The Other World
Trek VI
Summer '72
Several weeks ago in looking through an old hymnal
the kind of hymnal from which my church sang on Sunday night
well, I wee shocked by the poetry and metaphors and images that
were in those old hymns. I was not really shocked by those
images and metaphors, but as I realized the lack of images
and metaphors out of which you and I hew been living for the last
twenty I do not know how many years. You and I have
been living out of a kind of black and white. I do not moan absolutes.
But I mean we are living in times where we are getting clear on
our sight and getting clear on where we stand and where things
are in the universe. But it is almost as though what happens when
the black and white breaks through and you hit transparency is
like the carousel lights going on, the calliope beginning to play
a waltz, ant the horses starting their dance. The fullness of
life begins to break through. The multicoloredness, the
multi-dimensionalness breaks through. You and I are beings which
live out of images; and on top of that, you and I are living in
times in which brand new images are breaking through.
I used to worry, "Now what is it that I will tell my children
when they ask me, 'What is life all about?"' Well, now, I
figure it is very simple. Life is about four things: It is about
the land, and it is about the river, it is about the mountain,
and it is about the sea. Now, i! that is too simple for you, I
would say life la about mystery or wonder the wonder
at just the surprise that is existence, and the surprise of my
own showedupness and disappearingness in the midst of that.
Life is awareness awareness of my freedom to relate
to the mystery, to that final reality and to create an existence
in the midst of that reality. Life is care or love or service
released when one dares to struggle the struggle of Got. (Then
one finds he can have, or has the passion or love for his neighbor.)
Finally, life is tranquillity it is peace -- it is
happiness that is in the midst of one's daring to stand before
life, struggling freely the struggle that is his own existence.
I do not know what kind of images you have, but I have
got several images of the land of mystery. For me the land of
mystery is like the Scottish Moors with the sound of bag pipes
beckoning you, frightening you, luring you. Now, the river is
something else. I figure that it must be very, very deep and very
wide. But there must be only four ripples as it flows along. Sometimes
those ripples swell to huge waves, but still there are only four
as it flows along. One of those is my awareness of my life as
relationship. The second one is my awareness of my life as creativity.
The third one is the awareness of my life as decision. And the
fourth ripple is the awareness of my life as obligation.
Now, I want to read a script to you. And I would not say this
to anyone else; but you being the group that you are, having seen
what you have see, I am going to read the script that you saw
last weed. John 4: 815
As he walked down the street, Jesus throwing these words over
his shoulder, said,
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'Now, the Son of Man is glorified and in him, God is glorified. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in Himself, and He will glorify him now. If you knew me, you would know my father, too. From now on, you do know Him. You have seen Him.'
Now, Phillip was wandering down the street a little bit further behind and he catches up and he says, "Well, Lord, just show us the Father and we won't ask any more questions." Jesus answered, 'Phillip, have I been with you all this time and you still don't know me? Any one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father.' Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? I am not the source of the word which I speak to you. It is the Father who dwells in me doing His own work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. That is true. Or else, accept the evidence of the deeds themselves. It's the truth, absolutely. And I tell you he who has faith in me will do what I am doing and he will do greater things still because I am going to the Father. Yes, anything you ask in my name, I will do so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.' I showed up with a string of names: Aimee Margaret Williams Hllliard. And I showed up a twentieth century, white female...sort of tall and just about thirty. but these last few years, it has not been that part, exactly, of me that was sort of my fate that I have struggled with. I find myself coming face to face with fate itself and I ask myself, "Why me and the Church? How did this happen'" As I look at my history, it seems like it was all laid out from the beginning. Some character asked me one time, "Why are you here with the Ecumenical Institute?" And the only answer that I could give him in the first instance was that it all has lead to this point. You know, I could have had another set of parents who did not go to church every Sunday. My folks did not make me go to church every Sunday, we just always went. I could have lived some place else. I just happened to live in a place where the back door was at the front door of my church. Of course, the Baptist Church was just across the street to the front, and the Christian Church was (that's what we called it in Missouri) down the street to the right. I never had to worry about a ride, when the doors opened, I was there. I just stepped out my door, across my dog, and I was in church. And I do not know my brother, he never had that same problem; he went sometimes and sometimes he did not go. I always seemed to go... never out of a rebellious fit or beating or anything I just seemed to go. I do not know why one summer I decided to go on what Presbyterians called a caravan or Mission Study Tours, but I did. Two days before it left, I decided to go on the trip going to the South. I had been to the South before, but I decided two days before to go. I soon saw that I had never been to the South before; and, in fact, I had never talked to black people before. Why was that possibility opened to me? And why that next summer did I wind up going on a study trip going to the industrial cities of the East Coast. Again, I had been to the city before. Every summer, my family went to St. Louis or Kansas City to attend a musical show and a ball game.
