Inescapable Beauty

Inescapable Beauty: Four Square Jesus

How the hell did I end up in this godforsaken place? What was I thinking? Why did I agree to speak to this consulting conglomerate?

As I scan the auditorium, I am streamlined to an alternate reality. There are the Botox queens, the blow out five hundred dollar hair-doed princesses, the Hermes bagged glamour moms, the perfectly manicured administrators, the Lauren and Dior outfitted power people, the Rolex wearing silver haired men….it is rather nauseating. Despite being offended by the sheer gaudy shallowness of the display, I am ashamed that I find myself squirming in my pathetic Target outfit. I brush my unruly hair out of my face and fight the uneasy ness that is billowing within me.

I can’t allow myself to be bothered by the deeply gouged wrinkles that have found their home along the sides of my face.

When did irrationality become our cultural psyche? Hard to get a sound bite fix on how wildly nuts it all is.

Where are the intellectually searching human beings?

Give me a Grateful Dead T-shirted dude; a beatnik with an easel and a beanie, a peasant skirted hippie, a black coffee drinking Kerouac reader in the corner, a stoner with headsets in this crowd and my mood would instantly rise.

Thoughts swirl in my own miniscule eddy, filled with emotional drives and intellectual thirsts.

Maybe I am just too old.

Who was I kidding when I responded in the affirmative to speaking at this year’s TEMPT conference?

The name” Therapists Employing Multifaceted Psychological Techniques” would have been a clue to most folks who have IQs above room temperatures.

Well, to be fair, I knew it was risky, but I needed the money.

And where else could I make ten grand so easily?

My book is surely not a bestseller, but it has grabbed the attention of several wanna be intellectuals who head up committees choosing speakers for their obligatory end of the year conferences.

The thousand or so in this Marriott ballroom appear content chatting animatedly with peers, while simultaneously continuing parallel techno conversations on their phones.

This texting ever world is quite horrifying to me.

Who said, “One must choose in life between boredom and suffering”?

These dear lost people are all jaded up to their eyeballs in the minutiae of nothingness.

Who am I to try and introduce the concept of “ Caring as Curing” to them?

There is such glaring inadequacy in the psychological world in addressing the mystery of being. And I am being paid to speak to these individuals of the power in the sheer wonder of Being.

Can I transmit to these people what it means to be in love with living?

As I am scanning the crowd, I find myself getting dizzy, lightheaded. My heart rate begins to accelerate, and I find myself gasping for air.

The noise in the room empties out. My head is pounding.

Is it that time?

Again?

I didn’t know I was this close to the end.

But there he is!

And how glorious it is to see him- Owen-hip hopping his jolly way down the middle of the crowd, beaming at me.

An unlikely candidate for angel hood if ever there was one- tall, lanky, swaggering Dublin accented, tattooed, dirty blonde-haired hunk: Owen

“You are up to 90, Lassie! Four squared Jesus time.” Owen shouts at me.

And just as I am pitching forward- free falling off the stage- he reaches for me, enfolding me into his arms, taking me into his wings.

And immediately I am flying with Owen, out of the Marriott schmaltzy building, into the late afternoon sky- amidst whirling sounds of water falling, and into dizzying lights of bright yellow and purple we rise. Rose petals fall about and jasmine fills the air.

Thinking changes- linear living changes with Owen.

As I am being thrust upwards, I can see the me he is saving and saved before, concurrently.

There is the teenage me who has been choked and left for dead- alone in an alleyway outside of Boston.

There is the empty wombed me, after losing our baby- getting CPR.

There is the widow me, standing at Mitch’s gravesite early this morning, sobbing.

There is me falling off the stage a few seconds ago- to this joyous reentry into Owen world.

“Owen, are you real?” I shout up to him.

“Give it a lash, Missy. You were circling the drain again. Not your time, but this flight will serve to hold you together until your final day on earth. For the love of God, of course I am real. Do you think you can fly on your own? Are you mad?”

And suddenly the horizon is wiped clear, and we fly over mountain ranges and lush rain forests. The global map of recognition of Safety, of Home, of Love- sweeps over me.

I hear him singing “The Girl from Ipanema”!

“Mitch! I yell out to the universe.

And I see him- the love of my life- leaning over his tomato garden with our dog Roxie, by his side. He turns to look up and covers his eyes to shield the blinding light of Owen. I beg Owen to let me go to him and he says, with a sage clairvoyancy, laced with tenderness: ” Not your time, but he heard you, Kelly. “

And as I look back down, I see that Mitch is waving upwards, frantically, smiling that deep lined appreciative smile, with tears running down his cheeks.

Beyond recognition of the Human Experience, an electrical current of soulfulness washes over me.

Before awe takes over my brain, I remember to ask Owen what he means when he says” Four squared Jesus”.

“Oh, that! stems from one of my charges from Chicago, who played inner city leagues before the Bulls- he felt most alive within the four squares of the foul line section and he always shouted out:” Help me Four Square Jesus” as he seamlessly shot long, impossible shots into the net. I just love the way it sounds, so American and bold. So I use it for the heck of it.”

“Are you the highest level of angels, Owen? I mean in all my years of Catholic education, there was no referencing of angels being funny. Are you actually an angel, Owen?”

“Whatever you want me to be, I shall be, Kelly.”

