Volume 29, No. 2-Summer, 2005
Table of Contents
A Tribute for Jerry
by Carolyn Irish
Afterwards
by Thomas Hardy
Eulogy
by Bill Dietrich
Just Jerry
by Gail Epes
Music of the Night
by Gordon Forbes
Fly Away Home
by Marjorie Donnelly
Jerry's Path into the Heart of Love
by Tilden Edwards
For Jerry
by Rose Mary Dougherty
Remembering Jerry May
by Tony Sayer
At Peace
by Paul May
Memorial Service Reflections
by The May Family
Meditation
by Gerald May
A Tribute for Jerry
by Carolyn Irish
Soon after Jerry met with my group of Utah pilgrims-in Washington, DC,
for Utah State Day at the National Cathedral-I received a last e-mail
from him.
It began, as did so many of his communications,
"Aw, Cally..."
It is such a funny thing to recall now, but it always seemed to me to register a point of connection, understanding, empathy. Generally I had tried to put words to something 'neo-natal' or too tiny for words. But this little greeting at the beginning of his reply always said to me, from his Buddha smile-"Aw, there you go again, but I know you can't help it and I (sort of) know what you (might) mean, (maybe)!"
At this point, I wonder if or how or why I will miss Jerry. He simply isn't gone from me yet. Sure, I missed his "skin face," having lived the last nine years way out here in Utah; but even here and now his presence is so very real to me.
Somehow Jerry was a "noticer," and simply by being one he taught me the beauty and value of simply noticing- nearly always things that were small and passing, but wondrous even so. I know there are other words for this gift of noticing in contemplative life and literature, but I favor this one because of a Thomas Hardy poem about remembering someone after their death. To me, it is so very Jerry, so I offer it here in his memory.
Cally, the Episcopal bishop of Utah, is on Shalem's Advisory Council.
Afterwards
by Thomas Hardy
When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
'He was a man who used to notice such things'?
If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
'To him this must have been a familiar sight.'
If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, 'He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.'
If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
'He was one who had an eye for such mysteries'?
And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,
'He hears it now, but used to notice such things'?
Eulogy
by Bill Dietrich
Jerry was, aside from my dear wife, perhaps my best friend, the brother I never had. I still ask myself how and why he happened in my life as he did. Though we worked together for 15 years, it was mainly in the past few that we became really close, and most especially during his recent illnesses. Somehow some wonderful mystical bond grew between us that I could never explain except through God's good grace and for purposes I may never fully appreciate.
We all know it is an impossible task to describe in words the reality of Jerry May. There is no way to contain him in any number of descriptors or phrases. Simply put, he was the largest man I have ever known or likely ever will. Despite our closeness I knew that I'd only scratched the surface of this wonderfully complex person. And so any attempt to describe him will of necessity be incomplete, a caricature of the whole. But each of us here knew some facet of him, our own special memories, the special gifts we each received from him. Perhaps together we can try to create a collage that might begin to approach the "allness" of Jerry. Each of us can contribute our own brush strokes, shadings and hues to this portrait of Gerald Gordon May.
Where to begin? I start with a small, faded needlepoint plaque, hanging unobtrusively in a corner of Jerry's office, which reads: "Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much." This in perfect simplicity was the essence of Jerry May.
He lived so large and so well-an extraordinarily full life which encompassed an amazing breadth of interests and talents. Foremost he was a spiritual seeker, a devoted husband and father, and a skilled psychiatrist. He was of course a famous author who wrote prolifically about the intersection of psychological and spiritual health. He published 8 books on the spiritual life in his lifetime, and there is yet one more book to be published-his wilderness book some of you already know about. He encouraged others to write, including his children who carry on his gift for words. He loved language and studied German, Spanish, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Sanskrit. He loved to plumb the meaning of words.
He was a spiritual director, companion and friend to countless spiritual seekers over the years, including many of us here, and some whom he knew only through email and the Internet.
He was a fisherman par excellence, something he came by honestly from his father, Earl, who died when Jerry was only nine. Jerry loved fishing and freely admitted it was a longtime addiction that he was only able to overcome in his later years as his health declined.
He was an outdoorsman and naturalist who deeply loved and had a special bond with nature which showed itself in unusual ways at times. I recall a time 10 or 12 years ago when we were canoeing on Rocky Gorge Reservoir near his home. It was a pristine summer morning, the early morning mist rising from the lake, a breeze brushing our cheeks, the rising sun glistening off the surface of the water. We paddled around mostly in silence for a while and then found an inlet where we made for land to stretch our legs. We looked up and there soaring above us was a huge vulture, wings outstretched, effortlessly riding the rising air currents. As we watched, the vulture landed in a tree about fifty yards away. Jerry looked up at the vulture. The vulture looked down at Jerry. They seemed to make eye contact and gazed at each other for a few moments. And then the vulture turned around, raised its tail, and shot a huge stream of excrement directly at us. It was a scene that apparently repeated itself at other times in Jerry's life, including one memorable encounter with a pair of nesting eagles he'd disturbed on that same reservoir a year or two earlier.
He was a stage production engineer for Betty's theater company, the Little Theater in Ellicott City. He loved playing with computers and mastered all manner of hardware and software. He designed Shalem's web site in the mid 1990s and was its webmaster until just a few months ago. He also designed and fashioned Shalem's first computer database in the early '90s, naming it "Teresa" after one of his very favorite saints. It served Shalem well for many years. I recall long phone conversations answering his questions about the finer points of accounting so he could get the database calculations just right, which of course he did.
He was a wonderful musician and composed several chants which Shalem has long used, three of which we are singing here today-Changeless and Calm, God Guide Us Home, and God Alone. He played numerous instruments, among them guitar, dulcimer, drums, hurdy-gurdy, and most recently the shruti box, the "perfect drone" for which he'd been long searching and about which he wrote so poignantly this past year.
His spiritual life defied easy categorizations and encompassed the breadth and depth of spiritual tradition. Raised Methodist, he moved easily within the variety of Christian denominations and embraced all major spiritual traditions. He particularly appreciated Buddhism, especially in its Tibetan and Zen expressions. He studied Hinduism and mined the wisdom of its Sanskrit texts. He explored Judaism, Celtic spirituality, Shamanism, and many other authentic spiritual traditions and shared his learnings with us. He searched for and found in them that common ground of being in God that resonated with the ground of his own being. And through this realization he helped us break the boundaries of religion, to break the bindings and strictures that keep us from realizing and claiming a deeper, authentic spiritual life.
