“Love…it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.”
Kahlil Gibran
On rare occasions in my life, I’ve suffered momentary break-downs when sudden waves of sorrow would sweep over me in a storm of tears that wrenched up out of me in sobbing pleas and prayers; petitions to some unknown force for answers that never came.
My only thought during these episodes is the fear that I will fail to become who I was meant to be in this life. It isn’t just a fear of failure. It’s fear of a meaningless existence, a wasted station, an unfulfilled destiny; fear of letting others down and not just others but God, whatever or whoever she might be; fear of failing to serve the purpose for which I was created. Like dark vultures circling slowly overhead, that foreboding fear is never far.
I’ve always known I had a “calling” and I knew it like a shapeless shadow that one feels with phantom fingers in the mind. I couldn’t “see” it or taste it or experience it in any physical way but I knew it as sure as one knows the perfect bowl of blue that is the sky; or the melting of an orange sun over a dusky, restless sea; or a lone horse on a hill at twilight, a silhouette of sinewy muscle announcing “yes” to a world that whispers “love me.”
Even as a teenager in the 1970s, I knew I’d be writing these words you’re reading now. I didn’t know the Internet was coming, of course. I assumed I’d write a book. The word “blog” was still waiting in the wings, languishing in language heaven for its moment to be real. But even then, the words were wooing me, winding their way in, taking their special place; caressing my cerebrum like a freckled fawn with feathers, forecasting my future. “You’ll do this, you’ll do this,” it said, part promise and part tease.
I knew I would write and I knew they would come in small chunks and I knew they would contain spirit and truth and they would pass through me like light through a window and I would not own them and they would stand alone. The only thing I did not know was whether I would attach my name or not. That was the only question I struggled with over the years as I puzzled with the plan. What name would I use? I thought I should be anonymous. I really wanted to use a pseudonym. So much for that.
One morning in my lazy youth I awoke to find two words on the white tile of my bedroom floor, small words carefully cut from a magazine, so small I might have missed them. Who cut them? Who placed them there? Even now I want to know. One said “author” and the other said “serve” and I nodded. Of course I knew. I knew.
I knew I might fail the way a volcano must know it could fail to erupt; its molten lava screaming to be while restrained by fear or earth or pain. There are no guarantees. But something in me knew. With my short attention span and my easily bored mind, I knew my writings would be brief. I could not sustain a novel. I’ve written tens of thousands of poems, all short, sheared and shorn; filed away and forgotten just after being born; and stored, over the decades, in dozens of folders in file cabinets and boxes in dark closets and dusty garage shelves. I wrote ‘em, read ‘em, filed ‘em, forgot ‘em. Are they good? Are they crap? No clue.
My mentors were Hugh Prather, Kahlil Gibran, Paul Williams and a host of lonely poets; messengers of lacerating light who delivered their mysteries in small, beautiful bites; tiny jewels that gleamed in the sun, even at night.
One time in 1976, I sat cocooned in a carrel desk in the isolated heaven of the Wright State University library as I wrote a paper that got me so high that I forgot who I was. It was for a class on literary devices and our assignment was to pick any subject but use as many terms as possible. I played with anastrophe, euphony, cacophony sublime; antithesis, chiasmus, hyperbole and rhyme; connotation, consonance, allusion, and more; synecdoche, analogy, tone and metaphor.
The subject I chose – or did it choose me? – was the process of spiritual transmission from a master to his student. As I recall, the paper explored the questions a young novitiate might have and the searing arrows of wisdom that a realized or enlightened guide might direct at his pupil. I had the sense that some force or energy field was flowing into and then pouring itself out of me onto the blank, white page and I – like some disinterested observer – found myself peacefully floating out of my body like a balloon on a string, blissfully watching the process unfold.
After finishing, I recall walking through Fawcett Hall in a kind of happy daze when a familiar face approached me, a face I soon recognized as belonging to Becky LaRue, an attractive young lady from my high school. I have this dream-like memory of her mouth moving and words being formed like blown soap bubbles bouncing on air toward my ears and then, with dawning anxiety, realizing that I was still not fully in my body and was unable to process any socially appropriate response that might sound like the English language. I don’t know if I actually spoke or if I did, if my words made sense, but I do know she looked disturbed and confused and I so desperately wanted to rescue us both from my temporarily altered state.
I realized later that I was not “myself.” But who exactly was – or is – my Self, I wondered. And if I could lose my Self like that, who was the observing, noticing “I” that was temporarily losing its socially derived identity but still knew me as me? Who is that guy, I wondered. Who exactly am I? And more importantly, why am I?
I’ve spent all my life seeking answers to these unanswerable questions and long ago concluded that our puny words can only point to, but never fully grasp the truth. What I have discerned is that our existence here is not a fluke. Each of us has a purpose and all our separate paths are somehow joined in a wonderful oneness that in its ultimate depth can be described as infinite love. We are all “in love” whether our thinking minds agree or not. And for each of us, our purpose is to be as open as possible to receiving and expressing that love. Within our purpose we have choices, of course. We are not required to obey. But when we get quiet and listen past the chatter of our minds, we can hear the soft song-like serenade of invitation and surprise; the whispering brook of joyful devotion that is our own sacred path. And so I believe.
Doug Craig graduated from college in Ohio with a journalism degree and got married during the Carter administration. He graduated from graduate school with a doctorate in Psychology, got divorced, moved to Redding, re-married and started his private practice during the Reagan administration. He had his kids during the first Bush administration. Since then he has done nothing noteworthy besides write a little poetry, survive a motorcycle crash, buy and sell an electric car, raise his kids, manage to stay married and maintain his practice for almost 25 years. He believes in magic and is a Sacramento Kings fan.
