The video for today - "Georgy Girl" - ... I recall listening to the song while my dad drove my two brothers and me through the woods toward Herrington Creek. Oh my, what cold waters! I can go back in memory and feel it now. This was the mid-60s; the song was written in 1967. It is one of my earliest memories, and a happy one.
We rode toward the creek in my dad's Chevy truck. I liked the tune, and it was blaring through the trees while we meandered along the dirt three-path road to the cold waters where we would swim or fish. I thought the song was about the state we lived in - Georgia, USA -... this made the music even more pleasing. Later, I discovered it had nothing to do with where I was born.
* * *
Now, to 2020... I come upon the song again, after all these decades. I listen to it and watch the video. I am sitting alone in northern Maine, over 1250 miles from my birthplace, and my dad and one of my brothers have passed from the body. I am age 59.
While listening to the words, tears begin flowing. Tears keep flowing, like deep hurt gushing from caverns long-hidden below. The words that evoke these tears start with these lyrics...
Hey there, Georgy girl There's another Georgy deep inside Bring out all the love you hide and, oh, what a change there'd be The world would see a new Georgy girl
* * *
I was raised in a culture where I did not fit - Does spirit fit anywhere? The culture did not support me when I began to fly free, not in rebellion but in love of truth. Soaring was a threat to keeping everyone grounded. I more and more broke away from the constraints of the past, though it led to much heartache, emotional and physical illness, and loneliness. Among the losses was my beloved professorship. And, at one point, I lay on a living room floor deciding whether to live or die. I got up, choosing life, and got help right away.
Thankfully, I have never let anyone or anything keep me in a cage. I recall being encouraged by the Gospel of Mark 1.11. Jesus' Father speaks to Jesus at his baptism: "And a voice came from the skies, saying, 'You are my dearly loved son, in whom I am well pleased.'" Whatever the cost, I wanted that to be true of me. I knew I was finally not accountable to any human. I came to see I was responsible to myself, my heart. Yet, no one taught me that.
I am 64 now, and it is 58 years since dad drove with his three sons toward the creek with "Georgy Girl" playing on the radio. I am the only remaining one of the family of five. I live alone in Northeast Maine again, back where I tearfully watched the video of "Georgy Girl." I am no longer officially associated with the church, though I remain devoted to Jesus as wisdom teacher and spirit person. One could call me a Zen Buddhist - that is a long way not only in distance from my upbringing but in culture. Where I lived as that small child imbibing from the King James Version Bible, Buddhists were part of the long list of cultists bound to a fiery hell. Yet, the life seeping through me led to a deep feeling of the Zen Buddhist way. When I read Jesus now, I hear more Zen than church, for I think he was more Zen than what has become the Christian religion. I can see Jesus and Dogen being best buddies.
Yet, really, what I am cannot be a Zen Buddhist even as it cannot be a Christian, or anything. I can wear these things, if I choose; I can wear anything I choose. But it is all painting on puddles of water.
I am nothing. I have learned that. And the more I realize this nothing, the freer I am, the more alive. Being nothing lightens the load. Why not now? I was born nothing, and I will die nothing. And that nothing is amazing. It is wonderful! It is sacred and beautiful. It is not a non-entity. Nothing is not an absence, it is a fullness. But it is not a thing, either. So, what is it? I do not want to know. I cannot. I am too close to myself to identify what I am.
* * *
More and more of the unlived seeps through and manifests from the nothingness I am. Slowly. It has for the decades since listening to "Georgy Girl" with my dad and brothers. And I have learned this over these years since that day ...
Freedom is not just a state of being, one we reach; it is a becoming more alive to be.
The soul, divine, is not content with the status quo, nor need it - spirit's home is Sky - its joy in its flying free.
* * *
Love - call it God, Grace, the Light, Creator, Mother, Father... what you will - I know is what draws out from depths the unlived life. And I know I am already complete as spirit; yet, as a man, I am becoming whole. I do not see a destination, I do not want to see one - it is all happening here in this ordinary, ephemeral life. It is happening as I sit here at night writing these words. It was happening early afternoon at the vehicle repair shop as I sat and read poetry. It was happening on my walk late afternoon, as I petted the cow and talked to her. My life is absolutely sacred, unspeakably wonderful, for simply being what it is and nothing else.
So, in closing, I will invite Du Fu to speak for me, and, possibly, he speaks across time and space from 8th Century China for all of us ... He penned these words in his elderly, white-haired years. Let us listen ...
West of the cottage, mulberry leaves soft and ready for plucking
ears of wheat on the riverbank raising their spears again
how many times in one life can spring change into summer?
I want to drain the wine cup the lees like honey in the bottom.
*Du Fu. A Life in Poetry. Trans. David Young. p. 142. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