He struggled with the church but had great compassion for it and especially for those who sought to renew and reclaim its spiritual grounding and essence. He counted among his friends priests and ministers of every denomination, Tibetan Rimpoches, Zen masters, rabbis, Eastern Orthodox monks, and many, many other spiritual leaders.
He was the quintessential iconoclast. He relished in putting down those he thought were too full of themselves-especially other spiritual leaders. And yet at times he could be all too full of himself-and that's where he, and we, could count on Betty to bring him back down to earth and keep him grounded, be it with a fish thrown at his head or some other well-timed gesture.
He was strong and forceful, always very sure of himself. Yet he was wonderfully gentle, exquisitely vulnerable and not afraid to show it. He was welcoming and tolerant yet uncompromising in his dedication to what he knew as truth. He was flawed yet never hid his frailties and openly shared them so we might learn from the depths to which he probed his own brokenness. He could be tender and compassionate, yet at times startlingly and devastatingly critical, bruising even those he cared for most. Yet you never doubted that underneath was an uncompromising love and desire for our good. He wanted and urged us to move beyond our own limits, just as he tried to move beyond his.
Jerry laughed often and shared that laughter so freely. He was a natural clown-and he and Betty raised a bunch of clowns to boot (including one who makes an honest living at it)! He loved Monty Python and South Park, and it seemed the raunchier and more blasphemous the humor the better.
I can't begin to recount all the laughter we shared, and I'm sure many of you here have similar moments-and I encourage you to do so rather than focus on your sorrow. I think it's what Jerry would want for us for today and every day.
And he loved so much. Love was the most important thing to Jerry, and God was nothing other than love. He sought only to help us see this simple truth for ourselves.
I want to share with you some paragraphs from his yet-to-be published book which speak to his deep realization of love. He writes of his experiences over the past 15 years when he found himself literally called into the wilderness, both the wilderness of nature and the wilderness of disease and physical diminishment.
"I have a sense now of the creator of the universe, full of exuberance, loving all things into being, bursting with cosmic delight in fashioning endlessly diverse and infinitely creative life. It is a splendor so vast that I chuckle at myself for any attempt to understand it."
"And now I must laugh aloud, for I cannot help feeling I do understand something of it; I understand that all creation participates in creation. Created by and of the essence of an endlessly creative Creator, creation creates endlessly. No wonder we sometimes can't make distinctions!"
"Sometimes I can actually feel this creation taking place as a kind of play: love dancing in freedom. Love is the pervading passion of all things that draws diversity into oneness, that knows and pleads for union, that aches for goodness and beauty, that suffers loss and destruction. Love is the Power that births and grieves, the laughter that fills the heavens, the tears that water the earth. Love is the energy that fuels, fills and embraces everything everywhere. And there is no end to it, ever."
So who was Jerry May? He was the most integrated person I've ever known or likely ever will know. And he was so much more. In the final year of his life he continued to ask himself, "Who am I?" He probed ever more deeply into the mystery of his own divine/human encounter. In the end I believe he would have answered that question simply: "I AM." For Jerry that perceived space between God and him had, I believe, simply disappeared.
At his bedside that last day Betty shared with us that among his final words to her were these: "Trust in Love. Trust in God." With Jerry's example and with God's grace, we surely can and will.
Just Jerry
by Gail Epes
Dear Jerry,
It has been horrible not having you here in person, but every time I begin to plunge downward into despair, something prevents me, some sense that you really did fly away: you flew off not into nowhere but into everywhere.
But too soon, too soon! You were young (by my standards) and wanted to live. I wasn't ready to go on alone, without you as a spiritual director, yet here I am.
I remember reading in one of your articles in Shalem News that though your family knew you were well known out in the world, at home they knew you as "just Jerry." You knew yourself that way, too, knew your boundaries, your humanity. What you gave me as a spiritual director was the space and safety to experience myself as "just Gail" and to know the adequacy and fullness of that self in increasing amounts over time.
How I could forget, though, and how patient you were when finding me back to my own tricks of doubt and negation. I always thought an hour with you was as if my jumbled inner kaleidoscope was gently turned through your listening until a bright shining pattern emerged, sufficient for sending me back out into the world oddly (how did it happen?) smiling.
Two dreams. One I had forgotten but found in my journal. I was lying sideways, and you were there to encourage me. Someone came in threatening to distract me. It was as if I were going through a birth canal. 'You're almost through,' you said. That was at the end of October.
At the end of January, I saw you for the last time. I didn't know it would be the last time, but because of your illness, I tried to be aware that it could be possible. (It was in that session that you told me that the way I think of priesthood is idolatry, enough for me to ponder the rest of my life). You were having trouble staying warm so even in your office you wore a brown felt hat and wrapped yourself in a gorgeous shawl of many golden colors which someone had made for you. You had a gleeful look on your face, like a monk's. I remember saying to you, "You look like a free man."
In that hour you also said that you knew now that you needed to be sick; it was the only way you would stop trying to take charge of your own life.
The second dream came after you died. We were all at a Shalem workshop and you had led the morning session. After lunch, you went upstairs to rest. At the top of the stairs was a sign which recorded a significant event in the life of the staff at Shalem. The last sentence said, "We were transformed by laughter."
Jerry, I had a hard time after you died, having forgotten the heavy cellular pain of grief and missing your incarnate encouragement, especially before I preached. One day I sat on the floor of my study trying to write a sermon and crying, remembering how many times you prayed me into the pulpit and wondering what to do now. At that moment, I looked out the window of my city house and saw the streaking flight of a Great Blue Heron--a kind of cosmic wink. There was laughter in the air. Transformative.
You helped me so much with my love of earth and animals. I hope you see me riding my horse Scooter now, see and know the joy. We used to pray for you together, and I loved how you said, "Say hello to Scooter and his Gail."
In my sorrow, I thought you'd paid a visit to the powers-that-be and said, "Give her a good dollop of a Dark Night. It will be the best gift I could give her."
When I heard there would be a memorial service for you, all I could picture in my mind's eye was a blue sky full of balloons. I suppose you know how I smiled when I walked into Bon Secours--balloons everywhere, and that huge bunch at the altar, perfect! Happy, blessed, glad, grateful I am for the gift of knowing you in God.
Amen and thank you, just Jerry,
with love, from just Gail
Gail Epes, is an Episcopal chaplain in Alexandria, VA
Music of the Night
by Gordon Forbes
He sits, blanket on shoulders like a shroud,
rasps out chants to the wail of a shruti box.
