Beyond The Wall

6-3-07

I’m enclosing “Celebrating Our Humanness” for you if you choose to post it. It explores some thoughts on accepting and loving ourselves – warts and all.

As you well know, love is a favorite subject of mine, and on this topic, an incident happened in the classroom that I’d like to share with you…

I was teaching a group of students at my table on the subject of language and among them was a young fellow named Amir from Bosnia. Amir has been through some horrific experiences in the war in Bosnia and is now struggling to learn English. Suddenly, he put his book down, looked at all of us, and said, “I love you guys.” It was so unexpected, there was silence for a moment. Then we all answered together, “We love you, too, Amir.”

It’s moments like this that remind me how great these fellows are and how fortunate I am to be able to help them. I’ve learned that if our heart and mind are fully present in whatever we are doing, our lives have meaning. There’s a sense of fulfillment. If we have compassion and love for everyone – all beings – beyond the notion of friend and enemy, the basis for true hapiness is ours.

Never in a thousand years of muy wildest imagination did I think I would be in prison. Here I am, though, and all I can do is choose to make the best of each day. The truth is that every stage of our lives is perfect, if we allow ourselves to really live in it. If we concentrate on the present - (and this includes my writing this from a prison dormitory and you reading it with a broken arm) – we can contribute and show up for this moment as fully as we can, then any moment can have its blessings.

Flying Lessons

by Charles “tom” Brown
Copyright 2007

     When a mother eagle is about to let go of her eaglets, she does a couple of things to get them out of the nest. She starts bringing them less food every day. She also begins to remove their nest, branch by branch. She dismantles the resting place.

     From one point of view that can seem cruel. What a terrible thing to do! But when we look at it from a larger perspective, from a bigger viewpoint, we see that she’s giving her young the freedom to exercise their wings and fly.

     When we graduate from a certain level of being here, life does the same thing to us. It withdraws old sources of nourishment and reminds us it’s time to go to another level of awareness. By removing our old source of nourishment, we discover greater reserves of strength and power within us.

     No bird can fly without opening its wings, and none of us can love without exposing our hearts. Anytime we hesitate revealing who we are, we can picture ourselves as a bird perched on a roof, wings tucked at our sides. To enter a relationship without opening our heart is to jump off that roof without spreading our wings. That we must move through the fear of flying before being upheld is what trusting is all about.

     When we bring up what we keep inside, it is sacred and scary, and we’re often not sure if we want to touch it or not. By going inside, though, and bringing out whatever we find there, we discover that it makes all the difference. Our revelations become our wings. Then we can say, “This is who I am when no one is looking.” For each of us is a fledgling that eventually, if fed, will fly.

4-29-2007
You’ve been in my thoughts and prayers a lot lately. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to not have the use of an arm.

In a way, we each are confronted with the same dilemma: how to feel the pain of living without denying it and without letting that pain define us. Ultimately, no matter what burden we are given – a broken arm, an imprisonment, the loss of worldly goods, feelings of depression – once whittled to the bone, we are faced with a never ending choice: to become the wound or to heal.

Just as a vine or a shrub – no matter how often it is cut back – will keep growing to the light, the human heart, no matter how often it is cut – can reassert its impulse to love.

And so…let’s reassert our impulse to feel and express the loving energy that surrounds us, the energy that we are.

Enclosed is an essay called “Flying Lessons.” On the surface, it may seem inappropriate to write of flying when our wing is broken, but perhaps that is the best time to approach it. We’re all like birds who have forgotten that we have wings.

Sometimes when I’m out on the recreation field, I watch the hawks fly. It seems as though they just stretch their wings out and allow the wind to carry them for miles. I watch in awe of the majest and freedom they show as they go higher and higher without moving a feather. Wings outstretched as they are effortless lifed. It is beautiful. It reminds us to give ourselves permission to allow the universe to lift us higher.

May we feel a little more of the magic of being alive today and may we spread our wings and allow the wind to take us to heights we’ve never known before.