Plain dress November - learning new lines

Wandering around on the platform waiting for the train to Lewes to emerge from the tunnel at St Leonards Warrior Square Station, I noticed a big wall poster announcing the opening of Love Story the musical.

Love Story! That took me back forty years! Everyone in our school was reading it. So beautiful. So passionate. So sad. In fact so beautiful was it, that it caused me to suppress out of sight the puzzled misgiving I felt – but… but surely… but surely love doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry…

Of course it doesn’t.

Quite the reverse.

Love means having to say you’re sorry more than you ever imagined possible. Love means learning to see things from the other person’s point of view and letting your pride tumble into the dust and not bothering to waste your time going to get it back.

Love means letting go of things that really did matter to you quite a lot because the other person matters to you more.

Love means getting over yourself and settling for reality. Love means accepting that if the other person still drinks their tea like Darth Veda (slurrrp… Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!) until they drop dead at 94, well that probably doesn’t matter so very much in the grand scheme of things.

But whatever else it means, love means being willing to say you’re sorry over and over and over again.

In Buzzfloyd’s house, she says, they have been working on ‘unqualified apology’; dispensing with ‘I’m sorry, but…’ and just stopping without going further than ‘I’m sorry.’ She says it is transformative.

The Plain way is not Plain, without humility. Humility is not humble, without being willing to say ‘I’m sorry’

Love Story. ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’ However did it manage to run and run and run, turning on a one-liner that is so patently obviously untrue?

Gelassenheit

Today I have learned this new word. Gelassenheit.

Sometimes encountering a new word stirs up wonder as much as meeting a captivating new person who lingers in every corner of the psyche long after the time together is over.

Gelassenheit. It has given me so much to think about. Here follows what I have learned.

Lassen means to leave, so gelassen means to leave go or let go. ‘-heit’ as an ending is comparable to the English ‘-ness’ (eg fröhlichkeit and happiness – I guess the k comes about because you can’t really have fröhlichheit): so gelassenheit is letting-go-ness, the ability to let things be, to leave them as they are, to let them rest and not pursue them when it is not wise.

It isn’t only a passive thing though, a refraining from disturbing what was better left alone; gelassenheit, like ‘letting go’, can also be understood in active terms as releasing-ness – having in one’s heart the attitude that allows freedom. So this might be forgiveness, the ability to let go a grudge or a spiritual debt (or a financial debt for that matter), or having about oneself the kind of comfortableness that engenders release from tension and anxiety. It’s a peaceable, forgiving word. The Amish, who value gelassenheit, are known sometimes as Die Stille im Lande (maybe best translated as the Quiet People in our Midst), and gelassenheit is part of what underlies that quietness.

The German philosopher Heidegger liked the word. He described it as having the spirit or attitude of availability before What-Is that lets us be content to leave things in their inchoate or potential form of mystery and uncertainty. In the terminology of the Church, that would be like the contemplative prayer of the mystic tradition, that gazes upon God in adoration that forbears from analysis. And indeed Heidegger did come upon the word in the tradition of Christian mysticism, in the writings of Meister Eckhart.

Eckhart talked about the poverty of spirit (as in, ‘How blessed are the poor in spirit’ of the Sermon on the Mount) in terms of contentment: when desire and will and ambition are stilled because the soul has found her peace in God, wanting only what God wants, satisfied with what God gives, and therefore at peace with what is.
Eckhart says that the prerequisite for this condition is an empty spirit, immersed in the beloved will of God, having no desire for any thing of its own accord but only for what God in His good pleasure chooses to give. And indeed, what point could there be in desiring anything else? If God has not willed or given it, of what value could it be?

He (Eckhart not God) says that, when they hear about this gelassenheit, oftentimes people become all stirred up wanting to make changes in their circumstances – engage in a specific course of action, go and live in a hermitage or join a special community or something – but he says all of that is just about yourself really. He says that the way to find quietness and rest in God’s will is to leave/abandon yourself; as Jesus said, Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself… And Eckhart says the way to make a start with that is wherever you find yourself, deny yourself. He says that this should apply to how we direct our goodness, that we should not be fussy or choosy about how or where we are good, not select this or that course of action, not do good so much as just be good. And he says we should even apply gelassenheit to our ideas about God, letting go of preconceptions and theological constructs so as to leave ourselves unhindered and open to experience directly the mystery immanent and transcendent that lies beyond all our intellection pigeonholing of the Divine.