It goes beyond melody, disguises its harmony,
travels to the edge of music, folding into moan,
flirts with pure sound, dark, guttural
beyond the belly.
The original sound of creation
calling life to form, dissolve, reform.
He has gone past Will and Spirit,
Or the beautiful chaos of psychiatry
whose categories explode when
pure compassion cries and spirit blows.
Nothing is left but to move
beyond the known toward
The Inscrutable One
wild, and lovely
even in the dark.
Fly Away Home
by Marjorie Donnelly
Where does a cowboy go when he dies?
In my mind's eye, Gerald May is outfitted in full cowboy regalia presiding over our Shalem Spiritual Guidance training sessions. He has on jeans and a belt with a huge buckle, cowboy boots, hat, spurs and he's ridden in on a steed!
Once I get an archetype in mind, my imagination takes over to fill in the details; so admittedly, I'm not sure how much of this cowboy image is authentic. (OK, I know the spurs and steed are my addition!)
The question remains: Where does a cowboy go when he dies? For that matter, where does a psychiatrist, an author, a spiritual guide, a Shalem Senior Fellow, a beloved mentor and friend go when he dies?
That question has been on my mind, not because I'm naturally prone to deep thoughts about the afterlife; but rather because when I learned of Jerry May's impending death, I decided to pray for him by two-stepping to a song he played at the Summer 2003 Spiritual Guidance Residency.
Entitled I'll Fly Away (from the CD, O Brother Where Art Thou?), it
easily and succinctly answers my question about where someone goes when
they die in the words of the first verse:
"Some bright morning when this life is over, I'll fly away
To the home on God's celestial shore; I'll fly away."
I have chosen to honor Jerry's memory by continuing to dance to this tune, and so I'm regularly in touch with both the lightheartedness and joy of my two-stepping partner's soaring spirit and the strength and courage of his confident down-to-earth cowboy spirit.
I was blessed to have an embodied Jerry as my mentor and teacher at both of my spiritual guidance residencies. He was always bigger than life with an energetic presence that filled the room; a belly laugh that infected the group; and a gentle irreverence that brought us home to the truth about God and ourselves. For certain, his body is gone, and we rightfully grieve; but that bigger than life energetic presence, which is the essence of our mentor and teacher, is alive and well and two stepping to I'll Fly Away!
There's a second song that Jerry played at my first residency called Angel Band, again on the CD, O Brother Where Art Thou? When I read Jerry's article Of Death and Drones reprinted from Shalem News, Fall 2004, I chuckled out loud. If indeed, Gerald May has flown away to the home on God's celestial shore; and, furthermore, if he has taken up residence in God's Angel Band; then we know exactly what instrument he's playing-the shruti box. I am confident that Jerry is praising God with the sound of the drone all the while two-stepping in his cowboy boots!
Marjorie is a graduate of Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, Summer 2004.
Jerry's Path into the Heart of Love
by Tilden Edwards
Jerry visited me in my office one day in late 1973, referred by a mutual friend. He was a young psychiatrist just moved to the Washington area from Lancaster, PA. There, in the drug treatment center where he worked, he had discovered that the only clients who really seemed to become free were those who had some kind of spiritual transformation.
That awareness, among other things, had launched him into a fresh spiritual quest, both for himself and for his work, which now was in a Maryland prison, as well as with private patients. He wanted to explore how he could join me in my own deeper spiritual quest, in the Shalem group that had recently begun.
Over the next 32 years of his life that quest found a home at Shalem: a soul home and a work home, and given his irreverent spontaneous sense of humor and prankster habits, also a fun-house home! Some months after joining the first contemplative group, I asked Jerry if he would be one of the leaders for future groups, to which he readily agreed. As Shalem grew, he became more and more involved, until by the mid-80's he joined me full time on Shalem's program staff, along with Rose Mary Dougherty. He had already written three books by then, including one commissioned by Shalem, and his great books were yet to come.
I have learned a lot about God's sense of humor and means of stimulating growth and love through the way he put and kept Jerry and me together all those years, literally for thousands of hours altogether. We were two people who couldn't have had more different personalities and sometimes strongly different instincts about organizational and personal issues. However, when it came to our sense of the essence of contemplative awareness and the spiritual journey, our more peripheral differences collapsed and we spontaneously shared an overlapping spiritual heart. I could recognize my sense of inner spiritual truth in his words and prayer, and I think usually vice versa as well, even as we provided a mutual challenge to greater clarity and inclusiveness of vision at times. On a more personal level, we were mutual spiritual companions monthly (an hour for him, an hour for me), for 20 years. Those intimate times together regularly transcended our differences and sank us into the larger gracious Presence for one another.
I always greatly valued Jerry's evolving perspective of the spiritual journey, even if my own direction veered away a little from his in the later years. I always looked forward to his comments about drafts of articles and books I was writing and often was struck by the instinctual, effortless "orthodoxy" of his comments and writings, in the sense of their being so consonant with the writings of great contemplatives of Christian (and sometimes of other) traditions, whom he often quoted.
Eventually I began to keep a special "Jerry file," where I brought together some of my notes from his seminars, as well as letters and notes to me that were part of our mutual wonderings about the nature of the spiritual journey (most of which I think eventually entered into our published works). In looking through that file recently, I was reminded of how central love became to him in his experience of God and understanding of the journey. In one handwritten note to me, where he was speaking of the classical spiritual paths of knowledge, devotion and action, he wrote the following:
"Real formation, I began to sense, moved toward something encompassing all the ways, encompassing both self and no-self, quiet mind and active mind. And with the brain study "love" became the all important thing-not just the feeling of love or the action of love or an attitude of love, but the totality of lovingness. Nothing but love and grace transcended the neurons. Nothing but love could beat them, or bypass them, or transform them....So...I have recently come to see spiritual formation as growth in love. My reading of the Masters seemed to affirm that that's what counts. Also it was in reading the Masters that I "caught" the idea that spiritual formation is God's work, through grace, with our assent-and that God has been working all along, and that God can work through our desires, not against them."
Since that time Jerry's own experience of that mysterious divine love continued to deepen toward the most delicate sense of God's loving intimacy and vulnerability, including right through all his suffering with cancer, congestive heart failure and related illnesses. His trust in God's living presence could enable a certain inner lightness through much physical heaviness, and help to preserve his incredible humor, and sometimes lead to songs of faith and praise (some of his own composition) accompanied toward the end by an Indian drone, his beloved "shruti" box, which his family has given to Shalem.
