Taking part in a soaring truth that then devolved into an applauded lie....
Anyone who has seen some living soldier or sailor receive the Medal of Honor -- the highest military award in the United States -- beholds something akin to embarrassment. Never have I heard one of them say much more than that s/he receives the honor on behalf of those who were no longer alive to receive what they more rightly should have received. These recipients, if I had to guess, are not about to turn away what has the potential to make their lives better. But neither can they elude the lash of reality....
To have been somewhere and experienced something that was in deadly earnest -- something completely off the charts in retrospect and yet, in the moment, was simply the only choice available, the only thing that could be experienced, the only thing among all the only-things -- this moment, this action, this right-now ... this ... inescapable experience.
And now, after the fact, we gather together to award this medal for what no man or woman can rightly claim -- the present that is now the past.
Taking part in a soaring truth that has devolved into an applauded lie ...
How much of spiritual endeavor is precisely -- and I mean precisely -- like that?
The line between exultation and dissolving in tears is a thin one.
We find definitions helpful. And the line between one word and another, one idea and another, are just conveniences we invent to partition our thoughts and communications. We're an arbitrary sort of creature who contrive lives explained by dualist constructs such as ol'buddha man warned us about. I don't know how to explain up without down, but maybe up isn't what i was really looking for.
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