Father

Deep in slumber,
Cradled in the heart of darkness,
The silence parts to cellular music
Inviting me to awaken
And dream no more.

From the far side of the planet
My sister’s soft voice
Conveys in tones and pauses
An immensity
That mere words cannot capture:

Our father has died. 

Alone in my bed I breathe:
Slowly and deeply in, filling my chest with the promise of life;
A pause then, as I consider my destiny
And the gap between my dreams and waking life;
And finally release, as I surrender to the moment:
Broken, empty, and utterly spent.

As the tears begin to pool
In eyes that search the ceiling, the heavens, the stars,
For answers to an elusive, lifelong quest
I blink and the rivers begin to flow
For my father, for me,
And for each precious, sacred child
That dares to dance and sing
With its heart split wide open.

And as the rivers flow
I know that I am loved
That I have always been loved
And that this chest is being hollowed out
To contain even more love, more tears, more joy
Than I have ever known or can know.

Where the rivers meet the sea
The Earth is soft and pure and clean
And our footsteps leave their temporary imprints
On the sands of time.
 
Father, when I was young you always led the way
Discerning the trail that would carry us to the mountain’s top -
Our next adventure, our continuing quest -
And I was glad to follow.

Again you lead the way
But here on the beach
We walk side by side
With the luminous Nazarene ahead
Beckoning us forward

And as we are met
His embrace enfolds us
In a peace that blossoms from deep within -
A soft explosion of white rose petals
That gently settle and carpet our hearts
With the fragrance of love.

Placing his holy hands upon my shoulders
He looks into me with loving eyes that pierce my every defense
Then holds me again as his unspoken message sinks in:
I can follow no further,
It is time for me to return.

As he takes your hand and turns to lead the way home
You glance backwards with tears of joy
Streaming down your stubbled cheeks,
With the light of love shining in your eyes,
And smile at me.

At last I turn to face our footprints in the sand
While gentle waves dance and foam along the shore
Washing away every trace of our passing.

I love you, Father
And I receive your love:
A love for which there are no words:

Unconditional, unbounded and eternal.

In loving memory of my father, William L. Scott
December 26, 1935 – December 2, 2009

Bungee Jumping at Cola de Caballo, Mexico

Last week was my daughter’s Spring Break, and I took this opportunity to load up the minivan with my wife and daughters and drive down to central Mexico for a family vacation.  Our destination was a resort called Hotel Hacienda Cola de Caballo, just south of Monterrey in Neuvo Leon.  The setting that surrounds the hotel is nothing short of spectacular and the weather during our stay was ideal – cool mornings and evenings and warm afternoons, with breezes winding their way through the Sierra Madres that surrounded the hotel.  Our only complaint was the overabundance of insect life – especially gnats and mosquitoes – which made sitting out on our balconies a bit of a nuisance, although the abundance of butterflies and songbirds more than made up for this inconvenience (at least for me they did; I’m not so sure that my wife would agree!).

This hotel advertises itself as an eco-adventure destination, and although I knew that there would possibly be an opportunity to participate in bungee jumping nearby I did not realize that the facility they advertised was at the hotel itself (just above the restaurant attached to an observation deck overlooking the forest below).  As one of my short term goals over the past several months has been to face my fear of heights, it was clear that this was an opportunity that I could not pass up.

Since one of my previous posts highlights my recent experience with tandem skydiving, you may be wondering “What’s up with this guy anyways?”  Is it midlife crisis? Is it a death wish?  Well, not exactly – let’s just say that although my current path does have elements of both of these, fundamentally what I am trying to do is explore my limits, find my boundaries and determine the extent to which I can move beyond them.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to expand on my ultimate goal in future posts, but for the time being let’s just say the objective of this exercise was to embrace my fear.

One of the main things that really compelled me to pursue this experience was something that was lacking in my skydiving experience – the experience of facing my fear alone.  On my tandem skydive I was strapped to my instructor, and he not only controlled the parachute but also our exit from the plane and our landing.  At all times he was in control, and I could rely on his expertise and experience to safely guide me through the experience.  Don’t get me wrong – it was still an exhilarating, adrenaline filled adventure!  But something gnawed at me due to the fact that I was not the one that let go and made that leap into the void.  And so it seemed inevitable that I would need to take the plunge and experience letting go on my own.

Now that I have had the experience of bungee jumping I must say it was completely different from my skydiving experience.  I can truly say that skydiving was incredibly exhilarating, exciting, and fun – a wonderful sense of freedom and spaciousness.  My experience of bungee jumping was something altogether different.  For one thing, I just need to come out and admit that it was a terrifying experience – although you may not be able to tell it from the video, my legs were shaking almost uncontrollably as I was perched on the launch platform prior to jumping.  My body had a very visceral reaction to the entire process.  Unlike skydiving, where I was jumping from a height of about 2 miles, my bungee jump was from a height that my body could comprehend and fear – there was no question of an experience of flying . . . I would be falling!  Letting go and leaping off of the platform was an incredibly intense experience (I can assure you that I screamed the whole way down!), and in some ways I am still amazed that I managed to do it.  My body seemed to want to be at two places at once – safely secured to the diving platform and down on the ground below – but the one place it most definitely did not want to be was falling in between!

During the jump I had an extremely unusual experience as I fell towards the trees – when the bungee cord reached maximum extension and began to pull me back up towards the platform it felt as though a part of me (centered right below my navel) continued downwards toward the forest canopy to the ground below.  Being pulled back up by the bungee cord resulted in an odd sensation of being torn in two as my “center” projected itself down to the ground while my body moved upwards, and this phenomenon repeated itself each time I bounced up and down.  Each time that I bounced back it up it almost felt as if I was simultaneously watching myself from the ground below and the platform above – a very disquieting and disorienting sensation!

When I finally made it back up to the platform and the safety of terra firma, the first question my daughters asked was: “Was it fun?”

Well, no – not really.  It was most definitely awesome – in the full sense of the word (bordering on awful).  Despite the extreme “body fear” and intense anguish involved in making the leap, I certainly didn’t regret the experience.  But I could not honestly characterize it as fun, which is in some ways unusual as I could see that many of the younger people who partook of the experience most definitely were having fun – indeed, they were having a blast!!!  Perhaps I just need more practice???   

It took the better part of the day for me to get “re-integrated” after making the jump – I kept rubbing my belly just below the navel to help calm myself and ease the “hollow” feeling that lingered after my “pull apart” experience during the upward bounces.  By the following morning I was fine, but I must say that the experience of letting go was much different than what I had expected. 

It felt as though the whole universe held its breath as I made that leap, and the scream that followed . . . was like a supernova.