Wondering

I’ve never been able to separate my spiritual quest from the political. And I expect that both will be journeys that will take up my lifetime.

I often find myself at odds with those who seek only a political solution. That usually means playing the same old game in the same old way when I’d rather be learning to fly.

On the other hand, those involved in a spiritual quest can be so inwardly focused that their journey doesn’t seem to have any real impact on the world around them. I once heard someone describe his wife’s experience at a spiritual retreat this way, “She’s fallen in love with humanity, but she doesn’t like anyone in particular.”

In their book, The Great Cosmic Mother, Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor sum it up this way:

In this world, at this point, no political revolution is sustainable if it is not also a spiritual revolution – a complete ontological birth of new beings out of old. Equally, no spiritual activity deserves respect if it is not at the same time a politically responsible, ie, responsive, activity.

Here is how Robert Frost describes a coming together:

But yield who will to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

from Two Tramps in Mud Time

Now you all know why I’ve found a blogging home at Docudharma. As RiaD so wonderfully captured in her essay Pair o’ dig ’em, there is a synergy happening among and between us that is changing me. I don’t know where this journey ends, but I see the path laying out in front of us as we go.

Its about a coming together…of people…the political, the spiritual, the philosophical, the historical, the intellectual, the emotional, the artistic, the personal, and yes, even the sexual. We’ve been carved up and isolated for so long – for literally thousands of years. It will take some time to heal those wounds. I just hope we can be patient in this process of putting it all back together. We might not have all the answers, but at least we’re coming together to ask the questions.

Here’s a passage from Alice Walker’s book “The Color Purple” that I love. Its a conversation that takes place between Celie and Mr.___ towards the end of the book when they have reconciled as friends:

Anyhow, he say, you know how it is. You ast yourself one question, it will lead to fifteen. I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women. Where do children really come from. It didn’t take long to realize I didn’t hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don’t mean nothing if you don’t ast why you here, period.

So what you think? I ast.

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.

The water separating us from each other, ourselves and the answers to our questions does sometimes feel wide. But…