Pick up your path

… on the path of others
are resting places,
places in the sun
where they can meet.
but this
is your path
and it is now,
now that you must not fail.

… the way chose you
and you must be thankful.

The above are famous lines by the late UN General Secretary Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden that still tugs at the sleeves of our soul.

One can tell by the stories I tell that my imagery is traceable to Christian upbringing and the title phrase is easily understandable to one familiar with the invalid’s story waiting for 38 years by Bethesda’s pool for the angel-of-the-Lord to stir the healing waters in the Gospel of John’s story of Jesus.

In the account, Jesus walked by the man and asked him if he wanted to be well. The man said that when the stirring of the waters healed the first person to avail of its powers, someone else gets ahead of him. “No one is there to help me into the pool,” he lamented. Jesus’ retorted: “Get up! Pick up your bed and walk?”

In our time’s continuing saga of Jesus Christ Superstar, various twists are given this story, the main ingredient being that our supernatural hero made the sick man well. I will skip the appeal to the supernatural. Instead, I focus on the universal human excuse of not having anyone to help when we are in dire need, and somehow life’s word is spoken to us just to decide and move on, not unlike the message to pick up one’s bed and walk.

I am sure everyone differs on when they think themselves physically incapable of caring for themselves without depending on others. Traditionally, on the front end, it is six years in China before Mama and Papa can lay a hand on Xiaoyan or Tian Yu, making the sixth birthday a critical turn. With the one-child family of recent years, many extend that decisive turn until a child is married so parents wielding power stick around for grandchildren now that couples from a one-child only family may have two kids. The middle class “normal” also involves couples working making the presence of grannies absolutely necessary.

Shakespeare puts helplessness at both ends of the human journey, a cumbersome situation in China where couples from an only child family now have two pairs of elders to take care of, with some unused to making critical decisions since most of that had been done for them. The China Dream of Beijing wants 1.39 Chinese to participate, emote and cogitate, but we would be lucky if twenty percent of that will move a pinkie to join rather than wait for someone to decide for them!

An Arizona colleague Bill Salmon had a memorial service for himself on his 80th birthday and created a document to go with it. I plan mine on the end of my 70th year this year, and again, at the end of my 75th year, five year hence. Bill loves to distinguish between the head-trip and the gut trip, the difference between knowing and experiencing. I share his seat at the methodological incline.

The Cocks of North Carolina who sends out a daily reflection pulled out of the winter 2015 edition of Fran and David Korten’s Yes! Magazine Jason McLennan term homo regenesis in lieu of homo sapiens as the next evolutionary step in a human journey of the profound love of life. From his book, Cities Are the Future Now, Jason McLennan is quoted saying that people and life be put squarely at the heart of communities, in our context, both the urban and rural setting. Cogitating medieval human in situ (cogito ergo sum) is transformed into a regenerating communal human.

Here’s a version of the Cock’s end of 2014 reflection. The facts: Global events … National events … Community events … Family events … Personal events … and on each, the event for me!

Now, get to your heart: Laughed big-time when … Wept over … Enraged because of … Hopeful because of … Joyful about … Really struggled with …

Sharpen your wits: Creativity flowed when … Big idea began to dawn when … Was empowered by … Wish I had done … Stood tall in the midst of …

Line up the deeds: Most transformative event of the year … My journey of the past year has been like … My story line that is emerging … My name for 2014: The Great Year of _________ … I celebrated 2014 by …

Religiously, that’s bowing to one’s self, others, and the Earth at every turn, the action sacramentalized by the Namaste of hands pressed together, palms touching and fingers pointing upwards, thumbs close to the chest, that acknowledges “the spirit in me sees the spirit in you” (Sanskrit namas, to bow, and te, to you). Hindus sense a profound umbilical connection to earth and the rest of humanity, even long before we learned to say amen to the Way-Life-Is!

I am not stubbornly self-centered; I am experientially and consciously affirming Dag Hammarskjold gratitude for the path choosing him. In our time, we say, we choose the path we take even in our chosen-ness, or we haven’t got a path at all. We would just be chaff blowing in the wind.

Intentionally, I pick up my path, and I am thankful!