Still Sundays

July 25th.

“Question for those who cannot live without art.” “Steal” stillness?  Joyful chaos of wedding preparations. What is the cause of our times?

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.

Some kind people often take upon themselves to wish me “good luck” to steal stillness so as to be able to write this on Sundays. It takes effort to steal. I am not interested in exerting that energy. Beneath the surface calm can lurk violent storms. I am curious to explore stillness inside storms. I enjoy stillness inside the buoyancy of moments.

Some mornings it seems as if there is an undercurrent of constant stillness and it is up to me—us—to take a dip in it any moment. My imagination, ever since I was young, is helpful in that regard. I am here—fully present—yet also see beyond, within, and around simultaneously. Instead of making me crazy, it actually makes me still—that is when the voltage of receptivity is under control.

One of my former students—I taught her when she was a reserved but confident seventh grader, now a junior in college—called and wanted some answers to something beyond an appropriate major, relationships, and friendships that come and go in college. She is a young adult from an immigrant family south of the border who has worked hard through many adversities to attain a higher education. I wanted to offer some grand encouragements, a few simple truths, and something profound.

I am not a parent yet. How did my parents manage with all four of us and many, many others who consider them parents?

I told her: questions are more important than answers, the answers fill themselves into the crevices created from questioning, not on your time but at some time. She didn’t understand and she understood: the graceful dance to living even if you can’t dance.

Why is faith ‘tested’? Not just in a Higher omniscient Being of all Universes but in anything and anyone. Because it doesn’t rest in logical proof or tangible evidence? Doesn’t tangible evidence too lead to more hypothesis, theories, experiments till there is a concrete answer, until the cycle repeats for something beyond? Discovery begets an unquenchable desire to understand more. Faith seems to be tested and with material conclusions there are tests. Faith or otherwise, we seek. Some don’t. Most don’t. Is that the human condition’s perpetual dichotomy?

I watched this long, windy row of ants marching to an anthill outside my parents’ farm here in California. So tiny. So resolute. One gush of wild wind or a thoughtless human act and they are gone.  Oil spills, unemployment, California’s massive budget crisis, an accident on the highway that leaves no doubt in one’s mind that no one survived and yet life goes on. I am perplexed and inspired by this. Life goes on. Even when things touch us personally, life goes on.

I came across this quote in an article I read recently.

To create today is create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing. Hence the question is not to find out if this is or is not prejudicial to art. The question, for all those who cannot live without art and what it signifies, is merely to find out—how among the police forces of so many ideologies the strange liberty of creation is possible. ~ Albert Camus

What are the passions of THIS age? What are we moved by that we are willing to die for? We rant, we tweet, we write columns, we write comments on columns, but nothing is enough to push us over the edge. We carry on. Perhaps history will look at it differently and generations before felt similarly when tackling issues of their times. What is the issue of our times? Apathy? What’s our cause? To motivate?

Regardless, interestingly enough, there still exist “police forces of so many ideologies” when it comes to the desired liberty to create. To really create—without attachment to much needed financial stability and security, without attachment to the outcome of publication, without attachment to the bliss and angst involved in the process. We need to create as much as those who need us to create despite being forgiven nothing.

Art: give. me. something. that. speaks from the vortex of you so I can echo it out.

It’s been a hectic week and a half and it is about to get wilder over here at the farm/ranch house. My younger brother is getting married to a woman I now consider a sister. There is a festivity Thursday night, Friday night, and the big bang happens on Saturday with more guests than I want to provide a visual! Some of my very close friends are flying from all over to help out as well as to participate. They have been my friends and known the family for over a decade.

There is much uncertainty in life. It is refreshing when two people celebrate the joy they find in the certainty borne out of a spiritual affinity towards one another. I am happy to witness this with my family, distant relatives, and some of my closest friends. My parents are notorious for throwing social engagements which are remembered long after although they live as far away from enclosed communities as possible.

Well, my family was kind enough to allow me a few hours this morning to write this (they are slowly beginning to take my writing seriously) but much needs to be done and I have to help out.

Laughing helps. Taking a dip into the tincture of stillness which permeates above and beneath helps too.

~a.q.s.

Related posts:

Still Sundays Still Sundays Fortuna Favi Fortius Still Sundays: Shakti and Ibn Sina