WINE TASTING RAMBLE

 the party

selma and rafael

Friday night I skipped the Front Porch show to go to Selma's last Friday of the month wine tasting. Missed Jimmy Zeh's banjo and humor, but I've seen him a few times and recorded him a good bit. As I want to go to the Front Porch every Friday night, sometimes I feel like going to something else that happens on a Friday night. It's a loyalty to Selma and the regulars at her coffee shop that drew me to the wine tasting, because so many people kept reminding me. It's as much a matter of support from my side, and from the other side a good time with friends. I believe in supporting my friends in whatever they do, within reason, and all my friends are people I could call rational at least to some degree.

I don't ask for too much rational. Don't want too much rational for myself. It's good, it has an important place, but the irrational has a place too. I like to allow for the irrational in myself and others. It sure helps my understanding of history to accept the irrational as perhaps even more powerful than the rational. Whatever, I like to leave room for both in my world, in my life. Maybe it helps me to justify major irrational decisions in earlier life, to allow irrational its due. Rational is boring, ultimately. Few surprises there. I like the occasional surprise. Not necessarily the surprise that says the car needs a new fuel pump. But those wonderful moments that come out of the blue with no scientific explanation, meaning in the rational mind it didn't happen, but I'd have missed them if I restricted myself to only that which makes sense.

Spiritual experiences since I discovered that God indeed Is and opened to origin, the source of all being and non-being, opened to a universal consciousness that goes way beyond blowing my mind, that baffles me so much it makes me stop thinking about it, which turns out to be the only way to receive it.

The saying comes to mind, "You get what you want after you stop wanting it." I've seen that happen so much in myself and others I know that by now I'm used to it. Somebody talking about an experience might say, Isn't that weird? And I keep my thought to myself, No. Usually, I'll shrug my shoulders, liking to stay out of such conversations, because there's nothing that can be said. It's beyond words, beyond comprehension.

A few nights ago, I watched Peter Greenaway's film, NIGHTWATCHING, a story of Rembrandt, a contemporary of Johnny Appleseed. At the end of the film in special features, I found some interviews with Greenaway about the film. The final thing he had to say was Rembrandt had come to see human existence a matter of sex and death, everything comes down to that. I turn off the movie, eject the disk, go to the computer, turn it on, go to email, something from Edwin Lacy. He wrote, "By the way, you know everything is just sex and death don't you? Everything." The time it took to eject the disk and get the computer going was the span of time between the two. What can I say? What can I do? Nothing. How do I attempt to interpret it? All I can see is it was necessary at that moment for me to get it. Why? I'm not even going to ask. 

It was beyond coincidence. To be able to receive it, I must let go of rational mind and allow just whatever comes along. I believe with conviction it was something I needed to hear, and then to hear again, stressing it. Like the hand of God came into my space and pointed at it, saying, Pay attention to this. This is how I have found the spirit I can only call God communicates with me. Before I caught on, I missed several, one very crucial one I regret my entire life, but since catching on, it's like communicating with Caterpillar now that we're learning each other's body language, eye language, the forms of communication without spoken language. Communication with the spirit doesn't have eye language or body language. It's subtle. I've found the spirit of what I call God gets something across to me by one way or another from sources I'd never anticipate, surprises, out of the blue. Something somehow radiates what might be called a golden glow in the mind's eye, resonance such it gets my attention and says, Pay attention to this. It's for you. Now.

These experiences are not good to talk about, because putting them into words makes them appear irrational; therefore, unscientific; hence, invalid, ridiculous. And then the one with the experience begins to doubt the experience, and like Peter walking on the sea with Jesus thought about what he was doing and sank. It's definitely not of the mind. I hear people at the coffee shop talk about such things that are important to a lot of people like whether or not there's something to atheism. I had a period of time in the life I called atheist, but it turned out to be a gestation period where I did a lot of thinking. By the time I realized, again from out of the blue, the spirit of God had indeed put his hand on my shoulder and said, I'm with you. Not in words. The experience was so convincing that to ignore it would have been to turn around and go backwards into the attitude toward life I was needing to transcend, to get beyond or out of, whichever. Ignorance, I'll call it. Not that I'm anything but ignorant now, but not like then. 

I think of the emptiness I felt within during that period of the life when my rational mind wanted to rule. I don't try to convert atheists, because I figure it's a step along their way too, clearing out the old, making way for the new. New bottles for new wine. So it went at the wine tasting, everyone in clusters talking about sex and death, naming neither, in long animated conversations. Everyone knew each other and everyone was comfortable. We're all very different people, different kinds of people, different nationalities, religions, races, interests. Looking at us like circles, we all intersect at least a little bit with each other as circles. It's a lively, in motion atmosphere of a comfortable number of people, all of them friends partying, Selma's earthmama arms embracing everyone. 

*