Measure of My Days

by Scott-Maxwell, Florida

  Her failure may be the greater as she is the midwife of the profound forces stirred by love, and it is for her to join the ideal and the human, but she cannot do it alone. The intimacy that exists between men and women can seem the confrontation between good and evil, the place where there is the greatest chance of their being resolved by compassion and insight. It is here that souls are bared. Here in the welter of complete exposure we meet our glories and our sins, and we can see when we should have accused ourselves not the other: here too we may find the mutual support to enable us to say, “I see myself.”

  For small as we each can be we are more than our outer selves. Our potentialities, all those great forces that lie unconscious in our depths, accumulated through the ages, greater than we, mysterious to us, have to be represented to us in some outer form, in some person, in some concept, or we lose touch with them in ourselves, and live them feebly if at all. Or live destructively, which is worse.

  Humanity apparently requires a concept of the superhuman in order to rise above the humdrum and the base within us. We need each other to see in seering truth what shame belongs to each, and what grace and goodness we receive from the other. And Oh—there are moments when our prayer to each other is—“Be my superior”.

  So I still care! At my age I care to my roots about the quality of women, and I care because I know how important her quality is.

  The hurt that women have borne so long may have immeasurable meaning. We women are the meeting place of the highest and the lowest, and of minutia and riches; it is for us to see, and understand, and have pride in representing ourselves truly. Perhaps we must say to man “You create us when you love us, but you destroy us both when you stress our inferiority. The time may have come for us to forge our own identity, dangerous as that will be.”

  Suddenly I see what I did not see before. I have felt all my life exactly as those feel who ask for equality. The real need is for honour, often not deserved, desired the more when not deserved. Our cry sounds as though we had been deameaned, and while we are demanding “Our rights” we are saying, “Do not demean us for our difference, self-shame is hard to bear.”

  A letter has just come from a woman grieving over the weakness of character shown by her gifted husband. The secret inferiority of the man who in public is her superior can paralyse a woman’s capacity to think, and make her refuse to feel. But human beings are not easily shattered. They continue to love, marry and wreck each other, in fact they dare to live. If they were not mostly blind to the effects of their behaviour how could the world go on?

  If love unites opposites and overcomes law, then women have been given a role so great that it is strange we only sense it dimly. Was it clearer to us earlier, in the thirteenth century say when the Queen of Heaven reigned?

  Easter Day

  I am in that rare frame of mind when everything seems simple. When I have no doubt that the aim and solution of life is the acceptance of God. It is impossible and imperative, and clear. To open to such unimaginable greatness affrights my smallness. I do not know what I seek, cannot know, but I am where the mystery is the certainty.

  My long life has hardly given me time—I cannot say to understand—but to be able to imagine that God speaks to me, says simply—“I keep calling to you, and you do not come”, and I answer quite naturally—“I couldn’t, until I knew there was nowhere else to go”.

  Perhaps our “No” to God is our sacred care. If our otherness matters, matters primarily, if we must fill our human role, represent the sacred tension, and say at the utmost point of our endurance and our yearning, “You are too different, you ask the impossible. Even at the cost of foregoing you altogether, it is our humanity that forces us to deny you. It was not only pride that made Lucifer oppose you. We too claim our right to a Luciferian ‘No’. It has to be.”

  Then God might answer, “Of course that is your duty. If I had commanded anything less than the impossible, would you have recognized me as God?”

  There being but one answer to that we remain silent and God adds, “This is what creation is. The might and marvel of forever creating out of opposition. Your blindness is almost strong enough to defeat me, but if the struggle were less would we belong together?”

  Do I know what I mean? There is no notation to help one say these things, which both thought and feeling distort. But I must be as clear as I can. The experiences of the deep unconscious that came to me forty years ago were numinous, convincing proof of order and meaning in the universe. I knew I had a place in that order, and I felt contained. But not assured of protection or safety. Suffering was as likely as opportunity. Indeed suffering might be opportunity, or opportunity suffering. Logic and Tightness generally lie too deep to see, chance can seem a near miracle, or the irony of life can show me how naturally I blunder, or how fortunate I am. Behind everything my conviction of meaning, as well as mystery, remains unchanged.

  What do I mean by this new sense of simplicity, of it seeming clear that Christ was God and man, and that he symbolized the oneness in each of us? If oneness is what we seek that we may have roots to nourish us, at the same time knowing there is a division in that oneness, then where, where am I? It is not Job’s acceptance of what was unfair because God was God. Is it that humanity has reached a place, perhaps a new place—how to say it—some words are too literal while others are so big that they sweep me into the air like balloons. I must stop generalizing. I, just I in my ignorance, would find satisfaction and relief in saying inside myself, at the dim, dumb point which is the best I can manage, there I feel impelled to say to God, “God and man have begun to seem like fellow creators. You created us, but we create you. Over and over again we create and recreate you as you are for us, and in us. It is our central task. We destroy you too, it is happening now, horribly. So that once again we have the terrifying task before us of creating you. It is happening everywhere, whether known or meant. You know all this, you may cause it in a way we cannot understand, but let me go on, let me be as clear to myself as I can. We are trying more and more to create ourselves, many think we can do it without you, but we are destroying ourselves too; we can’t see our road, or ourselves, or you. Grant us this avowal, or recognition, yes recognition, as fellow creators, our small beside your great.” No! It feels impious to claim, I can’t go on.

