AN OLD MAN'S DEATH

Al Searle died a few days ago. A subtle murky part of my being moved in his passing as if an ornate bowl was moved from one place in the sitting room to another to be viewed differently or to reflect the sunlight coming through the windows directly. The Old Man, Ojuku, my Grandfather-Teacher died a few months ago. He let go of his life, and his spirit slid playful without a care into the next realm. He watches me with a leisurely studied gaze knowing, as usual, more than I know about what I need to know, and smiling silently knowing I will follow paths that will lead me to the reality, the knowing I have been attracted to in this life will guide my path in the next.

It is a strange, no, comforting thing merging into the Unknown knowing something you don’t know in an intimate way. Strange, but it is beyond English to see the unspoken words around a dying man who has lived a long life outside of the traditions of Judeo-Christian worlds of perception to embrace the roots of existence and the texture of relationships with the mysteries, beginnings, evolutions, and timelessness. Al had spoke to me the last afternoon we had together about the Cup of Perception laying between his wife, dead a little over a year, and himself at 96, frail and vibrant. This cup was the only way the two of them could grasp in a moment and speak to the soul of the matter between them, the matter they come from and return to, and the things which matter most. This cup could alter perception the same way sunlight moving from one direction slowly to another changes the way a tree in his backyard appeared. This Cup of Perception was a merging process. His dying the other day makes this clear to me.

Reading Maria Vamvalis’ blog entry, Life’s Exquisite Promise, she quoted the author of Letters to a Young Poet. The man, Mr. Rilke said, “...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Therein lay an answer to questions I could not ask that ached, and nudged for expression within me.

Gregory E. Woods, Grandfather-Teacher