Walter Ralph was my best friend, my mentor and a Christian clergyman with a reputation for being a rogish and outspoken fellow. Some might call him a wonderfully crazy man. Above all else, he lived life to the fullest. Passionately. He died at 72 on Dec. 6, 1996.
But Walter's spirit lives in many ways, not the least being in the letters he penned to me during turbulent times in our lives, in the 1960s.
Walter also was a poet, and today I happened across one of his poems titled "Automation."
Imagine remembering everything
That we ever did and thought
Without embarrassment
And in the very presence of
The Being of Light
Now a reality to thousands
Of people who somehow came back
From death with the same story.
Obviously we are alive in an
Extraordinary way, immune
From oblivion by a phenomena
So instantaneous and beautiful
In a world just an inch beyond where
We now live and worry
That we are seeing into it
Through the eyes of those who
Have been there
But either were brought back
Or decided they still
Were honestly needed and came back
To help out.
We are each indestructible.
Some live with this knowledge
And fear nothing at all.
The Being of Light is a better word
For God because it is as friendly
As the sun, without judgment
And hostility, simply
Reassuring us that life always grows
Even when we can't believe
Beyond our little funerals and tears.
-Walter Ralph
July 1979
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Deborah Uetz said-
"Are you folks too young to remember Pac Man?
Imagine the feelings you have toward those who shoud have stepped forward and instead stepped back, as little Pac Man critters, with each unmet expectation they take a bite out of your physical and emotional health.
Do they care if you are being eaten up with all of it? No.
they are chomping away.
Now imagine that you have to swallow them so they can't hurt you.
You wouldn't do that, would you?
Trust me on this one. I have swallowed a boat load of the little anger chompers.
They nearly chomped me to death.
I stopped swallowing them. No more. If I don't let it in, then they can't hurt me.
It took me 55 years to learn how to stop letting emotional triggers chew me up inside.
I hope you can all learn much earlier. It might just be one of life's hardest lessons. You can't always count on those who should be accountable.
IMAGINE NOT GETTING A PHONE CALL when your dad is dying and other family members are with him.
That was a tremendous amount of anger critters waiting to eat me alive.
I happened in.
I was there. that had to be enough."
Deborah Uetz said-
"I too have more questions than answers.
My brother couldn't let go of the past and he became addicted to drugs and he just couldn't keep going."
Dear Walter:
Hey, Walter, have you found Eden yet?
I’m still looking. My journey has taken me to, of all places, a seminary, where I’m auditing a course called ‘Anger and its Consequences.’ The reading assignments include Kafka, Freud and the Book of Job.
Of course, you know I’m more comfortable seeking answers to philosophical questions by walking in the woods and pretending to be primitive man. I imagine I’m living before books and theories and seminary professors. Before civilization.
And it’s only me and god. I’m talking to god. And I’m trying to persuade god to consider my input in fine-tuning the cosmos. I want to be god’s partner.
Is that a bit presumptuous? I don’t think so. I think god wants his creatures to voice their opinions. Such as maybe god created mankind because he was lonely. And he wanted partners, associates, confidants.
Of course, god wanted places where we could confer. Meet. So he created conference rooms. Magnificent woods and seashores and mountain tops. Among other places. Where I walk and talk. With myself. And to god. Directly.
In these settings, Walter, I come closest to knowing myself. I am able to utter the words, ‘What the hell, that’s me!’
It’s a place where I shut out the rest of the world. Oh, maybe not the whole world. But at least I try to turn back the clock to the days before we were brainwashed by educators and psychologists and scientists.
It’s as if I am Adam, and my only discourse is with a god that allows me to feel like a unique being, one of a kind, and with a free will that makes me unpredictable.
And here, Walter, I ponder what made us friends. Maybe it was that we were both primitives, and believers in a nonjudgmental god who, for instance, didn’t hold it against you for walking out on your first wife, Laura, for another woman, in time of Laura’s greatest need, I suppose, when she was dying of multiple sclerosis.
Our kind of god proclaims, ‘What the hell, that’s Walter!’ Our kind of god accepts us despite our foibles and sins here and there. Or for that matter, a whole barrage of wrongs. Our kind of god looks at the big picture and concludes, “Walter is my kind of guy. Long live Walter!’
Our god, Walter, gives you credit for getting on with life and having never lacked passion. You sinned passionately. And you loved passionately. The loving made up for any shortcomings, 10 times over. No, make that 10,000-fold in the eyes of god.
Meanwhile, Walter, I’m thankful that you were a prolific letter writer. Because that was one way of spreading your creative and poetic spirit. Granted, occasionally your words sounded angry. But that was your fierce honesty coming to the fore.
Your handwritten epistles to me, particularly the ones from the 1960s, a time of turbulence and anguish for both of is, did much to shape my spiritual being. To this day I read those letters over and over. They are timeless. It’s as if you are still writing to me...and I, to you. --Jim
jim
some call James Dillet Freeman..the modern day..Ralph Waldo Emerson..
I wanted to share this with you by him...
how do i find out what life's about..unless i venture farther out..
something in me is not content..something affirms that I am meant for more..
and so i have to try and see if somehow I can fly..
going beyond the edge of wings..i may find out that i have wings..
though they are a different kind than birds..being mainly in the mind..
whatever now i seem to be..yet more is to be found in me..
love Rosie
Post a Comment