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But then, I realized that in actuality I had never been to the city before. What happened to me? Why did that route seem all laid out? Why did I stick with the local church in college when every one else got disillusioned and began falling away? Why did I, though disillusioned, hold on?
As I think about my history being all laid out before me...it
is as though I had been destined, as though I had had no choice
within my particular history to show up here today. Why it that
I happened to join up with a group of people that came up with
something called a galaxy that looks like it is going on for more
than 40 years? It all just seems planned for me...Why?
It is rocking to see that life is so impersonal and arbitrary
and that in one sense there is no choice but to show up the way
I am. Out of the anger and astonishment, I began to realize the
obvious: That this is the only life I have got. It is certainly
the only one that seems available for me and for you, I might
add. And then, a strange wonder becomes very clear, once you have
made your peace with fate, creativity pulses forth. It is as though
what I decide today.is my fate tomorrow. It is as if I have permission
to depart from my rate. I have permission to use that fate as
a sort of fantastic palette of paint with which I can create the
future.
In the midst of the experience of seeing my life is just given
to me, in the midst of the impersonalness of it all, my first
response is just sort of panic. Remember the Edgar Allen Poe story
in which the ceiling and the floor start coming together
well , that is what first happened in my interior. And yet, at
the same time, I saw that my given is my given and there is a
kind of releasing delight that I do not have to shop around anymore
for raw materials. It also occurs to me that coming to terms with
my fate, realizing that I am my fate, is like having to eat jalapeno
peppers...When you eat those hot, hot, scorching hot peppers,
you have two choices: either frantically try to find something
to extinguish the fire which is impossible; or to
decide that you have eaten jalapeno peppers and just lean back
allowing the heat to be part of you, letting your eyes flame and
your ears smoke and your nostrils dilate, You and your hotness
become one thing and there is something new to work with.
I was in a situation once that was very hot. It was in the last part of my junior year. I was having a very particular kind of a problem, which can be referred to here as "the wallflower problem." (You understand, of course, that is not a botanical problem.) I was in deep despair about not having what I would consider an exciting dating life with young men. Now I unconsciously realized that my despair was not about young men. It had nothing to do with that. It had to do with what I was going to do with myself the next year, and the next year, and on into the future. I finally decided that I would wander into the office of the person who went by the name of school counselor. I sat down at his desk and began to tell him about my problem of being a wall flower. Now I was not like the ordinary wall flower, and he was very clear about that; for I had been elected President of the Student Body and I had a lotof men friends. And so he started to remind me of these facts. I patiently said that he did not understand, that there was more to this problem than I had told him (as I was beginning to see myself). I tried to explain further and then, he would respond and I would internally call him a stupid idiot and ask him if he thought I was 60 stupid that I had not thought of that before. And then he would suggest something more and I
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would just scream inside about how this man could be so dumb.
I finally got up and ran out of his office. I started wandering
around Campus with a kind of...do you know what the wandering
sadness is? It is like there is just nothing that can fill you
up and yet, you cannot stop looking for something? But you sense
you have stumbled across the fact that there is never going to
be anyone who can give you any advice. That is, that you alone
are your situation and that you alone, finally, have to create
your own response. Now, what I finally did was to race to the
tennis courts and solitarily pound that ball against the backboard.
I was furious.
