I'm standing at an important moment in my life. I'm about to turn 65, surely an important milestone within human accounting of such things. It's more than that though. I am celebrating my survival.
This year often felt like a time when I should be getting the last rites as it didn't seem that I would ever get to an actual passage through this particular sacred shit. The year started with big changes at work and my taking an early retirement package. I was totally unprepared for retirement but the state of my health combined with the offer of early retirement was too much to withstand.
So, a little over a year ago, I cleared out my desk and office from the detritus of a lifetime of accumulated big and little things that go with work. My favorite framed pictures came off the walls. My books got packed into multiple boxes. My mementos, gifts, notes from my children, and coffeepot followed me home. Almost immediately I went into the hospital for hip replacement surgery that was long overdue. I came home to a long recovery as the soft tissue damage in the thigh and leg was and probably always will remain painful.
As I worked my way through that recovery, measuring my success by how many steps down the road I could take with my walker or how many times I could life my leg, I began to see an empty life ahead of me. I was a worker bee suddenly out of the hive. I had no idea what to do.
This is when I began to experience that passage as a kind of last rite. I thought it would never end and that life, from that point on, would be, as the saying goes, "a bitch" and then I'd die! I was sad and angry, frustrated and bored. After a lifetime of spiritual practice, I didn't want anything to do with spirituality. I couldn't meditate to save my life. I couldn't get in touch with much of anything.
Having taught mythology and knowing full well the dark passages that the hero pushes through to get to the next elixir or spirit guide, I suddenly couldn't remember any or that and, if I did, I didn't believe in it. I couldn't remember the trials of Odysseus, the dark nights of Mary, or even the many deaths of the little hero in the Zelda game as he makes his way through the various levels and saves the world.
When you're in the dark and you can't find the light switch you're in a phase called "disorientation." The familiar, the taken for granted, the ground you stand on is not there. In the tales of the Hobbitt, swamps become alive with ugly creatures underfoot, whole forests pick up and move, giant spiders block your passage through a mountain tunnel. The hero went to sleep eventually in complete despair. Disorientation. Every life passage includes disorientation--the end of a way of life in its most intimate details and a period of time when the new life hasn't yet been born. Students leave home and move into dorms, drinking and sleeping themselves into oblivion: disorientation. Newly weds can't figure out how to sleep in the same bed amicably or how to share a bathroom: disorientation. The newly divorced walk through an empty house or apartment at the end of the day, instinctively shouting, "I'm home!" Disorientation.
The trouble with disorientation, one of its key symptoms, is that you don't know when you're in it. You deny it. You believe you should be doing fine or you think you ARE doing fine but you aren't sleeping very well; you're eating too much; you're crying or drinking a lot; you're numb. You don't know you're going through a natural, productive human situation that will move towards Odysseus arriving home, students taking up the mantle of scholarship, and the various heroes saving the world.
There needs to be a very spiritual ritual for every passage. The churches have that part right. So, where is the passage for disorientation. Where is the clergywoman saying, "Ah, you're in disorientation. It will pass." Where is the smudging of your soul? Where is the Native American shaman to throw you into the river and refuse to let you come out until your soul has returned to you?
For that's the problem, isn't it? You've lost your soul. Rituals of calling and naming and bringing back are needed during this time. Rituals that stand at the brink waiting while you flounder in the deep water waiting for your soul. That's what we need. We mostly don't have them.
But, when all else fails, time is a great shaman. Time passes and you grow inspite of yourself. You find the light switch in your new dwelling place or time. You eventually can find it in complete darkness.
I want to celebrate my rite of passage through disorientation. With two of my friends, I'm throwing a giant birthday party for my 65th year. I'm meditating, watching for signs and guides. I'm singing and moving. The Red Sea has parted and I'm on the other side suddenly. I don't know how or why, but OH I want to celebrate.
I want to celebrate making it through the worst year of my life (or so it seems). I want to celebrate a new, patched-together existence that is more satisfying than the previous one. I want to name all the guides who helped along the way. I want to name my loving children and friends. I want to build a monument to myself.
I want to fall on the ground in gratitude for the grace of this new life. Thanking the Dude for my sacred shit, Roxie.
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