In Quaker tradition one speaks of "weighty Friends," those who command an inner spiritual authority, experience and wisdom. Jerry was certainly a spiritual and human heavyweight, whose presence virtually always left an imprint on whoever was present, be that liberating, challenging, threatening, insightful, or tenderly loving. He was a pioneering spiritual leader of our time. He will live on mightily in the hearts of those who were touched by him in person and in his writings. For me personally, I will always be grateful for the grace that brought him into my life, into Shalem's life, and into the world's life, where there is so much need for the loving, contemplative and, yes, irreverent wisdom with which he was so gifted. Now he has entered fully into the heart of true Love, which he knew so well beckons us all day by day.
For Jerry
by Rose Mary Dougherty
So many memories of Jerry continue to flood into my mind, each (well, nearly each) accompanied by deep gratitude and many accompanied by laughter. But it is the brief time that I spent with him the night before his death that speaks most profoundly of him.
I don't know that Jerry knew I was there. He was looking straight ahead, very intently engaged in a conversation that those of us present were not privy to. Jerry's role was more of a listener than speaker in that conversation. Occasionally he would nod his head vigorously and respond a firm, "Yea! Yea!" Sometimes he would turn his head toward us and call for his wife, Betty, as though he wanted to tell her what was going on.
After awhile someone said to me, "He's really out of his head right now." I couldn't have agreed more with the person. He was out of his head. And it seemed to me that he was in that fierce, determined place of heart knowing/heart searching that I had caught glimpses of before. It is this image of Jerry that I carry with me now.
Kabir's poem, "To Be a Slave of Intensity," gives expression to my experience of Jerry. I offer it here for Jerry and, perhaps presumptuously, I offer it as Jerry's legacy to us. Thank you, good man, Jerry, for risking your intensity!
---------------------------------------------------------------
To Be a Slave of Intensity
by Kabir
Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think...while you are alive.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten-that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.
Source: indranet.com
Remembering Jerry May
by Tony Sayer
1)
just the other night i realized he was truly gone from us
i went out to look at the stars
the Twins were holding the moon in their hands
they had overturned its bowl of light
2)
he was our teacher and soul friend
but he is gone from us
no more will we hear that strange beguiling voice
strong enough to flatten all pretensions
soft enough to make our soul lean forward
no more will we see his stylish slow fandango
which he managed standing still
or even sitting in a chair
to any kind of music at all
no more will his scrawl grace our proffered pages
no more books
(well, maybe one or two
as befits a prolific dead author)
3)
he was our teacher and soul friend
but he is gone from us
who filled himself by keeping himself open
who was just himself in the most ordinary way
which turned out to be
extraordinary
who did not think it too mean a thing
to sense a mystical depth
even in us
and blew softly on the small flame within
who taught us a grave and powerful mantra
"remember
the only state you are in
is the state of Maryland"
4)
to tell the truth when i first met him
he was already as good as gone
he looked like death warmed over
he could have said like one before him
"as for me i am already being poured out
i have fought the good fight
i have run the race
i have kept the faith"
though if he had said it
he would have struck a pose
and
silent laughter
would have glittered in his eyes
and played at the edges of his mouth
for he was quite simply
beyond pity
beyond drama
beyond heroics
it was good for us to see him thus
to see death dealt with so lightly
for him (and for us)
grace means freedom
not just
freedom from death
but
freedom for love and delight
and to live means simply this
daily turning toward love
in all things
in all circumstances
5)
the bowl of light is upended
and he is gone from us
he is up there now
or out there
or in there
(wherever the there of paradise is)
he is hobnobbing with John of the Cross about the Heart Sutra
and delights to discover
they both understand it
he is showing Teresa how to move to a hiphop melody
and delights to discover
she is one fine dancer
all his gifts are gloriously magnificently in play
for if heaven is any kind of a heaven at all
it is a place where
the true worth of our gifts
comes clear
even to us
6)
he is gone from us
but we have his books
our memories
our faith
small things all
but more than enough
and
(the bowl of light overflows)
he has one last gift for us
7)
the stars shine with pale dignity
the Twins are holding the moon in their hands
they have upended its bowl of light
empty full
grief and joy (and presence and absence)
all mixed together
all splashing down
i lift my hands
for my friend's last gift of
(what else)
rich dark silence
Tony is a participant in Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, Winter 2006 Class.
At Peace
by Paul May
Barely dawn, the frogs and crickets wake me.
Cold in my sleeping bag.
I hold my tent flap back and see him,
Squatting next to the fire.
His old hat with a new feather.
Simple boots, rawhide laces.
His pipe smoke mixes with the campfire's,
Then carries the scent of bacon into my tent.
It's cold. I have to pee, but I watch him,
Just sitting there,
His arms across his knees, watching the fire.
The bacon sizzles. He is at peace.
Later, I feel his strong fingers around my waist
The rock ledge is inches from my toes.
Autumn-painted treetops blanket the world below us.
I'm afraid, but safe. Breathless.
Over moonlit sand dunes on Lake Superior,
He floats a Frisbee with perfect aim.
We play for hours past midnight,
The moon is bright, and we cannot stop laughing.
Late that night I hear his voice, strangely serious.
"Be very still," he says.
A skunk wanders past the front of our tents.
We are terrified, thrilled, silent.
I remember these things,
Because my little girl is curled up in my arms.
I smell the campfire smoke in her hair.
Her fingers, sticky with marshmallows.
It is cold, and I hold her close to keep her warm.
The frogs and crickets will wake me first.
Maybe she will watch me watch the fire.
I will be at peace.
Paul read this poem, which he had sent to his Dad for Father's Day 2004, at the Memorial Service.
Memorial Service Reflections
by The May Family
When Bill Dietrich was talking about his wonderful canoe voyages with Jerry, I thought back to the canoe trips Jerry and I took together. When Jerry returned from one of his trips with Bill, or when he got back from one of his solo outings, he would be relaxed and calm and filled with awe at the wonders of nature.
Then he and I would go out together. I would hop in the canoe and say, "Okay, how fast can this sucker go?" And we would take off. Ten minutes into our trip Jerry would be yelling at me, "Betty, for pete's sake, slow down. Canoes aren't supposed to leave wakes!" When we returned home he would stagger into the house and flop down on the couch, exhausted, and with no thoughts of the wonders of nature. I kind of see this as a metaphor of our life together, but somehow we made it through forty-two wonderful years.
