I recently picked up a yellowed copy of Ram Dass’s Grist for the Mill, written in 1977, about 6 years after his mega best-seller Be Here Now. In it, he talks about being done with personal “story”– hoping to transcend the melodrama of life in order to merge with the divine.
This is pretty much the same urge that sent me to the river bank two summers ago, hoping to make peace with my personal past and fears about the future and find the joy in the now. I captured my thoughts in a hand-written journal I called “River Diary.”
At the time I was working on River Diary, I was struggling with my vocation as a writer–the various tugs and pulls between wanting to be spiritual and wanting to be a success. At journal’s end, I shared the resolution to which I’d arrived: “I have a new, improved aspiration: to share my writing not as a matter of pride or even of celebration. But rather, because it feels like the most natural thing to do, like the river flowing from left to right. In the words of Thomas Merton, when one arrives at the place I now hope to call home, what one finds ‘is not a collection of great mystics and men of dazzling spiritual gifts, but simple and rugged souls where mysteries is all swallowed up in a faith too big and too simple for visions.'”
It was out of this place of calling that at the end of the summer, I returned to my career as an author, publishing River Diary and beginning work on a new book, which will be published in October, 2015. It’s co-authored with my associate and friend Robert L. Weber, Ph.D., titled Spirituality of Age: A Seeker’s Guide to Growing Older.” (Inner Traditions.)
Here’s the thing–this new book is full of stories-and while I, too, aspire to transcend the dramas of life, I have been liberated from regret by my latest reading of Ram Dass. In brief, despite his assertions that he was over drama, I realized that over the subsequent twenty plus years, he has had–and written about–more than his share of story, from embarrassing, public fall-outs with gurus to strokes–and everything in between. And I am personally grateful to him for being willing–as was Merton and my other favorite author/mentor Henri Nouwen–to share both the highs and lows of their spiritual and life journeys (not a dichotomy but a merger) warts and all.
I have a new aspiration that I hope going forward is infused in my new book, and also in this blog–that is to be simple and rugged. I hope you’ll stay tuned!
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