As we fly over a golden stretch of desert, I scattershot Owen with questions I cannot make clear to myself, but maybe he can conceive of this curve’s target in some stray shot- like the hidden unknown magnetism of the beloved for the lover- not under one’s control, but somehow magically always there.

“What is the ultimate reality, Owen?”

“Meaningfulness is keeping always in mind the wonderful evanescent yet limitedness of the life on earth. All humans are cast on Matthew Arnold’s darkling plain and ignorant armies continue to fight at night, but nonetheless we are all given life and while we are breathing on the planet earth, we must love. If love reigns, death will not exist. Til then, we alternate between various living experiences.”

“Do you have an address, Owen?”

“Eden, darling, Eden”

And with that, I am immediately thrust back onto the stage of the opulent, yet desolate Marriott in Sharon, Massachusetts.

No one notices my shocked expression, my awkward footing.

I straighten out my navy skirt and tuck in white blouse.

Despite feeling shaken up and rattled about, I feel strong.

And as I look out at the crowd, I feel the colors of their collective beauty.

This is a Yaddo meeting of the souls.

How had I not noticed them before?

There is a lady hovering alone at a small table, reading a note she has pulled from her briefcase, silently weeping; there is a couple exchanging fiery glances of lust by the side door, there is a middle age man gazing longingly at a picture of his newborn granddaughter on his phone;, there is the key note speaker chugging water and sweating profusely in the middle of the group.

They are glorious creatures- beaming lights of confusion and yet, hope.

All the outer work- the camouflaging of humanity with fake clothing, fake skin, fake smiles- all hide the real fear which is authentic goodness.

Is this our crucible?

To be able to endure beauty?

I am reminded of Mitch telling me of his happiest childhood moment: winning a three-legged race at the age of six- with his older brother, Tim, at his father’s annual work picnic- and being rewarded with ice cream tickets. Mitch said that it was the look of pride on his father’s face that meant the world to him. Not the ice cream tickets, even though he loved ice cream and his family was financially impoverished. He told me that the look of pride and love that his father bestowed upon him- carried him through the jungles of Vietnam more than his artillery.

From his splendor of love, I am going to tailor intellectually what are in fact, rags of my own intellect.

Can it be?

Did they just introduce me?

I am under some spell and begin speaking as though hypnotized:

“Good afternoon. Today we are going to explore Thinking is Thanking.

A small riff on Ora Et Labora: Work as though everything depends on you and pray or meditate as though everything depends upon your inner Divinity.

Think of the stars as they blink two million light years away with illumination each night at each one of us, for NOW, exists as much as their twinkle, though their source be long dead.

We are all going to die so each day is all we have to live our best ever lives and we are as much as the million yearned traveling starlight and stars, spinning in unfathomable space and we must do our human best to love.”

At this I stop.

The sea of faces in front of me look petrified.

I must sound insane.

I have abandoned my carefully scripted speech and realizing this unmoors me. Just as I am going down- yet again- I spot Owen at the back of the room, giving me a thumbs up.

“Can someone please turn off the lights?” I shout.

And Owen rushes to me, tossing a large flashlight to me, mumbling” Four Square Jesus, you got this, Kells”

And just like that Chicago basketball boy, I aim for my three-pointer shot- I shine the flashlight all over the crowd, saying:

“This is the light that will overpower the stars by shining pure light and love into your eyes. You each are a unique mystery and while the billions of stars remain raging suns of light, the darkness you each have experienced will dissipate and you will stumble into your own inescapable beauty. Do you understand me? I have come to tell you that you are loved. You are good. What I want of you is for you to remember that you will never be alone. This light is all yours. It is your job to share that light with all who cross your path. It is all that matters. Too many of us disappeared through the wardrobe door in our childhoods, but we seek the golden knowledge that was inherent within us at birth. What has been shocking is our willingness to stand on unsure ground for decades. But for truth to occur, for healing to begin, it is the transcendent that must be magnified- which means reaching the end of human capability of knowing- transcending knowledge- this seems a quagmire because it seems so simplistic…the transcendent trailing with it multitudes of philosophical and theological Summa – type imponderables historically. Before I came here today, I looked at the end of space, but I cannot think I can stick my hand out into that” end of space” without causing more space willingly. And the space that I willingly seek is truth. There is solidarity with honesty.

The beautiful logotherapeutic ideal was the one Frankl lived out in Dachau. People’s attitudes, our ultimate freedom and the primary effluence of our souls; our character and the glow of their unique humanity is achieved via being grateful and accepting,; humble and determined to do the most we could- this is the key to happiness and fulfillment…not stock prices rising or falling, not 401k plans, not new cars or manicured lawns…but learning to be grateful for our families and friends, our modest meals, our health and appreciating the bare necessities – and being concerned with matters of importance which is simple human living. The simpler we live, the closer we shall come to finding the ultimate truth: which is love of all living things.”

I was done.

Spent.

The lights went back on.

I have no idea how much time I was up there or what exactly I said.

But as I walked backwards, away from the podium and microphone, I desperately sought out Owen.

But he had gone.

He had done his job.

As the crowd rose to thunderous applause, all I could think of was: “Four square Jesus.”

Four square Jesus, sweet with the fate of a promise: Eden awaits all of us.