The line crackled and the tears fell as I caught the cadence of a voice I had not heard for thirty five years. There was no hello, no may I speak to, or even this is. No, I heard the words ‘are you still a full participant my friend’ followed by a laugh I thought I had lost forever but whose owner had never left my heart, even when I could not remember their name or their face that laugh would follow me in to dreams and find me looking round hopefully when someone else’s laugh stirred a memory that slipped through my fingers as I scrabbled to just hold on to it for another moment.
Through a revolution and a war or two that voice and laugh lifted my spirit and held my hand even when I believed the human being had been lost. More than anything the phrase ‘are you still a full participant’ made absolutely sure that this lost soul never gave up on promises made midst laughter and love that there was only one thing we’d never give up on and that was life.
No great ambition then, only to always be a full participant in life no matter the cost.
There was a road ahead we both knew would hold many a difficulty and may be a few accomplishments but it was never one we’d know where it was leading or at least where and what it would traverse before we reached journey’s end which we both knew was that ringing singing promise that we would die but first there was life in all its preciousness, which was our privilege to be full participants in.
No empires to build, something far bigger than that, to be open to the now, to offer whatever we had of compassion, understanding, empathy and fearlessness to life and its living.
I had lost much in the 35years since I last heard that voice and laugh but not the absolute belief that if I had anything to do with my life it was and is to live it. Not with any thought to money power or position, no unending pursuit of one goal or another but rather to keep checking I was and am still a full participant in life and its living.
I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning, often can’t remember my own name and certainly have not the faintest idea who most people are who I come in contact with but there was a voice and laugh that was immediately so identifiable that it pricked tears on to my cheeks.
A memory of a person, yes, but much more than that it was a memory that looks around at today and smile because I can easily say yes I am still a full participant.
That this life is punctuated by rather more physical pain and plain honest to goodness mess than a woman can always smile about doesn’t mean that full participation can be put on a shelf to gather dust.
More than ever I need to consider each day as grain of sand seemingly insignificant but in reality integral to the billion other grains and my participation in life is not about just muddling through, though that is now a permanent part of my living, no full participation means being as engaged as I can possibly be.
The spiralling down of my physical energies means that my small daily life and my living in it is beyond important. It is as essential as breathing that the process through which I pass needs to recognise the pace I can travel at and just how many resting places I need to create through each day but most of all it needs to embrace the wish, the need to be fully present and yes a full participant.
Each day this will mean I have spent the early hours of the morning, 4.30am onwards, listening to the valley’s bird life welcome the light with song and welcoming this beginning myself with bead and drum plus a quiet listening to my heart and making the commitment to be a full participant in my life and its living.
I will stop purposely through each day to realign and centre myself with the Earth having my own rituals and rhythms that support and encourage me to continually be reminded that I made a promise to myself and another that it was going to be full participation or nothing and is a bedrock that has helped me to live as independently and focussed as I can.
Even when chaos reigns in a somewhat fried brain and well used body, cough; the holding of a string of beads and Earth petitions said, even if I more often than not need to read them rather than bring them forth from memory, lets me touch my heart to the Earth and know life is precious.