DEATH IS AS ABOUT AS ESSENTIAL AS YOU CAN GET.

And so is birth.
My head is spinning from both.

My big brother is dying.  From a worn out heart.  Of course, I am sad.
I will go to visit him in Chicago this week-end.
I intend to make him play Monopoly to see if I can finally beat him.
We will remember together--family ritual, food, fights, games, sorrows and joy.
We will laugh and cry.
I will wish he would have another heart miracle.  (He has had two)
He won't.
I will mourn him well.

My newest grand child is robustly living.
She is 3 months old.
I was close by as she went from her mother to the world. 
Now there is a  transition!!
I make up songs for her.
We imitate one another as she earnestly struggles to figure out sounds.  Makes her sweat. (Learning is hard work!)
I will celebrate her living.

Normal life and death.

But up close, both are so profound that I find them disorienting.
So mysterious that time takes on another dimension.
There is a sweet essential quality to both.
To enter into them is an honor and enrichment that shifts me out of "normal" into mysterious.
I'm glad for the mystery and the reminder.
It makes me more alive and gives me more awe to work into the dailiness of
what to cook for dinner.

"Essential" relieves me of the flotsum and jetsam of all distraction.
Pure life.  Pure death. What matters.

WHERE DID THE TERM "TRUTH BURPS" COME FROM?????

Recently, I've been asked how I chose "Truth Burps" to name this blog. Not "what" a truth burp is.  That, people seem to get.  Not what, but from where.
First, how fun to have people care enough to ask.
Second, I so want to hear your voices/burps back.
Someday I'll figure out how to do that.

SO anyway, the term "Truth Burps" got started at work.
I'd be in a meeting going nowhere and I'd ask "Who else is bored to tears?"
TRUTH BURP!
Or talking about how to develop some one's leadership and the conversation was lifeless and I'd say, "Why are we faking this discussion. This person has no leadership talent?"
TRUTH BURP!
Or a conflict resolution meeting when 10,000 reasons for not working well were given, finally asking, "Do you two just make each others skin crawl?"

You get the idea. Sometimes they were helpful, sometimes rude, sometimes funny, sometimes regretful but always a spontaneous moment of truth.
I would semi-apologize and say, "Excuse me, that was a truth burp?"  People began to use the phrase.  

So that's the gist of it. 

But here's something that  just makes me happy at the absurdity of us all. 

I  live in Mexico part of the year and have developed deep friendships there.  Some read English and my blog.  So they told me about the Chaluma Indians  who live in a Tzotzil Mayan village in Chiapas, Mexico.

This is a small isolated village that doesn't allow visitors after sundown.
They practice a mixture of Catholicism and Mayan religion.
BURPING is central to their religious practice.
Burping is considered cleansing because it expels the bad spirits!!
The central church has many altars  with soda bottles playing a central role--especially Coca Cola although Pepsi and Fanta are now used as well. But Coke
produces the best burps!!  What can I say?
They have been doing conscious burping for years. Before Coke it was an herbal mixture called pox.

Look it up. 
Total truth.
Makes my day.
How could anyone not think life is fabulously funny and rich??

JUST COULDN'T RESIST THE STORY TOO!!!

I have had one of the most overstimulating weeks of any time in Mexico---way beyond exuberance.  I'm kind of vibrating as I write.  And ironically it has made me feel safe and cozy and calm. 

In Mexico, we live part time in one of the oldest communities  of San Miguel de Allende--- Valle del Maiz.  Corn Valley.  It's an Indian neighborhood.  Very very old.  Each year there is a week long festival honoring Santa Cruz. This is our first year here to celebrate all of it and we are smack dab in the middle of it.

Everyone in the community participates and contributes by the family.  And all of  the families have made the same contribution for more than 150 years.

It is a combination of church potluck,  Catholic church, Aztec culture and Indian rituals. 

Right this minute the church bells have been going for more than an hour.

Men dressed up like Spaniard Inquisition characters  and others dressed like  Indians are marching to do a fake battle which culminates in the firing of an antique cannon.

I can hear a tuba pumping along, Indian drumming, a Mariachi band and that particular sour note clarinet loved here.

One family (and by that I mean 40 or so people) donates all of the candles for the church for the coming year.

Another family carries flowers for the week to adorn the church--once again huge numbers of people.  Uncles, aunts, cousins, grandmothers in shawls, teenagers in Puma's all doing their part.

One family provides three pigs for a barbecue.

One provides a small clay shot "jar" of Metzcal after an evening of music for a crowd toast.  

Another family group makes "Mojigangas"--large paper mache figures that are worn/carried -12 feet tall. 

Still another family team makes woven sculpture out of reeds.  They are intricate and beautiful  and embedded with local food-- tortillas, ears of corn, avocados with a beer bottle in the middle. 

These last two processes are kept secret and can't be photographed. They have been handed down from? and when?

Every family knows exactly what its family role has been since Indian times.

They look at us like we are nuts when we ask about events and their timing.

This is deep down community and family history. It comforts me.  We individualistic Americans gain something and lose something.  I know I hold on tightly to my own rather puny (in comparison) family traditions, like Christmas Eve food, for a reason. They are grounding and defining and don't have to be explained.  They are in the DNA.  All of my distributed adult kids know what I will be doing at any one time on Christmas Eve.  But will their kids?  Probably not.  This Mexican festival is more than  family tradition. It is the glue of this community since before the lives of anyone celebrating it now.

Did I mention that there are perpetual fire crackers for the entire week?

Not little kid fire crackers, but deep gut wrenching explosions like  big screen movie bass.  I rest easily while I wince.   The ritual comforts me. 

