Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism

I remember about 15 years ago I read a poem which said that a woman’s life is like a process of flowering. As a teenager, she is like a pear flower---white and pure; in her twenties, she is like a peach flower---bright and colorful; in her thirties, she is like a rose---fragrant and fascinating; in her forties, she is like peony flower---elegant and graceful; in her fifties, she is like an orchid---open and calm; after sixties, she is like a lotus blossom ---flourishing and making you feel warm.

On Mother’s day this year, I happened to be traveling with friends in Texas, in the United States.  I decided to visit my close friend Jay’s mother, who lives in San Antonio.  I had heard a lot of her from her son.

If Jay had not told me that she is 93 years old, I wouldn’t have believed my eyes. I would have thought she was in her 60s as she had no trouble at all in hearing, seeing, thinking, talking and walking. I asked her about the secret of her good health. She said it was because she has good children. She mentioned her daughter, Linda, her son, Jay, and nephew, John, and her daughter in law, Kathy, Jay’s wife. She said Kathy treated her as her own mom, which made her feel life is worth living.

She showed me around her apartment. By the pictures on the walls, I knew more about her two children and her late handsome husband. Then I could easily picture the process of her flowering as a pear flower; a peach flower; a rose; a peony; an orchid. I could picture how she gave shelter and fragrance to her children’s life when she was young. I could also picture how she gives spiritual support and warmth as a lotus blossom now. As all kinds of flowers, she has been decorating her children’s life.  My visit to her gives middle-aged women like me a message: A woman can flower all her life, even in 90s.

As I visited with Jay's mother I realized that, at this stage in her life, she blossoms anew according to each circumstance.  When I was with her she was blossoming one way; when I left and a friend in need called her a moment later, crying over the death of a loved one, she blossomed in another.  She has a quality we in JJB cherish: a freedom to be obedient to the call of each monment, flowering relevant to each new situation.  In process theology this "call of the moment" comes from God.  God's call is adjusted to each new circumstance, and as we respond to the call we become different people. 

I saw this in Jay's mother.  She was 93 and yet there was a freshness in her.  I knew that her body was aching from the hardships of old age, but there was a freedom in her soul.  For all of us there will come a time when our bodies pass away.  Old age is natural.  It is one of the tragedies of the United States and Western nations, and also a tragedy of China, that we cannot accept the beauty of growing old.   Part of the wisdom of my own cultural heritage -- Confucianism -- is that old age is beautiful.  Lines in faces, graying in hair, even aches in our bodies are signs not of weakness but of character. 

But the most beautiful waxing and waning is that which occurs within our souls, as we respond to life's circumstances in ways appropriate to each new situation.  Jay's mother, at age 93, has mastered the arts of responding.  She knows that life is lived day by day, moment by moment.  As you talk with her, you feel her kindness and you get the feeling that she knows something deep and mysterious -- joy.  Her joy does not come from the fact that her life has been a perfect unfolding of a divinely conceived game plan.  She has known suffering and pain, as have we all.  But somehow she has learned from experience to welcome the whole of life itself: its flowering and its finality. 

This "finality" is not just the end of life.  It is each moment of life.  Every moment is a first moment and a last moment.  The moment at hand will never occur again.  If we think biblically every moment is an apocalypse.  But it is not a sad apocalypse, if we learn to blossom -- to flower -- with the circumstance at hand.  I conclude this essay with Jay's help.  We want to name some kinds of flowering of which we think all of us are capable, women and men, whatever our age.

Orchid Moments are Open and Calm.  They are connected to inner peace.  Even when people around us are anxious or angry, perturbed or irritable, we can receive them with a steady and loving calm.  With what Buddhists call equanimity.  This kind of openness comes with the wisdom of experience and with having perspective.  It has seen many things in life; it knows that all things pass away over time and that life is too short to hate others.  In our Orchid Moments we touch a wisdom which is deeply human and deeply holy.  According to the Bible we were made to become Orchids.

Peach Moments are Bright and Colorful.  They don't mind expressing themselves; and, in doing so, they say yes to life.  This "yes" comes from a deep place, a place we can trust.  There is a freshness deep down in our universe, says Whiteheadian, and we can live from this freshness at every moment of our lives, even when we are suffering from disease and old age.  Sometimes peaches can be flamboyant, but doesn't flamboyance add something beautiful to life.  Witness the colors of African fabrics, the sounds of free Jazz, the dizzying array of life's differences.  Isn't there something delightful -- even peachy -- about the dizziness.  According to the Bible we were made to become Peaches, too.

Rose Moments are Fragrant and Fascinating.  They can be very quiet and introspective and indirect; they can be very romantic; and they can be hidden.  There are occasions in life when what gets us through the day is fascination with something or someone who is mysterious, interesting, intriguing, rose-like.  And from God's perspective, says Whitehead, each actual entity is rose-like, too: if not mysterious and fascinating to others, then to the Deep Listening who ears each voice, sees each color, as transcending its own life, and therefore beautiful.  "And on the Seventh Day God rested and took delight in the sheer goodness of the world."  He smelled the roses.  He knew the roses transcended him, and that's why he loved them so much.

Peony Moments are Elegant and Graceful.  We become peony-like when, in response to guests visiting our homes, we reach out and welcome them, helping them to become comfortable, not forcing them to adjust to our circumstances, but rather adjusting ourselves to them.  We are hosts and hostesses in the best of the Confucian -- and Virginia McDaniel -- tradition.  And we never give the appearance of being too busy for people.  We are not in a hurry.  They can tell the same stories over and over, and we listen.  If they are children, we kneel to their level and give them the sense that they -- and they alone -- are who matter to us.  Recall the passage in the Bible where Jesus told the little children to come sit in his lap.  He was discovering his peony side.  He was elegant and graceful -- and kind.

In traditional Asian societies, the lotus flower symbolizes the wisdom of enlightenment.  To be enlightened is to understand, intuitively, the way things are and they way things can be.  It is to see...to hear...to feel...to know.  People can lack certain kinds of intelligence and still be very wise.  Their wisdom comes from experience.  All human beings bear the seeds of the twin virtues of wisdom and compassion.   They are like the Yin and Yang of traditional Chinese thinking.   When we are wise, we love others; and when we love others, we are wise.  We understand the interconnectedness of things, the fluidity of things, the fragility of life, the simple gift of being alive even for one moment.  Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus have Lotus Moments.  People who are not religious at all have Lotus Moments.  Jay's mother is a lotus, too.  

People do not need to know they are lotuses in order to be lotuses.  Their wisdom is in their bones, their experience, their longings, their kindness.  The Bible speaks of holy Wisdom in female terms: as Sophia.  It is arguable that Jesus of Nazareth was himself a lotus for those around him, and in this sense he was an enfleshment of the holy Wisdom.  But there are many enfleshments, many Sophias.  As many as there are grandmothers.