Jerry loved to laugh. In our theater the kids would ask before every show, "Is Jerry coming tonight?" They knew his infectious laugh would make for a wonderful audience. I think Greg said it best: His presence always guaranteed a great show.
When Jerry died he was surrounded by the people he loved most. We cried, told funny stories and laughed and cried and told him we loved him. It is wonderful that the last thing Jerry heard was the sound of laughter and the words, "I love you" said over and over again.
by Betty May
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In high school my dad got me hooked on the books of Carlos Castaneda. We'd talk about the philosophies of Don Juan and the Yaqui Indians, compare our attempts at lucid dreaming, and look for power spots when we were on family vacations. Then we started in on Eastern religions: Zen, Taoism, the Dalai Lama and Buddhism. I never dove that deeply into it all, but conversations with my dad did prepare me well for my comparative religion studies class in college.
After college, though, my scientific training began in earnest. I was one of only a few in my graduate class who believed in God. After graduate school I labeled myself an "optimistic agnostic," and my conversations with my father branched more into the intertwining of science and religion, especially where it touched aspects of psychology. We would talk about journal articles mapping brain activity to memory. We'd discuss awareness and consciousness in a physiological sense. A couple months ago I found a cool review on studies into the genetics of spite in lower organisms. We'd both heard about the altruistic behavior of ants and bees and such, but we'd never heard of insects and bugs being purposefully cruel to other populations. The joy of science was still a common ground for us.
We had some great discussions, but as I got deeper and deeper into hard science, I found myself drifting further and further from God. My father held that religion and science were much closer than the popular media would have you believe, in that both were dependent upon the precept of faith. Try as I might, I could never quite agree with that idea, and last year I approached my dad about my collapsing faith and my frustration about it. He was a man of science first, and then became richer and richer in faith as he grew older. I was experiencing the opposite, and I didn't like it.
That is where the thread ended. And I feel robbed. I learned so much from my father... so much. I learned passion for knowledge and a work ethic. Wonder about science and nature -wonder for wonder's sake. The irony is that, while I learned so much from him, I am only now ready and needing of his guidance in the very field in which he was an expert. He has helped so many through spiritual direction. I, my brothers, and my sister got more from him than any of you ever did. But still, I am jealous of the guidance so many received from him.
And so I'll end with my own statement of faith. I love my father very much. And he loves me. I'll miss him the rest of my life.
by Earl May
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If there is one recurring theme that I have picked up from my Dad's work and from his writing, it is the concept of "just being." I've never been very good at "just being." I'm always running around, racing to check items off my to-do list, desperately trying to be more efficient, more organized, more in control. When I slow down and breathe, when I just let go and relax and stop worrying, I can feel myself crossing that line, crossing from trying and doing and stressing to just... being. My dad was good at this. So good, in fact, that it became his way of life. It's funny, because the memories I have of "just being," of truly relaxing and opening my heart to the world... most of those memories are of times I spent with him.
My dad was often referred to as the "laugh track" for the Little Theater on the Corner. The kids always loved when he was in the audience, because he laughed so naturally at even the corniest jokes. And his laughter was truly infectious. Within seconds, the rest of the audience would be laughing right along with him. When I was younger, I used to think that he was just very good at making it sound like he thought stuff was funny. But I learned over time that this was really part of him "just being." The reason it sounded so natural, was because it was natural. He was just laughing. Laughing and enjoying life.
While he was in the hospital, Dad's infections, and the pain medications he was given, often made him delirious and sometimes even gave him hallucinations. But even in these times of craziness, of his dropping in and out of reality, he was kind and smiled and cracked jokes. I've heard horror stories about people in his condition saying terrible things, hurtful things. I wonder sometimes what might come out of my mouth if I were in the same situation. Part of it was his strength, and the courage he had to go through what he did. But most of it, again, was that he was just being, just rolling with the punches, just choosing to be in love with life and everything around him.
I spent a lot of time fishing with my dad-the canoe cutting through the morning mist on the reservoir that he mentions in his wilderness book. There was a time when I was really struggling with the stress of teaching in Baltimore City. I was bringing the stress home. We paddled across the water and he listened, offered no advice, just listened. His listening cleansed me as much as cutting through the morning mist did.
by Paul May
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About ten years ago, I made a life decision: something simple-along the lines of quitting college and running away to join the circus. I was thrilled at the prospect of my upcoming adventures, and the decision I had made felt right. In the core of my being, it felt right.
Both of my parents shared my excitement, but during the rejoicing my dad whipped out his theologi-k-an hat and asked me to take a few breaths and step back from my emotions without diminishing them.
He said I should catch a mental snapshot of what I was feeling right then, right there, in the moment. That I should jot down a few mental notes so I could recognize this feeling again in the future.
Because later on in my life, he said, I would be making other decisions, and if I didn't feel like this when I made them, then maybe I should slow down a bit, kind of rein things in, maybe even rethink them a little.
And then he dumped a cup of water down my pants.
To be honest, I don't remember exactly what silly thing he did there: the water down the pants, the bait fish in the pocket, the innocent request that I smell whether some mayonnaise had gone bad. What I do remember clearly is what a right decision feels like.
My dad knew how to squeeze the value from every moment.
During the intense grief I've felt over the last week, I've tried a few times to take that step back, to take that mental snapshot of what these feelings feel like so that I will have another emotional benchmark to guide me in the future.
One other thing my dad used to say that has helped me over the last week is a phrase he often used to close his e-mails when we were corresponding about a novel I've been working on for many years.
He would write, "Keep on keep'n on. Love, Dad."
What he meant was that though writing and marketing are long and often painful processes, they simply must be done if you want to finish a book. You have to keep on keep'n on. Every day.
Right now, this applies to much more of my life than writing. I am struggling every day to keep on keep'n on. All of us must struggle each day to keep on keep'n on throughout the weeks, years, and decades to come.
How we're going do this, I honestly have no idea. But I know that we have to. Because we have no choice. Because it is what Dad would want.
So, I ask everyone to keep on keep'n on.
by Greg May
Meditation
by Gerald May
Jerry's first article appeared in the December 1978 issue of "Shalem News;" the following is an excerpt of that article.
With completely open arms I would embrace all this. Just-as-it-is. Nothing added or subtracted. The beauty is indescribable.
By night my mind makes images of life, preparing for the morning. As a dream it does this, and its work is long and hard.
