Exuberant Wisdom

"Matter receives a signal from the sea it floats in."
Rumi *

I write to you from a coffee shop in Battle Ground, WA. Beside me now is a mature man and woman sitting at a table. They are talking with a loud conviction. So I eavesdrop. They are verbally tearing apart the people they read about in their shared newspaper.

I recall this morning

We went to a middle school assembly about the follow up of the kid's contributions to a Haiti medical relief fund. We passed through an early morning throng of young people in the hallways. We passed through an overwhelming exuberance full of kid's laughing and wrestling hormones. The physical intensity of the hallway was nearly trivial compared with the atmosphere of youthful hopes that the world will be fair and that life will be prosperous. Their was an infectious positivity.

The couple beside me frown. A snippet of their conversation floats by: "The world is nothing..." Then I hear another tidbit about how the bleeding hearts give too much of their hard earned money away in taxes and handouts.

I recall the entire student body sitting in silence as the slides of Haiti's heartbreak quaked on the screen.

The couple beside me turn the page to the Opinion section when they see a picture of the Haitians lined up for water and rice.

The kids gave nearly seven thousand dollars to help these same strangers.

What lives between the innocent age and an aging cynicism except for time?

When did we learn that adults are heavy while the young can be novice poets and artists?

Why do so many people fall from their wildness and become resigned to life?

I try to stick with the happy memory of the laughing bloom of youth parading down the polished hallway.

And adults beside me drone on.

I am an adult too. The weight of the years has been trying to bury the young heart inside. There can be a wider view inside the privilege of adulthood. This view provides more freedom of choice and more responsibility than I knew as a kid.

The elder person has both lived in Eden and seen the hard scrap of being an outcast in the desert.

I am full of questions:

Is there any lasting need for a black and white fundamentalism like the couple next to me?

Is there any way back to Eden now that we've imagined both the benevolent and stern faces of God?

Why were the desperately poor on the screen dancing and praying and singing in such a desperate situation after the great earthquake?

And when did the frowns arrive for the well heeled newspaper scrutinizers and coffee sippers?

Perhaps youth and wisdom can live in a compassionate place together within the adult, coming together for the sake of the world.

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* From Coleman Bark's translations: Rumi, Bridge to the Soul. Harper One, 2007, p.103

(c) Rick Sievers, 2010, All Rights Reserved