"COME ON UP TO THE HOUSE"Published on November 2, 2014
I am still recovering and reintegrating now that I am back home, and there is a certain restlessness of spirit as we tighten up the doors and put on the storm windows for winter. It provokes the following. This is not quite a rant, but more of a sigh.
It is so very painful for me that "meditation" is still such a relatively meaningless word in this society. It is meaningless because it has too many definitions. It means so many different things that folks just peg it as something it is not and let it go at that. They settle for less, just enough so that they can ignore it in good conscience.
And meditation (for some) is even a pejorative, actually looked down upon, probably a casualty of the 1970s and the New Age craze. It is almost impossible to break through the misunderstandings (and the bad rap) so you can give it a fair trial. And perhaps, saddest of all, many feel they have already tried it and it didn't work for them, so they pass on by. There are literally hundreds of techniques that fall under that word "Meditation." The thing is that so many people don't understand it or, worse, they already think they do and don't know that they picked the wrong type of meditation to try out. I wrote a line years ago, "To fail ignorance by a meter or a foot."
Anyway, I struggle, just short of flagging each of you down, to say please don't miss this key insight into life, due to something as shallow as society's ignorance. Don't ignore it and just walk on by, to where?
I am reminded of this song of Tom Waits that I love, "Come On Up to the House," with the words:
"Come on up to the house
The world is not my home
I'm just passin' thru
Come on up to the house."
"Come on up to the house
Well, you know you should surrender
But you can't let go
You gotta' come on up to the house."
That's how I feel just now.
[As we verge of winter, I can't help but think of the song from the great Michigan songwriter Dick Siegel, "When the Sumac Is on Fire." Here is a photo I took last week of the sumac.]