A journal entry from a while ago about Curt's memorial service.

This is a journal entry from a while ago when i went home for Curt's memorial service. I wrote it on 11/9.

The memorial service was awesome. Curt's life was most certainly unique. It was a life that fought against the status quo with joyful abandon. he broke through the veneer of a world that is drunk on image and presentation (to use David Lawton's phrase) but not simply to snub the world and turn his back on it. Rather, he smashed through image and presentatin in order to reach the real people on the other side. He broke thru his own need for image in order to break thru others'.

For those who have no fear of life, death holds no terror--because even the autumn rot becomes the humus that supports the spring. Cycles, cycles, cycles. things go around and around--but not like tires spinning in mud--no, it is a holistic cycle, not an endless spinning. The autumnal leaves become a moldy carpet--the very basis of life to come. All death is the birth of life. Hold to life loosely and you will find that life has sought you out. The same is true for God. Spend your energies seeking God? It is a waste of time. Spend your energies being found making yourself available to God, and you will find that your life is being swept up into the great journey of Christ.

How can we do this? how can we release ourselves in this way? after all, we are what we have been given responsibility for! To release our selves and our communities to the good graces of the divine seems to be crazy and incredibly irresponsible. But it is in fact a profoundly faith-filled, generous act. In the refusal to hoard anything, including ourselves, we find true freedom.

On the bus, I see so many people who are searching after some sort of God. Tarot cards, people talking of communes and marijuana. I see several ones obsessed with the god of music, or they are devoted to eccentricity. Everyone is, fashionably, a "spiritualist." I think of Busta and his journey. I think of my own journey these past 4 or so years. All of us feeling the oppressive weight of our own journeys. But what is a faithful, generous, trusting response to the search?

I believe it is to take the search off of our own shoulders and lay down in a woods, on the fallen leaves--and wait for spring to come. There are times when we must trek, of course, but if we believe in a benevolent God--if we believe this is a God worth finding--then let us lay down the search and accept what revelation comes to us. When we are always striving, there is much less of God in the struggle than we might think. There is more of us than we may understand. It's as if, when confonted with the blinding light of the divine, as was the Apostle Paul, for example, we spend so much time fumbling to find our glasses (because we know our eyesight is bunk) that by the time we get them on, the light that would have healed our eyes has passed and we--sad fools!--are as blind as ever.

Curt held life loosely. life was to be distinguished and celebrated (no undue tears for Curt!) but one could not look past the holistic and cyclical view of life that allowed all things to be whole.

Walking in Annadel today, the covering of wet leaves on the path softened every sound. A holy silence descended on my heart. I am always amazed at how that place, its familiarity that has come over time and its strangeness that will always exist because nature is somehow always "other" to us humans, never fails to see me for who I am. Rather, all parts of me bubble to consciousness on those trails (and off them). Even when it is late summer and all moisture has escaped, I am drawn there in my wholeness. Even when it is not beautiful, Annadel is the most true place in the world for me. This morning I was engrossed in the silence of wet autumnal leaves beginning to decompose. The whole place is waiting for winter. It is mourning, but with a knowing smile. It is preparing to enter deeply into the winter death when the birds are the only things that seem to move over the frosty morning ground and even their movement seems only to accentuate the stillness. Yet that stillness was coming over the dull roar of the whole valley. When you are truly quiet, you can hear the thousands of cars moving from Sebastopol to Oakmont, from Larkfield to Rohnert Park. Yet my quiet in those moments comes over the dull and muted roar of the valley's activity and I know that my God is present. my very existence begins to pray.

I look back to the beginning of this entry and I am reminded of Curt's life. He was like the prophet with no eyes who calls the whole world blind. On the surface it is, "Image! You say I have no sense of image! Yet your own acknowledgement and fear of me [so much so that we must tell funny stories to ease our discomfort] displays your false image." And even deeper, "Love! You wonder how someone like me can love? Do you not see that the only way to truly love is to cast off those inhibitions that you claim enable you to love?" Curt lived in the twinkling silence, closer to willing one thing than almost anyone I know. Cast off anything that gets in the way and love God with all that is in you. Forget fashion and trappings. Pragmatism's virtue is that we are left with only those things that support our search for God. May I live my life this way. Amen.