When dawn comes and I wake up, the images are ready-already laid over my consciousness like so many veils.
There is an image of me-of who I am and was and will be. Clinging to this or that characteristic of myself, sensing some kind of identity.
There are images of those around me, of my loved ones, colleagues, neighbors. These are images filled with longing, scorn, prejudice and possessiveness, and occasionally, fear.
There are images of my environment, of time and space and form, telling me the names and purposes of things. Without these I might try to drink the sunlight or wear a chair upon my feet. Would that be so bad?
And there are images of my own thoughts and feelings. Some energy arises in my chest, and it attracts my attention. Then without a moment's pause, my mind selects the appropriate image. "Longing," I say. "Wanting, needing, not having-hunger." A name for this energy in my chest, but it all happens so quickly I don't even know it's my label. It seems I actually feel wanting, longing, hunger.
And then the dance of the images begins. Over the raw and pure essence of things as they are, I have placed the many-colored veils and filters of things as I want them to be, and the world becomes dulled, and cumbersome, and very complicated.
My image of me reacts with my image of you and your image of you and your image of me, in an arena of our images of the way things are around us, in a time frame which is only image, and it is all driven by energy disguised as emotions, striving for concocted goals, running from imagined fears, playing in an invented space between us.
There is a certain quality of feeling about this image-dance. A subtle thing, but recognizable. It feels as if there were some tenseness about my eyes and forehead, and my shoulders scrunch up a little bit. There is something closed-in, tight, confining about my consciousness, almost as if all the images have packed themselves together tightly, encompassing the entire sphere of my vision. There is no space. The air is stuffy.
Recognizing this, seeing this image-of-my-images, my eyes blink hard and I shake my head a little. Take a deep breath and blow it all away.
And then, oh, just for a fraction of a second, just an instant, it all becomes clear. The world sparkles with diamond sharpness of detail and-just then-things are as they are. The images have fallen away, simply not there, and beyond them, through them, the indescribable beauty!
Here now in this precious moment there is no difference between me and you, no pulling of this against that, no struggling of feeling-just this, all of it, as-it-is. Wonderful, exquisite, awesome and immense, the universe opens its heart and love, love is the very air.
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A Potpourri of Jerry's Newsletter Writings, 1992-2002
Most of what I know about the spiritual life I have learned in relationships with other people, but there are some lessons that only aloneness can teach. I discovered this two summers ago when I found a place I could go for absolute solitude. It is on a mountain in a State Forest where almost no one goes when it's not hunting season. At the times I have camped there, I have never seen another human being. There I have learned that for me, at least in that setting, the essential value of solitude is freedom. When no one else is around, I am freed from my habitual social reflexes. There is no need for decorum, propriety, or tact, no fear of rejection or disapproval, no drive to compete or compare, no cause to endear, secure, protect, or define myself.
Freed from such interpersonal reactions, I find a different self
emerging. It is young, exuberant, spontaneous, playful beyond
restraint, courageous beyond my dreams. I do not act out fantasies or
strive to fit images, because the reality of being free in nature's
arms and God's love is more amazing than anything I could imagine.
Along with freedom from self-images, I find liberation from my images
of God. It is not a matter of replacing one image with another-instead
it seems all the images disappear. God is not this or that, not me, not
other, not within, not without; God just simply is. Similarly, prayer
just is: no separation, no compartmentalization, no definition. At one
point during my last visit to the mountain, I tried to pray the way I
usually do at home. Immediately it felt wrong. It was, I recognized, an
image of myself praying to an image of God. It seemed to put God at a
distance and it made me feel separate from the trees and earth around
me. When I stopped "praying," I relaxed into the deeper, truer prayer
that had been given all along, a prayer without doing, almost without
intent. In that letting-be of prayer I can sense the all-embracing
intimacy of God: no need to reach out or even to seek.
--Fall, 1992, "The Freedom of Solitude"
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It has taken a long time, but now I think I understand something about not trying. It is another thing nature has taught me. The first lesson, more than twenty years ago, went completely over my head. I had walked alone into the Sonoran desert in search of a perfect place to meditate. I found a flat rock in the shade of a small paloverde tree with a magnifi-cent view of the desert, endless sky and gentle wisps of clouds. I sat on the stone, breathed deeply and closed my eyes, seeking inner stillness. The sounds of birds and insects invaded my consciousness, and my eyes kept opening to see the desert beauty. God forgive me-I thought those things were distractions and I fought them, my body tense on the rock, trying to be contemplative. I later wrote about that meditation as one of the worst of my life.
Over the ensuing years, I tried different ways to be contemplative.
I also tried not to try to be contem-plative. I tried to quit trying
altogether. It all made me very tired. Then I began spending longer
times in the wilderness alone. It gradually became clear to me that
authentic contemplation is given, not achieved. In the wilderness,
prayer just is, prayerfulness is the way things are. The trees do not
try to be trees; they just are what they are. They do what they do.
Maybe we all have to go through trying to be contemplative. It does
express our desire, and maybe it teaches us something about what
contemplation is and is not. It certainly teaches us about self-will.
But there comes a time when trying is finished, a time that is given.
This summer I'll be going into the desert alone again. I'm sure I'll
want to be contemplative. I hope and pray that I won't impose my ideas
and efforts about contemplation on whatever God has in store for me
there. If my eyes seek the beauty of the sky, if my limbs want to move
over the land, if my thoughts want to roam, I hope God will save me
from the arrogance of calling such things distractions. I want to be
who I am in the wilderness as it is, with God as God chooses to be.
This is also what I pray for right here, right now.
-- Summer 1993, "Trying to be Contemplative"
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Twenty-five years ago, I thought contemplation was an "altered state of consciousness," an extra-ordinary improvement upon natural human awareness. But in actual experience I have always had the feeling that contemplation is absolute naturalness. Becoming quiet, body and mind easing, I sense a moment of true presence. I am simply here, simply now, simply being, and it feels like a home-coming rather than something being altered or enhanced. It is how I was as a little child, how I was always meant to be, completely natural, pricelessly ordinary. From this perspective, contemplation is the opposite of an altered state. It is consciousness in its pure, unadulterated, wholly natural condition.
In my studies, I came to understand that contemplation is characterized by two basic psychological qualities. The first is immediacy, centeredness in the present moment. In contemplation, one is not lost in memories of the past or fantasies of the future, but is directly conscious of what comes to awareness in the here-and-now. When memories, fears, hopes or plans happen within contemplation, they do not take one out of the moment. Instead, one has a subtle, soft appreciation that they are part of what is happening right now, right here.