Gelassenheit, letting go of everything, is a primal state of simplicity allowing us directly to experience the reality of God (this is how Eckhart sees it).

It also manifests in such virtues as humility and mercy, for it is willing to let go of status, privilege and deserved place, and willing to let go of grievances and grudges and the right to punish and pass judgement.

Gelassenheit is a key concept in the Amish way of life, and underlies their aversion to individualistic self-expression. In Amish culture gelassenheit manifests as calmness and meekness, composure, stolidity, imperturbability, and also as submission – the willingness to relinquish self-interest or one’s own way and will.

Why I at the present moment find this word so illuminating is that I can immediately see its relevance to the practice of head-covering, for that arises out of the Christian tradition of submission. I personally dislike the word ‘submission’, because for me it imports association with sadism, power games, domination and life-stifling cruelty and selfishness – not attractive, then! But if I substitute for ‘submission’ the term ‘gelassenheit’, that imports for me an entirely new perspective – relinquishing self-image and agendas in favour of allowing the way things are to simply be, letting go of addiction to power and status, permitting the flow of grace, letting the sweetness of humility permeate relationships, allowing the freedom of detachment like taking off a constricting corset or cutting a sheep free from a strand of barbed wire fencing tangled tight in its fleece.

Headcovering as gelassenheit is a relaxing of the grasping fist, opening the hand in the stream of grace instead of vainly clutching at the living water, opening the cage door to let the imprisoned bird fly free.

It’s not a million miles from the wu-wei of the Tao – the art of non-doing – (see Chapter 37 of the Tao Te Ching) whereby without apparently doing anything, effortlessly the sage achieves everything.

Staying with the Tao for a minute, gelassenheit is also reminiscent of the Valley Spirit (see Chapter 6 & Chapter 28 of the Tao), the feminine principle which receives, which allows penetration by the other, taking the lowest place like the riverbed at the bottom of the valley, lying below what is above. This humility and passivity (in the true sense of the word passive; permitting, allowing) is recognized in the Tao as immensely powerful – ‘The sea is the king of a hundred streams because it lies below them’. ‘The greatest misfortune is the self,’ says Chapter 13: ‘If I have no self, what misfortune do I have?’

In Chapter 7 Lao Tsu points out that the reason Heaven and Earth continue without being exhausted is that they do not live for themselves – and immediately I can see that is true. The whole nature of sin, the whole ecological and environmental disaster that humanity is, comes about because of selfishness, self-aggrandisment, self-interest. Gelassenheit would permit the earth to heal.

And in Chapter 8 Lao Tsu says that wise people are like water, finding their way unassumingly to the lowest place.

Chapter 13 continues:
So one who values the self as the world
Can be given the world
One who loves the self as the world
Can be entrusted with the world

Thus gelassenheit makes the spirit as wide and kind as the sky, full of understanding, gentle and receptive.

Gelassenheit among the Amish is the refusal to be self-promoting, embracing insignificance, avoiding pushing oneself forward.

I guess it also accepts if need be the condition of finding oneself to be counter-culture, laughable and at odds with the mainstream, accepting that awkward and uncomfortable experience with the peace of the person who has built her nest in the will of God. At the top of this entry I have posted again a picture I’ve shown you before of a nest we saw and photographed up on Blubberhouses Moor in North Yorkshire, tucked down in a deep crevice within the rock formations there: ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee’; ‘Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God’ (Psalm 84:3 KJV).

What I am finding is that the practice of headcovering has its own language, and is potent for this genre of spiritual experience. It speaks to me, in a way that I had never expected. The headcovering talks to me all day long without ever really saying anything, about gelassenheit and the principle of humility and the valley spirit, the way of peace. That seems like a jolly good thing to me.

Stepping Off. 1

This is to be the first in a short series of posts. I feel that I am at a kind of crossroads on a hill, able to look back along the road I have travelled, and also see down across the valley where the road I could take is visible in the distance. There are options.

