Authenticity and Self-Acceptance

and so once again i sit and type these words without the normal punctuation marks in the tradition of the great James Joyce he who let his soul shine forth in sheer authenticity against a society set in stone ah yes he let his self pour forth on every page and in every word that he wrote and how he took all the criticism and rejection i'll never know and yet he persevered and kept right on going calling a spade a spade saying it as it was never once covering up the truth as he saw it and here i go again this evening writing these cyphers which are shaping themselves into words and words into sentences with thoughts running after them rather that the other way around and yes that's what i so love about the creativity and spontaneity of the stream of consciousness way of writing that thoughts are chasing words rather than words chasing thoughts and i will write on here without censorship because being true to self is the most important thing any of us can do in life and today i did so much so much and yet i am not too tired perhaps i'm a little enervated by the way i seemed to let my connection with life lead me through my day and what a day it was beginning with a funeral yes yes yes yes a funeral the inevitable call of the grave which is a universal call and the funeral was that of a young man of 43 years of age the father of one of my sixth year students poor boy poor young man struggling to make sense of life as it is and he only after getting his father back in his life and i was touched by his pain his pain and yet i am powerless to do anything for him but be there with him but be there for him among the many hundreds of others who attended that funeral and the songs that were sung and the hymns that were sung are playing away in my deep unconscious as i write for they touched me they touched me but not in a phony religious way but in a deep spiritual way for these were little children from the young man's little sister's school for that choir had come to lend support to lend their voices to sing this grief ever more loudly and beautifully to the heavens and then they sung their little hearts out bless them bless them and the words of Jesus come into my mind as i type on and on suffer little children to come onto me for theirs is the kingdom of heaven and i so wished to descend into the well of my self into the well from which my soul springs and taste its healing waters to return to the child within me to the little boy sitting in the back lane long ago that little innocent boy who i was playing away happily with a little toy lorry playing away playing away happy and the little boy then and these boys around me now here and now and their poor friend who had lost his father and his grandmother his father's mother still alive and i type and wonder what it is all about at all at all at all and the words of the great John Henry Cardinal Newman come to my mind and i must keep reminding myself that i have not sinned against the light oh no i have not sinned against the light and by light here i mean the light of my innermost self the light of my own authenticity that innermost light even though i am using Newman's words for him for that great Cardinal for that great luminary of the Roman Catholic Church he meant the Light of Christ and i capitalise i capitalise because i realise the power and the control that those purveyors of the TRUTH in capital letters would have wanted it and oh no i want to be modernist and post-modernist and post-post-modernist and so on and so forth and that is why the stream of consciousness suits me because in it truths run free truths run free in lower case letters and these are authentic encouraging and approachable truths not fearsome ones blaring themselves out shouting shouting shouting in capital letters oh no oh no i am feeling so reduced so small so insignificant and i feel like Yeats' great sentiment in one of his great poems i feel like my soul must clap its hand and louder sing for every tatter of my mortal dress and like Hopkins i feel so much this evening that i am in the mud that i am wearing man's smudge like that great Jesuit poet and Greek and Latin scholar that oh he knew great desolation great torment and great despair no wonder he wrote about wearing man's smudge and sharing man's smell and i feel like one of those prisoners looking down from prison bars and seeing the mud but envying the other prisoner who saw stars or as Oscar Wilde put it we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at stars how i yearn to look at the stars and to leave the gutter heave myself up and embrace the universe in love yea even make love to the universe yea  yea yea even make love to great Mother Gaia Mother Earth Mother of the Earth and i want to write on and to return inward and downward into the chambers of my heart to make my home there to be comfortable there to be true to myself to be at home there to be true to myself to be enriched by the joy of being myself despite all the mud and slime yea yea yea despite all the mud and all that slime that seems to clog my soul at times and i was truly present today for that young man truly present because i was truly present to myself wanting to be there wanting to be really me in solidarity in solidarity yea yea yea in solidarity with the fragility of it all with the impermanence of it all with the finitude of it all with the ending of it all with that sad ending knowing knowing knowing that i had no control over anything over anything except my self except my self now at last coming home coming home coming home to self...

and the wind and the rain and the need to connect

Self at Mount Oliver Summer Conference 1996

.... and now something moves something stirs within some ancient primordial instinct perhaps and yet and yet it is more so much more so much more it is as if the strings of the heart are being played by the hands of angels by the hands of angels delicate as the touch of tears as they trickle in the crevices below my sore tired eyes and yes there is indeed a deep down passion struggling to be expressed struggling to reach out and embrace the whole world to embrace all in its elemental primordiality to embrace the rains that lash the windowpanes and the wind that howls to catch the wind as donovan had it in a song of all and now let the music of the soul play on play on play on let the music play on and let it never end until we have shuffled off this mortal coil this mortal coil this brittle house of bones this brittle house of bones and there is so much to be embraced if the spirit is only willing if the heart is at ease with itself if the gut is listened to listened to listened to and this is so much needed today for we all want to go beyond the stress beyond the sturm und drang of life beyond the pain that bites beyond the weight of stones the weight the weight that presses down on little people little people whom i teach these weakest of the weak these brittle reeds in our gentle pool of care and yes this something this something deep within this yearning for union for unity with the centre point of all creation with the still point of being with that strong ontological centre of gravity that pulls us like little planets to its supporting sun and still the tears come and still the tears trickle for this life was meant to be experienced deeply deeply deeply and yes there is a deep down well of wisdom from which we may drink and all is a going inward deeply an exploration of the caverns and passageways of what it means to be alive to be truly human to be caring to be caring of others yes oh so very much caring of others especially those significant others and even the insignificant broken people who cross our paths on a daily basis and yes this desire is deep within this mystical desire for the great unity of being and these words cascade out looking for shape but like the rivulets that stream from a larger waterfall of being and these little streams are enlivening and nourishing and sustaining and hope giving and thirst slaking and there is more so much more like the music of bob dylon and that of leonard cohen a music a deep music a music a music which seeps into the soul like water into the parched soil like water slaking the thirst of the parched soil and so the music comes the music comes through their old cracked voices but the music the music is so young so young while the voices are so old and we are told we are told that the music is eternal that the music is eternal that it will go on and on and on and there will be young voices who will come and take up the tune and carry it on and carry it on and on and on and still the wind beats wild on my window pane and the rain washes down the glass in healing rivulets and these old eyes water and i listen and i listen to the music of the spheres somewhere within...