When Meaning Rests With Us

With so many things CoVid related, circumstances can change multiple times within a half day’s time. So much is fast, yet slow too, as people adapt. I’m home. I’m reaching out to both clients and family with support. I’m writing. “We don’t need to figure it all out; just be with it.” I remind myself.

I’m glad for this poem below by Lionel Philippe, a friend from the Soultime Men’s group gathering Fall 2019. With his permission, I post it below. He wrote it after the three days spent together at Soultime as a group of eleven, among trees.

Because in these days of CoVid change, we should speak of intimacies, and of things that move our hearts, and of meaning that congeals, and rests with us, right?

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A Circle of Men
by Lionel Philippe

Eleven men, meeting in a circle, on an island, in the middle of a hut
Brothers, companions, fathers and sons
Story tellers and shamans
Leaders without followers, followers without leaders
Stories of men, shared and held in the presence and silence of men
Delicate tenderness and strength between men
Men at heart and men with heart
Men that love and men that cry
Men that laugh and men that dance
Men that celebrate and men that honor
No first, no last, just a circle of men
The sum of the whole is not equal to the sum of each individual; it is much more
There is an invisible and powerful synergy within this circle that unifies and connect each man
There is something real, special, something magic here
The fuck, the shit, the tears and laughters, the deep and the shallow, everything is there
The silence of men holding the presence of each man
The talking stick holding with reverence our stories, thousands of them
Strong and delicate to our touch, it is moving from one man to the other, being just a witness
It supports each of us in being able to unwrap our stories, our hopes, fears, shames, struggles, anger, laughs, wonders and all the rest.

 

Get Out

Most of my life I’ve been seeking a relationship with the unseen. It’s a search on the outside and on the inside. It’s a search with succinct deliberateness and with passive roaming. It’s a search through my heart, mind, belly, and spirit. There were chapters of life in which I would have called it a search for the divine. At others times, spirit. Or, the other worlds. Or, or, or. But it has been most of my life.

I like posts like this from friend, Charles LaFond, “Go Ahead, Get Out!” Pick your own reason.

For me,

  1. it’s just thoughtful writing.
  2. it’s informed — one of Charles’ callings as been as an Episcopal Priest, and he knows a pile of history that I don’t.
  3. phrases like “lost to all but God.” This lost business is common.
  4. the courage it takes to get out. To trust. To leap into a chasm. To dare to find what is beyond the confines of so much numbedness and protection.
  5. phrases like “wound of knowledge”. There are times when I wish that I could lose myself as easily as my young teenaged son does into a video game.

Enjoy Charles’ writing. Sign on for his posts through The Daily Sip. Stay curious. Stay moved.