co-traveler on this life journey, Anne Lamott, read her book Plan B. Her often funny, poignant, frequently irrelevant, nakedly honest recounting of her journey as a friend, mother, adult child of an alcoholic, recovering alcoholic, church school teacher, stone throwing contemplating, neurotic, “overly sensitive” (meaning she cannot hide or filter her feeling through the sieve of the acceptable rules of “polite” society) evoke or awaken all those, not well buried, feelings in me.
Now I know that if I want to be more a part of the team of manly men or seriously in shape women who work out at the gym every morning I would not listen to Anne Lamott or other irrelevant teachers who speak to the likes me; who quickly break through any barriers I might have had to the tears and the laughter lying under the thinnest, porous layer of “skin”. Yet, when else should I be listening? I need something to divert me from the boredom of the exercises to which I religiously submit my body.
I ride my bike home thinking that once again I have “failed”. A little later I sit down to read the newspaper where I read about such news as the decision of our government to sell armed drones to other countries, the lavish spending of tax paper money by the head of Israel, the leading cause of death in teenagers in South Africa being AIDS, ongoing fighting in so many parts of the world and that occasional heart warming story such as one about a guide dog making it possible for a man to live independently for many years. With still only the thinnest skin to protect me I again finding myself weeping over my eggs and muffin. At least here at home there is no one to observe such unmanly behavior.
Wait! Why it is that tough means being able to detach from one’s common core of humanity. In my experience it takes much more strength to experience what seems very natural and “right”. Is it not moral and necessary to experience grief and laughter and a sense of shame for how much we humans alternately hurt each other and love each other.
I laugh as Anne Lamott conjectures about Jesus as a teenage going through hormonal changes and driving Mary and Joseph crazy while simultaneously delivering such wise lessons to his elders in the synagogue. Who is this child, they might ask? Surely not the bratty, sarcastic, inconsiderate, underwear showing child who inhabits our home? Yet, of course, it is very same person just as it is the very same person inhabiting this body alternately loving unconditionally and then judging harshly and unkindly the next moment; the one who appears to have it together and falls apart; the one who wants no one to suffer as long as he can have an unequal share of the world’s richest. Yes, that very same one.
Perhaps I will get better at following the rules or perhaps as I approach my 75th birthday I can blame my behavior on aging.
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