I was mad that this could be what life was about. I remembered
another situation which happened very often as I was growing up:
I would race in to my mother and I would say, "Mother, what
should I do about this?" Mama would always suggest something.
And I would say, "I thought of that," or "You don't
understand'"
I realized that all my life I had been aware of the fact that
no one else can decide my life for me. Finally, I show up deciding
my own life. My situation is not something external to me. It
is the way I relate to the givenness of what is there. That is
to say that my situation is always open because I am very
clear that I have permission to create, to change, to turn a corner,
and that no one is going to decide for me. I have got the whole
catastrophe on my hands! I am totally alone. It is only at this
point that I begin to feel and sense after what creativity is
all about.
The wandering sadness is the kind of sadness that makes you sick
to your stomach. It is an emptiness and wandering around that
goes on in your interior being. But yet it is a kind of tantalizing
intrigue. It is all yours. Come on' Do it! Come on! It is a magnetic
kind of beckoning of your future, of recreating your past, that
calls you into being, because it is yours. This kind of awareness
is like being in a storm at sea. I was in a storm at sea once.
It started out to be a very beautiful day and then all of a sudden
the sky turned black, the wind came up, the waves were huge and
the lightening was flashing all around me. Fortunately, I was
in a fishing boat on a Minnesota lake and the shore was not so
very far away. But I was clear that it is a forbid solitariness
which surrounded me.
Well, the kind of solitariness that breaks loose, that helps you
to see that "I am my situation", (and that is nothing
external to me), that my relationship to it is also me, leads
you to other kinds of insights about life or radical
awakening. One of those awakenings occurred to me in an encounter
with a Chinese waiter. I do not know if you have ever encountered
Chinese waiters, but there is something about the selfhood of
a Chinese waiter that is not to be outdone by any man, any place.
This encounter happened in January, the day of my daughter's birthdayher
fourth birthday. And we had decided that to celebrate we would
go out. That is pretty much the way you celebrate in the order;
you go out since you do not have a kitchen in your
own house. We had decided to go out. And strangely enough
as we got into the car, Frank and I, neither one of us had thought
of a birthday cake. But ah ha, Li Lin had! And she said, "I
want a birthday cake. I want a birthday cake. I want a birthday
cake." Now where could you get a cake at that hour? As we
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drove along, we decided to go to Chinatown. When we got there,
I was secretly commissioned to go inside and see if they had a
birthday cake. And they said, "Yes, we have birthday cakes."
So I went out to the car and announced, "They have birthday
cakes. Let's go in."
We were seated at the back of the restaurant. (You know how when you have a very young child, you are quickly ushered to the back of the restaurant. This always sort of hurts me a
little bit; while at the same time, I am relieved because it is
true.) And so, we were ushered to the back of the restaurant,
and being at the back you always get the waiter that slinks by
on his way to the door to the kitchen. We finally got the waiter,
and Li Lin was saying, r' am gonna have a birthday cake. I am
gonna have a birthday cake." We made our order concluding
with, "We want a birthday cake." The waiter said, "Yes.
Our cakes are too big, but I'll bring you just the thing you need."
And so we ate our meal. And all the time Li Lin was saying, "I
want a birthday cake. I want a birthday cake."
We finally got to the end, announcing, "We're ready for the
birthday cake. now." In came the waiter with a piece of apple
cobbler with a tiny candle burning on top. Li Lin's face fell
twenty feet. But being a girl who loves sweets, she dug right
into it. And I thought we had made it through. But Frank came
alive, "I thought you said that they had birthday cake here.
We've got to get a birthday cake." I said rather nervously,
"Be quiet. Let's not cause any trouble in this place."
So he gets up and walks out of the restaurant and leaves us for
about fifteen minutes and comes back in and shouts, "We've
got to find a birthday cake"' loudly. And I scream, "Let's
be quiet! This thing is alright. She's satisfied. Let's go."
So we left.
But we left for a mad chase around the city of Chicago and a screaming
battle on birthday cakes. "Are you a Mister Milk Toast after
all?' You said they had a birthday cake at that place. Let's
go back and see. How do I get there?" He always asks me the
directions. So I did not tell him, which resulted in a wilder
ride. By the time we finally found ourselves back at the restaurant,
we went in. Or rather Frank went in and bought the biggest birthday
cake they had.