The second quality is openness, a simple receptiveness to all the thoughts, feelings, sights, sounds and other perceptions that each moment brings. In contemplation, one is not concentrating, focusing on one "important" thing to the exclusion of other "distracting" things. Nor is one avoiding, denying, or distorting what is given. Instead, there is a gentle willingness to acknowledge whatever comes.
This tender, powerful combination of immediacy and openness may seem
strange because our minds are unaccustomed to it. We are more in the
habit of being "away" from the present moment, more used to focusing
our attention and controlling our perceptions. In this sense, the
uncontrolled freedom of contempla-tion may indeed seem unusual. But if
your experience is like mine, you know in the moment that
contempla-tion is home. It may be unusual, even abnormal in the sense
that we aren't used to it, but it is certainly not unnatural. Nothing
could be more natural than contemplation.
-- Winter 1994, "Contemplation: Natural & Wild"
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After chemotherapy for his lymphoma in 1995, Jerry offered some notes of his recent journey for newsletter readers.
July 14. After endless tests at NIH, I begin a six-month course of chemo-therapy. I have a venous line in my neck and am carrying around a pack that pumps drugs into my blood-stream. It hurts, and the drugs are already making me feel bad. But joy and gratitude remain.
July 22. I felt worse all week, and now have been hospitalized for jaundice and GI tract paralysis. I am permitted nothing by mouth and feel I'm dying of thirst.
July 23. I dream of drinking from a clear mountain stream. I awaken, parched, praying for real water. I remember two little girls last summer in Bosnia, filling a bucket from the single working water tap in their Muslim side of town. Never again will I take water for granted.
July 24. In the night, in the midst of pain and thirst, I have a vision. God has placed me upon a promontory and has spread out before me a small version of the universe. It is a beautiful rolling meadow, and I am meant to see every part of it. All around its circumference I can see where the universe ends, where someone could wander off and disappear forever. But I see also that along the edges God has stationed angels to keep all things safe. I think there must be some place left unguarded, some unprotected precipice. I spend hours searching, yet the angels are everywhere; there is nowhere outside God's protection. The vision fades and words come: "So you see, God has everything covered, without exception. Because God overlooks nothing, there is never any need to worry about anything, ever. You can worry, and you probably will worry, but you never have to worry, about anything, ever."
July 25. I realize the difference between worrying and caring. Worrying
comes from mistrusting God's grace, from believing I must cope with
things myself. But simple caring is nothing other than my own love and
grace. It is the place from which I become an active, privileged
participant in God's grace, where I join the angels at the edge. No
wonder such gratitude.
-- Fall 1995, "Angels at the Edge"
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I believe we truly are here for fun. I don't expect to comprehend God's fun any more than I can comprehend God's love, but one thing is clear. No matter how much pain, abuse, or injustice we may suffer or cause others to suffer, a certain delightfulness remains within us that can never be destroyed. And somehow, at some point in every situation, there is always an invitation to join the play.
Sometimes I wonder how religion got so serious. How have so many of us become what Quaker scholar Thomas Kelly called "dour old sober sides" in matters of the spirit? Why do we restrain our celebrations and plan them so carefully, making sure they are always tasteful, appropriate, and most importantly, always about something? I could speculate on the reasons, but right now it doesn't feel like fun.
Instead, let me share another memory. I was nine years old when my father died. I remember the trouble he had breathing in his last moments, and how my mother asked me to call an ambulance because she couldn't leave his side. I remember how I felt when our minister confirmed that my father was dead. "We lost him," he said, and that's exactly what I felt. I had lost my dad, would never hear his laugh or feel his hand on my shoulder again. I missed him terribly. I cried from a grief I could barely understand.
When we came back home after his burial, all our relatives gathered there. Everyone was being very nice to me, and I began playing with cousins my age that I hadn't seen for a long time. I was having fun. I had so much fun, in fact, that one of my aunts called me aside and whispered sternly, "You'd better calm down or people will think you're happy that your father died." I immediately went over and sat by my mother and began to cry again. This time the tears were not from grief but from shame.
Now, 47 years later, I rejoice that I have been largely delivered from
such shames. Like Thomas Kelly said, "... one tries to keep one's inner
hilarity and exuberance within bounds lest, like the people of
Pentecost, we be mistaken for being filled with new wine." I find,
however, that I am no longer very concerned. In a way, it is new wine.
-- Summer 1996, "A Wink Out of Nowhere"
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I know now that it is possible to pray in action instead of alternating prayer and action. It is even possible to think analytically or add a column of numbers in one's mind without closing off one's immediate openness to other sights, sounds, thoughts ... and prayer. With grace, one can indeed flow wholly in participation with God's presence in any given moment of life, moving through both pleasant and unpleasant undertakings inspired by rightness instead of driven by will. And what's even better ... one can immediately appreciate and enjoy that it's happening that way.
One pays a price, of course, when one's willful habits of consciousness
begin to change. Controlling things is out of the question. And
intentionality must become increasingly delicate, the thinnest veil
between desire and action. I suspect that what we know as
intentionality eventually disappears entirely, leaving only sheer
desire as the empty content of wordless prayer. This requires the
simultaneous full-feeling of desire and relaxing our ego-grip on all
our agendas, even those that are most spiritual. It means a continually
deepening discovery that the fullness of selfhood lies not in claiming
autonomy, dedication, or commitment-finally in not claiming
anything-but rather in the magnifi-cent being of who we authentically
are in God, with God, loved and ... embraced and infused by God, and as
living manifestations of God's very Self.
-- Fall 1997, "The Shadow Side of Intention"
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What empowered Teresa to transcend two decades of struggle with herself and her advisors? Teresa describes what happened. She finally surrendered, not to her own judgments nor to those of anyone else, but to God alone. She quit trying to control her prayer and simply put it in God's hands. Thereafter, instead of blindly trusting the opinions of others, she tested them against her own interior experience of the Divine Presence.
Repeatedly she affirms it was God's sheer grace that enabled her to surrender and, thereby, find her strength. She also mentions three experiences which were vehicles of that grace. Two were words she heard God speak in prayer; the third was meeting a human being who finally understood her.
One powerful word from God came at a time when Teresa was feeling especially abandoned by her friends. "They were all against me;" she wrote, "some, it seemed, made fun of me ... others advised my confessor to be careful of me ..." Praying in her loneliness, Teresa heard God say, "Do not fear, daughter; for I am, and I will not abandon you."
