Sitting baby

My new spiritual practice.

Dear reader,

I haven’t checked the news in almost two months. Because we had a baby. And our plan was to take 3 months to just be together. Don’t work. Don’t leave the house. Definitely don’t check the news. But what’s happening “out there” is finding its way “in here”—friends’ newsletters gesturing toward catastrophe, the offhand comment in conversation. The collective nervous system is triggered AF, and we feel it, too, here in the womb we’ve made for ourselves, for our son, for our new family.

In times of grief and rage, it may seem impolite to share joy, but that’s what I have to share with you today. Even as I write that, though, I know our joy is needed, too. So I offer mine now, a little dose to see you through the day or just this next moment of whatever-it-might-be-for-you—anger, fear, lamentation. But maybe you’ve got your own joy, too, overwintered, thawing, just now peeking up like the tender tops of spring garlic. It’s all welcome, all a part of this great cycle. Let’s just keep sharing it, whatever it is. Let’s keep finding each other out there, in here.

With, with, with,

Andrew

---

We just had a baby

and I’m tripping,

tripping on baby, man,

astonished at the many miraculous attributes of my son.

For instance, his absolute vulnerability,

which is to say, the valor it takes to be born,

to be a newborn,

to be a human,

to say yes to a delicacy that endures 

even as we learn to hold up our heads and crawl and walk and eventually believe we are something other than delicate,

which is to say, perfect.


"He's perfect," a few friends wrote back in response to pictures.

Yes, I thought. That's correct.


So, too, you, and I, and each of us.


But babies, dude. 

It's a trip.


Have you ever sat with a baby? 

Like, really sat with a baby. 

People talk about sitting with a spiritual teacher, 

or sitting with plant medicine, sitting in ceremony.

"I sat the Unification of Mind retreat."

"I sat vigil."

Well, how about sitting baby?

I've babysat before, 

but never sat baby, 

really sat, baby.


Oh, he’s awake, crying, gotta go check in with the master, see what dharma he's tryna drop...


I’m back.

He said, it’s hard out here sometimes, really fucking hard.

I understood this by the sound of his screaming, the little tears glistening in the seams of his squeezed-shut eyes, the tension of his arched back in my left hand, the shaking of his head in my right, his skin hot and red fit to burst.

He said, sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it but just cry as hard as it actually is for you. 

And then he said, it can change, 

in an instant, 

when you find what you need,

when the embrace of a mysterious grace (i.e. your dad) delivers you to the bosom of your great and unknown longing (i.e. your mom, i.e. milk). 


He is the Sermon on the Mount.

The truth, pure truth.

Everything he does and says is infallible, uncontestable.

I may resist his screams, but his screams pierce clean,

as his mother's did when she bore down to push him out of her.

No artifice there. No negotiation or presentation.

Just truth,

his squirming, 

his squealing and snuffling and grunting,

his gasping shrieks,

the just-so response to what is:

the feeling of hunger, 

of gas in the gut, 

of some unknown terror passing through like a dream.


I don’t dare to be so true anymore, so honest.

But maybe the ways we hide are true, too.


My guru, though, goddamn, 

he coos the unrefined truth,

farts the truth,

gazes perfectly true upon what I can no longer see 

through all these passing dreams I’ve taken to be real,

the stories I’ve believed about you, about me. 


He has seen me.

I saw it happen, 

saw him see me, for the first time.

He raised his head up off my chest, inches from my face,

and suddenly I was staring into the solar eclipse, two of them,

coronas of light encircling black moon pupils covering the sun of his soul, against the silver skies of his eyes,

but this time the sun was staring back. 


My son.


What did he see, I wonder.

And who will I become in his truthgaze 

as these days go by and by,

one long day, 

one eternal night,

this trip with no come down,

this sesshin with no closing bell,

this ceremony without end,

no amen,

just hosanna right here and hallelujah right now, 

forevermore,

and sure enough there he is,

crying, perhaps for me,

and yes, I'll tie this off and go to him,

to myself,

to the truth of us all,

this prayer that must not and shall never cease.