  I went and did some baking as it all seemed beyond me and I felt frightened. As I worked I saw that I had been rightly frightened, for I had thought it simple to say that God and man—in my childish, arrogant view—had become fellow creators, each of each; then as I remembered what man is making of himself I felt a sick recoil from humanity. But out of my need I assumed a myth that God had split himself in two, God and Lucifer, Heaven and Hell, and that this was so that consciousness could emerge. It was for man’s sake, and the birth of man’s insight. But as man attempts to stand alone, the split is more than he can endure and God is revealed as the power that binds us together. Man’s independence has made the acknowledgement of God indispensable. On that let me rest.

  In some central part of us mankind must always be trying to understand God. In that poignant core where we call out our questions, and cry for an answer. It is in each of us, even if question and answer are both despair. We are always talking to God even while we argue him out of existence. It is not easy to commune with that great force. Can we do less than speak as creator to creator since that seems the role given us, and in our seeking we honour the honour done us.

  I suppose this is what religion is about, and always has been ever since man began to suffer and to care why he suffered. I’ve taken a long time to feel it as very truth. The last years may matter most.

  What frightens me is modern man’s preference for the arid. He claims to understand, yet knows himself so little that he dares dispel mystery, deny the depths of the human psyche, and prefers to bypass the soul. It is inevitable that he arrives in a desert without values. Life is being sterilized, crime increases, and even children become murderer
s. It is as though God said, “You think to create order? Here is the appropriate disorder, since they are one”.

  In the midst of these contradictions something is stirring, something that feels like the beginning of a new pact. Man seems to be saying to the god within us, “Let us come closer. We know what we have been in your name, and we begin to see what we may be without you. We have begun to fear ourselves. We ask for recognition of a new thing in us. We are trying to extend our human understanding, to take on further responsibility for what we are. Help us to make a new image. If we have lost our fear of you, do not doubt our terror of ourselves. It is real.”

  As we face the god in us and come near our Luciferian sin, God may seem to die. If we cannot face this duality how are we to gain the mercy of inclusion that resolves all? I see now that it is so immeasurable a realization that it must always seem new, always is new, for here God and man are born afresh.

  How can anyone conceive of a Godless world without foreseeing our disintegration? Man’s first reaction to nature within him and outside him must have been fear, awe, and the need of meaning and value. What else have we been doing but searching for, insisting on, and creating these as they tore us in two? We only survived because we were searching for the power that contained us.

  If we are the meeting place of God and Satan, and so it can feel, then without God we could become Satan. If the God image should fade, vanish, we could be left with our destroyer. We have been devils of fanaticism in the name of God, and we are now uncertain of the true name of the forces within us. Am I struggling to say what man has always been struggling to say, always and perhaps forever and in every way, that it is man’s chief role to define the difference between God and Satan? Each of us, lost and groping, begins to perceive it as our present task. It needs courage; Great God, grant us that.

  The surgeon says I may pay my visit. I seem so well, so almost brilliantly well. I told the surgeon that it might be the last chance to see two of my grandchildren as they were leaving the country. He looked at me long and critically and said, “You may go”. I am off, feeling almost drunk with health, shaky health. I have never had steady health, but better not to analyze. I am off, and I leave my note book behind. What need of a note book when one is out in the world?

  It wasn’t real. All that life in me was without a solid basis. Everyone spoke of my “newfound health” and said “I’ve never seen you like this before”. So I paid two more visits, always cherished as a convalescent. I talked, how happily, and I walked with ease, though not far. For three weeks I lived at that height. Then I began to flag, I came home, and just petered out. Was I going to have a stroke? That dread thing in the back of every old head, that impairs and cruelly may not kill. I had severe headaches that went right down my spine, a numbness in my right arm and leg, strange symptoms unknown before, and I was spent, spent.

  A GP came, a locum, and said, “Nervous exhaustion, and small wonder after all you’ve done, and at your age”. I must rest; how I know that word, have known it all my life, so now I lie and rest. I rest even more than I always do. I must also “take exercise” so I drag myself out, my arthritic spine quickly fails me and I drag myself back as best I may. Anyone living alone, even in a small flat, takes constant exercise. Do doctors think you summon meals by magic, hot water bottles, all the things you think you might be more comfortable, or less uncomfortable, if you had, and have to get yourself? No one is more active, relatively, than the sick person who takes care of herself.