Aside of the metaphor of possibilities and history seen as roads, there are also matters that I don’t understand, and blocks I come up against repeatedly. How to find the way round the blocks like water; no fight, no blame?

Today, I want to look back at some of the milestones along the road have travelled, and come up to this present crossroads place. Tomorrow to look at where I am now. The next day to consider what may lie ahead.

Writing a blog post on the world wide web is different of course from talking to a trusted friend or thinking things through alone. Sometimes people do post indiscreetly about their private relationships and histories: I shan’t do that, but it means that what I write here will be seriously incomplete, since private and personal experiences have contributed to heavily in forming the person I now am. But, hey.

It began in earnest when I was fifteen. Already I loved deeply the Earth, the creatures and the green and growing things, the soul of tree and hill and stone and sky and water and fire. Then, after giving my heart to the Lord Jesus, I encountered St Francis of Assisi, and his vision of holy poverty, complete simplicity and humility.

Then and now his asceticism does not resonate with my soul, but his humility and simplicity do, and his love for the earth and acknowledgement of the ensoulment of creation.

After St Francis and the Fioretti, the book about his life and early followers, a year or two later I read Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha, and saw the film that was made from the book. This expanded and deepened my vision and understanding of how simplicity could be lived. At the same time I read Sister Felicity's book Barefoot Journey. When I was eighteen, I discovered the Tao, and also a book called Unsui, about the life of Zen monks.

I have been challenged and taught by other lives and stories – Juliette de Bairacli Levy’s Wanderers in the New Forest, Julia Butterfly Hill and The Legacy of Luna, Catherine de Hueck Doherty’s Poustinia; and some community expressions of simplicity – monastic communities, Stephen and Ina May Gaskin’s Caravan, and the Anabaptist world – Amish, Hutterite, Mennonite; and the primitive Quakers.

What came together in me was a definite and quite fierce small flame of longing burning for a barefoot life: simplicity, humility, quietness, frugality.

It crystallised in my imagination into a sense of living in a hut two-thirds of the way up a mountain. I think this image drew on my memory of an afternoon spent with a woman hermit in the woods above Ampleforth, and also was fed by the goat woman in the film of Cold Mountain.

I had been thinking that what I wanted was a life that would fit easy into a twelve-foot caravan, the space defining the limits of my possessions.

But I’ve also had a sense of wanting to step off – ‘step off’ what?

I want to step off the ground: to live in a dwelling that has no roots or foundations. A hut just placed on the ground, or a houseboat or a shepherd’s hut. And right up close to a mature tree. With no electrical cables or mains drainage or gas pipes or any other veins and arteries opening connections.

There I want to be able to think and contemplate: to feel along the silver threads that join things and people until I feel my way to truth.

I want my hut to be in nature: so that the birds and frogs, the insects and hedgehogs, the foxes and grass and clouds and rain and sun are my living room.

I want to walk lightly on the earth: not to wound or deplete or poison the earth. I want to be the earth’s faithful child; nurturing the earth as the earth has nurtured me. I want to be the earth’s friend.

I want to live less and less in the world of money, and sever the links with consumerism completely. To work with my hands and to work with my skills and use my wits to earn a living feel right.

Self-sufficiency is not my aim. I feel that things go better when we work together and we share: links of craft and trade are honourable – but I would prefer the links to be small and immediate: honey from the bee-man, bread from the baker, fruit from the garden and the hedgerow, candles from Peter Neumann, cutlery from Tod, socks that Alice has knitted. This is growing. It isn’t there yet. But the longing is present and intensifying.

Like a hunger and thirst, I want simplicity – to live with very few possessions; to walk humbly; to live unobtrusively, a hidden hedgerow life. Also in my relationships: honesty, integrity, freedom, respect, peace and kindness; no contention, no possessiveness, no domination.

I think I should also strive to want to love: because love is the mark of Christ’s disciple, and is the best way of all. But in my life now, after the many personal traumas of the last decade, love does not come easily. I try to ask nothing of others, and to meet them with the Namaste of my soul: reverencing and respecting the truth and light of their living being. I am hoping that may be a step on the way to love.