We’ve been aware of her for a few weeks – paw prints on the ground and snow, shadows in the woodshed, quick sightings of her darting underneath the porch and across the pasture. Maria encountered her yesterday in the barn near Minnie and the cat came up to her. Today, she came into the barn again and we fed her – she was ravenous. She seems to be a seasoned barn cat, staying out of the road, keeping away from the dogs, watching us and figuring things out. She made a wise choice in approaching Maria, and she doesn’t like to be held – Mother was this way – but she purrs and likes to be touched and scratched. We have to figure out what to do with her. She seems to already be living here. First, we will take her to the vet to see if she has been spayed and is healthy. She does not have a name.
The shaman I have been seeing in my soul retrieval work – her name is Carol Tunney – has two dogs, Bernese/Husky mixes, Jack and Jill. Both are approaching 14 years old, both are coming near to the end of their time and this week I went to her home to photograph the two dogs. Her own cameras were destroyed in a fire last year. I take photographs of dogs on the edge of life often, it is something I am drawn to to and love to do, capturing their beautiful spirits as they end their time with us. Jill does not often look at a camera, I was told, but she looked at mine, and I loved what it saw in those gentle and peaceful eyes.
The spiritual life is filled with cliches, as is all life. The writers know to respect cliches, because cliches come into being because so many people embrace them. If you seek a meaningful life, choose to be awaken, aspire to authenticity you will hear similiar terms and phrases: live in the moment, you can only take care of yourself, fear is a feeling, not something real, love yourself and you will learn to love others, take responsibility for your life.
Cliches become cliches because they are generally true, and then they are invoked so often as to lose meaning sometimes. Of these terms and ideas, taking responsibility for myself has become the most compelling, challenging and important idea for me. It was something I had not done in my life, needed to do, wanted to do. I understand how central an idea it is to becoming the person, the man that I wanted to be. I have always struggled to understand what the idea meant, and I am making progress with it. I am grateful for it. It is helping me more than any other idea.
For me, taking responsibility means this:
– Dropping struggle stories. I understand life. We all live, we all die. Things happen – accidents, storms, misunderstandings, betrayals, taxes, money troubles, sickness, the violent and disturbing occurrences of the world beyond. Our parents will grow old and die, and so will our dogs. Each of these things will not be a tragedy for me, a repudiation of life. They do not mean there is or is not a God. It is the nature of being human, and I have chosen to embrace being human and accept it for what it is. I think my animals have taught me that. And I have learned to look every day for the love and beauty and light in the world. This is what balances hardship for me.
– Do not blame others for my life. To become aware of resentments, jealousies, this idea that other people are to blame for my troubles – parents, spouses, bosses, the world-at-large. I feel these things all of the time, now less than ever, and less all the time. I am proud to be responsible for my life. I make my life. I work hard, sought and found love, work to become aware of these corrosive ideas and feelings. They do not help me, they drain and weaken me.
– Do not think and act out of anger. The gift of the Internet is we are constantly forced to confront the broken and angry people of the world, and to see in them a mirror of the things we do not wish to be. For me, politics has become the same challenge, the same opportunity. In seeing what I do not wish – my life is not an argument – I can come to see what I do wish. I am learning to approach life with compassion and empathy, even – especially – when I am angry or disturbed.
– Do not make decisions out of fear. Fear is the natural enemy of responsibility. It causes us to make decisions out of reality, to turn to other things than ourselves for help, to work out of panic, not clarity. Fear challenges the notion that we can care for ourselves, the essence of taking responsibility.
– Finding my strength. My Truth. Taking My Stand. It is not about what others might do or think, it is about what I believe. I am learning to state my truth, and take my stand. I am not responsible or in control of what other people might do. I am increasingly in control of what I wish to do.
Every day, I ask myself what kind of life I wish to life. And also, what can I do to live that life. Sometimes taking responsibility means taking risks – buying a home before the other one is sold. Sometimes it means foregoing security and conventional wisdoms about safety and health. I never can say these decisions are the right decisions, only that they are my decisions and I will live with them, speak my truth on their behalf, take my stand on them. So far, this is what I am coming to see about taking responsibility for my life. It has made me stronger, more peaceful. It is perhaps the most important among the great cliches of spirituality.
