Too much going on to post, so here’s something fluffier for a change.

I. am. exhausted.

Moving is hard work. And there’s still a couple of days till the movers come …

I’m continuing with the excellent read Engaging the Powers, by Walter Wink, an analysis of the mythology and spirituality of violence from a Christian perspective. This is the best book that I have yet read on the topic of violence and the spiritual basis for nonviolence.

I’m on the chapter, “On Not Becoming What You Hate,” in which he discusses the way violence spreads by mirroring itself in its victims. In a sense it’s like a virus, infecting everyone with whom it comes into contact. It’s so invisible that no one realizes that the violence itself is the enemy; instead we use it to defeat those whom we believe to be our adversaries, little realizing that we have become the enemy.

We become what we hate. The very act of hating something draws it to us. Since our hate is usually a direct response to an evil done to us, our hate almost invariably causes us to respond in the terms already laid down by the enemy. Unaware of what is happening, we turn into the very thing we oppose.

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Does spiritual enlightenment mean perfect physical health?

For some reason I’ve always assumed so. Certainly as I grow spiritually, and bring awareness into parts of myself that I have repressed or ignored, I feel healthier and more alive.

On the other hand, I read somewhere that many Buddhist teachers die of cancer. Heck, many spiritual leaders, including the Dalai Lama, wear glasses, which, while minor, is certainly indicative of an imperfection in health. So what’s the deal?

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A sweet little story:

Last July I was in Taiwan for a week, to see my grandfather and relatives and to attend a traditional banquet held in honor of my wedding to Abigail. Abigail’s parents and aunt and uncle came too.

One day we took a short tour from the hotel, just us Americans. Our tour guide was a funny man who kept pointing out that we were on a toll freeway — “They call it a freeway, but it’s not really free. You have to pay.”

Toward the end of the tour somehow we got talking about him and his wife. It turned out that he met his wife while giving a tour. The woman was with a group from Malaysia and they went on an all-day tour with him. All during the tour he would talk to this woman, and he said it felt like they had known each other for a long, long time.

At the end of the day, he knew what he wanted to do, but he was too frightened. But then he thought, what the hell, you only live once (or some Taiwanese equivalent). And he asked her to marry him. And she said yes!

We asked him how long they had been together. He said, “Twenty-three years.”

Found a great little essay that speaks directly to some of my uncertainty around martial arts.

Ninjutsu Hiketsu Bun
(Essence of Ninjutsu)
by Toshitsugu Takamatsu

The essence of all martial arts and military strategies is self-protection and the prevention of danger. Ninjutsu epitomizes the fullest concept of self-protection of not only the physical body, but the mind and spirit as well. The way of the ninja is the way of enduring, surviving, and prevailing over all that would destroy one. More than merely delivering strikes and slashes, and deeper in significance than the simple out-witting of an enemy; ninjutsu is the way of attaining that which we need while making the world a better place. The skill of the ninja is the art of winning.

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While finishing up my latest read, The Warrior Within, I found an interesting statement that gives me a different perspective on the whole martial arts thing that started this exploration into violence in the first place.

Serious engagement in at least one major martial art is an activity with unparalleled effectiveness in mastery of one’s Warrior energy. One could effectively argue that the dojo of the martial arts traditions is one of the more important contemporary “temples” for this divine energy of the human soul. It is a space equally as “sacred” as any church sanctuary — and one perhaps far more promising as a resource for harnessing and channeling the energies of masculine aggression for the human community.

It brings me back to the question of my own issues with martial arts. On the one hand, I’m not sure I agree with their assertion; I think you tend to become what you do, and if you train intensively to harm other people physically, then you incorporate that into your way of thinking and viewing the world. On the other hand, there is a necessity to accept and channel the energy behind physical violence, and martial arts do that in a disciplined way.

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Today, the summer solstice, is my first wedding anniversary with my wonderful wife Abigail.

In reality it feels like I’ve been married to Abigail for the entire time I’ve known her. Our commitment to honesty and awareness in ourselves and openness to each other has done nothing but grow since the first day we met.

Still, the ritual of public acknowledgment and celebration of our love was tremendously empowering and, dare I say, magical.

Today is the first day of what I hope to be a lifetime more of the magic that is love, with all of the peaks and valleys, the light and the dark, that love encompasses. I hope that I will turn away from none of it, and experience all of it for what it is. Already the life of growing and being with Abigail has been many times more rewarding that I ever imagined in my youthful daydreams.

Happy anniversary, my Abigail.

In the book The Warrior Within, the authors explore the Warrior archetype from a depth psychology perspective, an approach that I find illuminating and very complementary to my own exploration of violence and power.

Incredible as it may seem, most men have great difficulty integrating their power. They have been taught by abusive fathers and controlling mothers that it is not good for them to feel powerful. Their real wants and needs, they have also been taught, are not meant to be expressed.

One thing that I find notable in looking back on my experience living in the woods is my lack of awareness of basic bodily needs. One example of this was my strong distaste for walking around. In a primitive living experience, you would think that walking and exploring would be fundamental, and indeed just about everyone explored widely to some extent. But my own explorations came very seldom. I hated walking.

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0. All the Power that ever was or will be is here now.

- from Paul Foster Case’s Pattern on the Trestleboard

For much of my life I’ve sought Power. Now it occurs to me to question: What, exactly, is it?

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