Ode to 70

 this morning i sit on the precipice (or in the pit) of 70! it feels frightening and beautiful! and so I am contemplating thresholds and time, space and potential. i am also vitally aware that i do so on 9/11 the day when the particularity of my circumstances pale in the memory of a tragedy of such vast proportions. 

perhaps it is my age and i hope it is accumulated wisdom which allows this day not so much to overwhelm and sadden as to pry open and invite contemplation of a timeless oneness and interconnectivity.

other than the precipice/pit part at the opening, which i will soon address, i am aware of a consummate pull toward non-duality as only both/and make sense any more; only such an approach includes and assembles. for dualistic parsing has not served me well…

i am most grateful for the emergence of an imagination which allows the celebration and the grief to coexist…

what does 70 have to say about imagination? for me, imagination is the stuff which weaves the dualistic aspects into a beautiful interwoven tapestry. this weaving is what I give thanks for this day for it is not just my life which is reflected in threads of cornflower blue and periwinkle, it is all creation in the spectrum of color differentiated, sometimes adjacent, sometimes overlaid, sometimes intertwined. nothing dualistic about it, nothing separate.

C.S. Lewis went through a period of struggling with atheism and dualisms:

“The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many-islander sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow ‘rationalism’. Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.”

i too have known this divide and this divide has known me. for too many years i was instructed to remain on one side. somehow, perhaps in persistent prayer and certainly by grace, a mustard seed of imagination managed to traverse the tragic gap and infiltrate reason, irradiate facts with mystical wonder.

and that is what i give thanks for this day for a still growing imagination and faith which has created a deep and profound hope not only in my life but also for the lives of so many victims of violence that there will be reconciliation and redemption, resurrection. at 70 my role is not to despair so much as to be this hope in the world albeit small. i find very little “grim and meaningless”; i find so much beauty and possibility.

oh and as for precipice or pit, in my imagination both spaces coexist and can be valuable and meaningful contemplative spaces. inhabiting both, welcoming both, affords a certain equanimity.