Conversations with a Soul (22 page)

To measure ones’ life from the perspective of borders crossed, explored and lived is to get to the heart of what it means to be human. In contrast to the usual shallow categories by which we evaluate ourselves – economic standing, professional qualifications, acquisitions, social standing – the borders we have crossed tell the saga of how we have
engaged life
. Thoreau described it like this;

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when it came time to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God. . .
⁶¹

I suspect that like Thoreau’s border crossings and explorations, ours are ultimately rooted in the need to grasp and plumb, to celebrate and engage, to wrestle and argue and then to come to some accommodation with what it means to
live life
. Written deep in our being we were born to be explorers, not only of places and people but of the whole awesome kingdom of our inner world.

The calendar dates we assign to the pivotal moments of our personal history: birth, graduation, marriage, birthdays, employment, parenthood, that become the warp threads against which we try to weave a life’s story, usually prove too fragile to contain the immensity and complexity that characterizes every human life.

So, it is not uncommon in a conversation to have someone share, the date, perhaps the time, perhaps the place they married, but then almost immediately, sensing the inadequacy of a mere date, they begin to share significant details of the day. Suddenly the stories begin to flow, some funny, some poignant, some tied into deep friendships, some centered on the wider family, some reflecting their dreams and hopes, but all communicated in a language that tells of a border crossing.

Here’s where the real heart and guts of life is to be found, forsaking the familiar for the unfamiliar. Here’s the story of two people who cross into foreign territory, with little preparation, few resources they can rely on, bereft of any maps or even a simple compass and keenly aware of the enormous number of fatalities reported amongst others who have travelled this way!

Yet everyday countless numbers of men and women cross the wastelands and, take the most colossal risks simply because they are explorers and they have fallen in love with another explorer, a process which is of itself a crossing of a complex and ill-defined border. What infinite complexity tells the story of two persons who decide to share their crossing of borders and braving of frontiers; the struggle to find patience, the shared jewels of humour, the slow growth into maturity, the courage to raise a child, and the agony of separation?

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. -

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back. -

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever and forever.

Why should I climb the look out? -

At sixteen you departed,

You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,

And you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden;

They hurt me. I grow older.

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,

And I will come out to meet you

As far as Cho-fu-sa. - -“
⁶²

Not every exploration made or frontier crossed is done so gladly. Sometimes we are simply left without a choice. Despite our careful preparation pack ice locks in our ship, or the skies refuse to clear, or the waves wash away mast and sails, or trusted companions fail us at crucial moments, or something we never planned on suddenly confronts us.

Anyone who has had to come to terms with terminal illness understands the sudden transition from one world into another. When 'forever' shrinks to three or six months, or the assumptions we have had about health are dramatically challenged and we are thrust into a battle to keep death at bay, then a crossing is made and a new reality created. Things that seemed supremely important are jettisoned so that time might be given to nurture riches, never much sought after in the old world.

At other times the borders that stand between one world and another are so subtle and inexplicable, that crossing them feels like crossing the boundary
between waking and sleeping.
One moment alive and engaged in a predictable, sensory world where things are stable and, somewhat, controllable, in the next, without quite knowing how we got there, we become participants in the strange, unpredictable, sometimes frightening world of dreams. But the crossing over is accomplished without fuss or design; we simply slide from one realm into another.

No matter whether the border is crossed in high drama or indiscernibly once it is made we are faced with choices.

I was almost three months in a Trappist monastery before I realized how dangerous spirit life can be…. early one morning I wrote:

These monks in this place are subversives, not so much because of what they say or even think, but what they are. In the midst of a culture of noise, these little white-robed men who like to play with bells choose silence; in a culture of work, they choose contemplation; in a culture of self-realization, they renounce the self; in a culture of achievement, they declare that the winner will be loser and only the loser winner; in a culture whose economy is utterly dependent on consumption, they insist on emptiness; in a culture structured by possession, they insist on detachment….in a culture intent on a high standard of living they insist on a high standard of life. Achievement versus grace; the exposure of the emptiness of fullness for the fullness of emptiness. The heart of this subversion is in planting within a person the appetite for silence. And once planted, once one tastes silence, and listening and stopping, and being flooded by a depth beyond all words, once one lets go so that one’s hands are empty for the first time, once you do nothing, say nothing, think nothing but just let yourself be in the midst of Capital Peak, or a columbine field or Snowmass Creek or the mist of a morning valley – if you ever let it happen, it is all over for you. From then on, everything else seems insane.
⁶³

A scant two miles south of Carmel is a Carmelite Monastery which has loaned its name to a stretch of beach, commonly known as Monastery Beach.

Monastery Beach is much beloved by scuba divers. Not far off from the shore the Monterey Submarine Canyon entices divers to enter and explore its mysterious secrets. Great kelp beds support an extravagant underwater sea life, and then, as the Canyon descends to extreme depths, the kelp forest is replaced by other marine wonders. The canyon’s walls swiftly fall away very steeply, sometimes in excess of sixty degrees, and trick unwary divers into venturing way beyond safe limits. Surrounded by swaying kelp and caught in turbulent currents inexperienced divers periodically lose sight of their diving partners. Easily confused by the constantly moving world about them they become disoriented and trapped in the kelp. Only later, too much later, does someone notice that a diver is missing.

The beach is no less tempting to picnickers and groups who come to spend a day playing and enjoying the white sand and rolling breakers. Monastery Beach
seems
to be an ideal destination offering wide expanses of shoreline, easy access and lots of parking.

Unfortunately there is no way to see that the beach rapidly falls away, quickly dropping off into turbulent waters and rip tides. Several years ago, an entire family, posing for a family photograph on the edge of the beach, was washed out to sea. Last week a little girl was swept into the ocean. Caught in a rip tide she floundered, unable to make her way to safety. Five adults jumped into the water to rescue her. Only three returned but she was saved.

So frequently has the beach been the scene of tragedy that local residents have nicknamed the beach, 
'Mortuary Beach.' 
California State Park officials recently designed new warning signs to replace the existing ones hoping that these warnings
“Will be scary enough.”

There are never enough warning signs, and none of them are scary enough!

We’ve made a start by yelling warnings at people who are in the path of a violent storm, maybe one day earth quakes and tsunamis will be predictable and we can issue more warnings.

But we don’t seem to be very good at heeding the obvious.

Warfare has turned the safest of frontiers into the most dangerous.

Every year, six thousand people, forty per cent of them children, cross an invisible boundary and are blown apart by abandoned and forgotten landmines.

Cluster bombs turn yesterday’s playground into today’s place of horror.

Improvised Explosive Devices rip flesh from bone and bone from body.

How much of what I learned over there can I trust and rely on over here?

Without a checkpoint or signpost how can I know where one border ends and another begins?