Yearning

“You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.”
(Andy Warhol)

Rainy days can feel confrontational.

Even downtown Manhattan can lose its lustre on a wet day. Perhaps the rain dissolves away our faith in consumerism and we stand in doorways silently yearning for something different. What would suddenly thrill you on days like these?

It’s our faith and attachments that stand in the way of our transformation. We want to change; but we don’t want to be changed.

In Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s searching poem, ‘The Invitation’, she asks if we can be ‘faithless and therefore trustworthy’.

When the poem was first published, people were apparently upset by the the word ‘faithless’ and would often substitute it for ‘faithful’.

She says:

“It is uncomfortable when someone perceives us as breaking faith with past promises. Yet, if we live fully, it is inevitable that this will sometimes happen, because change is inevitable, and commitments, if they are to remain vital, must be made and renewed.”

As we live into a time when our commitments are being shifted, I wonder if we can bear to look carefully, without slipping into the anaesthesia of our ‘faith’ in how things have been or, maybe, should be?

The deep-seated patterns in our human relationships are being rattled rattled by pandemic, racism, pending economic depression and progressive ecological collapse. Things might change but they won’t get easier any time soon.

So, can we accept that, even on 5th Avenue, our lives may not be all we have hoped for?

And will we squarely face into the bargains and commitments we need to leave behind?

Can we be faithless as we each confront our yearning?

Notes:

The blurb on the back of my copy of ‘The Invitation’ tells me that Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s name was given to her by the Native American Elders to whom she was apprenticed. It means ‘one who likes to push the edge and can help others do the same.’

Andy Warhol and the New York ‘Pop’ artists offered us a confrontation with the mass market and the expendable, cheap, transient agenda of big business. As Warhol said, “Buying is more American than thinking, and I’m as American as they come.”

In ‘Who do we choose to be?’, Margaret Wheatley asks:

“The more we know ourselves - how we filter and react to the world - the more trustworthy we become. It’s been said thousands of times, in all faiths and philosophies. know thyself. What may be less clear in these wise expressions is the reason we learn to know ourselves: we develop a knowledge of self so that we can give up the self and serve others.”