  Now those worst ten days are over I improve hardly at all. The acute headache gone, a middle-sized one is always there. This is what is called taking things slowly. I do not exist, nor do I understand the ebb and flow of energy. I never have, and doctors understand it so little that they disregard it. Or truer to say they regard it as the patient’s personal folly and no business of theirs. They may be right, and the patient longs to be equally superior but has to say, “It may not make sense, but it makes me!” As being too well brought me to the low place I now occupy I could curse my excessive reactions, but just because life is baffling it stirs one to artistry. It would clear my mind if I knew why a major operation at eighty-two stimulated me to an increase in vitality so convincing that now I have none.

  I recoil from the idea that one must be compensated in another world for the hardness of this one. If this world is almost incomprehensible we are almost unteachable. Even tragedy barely makes us feel; its frequency may require the protection of not feeling, this is true, but thinking about tragedy barely affects our judgement. War follows war almost, not quite, as though no one had noticed the last war. Every aspect of tragedy must be the bones supporting the rest of life, the bravery, the drama and delights, and the calm, and all the small pleasures and beauties. What I cling to like a tool or a weapon in the hand of a man who knows how to use it, is the belief that difficulties are what makes it honourable and interesting to be alive.

  I am uncertain whether it is a sad thing or a solace to be past change. One can improve one’s character to the very end, and no one is too young in these days to put the old right. The late clarities will be put down to our credit I feel sure.

  It was something other than this that had caught my attention. In fact it was the exact opposite. It was the comfortable number of things about which we need no longer bother. I know I am thinking two ways at once, justified and possible in a note book. Goals and efforts of a lifetime can at last be abandoned. What a comfort. One’s conscience? Toss the fussy thing aside. Rest, rest. So much over, so much hopeless, some delight remaining.

  One’s appearance, a lifetime of effort put into improving that, most of it ill judged. Only neatness is vital now, and one can finally live like a humble but watchful ghost. You need not plan holidays because you can’t take them. You are past all action, all decision. In very truth the old are almost free, and if it is another way of saying that our lives are empty, well—there are days when emptiness is spacious, and non-existence elevating. When old, one has only one’s soul as company. There are times when you can feel it crying, you do not ask why. Your eyes are dry, but heavy, hot tears drop on your heart. There is nothing to do but wait, and listen to the emptiness which is sometimes gentle. You and the day are quiet, and you have no comment to make.

  I wish I could remember that Blake said, “Any fool can generalize”. I generalize constantly. I write my notes as though I spoke for all old people. This is nonsense. Age must be different for each. We may each die from being ourselves. That small part that cannot be shared or shown, that part has an end of its own.

  There is a word I have never found. It is a word for the thing most precious to man. Perhaps it is man’s essence. Then why is there no right word for it? Pride, honour, both seem near, but they have too many aspects that are wrong. Soul comes near too, but it is seldom used in the way I mean. Perhaps we are still bringing the reality the word expresses into being, so we live it always but are not ready to name it. It is self-respect, but also the basis of self-respect. There is no reason why I should boggle at this phrase as though it did not say what is needed to be said, yet I must for it does not say enough.

  The admonition “Have a proper respect for yourself” or “Your self-respect should have told you what to do” were both based on the assumption that you are of fine quality. It is this assumption that I want to name. Almost everyone makes the assumption; it can be a calamity when it is lacking. It is the assumption we used to live by, and we protect it so instinctively that we strike, even kill by reflex action if it is questioned.

  Self-protection, self-preservation, these are words that ought to satisfy, but they do not seem to convey that passionate conviction that one can, and should, stand by what one is, but may not seem to be. No one must describe you truly with words that your reason would admit as accurate; you know you have done an unforgivable thing if you describe the acts of another truly. It is called disparagement, as though the bad thing was not a true statement. You may have stolen, bu
t it is not right to call you a thief, and it is an insult that will not be borne, for you are more, more.

  Who has the right to say what another is? It is here that I feel the conviction lies that we, the simplest and vaguest of us, know that we are other and better than we appear. More, that this is our basic assumption about ourselves. We put it to the test without a moment’s reflection, attempting what we have never learned to do, dying with ease and style because we know there is greatness in us. It does not make our bad untrue; one is as poor a thing as one seems; but there is that in our being of which no man may speak ill.

  If it is beyond naming, contradiction and confusion affecting it not at all, it is still man’s point of passion, until I wonder if all the years we have been saying “self-respect” and “self-preservation” we spoke not of moral rectitude, or of physical preservation, but of what is descriptive of our true essence. We used “self” as it is used in the Upanishads, as the sacred identity within us, and to protect this is our chief aim.

  It could be this, and we cannot name what we do not yet know.

  After a time of trouble I found a likeable flat which was to be my home. I had had a long need of one, so it was also my dear shelter. My daughter and I moved in one evening with two suitcases, two beds, three pots of bulbs, a kettle and tea things. We lit a brilliant fire in the seemly little grate with the dry slats the builder had left after making a big opening between the two public rooms. I lay in the firelight peacefully listening to pigeons on the roof. To me pigeons say, “Too true, dear love, too true”. I listened, looked out on trees beyond both windows and I was free and happy.