Ob La Di Ob La Da

Life goes onnnnn hey! la la la la Life Goes On. -the Beatles

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It Goes On" -Robert Frost

This is what she has taught me. Whirling through the kitchen on her toes, wooden spoon in hand diving in for a taste of the sauce we made. Her lungs puffed out like an elegant bird ready to "squawk!" "Ob La Di! Ob La Da! Life goes on!" It is the foremost memory I have and it has the best message. Even though all of our lives will end at some point, life, in general, goes on. Through the small inconveniences, the large stumbles and no matter how far we fall - it goes on. The mother still feeds her child, the store still runs, the cars still move on the highway, the birds still perch in trees, the rain still falls. It feels like it is over, the dark consumes from the inside up my throat and into my mouth, a tiny hand with suchers sewing my lips shut before I can scream. It seems impossible to reach beyond the finality of that feeling. With one hand up, reaching, shoulder back and opening the chest to allow the heart to breathe, Extended Warrior, life goes on. We are all warriors, on our own paths, cutting a path in the over growth, snaking around obstacles and moving them and finding a way to still be ourselves with all the weight that seems to push back. We move forward as does life. Everything can suck sometimes and the comfort of being alone surrounded by nothing but air and down comforters feels safe, but that is the most dangerous place to be. Accepting our source, accepting interconnection and the life of life, the existence that occurs with or without our participation and deciding to participate, revel, and celebrate in it is the safest place.

She taught me a meditation on Yahweh that she did lying down flat on the ground, palms up. She concentrated on the Hebrew letters, yud, hay, vuv, hay (I didn't transliterate correctly, as close as I could). She filled herself with breath, beginning at the feet, "Yud, hay, vuv, hay" and back down, emptying the body of breath, envisioning Yahweh, Adonai, Hashem, Shachinah, filling her up and leaving again. I sat on the edge of a mattress while she in her black office chair that swivelled, faced me. She drew the letters vertically on a page and explained to me her theory of the person, the the letters look like a person. Enforcing her meditation, the Source filling her up and leaving with each breath, the Source being the breath, and the letters stacked to make a person, made more sense to me in that moment than ten years of Sunday School had ever made.

These are the things I carry with me. Recognizing the Source and my origination within it, the breath, the spirit within us, Ob La Di, Ob La Da. Life, it does go on, with each breath it steps forward.