We have been invited to be part of the pyrotechnic family.  It is an honor.

SILENCE AND SOLITUDE ALMOST ALWAYS END UP BEING HOLY FOR ME

I am at the end of a five day festival in my Mexico community.
One of the richest oldest traditions in Mexico.
Pre-historic ceremony, Catholic ritual, Aztec dancing and drumming, Mariachi bands, Indian and Mexican food, an all night passion play with big booming tonsil rattling adult fire crackers through-out.

I started to share it  and stopped.
Not today.   I have found a quiet corner.
Birds, a fountain, dappled light and a lemon tree.
I've dipped into quiet.
The kind the soothes and holds and heals.
When this happens, I've learned not to step out.
Not even for a great story.
Step in.  Words can wait.

OLD AGE IS NOT GENERIC

I have to be reminded that every person no matter how old is unique, specific
and still very much alive----wanting, loving, hating, doing, thinking.  Not someone who has already lived a life and is now coasting.

True for other groups of people that we stereotype but it is worse in our culture for old people.  (I said "old" not older because we so soft pedal our biases)

And I was reminded of how bad I am about this when I sat next to two older guys having breakfast at a motel where I was staying.  I couldn't help but hear their conversation.  And they were cartoon geezers.  Bald, bent, v neck cardigans, flesh colored shoes.   

Then their beauty shone through. 

One said to the other,
"You're a sight for sore eyes. How are you spending your time?" 

The other replied, "I go to the gym 4 days a week, not to get buff, but to keep strength for my wife if anything happens to her." 

"What about your project?"

"Well I've finished the introduction and am talking to more people about it.
So many agree that small businesses are the answer to America's problems.  I'm still passionate about it.  I'm done with my research.  Did you know there are 27 million small businesses?  Two agents think the topic is right."

They  debated the definition of small business for a while.  I wanted to join in.
Then the focus shifted to the other man.

"I've been having the time of my life."

"How's that?"

Well, I thought I would quit the cello after I left the symphony but I play 4-5 hours a day and can't get enough of it.  It's my meditation and my comfort.
Drives my wife a little nuts."

Lots of good natured laughter followed that.

I was so nourished by their conversation.
And so ashamed at how I mentally dismissed them as I sat down.

There is a good invisibility about getting older.  Less concern with what others think.  More, "What the hell."  Less need to prove anything.

And there is bad invisibility if we don't take the time to look deeper and learn deeper from the richness and specific lives of our elders.

The beauty I saw was how they emerged from caricature to fully defined people.  Would have been my loss if I hadn't eaves dropped.  
A great reminder.

Are you listening kids?

DON'T MESS WITH CONTENTMENT

I am content.  Right this minute.  May not last long but here it is.
I have traveled more than 8  hours by car with my daughter and my new granddaughter to a wedding
A wedding with a mix of guests very different from on another in many ways.
But not in the ways that matter.  It was a generous, accepting, warm-hearted bunch that knew that their job was to love and support the bride and groom.

There can be an alchemical by product from this kind of wedding.  I'm here simply to be the wedding nanny and I've been exposed to the elements that create--well, happiness.

So I have several smart remarks to make about Mother's Day.  Comparing it to Valentine's Day with the same mother lode of obligation that can kill the intention of the day.  I'll hold these comments.  They're just clever.  Not true.

I am content.
Don't ever ever mess with contentment.
Grab it.

I believe I hear a baby cry.  Oh well, I've had my moment.
Now comes a different kind of contentment.

JUST MAYBE, STRIVING IS OVERRATED

Two things have been itching at me this week.  One got started as I read several biographies of Magaret Fuller a Transcendental  type who lived in Concord MA.  Good friend of Emerson and Thoreau.  A great feminist intellectual.  Look her up.    And given how hard she worked and pushed herself for moral and intellectual improvement she should be known.  She was a relentless pioneer.

AND she died in a ship accident  coming back to the US after being in Italy working as a newspaper correspondent.  With her  Italian man (not husband--not this feminist) and new baby.  The ship went down 200 yards from the US coast near  Fire Island but Margaret didn't know how to swim.  I should have only read one biography.  All that striving and she didn't know how to swim.  And she had just begun to enjoy.  Italy is a great lesson in enjoyment..

The other thing that was scratchy for me all week was the titles of invitations to various on-line workshops that plague me.  I decided to get them off my computer.   Get rid of  the too many opportunities to ensure me that I Have the Love of My Life,  that My Body is Ready for Perfection that I Know and Grow My Soul into Glory,  that I Write the Best Transformational Book of All Time, and that My Marketing Social Platform Will Trump All Others.  We swim in superlatives.  Reading them all together I felt both like I was some hot potato and then lazy as hell for not being  thin, famous and spiritually evolved.

Here is what gave me great pleasure, relief and goose bumps of truth.
A quote of Thomas Merton:

"We tend to think that we live at every moment amid unlimited hopes.  There is nothing we
cannot have if we try hard enough.  Only in solitude, when accurate limitations are seen and accepted, does a new dimension open up.  It is called the PRESENT AND IS, IN FACT, UNLIMITED."

Oh yeah.  Breath that  in.

We have trend ourselves to think that we live at every moment amid 'UNLIMITED HOPES."  THERE IS NOTHING WE CANNOT HAVE IF WE TRY HARD ENOUGH, OR LOOK IN THE RIGHT PLACE FOR IT. In solitude,  when accurate limitations are seen and accepted a new dimension opens up.  It is called the present and is in fact, unlimited.  Unless we place the burden of future expectations and hopes or regrets on it in order to live with this burdensome present. "

 And that is the lesson for 67 years.  The present is the place to drink every drop of life that is left.