Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Blessed Advent & happy Thursday to all of our ADD Irregulars, Friends, Refuges, Early Birds, Later Dayers, Conversants, Lurkers, PHAM, Dawn Patrol, Happy Bigots, Fascinating People, Triggeratti, Seekers of Sanity & Civility and all the rest of you Supports, Members and Visitors at Locals! Welcome December and this final month of 2022, may it be a wonderful ending to whatever this year has held for you.

How about a little David Whyte to start off the month? Off we go to Consolations - The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words!

MATURITY is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts, most especially the ability, despite our many griefs and losses, to courageously inhabit the past, the present and the future all at once. The wisdom that comes from maturity is recognised through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics that form human identity: what has happened, what only looks as if it is happening now, and what is about to occur.

Immaturity is shown by making false choices: living only in the past, or only in the present, or only in the future, or even living only two out of the three.
Maturity is not a static arrived platform, a golden epoch from where life is viewed from a calm, untouched oasis of wisdom, but the dissolution of living elemental frontiers between what has happened, what is happening now, and the consequences of our past; first imagined anew, and then lived into the waiting future.

Maturity is the breakdown of elemental frontiers, between different epochs of our life, between life and death, between the part of us that has been a fine, upstanding citizen and the darker, helpless parts of us that have caused harm and damage. Maturity is the time when these tidal forces meet and break apart our life, making one life out of our regrets, our self-compassion, and our forgiveness forged into a future made real by a radical change in our behaviour: real maturity can only be sustained by real silence, by a daily discipline of silence and an inhabitation of spaciousness, a foundational giving away. Maturity is the discipline of giving up and giving away, to see what is left and what is real.

Maturity calls us to risk ourselves as much as we did in our immaturity, but for a bigger picture, a larger horizon; for a powerfully generous outward incarnation of our inward qualities and not for gains that make us smaller, even in the winning.

Our previous stage of immaturity always beckons, offering a false haven and false accounting, an ersatz safety in one state or the other: a hiding place and disappearance in the past, a false isolation of the present, or an unobtainable sure prediction of the future. But maturity beckons also, asking us to be larger, more fluid, more elemental, less cornered, less unilateral; a living, conversational intuition between the inherited story, the one we are privileged to inhabit, and the one - if we are large enough and broad enough, moveable enough and, even, here enough - just, astonishingly, about to occur.

Maturity - something I would never claim for myself, I imagine I might be mature and there are many who might think I am immature, such things are open to debate. Trying to gage one's maturity seems to be more of an understanding of one's own capacity to manage your emotions and to integrate your thoughts and awareness into them. Mr. Whyte sees it is the ability to juggle the past, present and future equally in your contemplations and experiences.

MATURITY is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts, most especially the ability, despite our many griefs and losses, to courageously inhabit the past, the present and the future all at once.

I agree with the assessment as long as one also grants the integration of feelings and thoughts without the complete dominance of one to the exclusion of the other. Neither facts nor feelings get the ultimate say in a mature person's life compass. Neither facts nor feelings care about the other in the immature person's experience. I'm not taking a dig at the like of Ben Shapiro, I imagine his point is not to let feelings undermine and obscure your facts. At the same time, your facts have to acknowledge the emotional landscape that is processing the facts, a message delivered to the unreceptive is barely any better than the one never delivered. Facts & feelings are in some sort of interior dance for those of use trying to embrace maturity as a more permanent state of being. Maturity is not place of arrival for us but rather a place of dwelling that is one maintains by our constant attentiveness. So many factors can dull that attentiveness, can distract, diminish and at times delete that attentiveness as we slide into the immaturity that makes a wreck of our lives. Sadly regressive immaturity is often recognized by our friends and close ones long before we awaken to the fall. Good friends lovingly pull back the curtain on our immaturity and help us find our way back to more attentive living. Helping us rediscover our truer self is a priceless gift that only good friends can offer because of their love for us that is not alienated by the edges or put off by the warts.

Maturity is the breakdown of elemental frontiers, between different epochs of our life, between life and death, between the part of us that has been a fine, upstanding citizen and the darker, helpless parts of us that have caused harm and damage. Every sinner has a future, every saint has a past. That awareness gives me hope for humanity, the entire lot of us slowly making our pilgrimage through life to an unknown and uncertain future for so many. I believe in the destination and homecoming, but only time will tell. There is a Companion on the path, hidden, humble, and subtle, often just whispering invitations to us to open our heart and awaken our mind, occasionally speaking with greater veracity in larger life moments. Such whispers and utterances are observed or ignored, the choice is yours. The Companion is never looking for the qualified, never seeking the perfect, there is no need for you to bring credentials, those just get in the way. Attentiveness, willingness, childlike trust in the context of adult awareness with all its questions and doubts are suitable enough for the Companion, if there is a welcome.

real maturity can only be sustained by real silence, by a daily discipline of silence and an inhabitation of spaciousness, a foundational giving away. Maturity is the discipline of giving up and giving away, to see what is left and what is real. Silence makes one more attentive to the whispers of life, allowing us to hear our deeper self often hidden from us by our distractions and preoccupations that lead to a barren life. The giving up and giving away - good parents awaken to this reality, the poor ones struggle to find it. You can almost always tell with their children if you spend enough time with them. No judgment here on parents, it is such an amazing vocation. Those who awaken to the giving up & giving away find a new life to form, encourage, direct and love. You don't have to be parent to discover the giving up & giving away, anyone can if they allow their time to be claimed lovingly by others, but parents are brought to this state of yielding faster than many of us who have no children.

But maturity beckons also, asking us to be larger, more fluid, more elemental, less cornered, less unilateral; a living, conversational intuition between the inherited story, the one we are privileged to inhabit, and the one - if we are large enough and broad enough, moveable enough and, even, here enough - just, astonishingly, about to occur. Immaturity tempts us toward regression, but maturity beckons us to be more. It is easier to chose the path that leads to less, but it always leads us to the dullness of life and the entertaining of more selfish or darker inclinations to fill the void made for a more vibrant experience of life. The conversational intuition between my story now and my story unfolding should be enough to keep us all engaged in the adventure of living. I hope you dear reader, can hear that beckoning voice in your life and you have the trust and courage to follow it to a larger more fluid, more elemental living as David describes it.

Happy Thursday and December my Dear Digital Neighbors! A fun meme from @eclecticRPT to cap off the rather lengthy text.