This post brazenly lifted inspiration from my long favorite elder teacher, Rachel Naomi’s Remen’s book Kitchen Table Wisdom,
Thank you Rachel I know you’re here to spread light, me too!
“A Label Is A Mask life wears.” … Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are…We are in relationship with our expectation and not with life itself…Belief traps or frees us.”
“We may need to take our labels and even our experts far more lightly.” Rachel goes on to tell her readers about a doctor-in-training studying people who thought they may have had an unusual experience of healing. One such person was a farmer who had done exceptionally well despite a dire prognosis. That doctor-in-training told Rachel she felt his outcome was related to his attitude.
“He didn’t take it on,” she said.
🎈
I’m pecking at the tiny letters on my iPhone in the hour of po just ahead of puka I Ke ao. Early early morning. Pete is now tucked back into bed with our mo’opuna’s sleeping bag to warm him after a unexpected encounter with a glass water bottle. A small but significant stream of water and broken glass flowed.
“That’s the end of that,” he said as he went to his old knees with a roll of paper towels to swab our Vardo and gather glass shards. Like this rose of a home we built, that was a glass bottle we have used for more than fifteen years choosing the fragile transparency.
We built this rose sized home because many common products e.g. plastics were making us sick. Over the years this home and that glass jar have weathered the decision we made to appear odd and different in the twenty first century.
In today’s world our golden rose Vardo much worn from wear is pointed to often and admired or surprised people when we two kupuna tell people we’ve been doing live from her for nearly two decades.
I said to Pete last night in a moment of such fond appreciation and aloha, “Our memory holes are like old lace, honey.” A far lighter and loving view of aging than the other labels so quickly uttered as diagnosis.
“Old Lace.” I’ll live that! Like spiders webs. Appearing fragile but not.