"By these words alone," Teresa says, "I was given calm together with
fortitude, courage, security, quietude, and light so that in one moment
I saw my soul become another. It seems to me I would have disputed with
the entire world that these words came from God. Oh, what a good God!"
-- Summer 1998, "To Hell With The Devils"
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I can't remember exactly when I first encountered the writings of John of the Cross. I'm sure they never mentioned him in my Methodist Sunday school. I must have come across excerpts in the late sixties when I began to explore mystical traditions, but excerpts are a problem when it comes to John. He is one of the most unfairly excerpted authors of all time. The available excerpts were far too austere for me. They said you had to desire the hardest, most painful things in life, deny pleasure, and do battle with attachment. At first meeting, I didn't much like John of the Cross.
Then at some point I heard one of our local Carmelites (either Connie FitzGerald or Jack Welch), who gave John a new lease on life in my heart. I read his poetry, and it made me cry and sing. I read his Ascent of Mount Carmel, skipping those oft-excerpted austerity passages in Chapter 13, and picking up in Chapter 14 where he says of course the austerities don't work. This was good news for me; I knew from my own experience that austerities don't work-or rather, I knew I had never been able to maintain a single austerity long enough to know if it worked or not.
Ever since, I've absorbed John's writings like water: small sips when
my lips are dry, huge gulps when I'm dying of thirst. Sometimes I spend
so much time with him I think one or the other of us must surely cry,
"Enough!" But it never happens. He always has something to say to me-
something that was already in my heart that I couldn't claim until he
put it into words for me. And sometimes, I swear, the little fifteenth
century Spanish friar actually shows up in miniature, hovering a little
behind me and to my right, grinning, winking, or frowning.
-- Summer 1999, "Noche Oscura"
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So is spirituality good for your health? For me, the answer is unequivocally yes and no! Religious belief and faith community can support physical and mental wellbeing. Some spiritual practices can lower blood pressure and help handle stress. The power of prayer is unquestionable for those who have experienced it. And I myself have no doubt that miraculous healings do occur. In all these senses, spirituality can certainly be good for your health.
However, one cannot ignore how faith may not only fail to help physical and mental illnesses but also sometimes even seem to invite people into greater disease, disorder, suffering and death. If you reflect on the physical and mental health of the holy people of history and the ones you've known personally, you may find yourself inclined, as I am, to suggest that every Bible come with a warning from the Surgeon General.
Things would, of course, be simpler if the spiritual life clearly led
to better health. Then we could treat the life of the spirit, to quote
the Christian Century editorial, "like a nutritional supplement or a
leafy green vegetable." But things are obviously more mysterious than
that. In my own lived faith, I feel certain that God does not want
people to suffer, not now, not ever. So how is it that authentic
spirituality can sometimes be bad for your health? My hunch is that it
has to do with something that the contemplative strands of all the
great religions proclaim: the ultimate meaning of human life is not
health; it is love.
-- Winter 2000, "Is Spirituality Good for Your Health?"
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It is the third day of my week-long solitude retreat in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. I am sitting on the deck outside a small cabin and I am well into the silence. Gentle majesty surrounds me, high mesas east and west and limitless vistas of desert where the canyon opens in the south.
As I so often do when it is totally unnecessary, I am trying to meditate. Why, when everything around me is perfect and I am immersed in the moment, do I still think I must do something to be contemplative? Just-being never comes except as a gift. Left to my own devices, I will always be trying to do something-even if what I am trying to do is nothing.
I am trying to do nothing as the morning sunlight flows down the side of the western mesa. I sit cross-legged on a Navajo rug, back straight, breathing in the high desert air that is like wakefulness itself. My eyes are slightly open, looking south into the endless desert. A soft silent prayer arises, "I am yours." There is stillness all around, but I know I'm trying too hard, working at something, holding something somewhere. I try to relax everything, surrender myself completely, but even that is a kind of striving.
Then I hear the eagle's call. I do not recognize it at first, but it is a cry that pierces me once, twice, a third time, going directly into my heart, into the very center of my longing. It is as if that center of me had suddenly shrieked out of itself, crying into the empty mountain air, echoing back and forth between the high mesa walls. My head turns to the sound and there I see two slowly moving forms above the mesa, black against the utterly clean blue sky, high above the great red-white rocks and windblown piñon trees.
In this moment, the eagle's call is an intercession for me, a standing-in-my-place, an expression of my simple aliveness made possible in a freedom I cannot possess, in eagle freedom. I feel an earth-deep need for this eagle to cry out my soul for me, to sing my utmost prayer in the heights of emptiness.
My prayer then becomes suddenly intimate and it is a prayer of gratitude for the eagle who sings my prayer.
-- Summer 2001, "The Eagle Cries for Me"
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A single sentence has haunted me for over a decade. It is the first line of the Dalai Lama's Foreword to Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's book, Peace is Every Step. This is what he wrote: "Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way."
On the surface the thought seems simple, almost obvious. We all know that changes in individual people affect larger social systems. But it is those last five words that catch me up: "it is the only way." The Dalai Lama's statement is far more than another simple encouragement to love one's neighbor; it is also a critique of all the other ways we human beings have tried to bring peace and justice to the world. It says that they simply do not work.
As I have reflected on the Dalai Lama's words over these past ten years, I find myself sadly in agree-ment. War, violence, oppression, injustice and countless other forms of human cruelty are endemic on this planet. They have been with us since the beginning of our species and they are no less present now than they were ten thousand years ago. With modern technology, the cruelty we humans wreak upon one another is now more devastating than it ever was.
I am now convinced that our many programs and projects have not worked because they are all systemic remedies. Whether great utopian visions for society at large or simple moral and ethical principles for individuals, they consistently address our corporate ways of living together. But human cruelty is not, at its core, a systemic problem. It is part of our individual human nature. Thus the fault lies not in our collective systems, but within ourselves. And if there ever can be a remedy, a depth-change from cruelty towards compassion, it too must arise within the nature of the individual human being.
I believe I have seen the inner transformation from selfishness to
compassion happening to many people, and I believe I have tasted it
within myself. I am convinced that although it is difficult as the
Dalai Lama said, it is a very real and practical possibility. And I am
ready to agree that it is the only way, our only hope.
-- Fall 2002, "The Only Way: From Cruelty to Compassion Through Personal Transformation"