Love That Survives Divorce Redacted

Yesterday I posted an entry that described a tender and (for me) healing exchange with my ex-wife, Ma'ikwe. Though I had a very positive experience of what I wrote about, Ma'ikwe had a bad reaction to my sharing what for her was strictly a private exchange.

While I thought what we'd been able to accomplish would be helpful (even inspiring) for others to hear (which is really the point of this blog), she felt exposed and has asked my to stop writing about her. While I'm saddened by this request, I will honor it.

Thus I took down what I posted yesterday and will no longer write about Ma'ikwe. I have caused her pain enough.

In Service

While I've always meant for service and community to go together, sometimes they're at odds. Sometimes attending to service keeps me away from my community home.

One of the reasons I live in intentional community is that it offers an excellent platform from which to be of service. With shared living, it's possible for some members to take their hands off the wheel (of driving things at home) for stretches of time because there are other members to take their place. Then, when you come back to focusing at home, others can get a break.

Sometimes this means traveling to do things elsewhere; sometimes it means redirecting your attention without even missing a meal at home. Either way, it's uniquely possible in community to free people up for concentrated periods of time, to be of service to needs other than those on the home front. This is an important quality-of-life feature that is precious to me about community living.

This topic is up for me right now because I've paused on my way home from 29 days on the road to honor a last-minute request from a friend to help her prepare for a move. I checked with home (both my community and my wife—which requests are not processed identically) and got the green light to stretch my road trip by an additional three days, spent mostly moving boxes to and from a storage locker and a community donation site.

I'm thankful that I have room in my life to by there for friends in need. Thankful that I don't have 9-5 M-F employment, and therefore the flexibility to shoehorn this detour into an otherwise fully subscribed life. It's good to take a moment to realize that while it's my arms moving the boxes, it's backed up by many arms at home making my good Samaritan act possible.

The friend I was helping does not live in community, though she has in the past and clearly misses the relationships and support that are at the heart of it. Part of my time with her was listening to her talk about:
—Her struggle to fit together the disparate pieces of her life.
—The choices she faces in how to make a living as someone north of 60.
—The calculus she's using in trying to determine where to live.
—Her everyday experiences and observations—something that she doesn't dependably have the chance to share with others.

To be sure, she was looking for a stevedore, yet the listening may have ultimately counted for more. I'd listen and reflect back what I'd heard and what made sense based on our two+ decades of knowing each other. It's what friends do.

And I appreciate that my friend gave the the chance to be there for her these past 72 hours. It's a gift to be needed.

Thinking of Geoph

Yesterday was Geoph Kozeny's birthday. He would have been 58. 

     Ordinarily he would have celebrated his birthday with me and my cmty at Sandhill (we were the regular year-end stop on his annual peregrination, right after Christmas with his mother in southwest Missouri). But pancreatic cancer cut his life short and he died two months ago in the San Francisco apartment of his dear friend and ex-partner Eraca Cleary. I got to see him two days before the end and treasure having had the opportunity to have been with him at the last. Writing this evokes the image of him rallying to squeeze my hand for our final parting. Though his body was wasted by the ravaging disease, his spirit remained strong and clear throughout.

     I miss him. 

     It's different going through the holiday season without Geoph. While not exactly a lump of coal in my stocking, it's certainly a lump in my throat.

     Right after Geoph passed away, I turned 58—the age he didn't quite live to reach—and it's been a wake up call, pulling the curtain back from the illusion that we have oodles of time to get around to the life we meant to live. Losing Geoph brought home the reality of our mortality and that we truly don't know how long we have.

     It has also help me step back and take a look at what hooks me, and my patterns of irritation. Going through the pain and grief of losing a dear friend offers perspective on what's truly matters and the ways one allows pettiness to obscure what really valuable—either because we become obsessed with the surface and miss the core, or because our heads are turned the wrong way, distracted by the glitter of some passing bauble or drama.

     Geoph was an optimist's optimist, and it buoys me to hold onto the kinship we had around our unflagging efforts to help build a more cooperative and fair world. While, like Geoph, I expect to die with a full In Box, I love what I do and have no intention of deferring engagement or enjoyment to an uncertain future. I'm not counting on another life to make up for opportunities I've inadvertently squandered or postponed in this one. As the bumper sticker says, "This is not a rehearsal," and I am a player.

     I am a better person for our having walked so many of the same pathways and for having had him as a friend. So it's fitting to take time in this season of long nights and reflection to feel again the ache of his absence and to raise a glass to Geoph and the wonderfully rich 22 years we had together.

     Though Geoph is gone, he is still with me.