L'Chayim

Last weekend Vashon Winery, on an island near here, hosted a story-telling and wine-tasting event featuring Michael Meade, a mythologist and story-teller who was very active, along with Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Coleman Barks, in the men's movement in the 80s and 90s.

We boarded a ferry for the 15-minute ride to Vashon Island, pictured as we approached it below,


and proceeded to have one of the most exhilarating evenings of my life in the only barn I know


with such a fine chandelier,


and an equally fine vintner (and poet), Ron Irvine.


It is a grave disservice for me to try to distill all that Michael conveyed that evening, but, in a phrase, he makes a profound connection between the process of making and drinking wine and the evolution of one's soul. In Sufi terminology, the heart is known as the qalb, and "the individual’s body is the physical dimension of his or her existence, while one’s heart constitutes its spiritual dimension. For this reason, the heart is the direct, eloquent, most articulate, splendid, and truthful tongue of the knowledge of God."

The physical body houses the ego. The heart is connected to the Divine. And there is an ancient association between the breaking of the skin of the grape and the breaking down of the ego, in order to discover the Divine. In Greek mythology, a parallel analogy is drawn. Apollo's function is to maintain limits/control/ego, but Dionysus's task is to dissolve boundaries, to move from order to chaos to a new order, one of the many processes of creation, individuation, dissolution and recreation of self across a lifetime. This moment of inviting the Dionysian moment - drinking the wine - was a moment of honoring all that preceded and honoring all that will proceed. It is a magical, liminal moment, inviting the most profound of insights into the nature of the Divine, but is very much fraught with the dangers of riding a tiger, as shown in the picture at the top.

Michael, whose most recent book is The World Behind the World, read the poetry of the 12th and 13th century Persian poets Hafiz and Rumi, who speak of the the Divine Ecstasy that is always present for all of us to connect with through poetry, love, virtue, and wine.

Certainly for me, before that evening, I have never had a glass of wine with such a sense of the sacredness of drinking. I hope that I shall never take another sip of wine without that consciousness. Baudelaire famously ordained, "One should always be drunk," but he misunderstood the two-fold purpose. Yes, to drink wine permits enduring the pain and a sort of revelry, but it also offers reverie, an insight into Divine Ecstasy.



Among the quotes I scrambled to take down that evening, while basking in a sublime glass of the 2002 Anniversary Reserve Red, are these:

~ There are risks the soul waits to take.

~ Safety is being in the right risk.

~ A false sense of security is the only one there is.

~ Guilt does not ferment.

~ God is the only one who should be put on trial.

~ Morality is what happens when there is no love present.

~ We are the cup into which the Divine wine pours.

~ The real world is Divine.

~ The world has a soul.

~ I have fallen in love, with someone who lives inside you.

And finally, in honor of Lee's River, and all who strive to understand and dance away their pain, the following words.

~ There is a God who only knows four words - Come dance with me.

That's a God whose dance card I'll happily sign up for.

In sum, it was a supremely uplifting evening, and made me wish that many of you, my readers, were there. It was the very reminder I needed of the redemptive power of suffering - that in that process of breaking down our defenses and egos we ferment/create a transcendent self, a fine wine, that helps us discover the Divine in every moment of our lives. I have long believed there is a purpose for our struggles in life, but I have never invited the struggles, the sorrow, the anguish - I have endured, and have created meaning, but never made a toast both to the Agony and the Ecstasy.

After hearing Michael Meade, however, I think that I can welcome what Life has to offer, in all its many vicissitudes, and make a toast with each glass of wine with a L'Chayim that I mean now in a very different way than before this evening.

Finally, I love that for all the sublimity of the occasion, the last thing I saw as I left the barn was the following profane and hilarious sign.



L'Chayim, blogger friends.