The Cure For That Deep Dry Ache

                                                        Photo by Nikolay Dukov on Unsplash

An internal ache. Same as when I threw my body, rocking self to sleep as a child. An awareness that tangible physical reality can’t  touch the deep heart of me. Propped on a pillow as a teenager I searched books. Of men praying peyote prayers that held no hope. Some self-proclaimed prophets with poetic prose that increased hunger but provided no spiritual bread.

The foray into the spiritual oft meets with meditation. Trying to connect with the jumbled perception of who I thought God was. Damaged and trying to get repaired. Unaware of that at the time. Sitting in quiet with crucifix as focus. A short phase that brought me no closer to satisfaction. Understanding crashed in later.

Driving through the canyon, to find solace at the ocean. How strange to find comfort in that contrast between a sea so immense and self so small. For You fit the oceans into the palm of your hand and hold heaven in Your fingers. Those same years taking long walks on the track at a local college. Praying as Canadian geese fly overhead. Prayer soaring, prayer heard.  

There will always be this hurt for heaven. “Hunger stays,” as the song goes. Bodies ache for water. The hidden face of God is normative in season and circumstance. “I stretch out my hands to you; My soul longs for You, as a parched land.” The spiritual and mystical need not be cracking hard soil. We are promised streams in the desert. Lovingkindness whispers to us in the morning. There is always a deep dryness. It can forever be filled from an everlasting fountain.

Stagnation Is Easy. Satisfaction Takes Work

“One does not surrender a life in an instant - that which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.” --- Jim Eliott

“In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” ― Jack Kerouac

The mountain top and the therapists chair are lonely places. Places where baggage is left behind or stripped away. That avocado green Tourister with the extendable handle and Teflon wheels for instance. The angry self-protectiveness that stems from---where?  The crowd isn’t clamoring to give up the perception of safety. Not hungry enough or hurting enough.

The lie is this; satisfaction will come easy. A glimpse of a thing is not the thing itself. The river is beautiful seen from valley’s edge, but you can’t taste it.  Beautiful but it won’t slake your thirst, clean your face, soothe your feet, shake you awake. Have we always been so naive?  Feeling ‘in love’ isn’t the core of marriage; spilling semen isn’t sex. Rendered skin deep we call it beauty.

Time and self are difficult to give up. Deepening relationship requires both. Stagnation is easy. For now the mountain is a picture on your desktop. Personal growth hurts and leaves hollow. Reward seems nebulous.

We commit to the not-yet tangible. Remind ourselves. Short ascents where we push hard, feel shale and smell pine. At home we’re willing to have those deep, tough talks; play and wine with the mate. We do the difficult work. Sit in the lonely places. Listen in the lonely places. Stagnation is easy; satisfaction takes work.

“In a sense everything that is exists to climb. All evolution is a climbing towards a higher form. Climbing for life as it reaches towards the consciousness, towards the spirit. We have always honored the high places because we sense them to be the homes of gods. In the mountains there is the promise of… something unexplainable. A higher place of awareness, a spirit that soars. So we climb… and in climbing there is more than a metaphor; there is a means of discovery.” ― Rob Parker

How Dull It Is To Rust Unburnished

In one of my latest posts, my friend Robert wrote in the comments section, “And if I hear your right, the cycling is great for meditation” I’d like to clarify. What I meant was, I want to bleed. I want to be poured out in battle, to be all consumed by life. I remember even as a teen having the desire to push life, to live radically so that I could feel it. For instance, one of my favorite backpacking memories is a long trek over rocky cliffs in a cold and biting rain. Why? Because it pitted me against the wilderness, pushed me hard; made me feel, made me taste, made me fight.

As a teenager, I had a poster up in my room which quoted Ulysses, “…And drink delight of battle with my peers, far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,” “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life…”

On occasion, the push for fight, the arousal for adventure is combined with a hunger, anger and drivenness that most have never seen in me. Perhaps its because I’m “Wild at Heart.” Perhaps there are deep longings which I want satisfied, but of which I can only glimpse here.

Whatever the cause, I remain drawn to such movies as The Princess Bride (“My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.”), Tombstone (I’m coming, and Hell is coming with me”), Gladiator (“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”). You get the picture.

This deep longing and intensity manifests itself throughout my life. The way I drive (when alone), the way I run the coffee shop, the way I relate to people, the wine I like (red-Syrah), the beer I drink (can’t stand all those wimpy ones….Bud, Michelob, Miller). Quoting Ulysses again, “I will drink life to the lees."

So, no, bicycling is not a place for meditation. Bicycling is a place to push hard…..pit myself against the elements…and bleed a little.
“I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart….”