Now what I realized a couple of weeks later was that the propensity
of the introverted man or the Mrs. Milk Toast, as I could be called
in that situation, is to assume that the Universe is all set up
for you, that you have a particular role of gracious guest that
you play not causing any trouble. When anyone else
messes up the whole plan, whatever that might be, they have also
messed up your role, too. That is to say that I was assuming there
was another universe that someone else had already set up, where
if a waiter takes charge (and that man obviously knew that he
controlled his universe), that you just let the thing just sort
of play out. The address of "Are you a milk toast after all?"
was (it occurred to me) that I was living out of a totally different
universe than what was really on my hands. That is to say that
what I realized was that I create my universe. That no Chinese
waiter, no kind of objective machine rolls out my script or creates
my universe.
It has been that kind of an awareness that it is my universe, that there is nothing out there that creates it for me; but that I create, in my relationship to the given, my universe. I am
master of my fate with no one to blame. No one hands out my parts.
No one hands out my roles. And I would like to whisper, "You
can't even blame God!" because God be's in your relationship
to God. So, if you are going to get angry, mad or blame anyone,
it has to be yourself that you are angry at or blaming, because
it is your universe. When you come to terms with that, the spark
of creativity, of designing out of nothing, can and does occur
When you realize that there is nothing rolling out parts, scripts
or roles, it is your universe.
At first, you may be sort of disappointed. At least I was because
all the time I thought I had been going along the right track.
Then you are sort of fearfilled. A kind of suffocating fear
takes hold of you. You know the D. H. Lawrence poem, "Everything
is tainted with myself. Skies, trees, people, grass, machines,
war." Everything is tainted almost to suffocation. Yet there
is a kind of liberated boldness that occurs because you are not
waiting around for anybody. You are striding on because that is
just the way it is.
I figure it is something like recruiting a thousand people for
Summer '72. Ken Ellison on the night before this thing started,
came to the buffet line exclaiming, "Two weeks ago Marian
Hamje said there were going to be two hundred people here from
area East, and do you know that is exactly, to the nose, how many
registrations we inane counted from there tonight"' After
which he gasped, "My goodness, I am the architect."
Well, the kind of creativity that begins to blurp itself
to explode must be something like the kind of creativity,
or the kind of awareness that occurred to us as we were developing
and giving birth to the 5th City Preschool. After spending a year
in studying the great classical minds in early childhood education
and the molders of the current trends, and pulling together the
most comprehensive of curriculum models for the child today and
for the community as well, we began to realize that conceiving
this child was one thing, but bearing it was another.
What you have to take into consideration in delivering this child
are the doctors that society has not prepared to deliver it. In
this situation the doctors would come in and look at what was
about to be a new possibility. They would think it was going to
be something like a stillborn, or an idiot; and it should, therefore,
get misplaced somewhere because they had no framework in which
to understand it. "But were the cotsheets the right
size? Was the sick room big enough?" It was like something
that had appeared out of nothing. And they had no way of appropriating
it.
All the while, you were sort of wild and irrational when people
would raise a question to you. You are wild and irrational because
you are pulling it out of nothing. Of course we gestalted; of
course we used the wisdom of the great minds, but still it was
out of nothing that this was being born. "This area isn't
possible to be licensed because it's three feet lower than ground
level." You want to hit him over the head! You had to hold
yourself back to keep from screaming at him: "There are 800
preschoolers in this neighborhood You'll deprive them of superior
education any education at all because
of three feet?"
A kind of wildness erupts when your creativity is about to take
form and questions get raised and someone starts diverting your
attention. One doctor who was required in order to deliver this
child, that is to say she was the government's funding agent,
said, after a very sterling description of the proposed program,
"This curriculum is all fine, but what children really need
is mothering." Wild irrationality breaks loose, and you have
to intensify your discipline simply because it is crucial that
you exist in order to get this thing created; and it follows that
society has also to exist in order to use it.
