the Glory

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. ... It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. ... it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then -- the glory -- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. ... It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men."
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

one.
Have you experienced those moments of glory? Moments of substance? They are always the simplest things... once it was a crow about to land on the ground, and as I drove past I saw the summer sunlight on the jet feathers of his crooked wing.
That glory, that substance, that life-fullness comes when least expected, and it is a gift. Steinbeck relates it to our creativity, and points out that this glory, like creative acts, can only happen alone. Yet (his narrator says) our systems -- political, religious, ideological -- generally move us away from being individuals and toward being part of the herd, thereby smothering the glory, squelching humanity.
And those patterns can become ingrained, so that I choose busy-ness over rest, or I seek companionship to avoid solitude, although both are valuable and necessary.
two.
The moments of life can troop by, faceless. But the stars can also sing! And the earth chants, and the light blesses, and the skin tastes the air! Am I more fully human, more connected with myself, the physical and the spiritual halves more integrated, in those moments? Is that fleeting glory a foretaste of eternity?
And it is not of myself. I am filled up by a force outside of myself that interacts with me, and I suddenly gush! An outpouring of life, of love. I loved that crow, and the sunshine, and the way they met and entered my eye and my soul.
It is a pouring-out that does not take away from. Like the image of the burning bush that was not consumed. I want to be a burning bush more often.
three.
Can the overflow of the heart continue even past the moment of the glory? Those moments of substance are solitary affairs, but I want their effects to spill over to interactions. My self-integration is important, but so are my relationships.
This "lonely thing" that separates us, sets us apart from one another, is beautiful because being ourselves and seeing each other in truth and glory breaks the patterns, shatters the systems, and births the new humanity. Note that all of those verbs involve pain...
I have been filled and am ready to let it keep pouring out! To take my humanity -- the ability and calling to create -- and be used in turning the gray glorious.


"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. ... and I will fight... to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."