Passion

"Pass me not" is so opposite to what most people want. To engage with people can be demanding because it's intense and requires commitment. Life feels far easier to have lots of friends a la Facebook where you just exchange pleasantries and can bail whenever times get rough. Most end up saying "pass" to intimacy.

Look past the choir robes, religiosity and other prejudices. Listen to the soulful passionate, engagement with the music and feelings. This performance of this old spiritual kills. Let loose in the exclamations, shouts, cries... and the passion to hold on to someone who loves us is so so so so sweet.

Going through the "valley" prepares me for higher places. And I feel like living proof of what it means to be drifting in the vast emptiness of space only to find a way to life. This contrast, if experienced mirrors the moment of our birth, when nothing becomes something. And death, then the life ends just as magically. Both moments reflect the beauty of meeting another, connect, share and enjoy the desire to be loved, for closeness and fulfillment.

So I don't want to let go of these moments because they are the gems of life. In myself, in others, in Nature and in this life we share on the blue planet, whose very existence in the empty violence of the cosmos, is a miracle. Living proof that hard times actually make life worth living. (in spite of the pain). Pass me not.

** sorry if you noticed I posted these videos before. Good things haunt me (in a good way).

Exspectans

My blogging life started because of the a long wait for something. It felt as boring and frustrating as the play "Waiting for Godot". This symphony is at the center of my feelings and experience. I listen to it on my ear phones all the time. Even though it is strange and far from cheerful (in the usual sense), I love the mystery, majesty, pain, peace, exclamation, surprise...

The waiting** is better for having this friend of music.

**Exspectans is Latin for waiting. It's the theme of the middle movement.

True

**"I'll see your true colors

Shining through

I see your true colors

And that's why I love you

So don't be afraid to let them show

Your true colors

True colors are beautiful..."**

I've been afraid to show my wild ideas, colorful dreams and the songs in my soul. Things are about to change. I finally feel safe, ready, enthusiastic to say "I am myself." (final line in the movie Elizabeth: The Golden Age).

**Gotta listen to this 2012 cover by David Archuleta of Cyndi Lauper's classic. Great Lyric animation too ... ad-lib's included :-)

Beautiful

"Beautiful" by Carole King from her Tapestry album 1971

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face

And show the world all the love in your heart

Then people gonna treat you better

You're gonna find, yes, you will

That you're beautiful as you feel

Waiting at the station with a workday wind a-blowing

I've got nothing to do but watch the passers-by

Mirrored in their faces I see frustration growing

And they don't see it showing, why do I?

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face

And show the world all the love in your heart

Then people gonna treat you better

You're gonna find, yes, you will

That you're beautiful as you feel

I have often asked myself the reason for sadness

In a world where tears are just a lullaby

If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness

Maybe not, oh, but we can only try

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face

And show the world all the love in your heart

Then people gonna treat you better

You're gonna find, yes, you will

That you're beautiful as you feel

Ms King's album came out when I was 9 so I couldn't appreciate it. But the poetry and music symbolized the best of the time. The song speaks the feeling that life is beautiful in spite of it all and helps weave the tapestry of our lives. Both the making and result is a piece of art to be loved, admired and enjoyed. This including the dark and sad times.

Beginning

"Sometimes the very thing you're looking for is the one thing you can't see..." This line in this song haunted me during my traumatic short prison experience in China. During the anguish of waiting for release, this song somehow rang inside my head even though I didn't own it nor remember paying any attention to it. It was the message that something good awaits me that kept me positive. 

During my often desperate search for that "something" to release me from the self-imprisonment, that first line haunted me. The something will be new and unseen but it's origins lie in how I saw my past. There was guilt, nonacceptance, obstacles that had to do with me. Despite my general optimism, these historic dark places still stood in my line of sight.

One by one, through silence, training, crying and caring responses, I saw how even the nightmares were part of a blessing. Like rain in the songs of my previous blog post, the horror of the past morphed into a beautiful tapestry. It involved going back to my beginnings but with new insights, that is making a new me.

"Get right back where we started from". I grew up in the 70's yet disliked much of the clothes, music and popular culture back then. But there were gems. Like this song, the imperfect beginning can take on new colors, meaning and life.

Soaked

"I guess I must appear so brave and so strong 
but even the strong need someone to cry their songs to
someone who feels the disappointment and fading visions of grandeur 
who knows that the strong are often children and unsure 
Who have to endure 

[chorus] Jesus although I may stand these storms like I’m made out of stone 
You hear the songs that I cry when I’m weary and all alone 
You see the years that have come too fast and the pain that goes so slow 
yet like rain to a garden when the ground becomes hardened 
I know You’re using it all to help me grow 

I have to be a beacon, strong and shining Your light 
I know that beacons can’t never be weary or frightened of the night 
so I seek You even through these songs and I wait for You to hear me 
and I know that You are going to answer despite my trembling and my fear 
I just need need to feel You near me ..." 

For My Growing" by Mylon LeFevre & Broken Heart.

This old song made me cry when I first heard it because the lyrics seemed to describe me, even when everything was going well. People naturally use me as a sounding board or even advice ever since adolescence. I enjoyed knowing them but wonder who would listen to me. 

After feeling oppressed by misfortune, I cried out when I felt so empty and hopeless, after exhausting all the ways I knew to climb out of my hole. When I no one seemed willing to help, the feeling that I was thirsty for truth, then being soaked by rain so that my drought infested spirit could be revived and grow like a small seed. A mustard seed that grows into a tree. Like the first weak rays of sunrise that light up the whole sky.

"Let the rain come down and wash away my tears

Let it fill my soul and drown my fears

Let it shatter the walls for a new sun

A new day has...begun."

A New Day by Georgia Mass Choir

A much more recent song but saying the same thing. 

Changed

My recent journey is boring if you made a video. Not much drama is visible because all the change I needed started internally. Nightmares, panic, silence, tears, laughter, shouting, screaming, swimming, cooking, reading, chatting, writing, photos, blogs, thinking, searching, remembering.... Boring for the observer unless you could visit my mind and my heart.

Change is like that. It's quiet and painful if you're impatient like me. My internal "operating system", the patterns and habits that I live by, have changed. My weight problem and my blood sugar are in control. Also boring. Yeah old pictures of my looking like a laughing Chinese Buddha compared to the smaller version now is funny but not that exciting.

The excitement is inside and bringing new external living. A good analogy is in Chinese warrior films of old where a material arts expert shuts himself/herself in a cave to practice some energy exercise for days/months/years to emerge a changed more powerful warrior.

In nature metamorphosis of a worm-like larva into a colorful flying butterfly is marvelous. No one thinks about how boring and difficult such change is. We just want the end product.

What am I going to do as a changed man? What product will I become? These are questions that I wanted to answer.

The conclusion: how I grow from now on has changed. The foundation of safe stable schedules, income, meetings... are no longer the focus. My confidence and safety are in discovery, surprise and rest.

To hold on to achievement, money and to save the system (even if I helped make recent success) are like anchors that should be raised. Any crying or violence from resisting minds must be lovingly tended. But no compensation exists for dying ways.

The hardest lesson to learn was about dealing with things that don't exist except in our heads. And these are the opposite of what most people think.