The Gray And The Gold

There was a lamasery way up in the Himalayan Mountains. It was famous for its huge gold Buddha. it was very beloved and famous and just the joy of their lives.

Well, they got word that the Chinese Army was on the way, to take the gold Buddha and melt it down for gold bouillon. And the Buddhist monks, being Buddhist, thought long and hard about this. What they ended up doing, in a very Buddhist way, was covering the entire Buddha with a thick layer of plain old mud clay.

Then, when the greedy soldiers got there, the monks said, "You want to see the Buddha? Sure you do. Come this way."

And the soldiers looked up and saw a great big old, dirty, gray clay Buddha. And said to each other, "Aw, Jeesh, must not be the right lamasery." And they left.

The Buddhists left the Gold Buddha covered up for years and years and years. There was a big news story when they finally stripped away the clay and shined up all that wonderful, glinty gold. Until then, there were only whiffs of gold--where everybody had rubbed the Buddha’s belly and where the mountain wind and rain had kissed the head and the little, sticky-out fingers and toes. Just little glints, getting bigger and bigger over time. IMHO, grief is that clay, made up of all the abject misery and tears we cry. We just get packed over with this coating of grief. Then the gentle wind and the warm wind of The Land of Living wash over you and just ever so slowly erode away that clay.

When my sister Joyce died of Lou Gehrig's, I felt like a huge window of connectedness had closed for me. I was closest to Joyce, more than any of my other sisters and brothers or their children. And she was the one that had acted as a grandmother to Darling Daughter. I just couldn't seem to get past the fact that she was dead and I was still alive. I was just shell-shocked with grief. Somebody much older and wiser than me took me aside and lovingly said, "Kiddo, Life is for the Living."

I just looked at him. "I don't understand."

"What makes you happy?"

"Walking my dogs. Talking to my daughter. Music."

"Then you have to let those things wash over you. Until you get your center back."

And that's what happens. Life just makes you alive. And unless you get bogged down in loops of depression and grief and deep, dark thoughts, you can pull through.

Janelle