Now, an amazing thing happens when you do get your creativity into form, when you get that package prepared. There is a kind of power that rushes through you in such force that you
think that you could lift a mountain, or you could lift ten tons.
"We'll try for four more or seven more classrooms. Give us
a demonstration grant." That kind of power just surges up.
You can do anything, when you have produced your creative idea.
And of course, after that you are sort of wrung out. There is
that sort of wrung out kind of time that everyone sort of goes
to bed on for a minute.
It is like there is a kind of impertinence when you dare to create.
You see society was telling us, "You cannot do this. It is
impossible. The community does not need this. This is unprecedented.
No one has ever built a curriculum like this before." And
there is the kind of impertinence that we had in just going ahead
and doing the thing and saying, "There it is done. It is
possible."
You are sort of terrified at your own power. Maybe when
you are about to create something and you sense that power surging
through you, you just doze off for a while; or maybe you get wildly
frantic. Well, what you begin to realize is that creativity is
always present within you. Creativity is not something that some
people have and others do not, or that I have some of the time
and not other parts of the time. But creativity is always there,
always raveling out.
Now sometimes I use that intentionally and sometimes I do not.
The problem is, when I do not, you never see what it did. It just
sort of continues to ravel out. And it ravels out your whole life.
Maybe you save the last six inches of that creativity as it ravels
out to die yourself one great creative death. But it will last
until then. And now you see that Being is Creativity. That is
why God is called the Creator. Being be'd me. He created me. I
am Creativity! I am creativity! It all comes clear and what a
scandal it is. I am the hands of Being itself. I am the channel
of Being. Being has no stuff with which to create except my stuff.
I do the work of Being. I am Creativity.
Then, out of the nothingness, that is the future, you see that
you are really that which creates, molds the future. It is a kind
of impertinence that is so frightening you are afraid to say it
out loud or to sense it self-consciously. You articulate it to
yourself in the mirror.
It is like all your life you have been living like a little pigmy. With this realization, suddenly, the giant just breaks loose inside you and you Be the Giant, which is the Creative One that you are.I tell you, with these kinds of awareness, or this awareness that has broken loose in me, I will never be the same person again. As a matter of fact, I will go to my grave with the kind of awareness that I have never had before. You see that one thing is that I never expect anything in life but surprise. And I use all of the faith that I am given and I use it up, every bit of it. I do not pretend it is not there. I do not wish something. I. I use every bit of it as a part of mixing up the oils
for the future. For I see myself as having made friends with Fate.
I guess, when you do that, when you make your peace with Fate, when you make friends with it, it becomes sort of personified. You sort of just shake hands with it. One of our colleagues was going down the stairs with another colleague the other day, and he said, "Have you ever
noticed that going down stairs is easier than going up?"
And the person next to him who probably thought this kind of scientific
knowledge was surprised and said, "I think it has something
to do with gravity." To which our colleague responded, "I
think I will just make friends with Gravity." Well, when
you decide to embrace your Fate, to be your Fate, to create your
Fate, you make friends with it.
One of the souvenirs of this kind of awareness is no more scapegoats
or counselors. You may have collegial advisors, but no more counselors,
because you see yourself as radically selfconscious to the
fact that you alone are responsible for relating to your situation
and no one else can do that for you. Also you find that you are
never going around looking for answers. I have found myself, when
preparing a lecture or a seminar, always looking for answers.
I mean that I have books piled up a mile high.
What I realized, when struggling with this state of consciousness,
is that, when you create, it is always out of nothing. You just
dare to walk out and mold and pull together and create. That means
that, every moment that you are creating your situation, you are
going to have a belly full of anxieties till the day you die.
That is just one of the souvenirs that goes along with it. But
you see yourself at the Center. You know yourself to be at the
Center of Creation itself.
Finally, it is always from nothing that I create. It is
out of nothing that I create the future. But I do create
and determine the future. I see myself as a sign of Creativity
itself. Whenever I walk down the street people look at me and
see Creativity itself. That is not whether I am doing a good job
or not. That is just the fact. I am Creativity. I am a
sign of the glory of God.
Aimee Hilliard