Summons

The Habit Body/Mind: A Slow Descent into Unconsciousness

As we get older it is all too easy to go through the motions and get caught up by the humdrum ways of the habit body/ habit mind. Routine takes over, people cocoon into the familiar and slowly but surely go unconsciousness until something or someone comes our way and calls out to us: hey, listen up, look here! It may take an encounter with the strange or the unexpected to bring us back to our selves, to jar our memory of an innermost calling, a passion that may have lay dormant for 40 years. It may be a song, a book, an encounter with a deer on the trail, or the story about the 55 year old man who for the first time told his father he loved him. Last week, I met up with Dave Parker, a friend I have known since 3rd grade and he played his guitar late into the night. A love that can only appear from a time worn friendship stirred in me, a childhood communion to last through the ages. It was then that I met again my former boy self– playful, unschooled and adventurous. Dave shared with me this poem by Robert Francis:

		Keep me from going to sleep too soon
		Or if I go to sleep too soon
		Come wake me up. Come any hour
		Of night. Come whistling up the road.
		Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
		Make me get out of bed and come
		And let you in and light a light.
		Tell me the northern lights are on
		And make me look. Or tell me clouds
		Are doing something to the moon
		They never did before, and show me.
		See that I see. Talk to me till
		I’m half as wide awake as you
		And start to dress wondering why
		I ever went to bed at all.
		Tell me the walking is superb.
		Not only tell me but persuade me.
		You know I’m not too hard persuaded.