Epiphany

Wow. I went for a walk on the greenway this morning (Sunday), and (surprise!) it was by far the most fulfilling experience I've had since my last walk. Some friends and I have been discussing the question, "What is necessary and what is extraneous in life?" Taking walks in solitude: I think this is at least a clue toward what is necessary and what is extraneous.

My last 'walk' was on our winter solstice evening a couple of weeks ago. It was actually a gathering with a few people from church. We met at a more-or-less wooded retreat center in Hillsborough at 4:00 p.m. for a meditative evening of still and quiet as we waited for darkness to fall. It was an overcast, cold day, perfect for this sort of thing, and we began with about 30 minutes of prayer book and scripture readings. This part was not very meaningful to me at the time, I remember, and I almost wished that I'd just stayed at home.

But then after the readings we were dispersed and quiet, moving about the property, walking or sitting still, perhaps meditating on some poetry. I appreciated us doing this together as a group; we were intentionally alone, yet each along side the participating others. There was a nicely designed brick and lime-stony gravel labyrinth involved also. This all turned out to be just what I needed at the time, and, I dare say, it was necessary.

So, what is necessary in life?

What is extraneous seems easier to say. You can pretty much fill in the blank there. It seems true to me that withdrawing from all the extraneous things for quiet, contemplative moments like these can help one clue in, at least, to what is necessary. I was thinking about this question when I started my walk this morning and thought about the Pre-Socratics, mainly about Heraclitus and "flux". Then I started thinking about how important a context can be for making sense of anything, so I thought about Genesis and the Vedas and how important "story" is.

So..., is there any particular story that is important? At this point, I am going to say that I don't think so. However, I just mentioned two good ones to start with. Three, if you count the Pre-Socratics, backed as they were by Greek mythology. But then each story becomes so diverse and complex as you bring in their extended uses and their developments in history. Now, I think that diversity is a good thing for several reasons that we can talk about later, but it definitely presents us with our greatest challenge as human beings, globally and otherwise. And concerning this challenge, it seems particularly important for us today to recognize that our stories themselves are always changing, too.

(So, everything really is in flux, isn't it? Or, at least the extraneous things are. Maybe some things, like particular stories, at certain times are necessary but are ultimately extraneous. I don't know. Still, the question remains, What is ultimately necessary?)

And what is our story today? What is our context? What do we hold in common? And by "our" and "we", I could mean any "our" or "we": the world, a nation, a society, a religious or ideological group, a "community", a family, friends, sexual partners, even a single individual with multiple social identities. What holds us together in all the flux and diversity? And what is the "self" among all these relations? It seems that story and context is important for coming up with any real answers here.

But still the other question is primary. Regardless of story, context or identity, there seems to me be only one thing necessary. So, the question posed is a good one. I feel like I experienced the beginnings of an answer to it this morning on my walk. But I dare not try--alone, here and now--to sum it up for us all.