Finding Love and Life: Healing the Soul

By David H. Rosen and James Miller Jr.

Finding Love and Life make the world go round and provide meaning for everyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jun 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385200023

David H. Rosen

David H. Rosen is the author of such wide-ranging books as: Transforming Depression: Healing the Soul Through Creativity (1993), The Tao of Elvis (2013), The Healing Spirit of Haiku (2014), and Time, Love, and Licorice (2015).

Book preview

Preface

Being seventy-eight is a good age to write another memoir since you can see clearly looking back. To write this memoir, I utilized journals that I started writing on a daily basis beginning at age eighteen. The reason I started writing journals was to keep track of what I was doing and the places I was going. But also, I really just enjoy writing. Each chapter of this memoir contains one year of my life. For example, Chapter 1 covers the year 2005, when I turned 60; Chapter 2 covers 2006, and so on. The reason I write about my life relates to what the Zen Buddhists say: that life is death and death is life. The end of life is a subtle theme in this book, along with that bugaboo: afterlife. But let me talk about life first. I think I jumped ahead too much. I am actually fortunate to live in paradise with my loving wife, Lanara. Why do I say paradise? Because if you travelled here that’s what you would see. It’s a very rural place close to Eugene and the University of Oregon. We live at the end of a lane, across from Spencer Butte. This lane starts as a bumpy, paved road which quickly turns to gravel. I’m writing this in a small home office, looking out the window at beautiful, tall oak trees. I view my house as a sanctuary, a sacred space, and a place of creativity.

Before I started and wrote my first memoir in 1989 I met and visited with Franz Jung, Carl Jung’s son, who lived in the very house that Carl Jung lived in in Kusnacht, Switzerland. He was a kind and thoughtful individual. One of the reasons I met with him was to visit Bollingen Tower, Carl Jung’s stone retreat house. I was told that he had the keys to the house. Franz informed me that Peter, his oldest son, would take me there. My visit to this memorable place is recorded in The Tao of Jung. Interestingly, I sent a flyer of books that I’ve written to Jung’s other grandson, Andreas, as he is a Jungian analyst like others I sent the flyer to. He wrote me a letter talking about the books that I’d written, including The Tao of Jung. Because he said he’d never read it, I decided to send him a copy. Later, Andreas thanked me for the book and said that he really liked it.

This memoir, like my first two¹, is about integration and finding wholeness. It starts with a trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil and Cusco, Peru, meeting Lanara in New Zealand, and eventually leads to coming to terms with retirement and old age. I also deal with new aspirations such as building a house in the woods, becoming a comedian and writing different kinds of books².

We spend a lot of time wanting to grow up and be grown-ups. Growing up is what we do in our sunrise and early years. However, growing down is equally important. And as the reader will see, it can be a beautiful and striking preparation for the greatest adventure of all. We know what it’s like to have a wonderful sleep, dream, then wake up to life. My imagination is that this also happens after death. As Shakespeare put it, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come. Perhaps death, the ultimate sleep, is a preparation for a rebirth that is unimaginable before we die. Death is often feared, but it ought to be embraced. Why embrace it? Because as Zen Buddhists say, Death and life are clearly related. Hence, afterlife, in a way, makes sense.

What Mary Oliver says in her poem, When Death Comes³ is a wise statement:

When death comes / like the hungry bear in autumn; / when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse / to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; / when death comes / like the measle-pox / when death comes / like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, / I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: / what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? / And therefore I look upon everything / as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, / and I look upon time as no more than an idea, / and I consider eternity as another possibility, / and I think of each life as a flower, as common / as a field daisy, and as singular, / and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, / tending, as all music does, toward silence, / and each body a lion of courage, and something / precious to the earth. / When it’s over, I want to say all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. / When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder / if I have made of my life something particular, and real. / I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, / or full of argument. / I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world

1

. My first memoir, Lost in the Long White Cloud: Finding My Way Home (

2014

), covers my conception to the death of my father in my

29

th year. My second memoir, Torn Asunder: Putting Back the Pieces (

2021

), covers ages

30

–

59

, family and professional years. This third memoir covers ages

60

–

75

. If possible, there will be a fourth memoir that covers ages

75

–

90

.

2

. In the front of the book is a list of other books I have written.

3

. Oliver, Mary. When Death Comes. New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press,

1992

.

Chapter 1

Transformation and Traveling

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

—Helen Keller

Having turned sixty on my birthday, February 25th, 2005, I thought, I really need to write about my visit to South America, which I had done before going to New Zealand. In May of 2005, I was invited to Sao Paulo, Brazil and Cusco, Peru. The reason I went to Brazil was to give a talk at a university and do a workshop. I was honored to be asked to go to Sao Paulo and was struck by the magnitude of the city. It’s one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. I was confronted by the vastness of urban sprawl, the extreme number of people, and a similarity to most densely populated cities. When walking through the streets with my colleague, Roberto Gambini¹, he said, Let me do the talking. I asked, Why? to which he replied, Because that way they won’t think that we’re vulnerable tourists.

Sounds of Portuguese,

classical piano. . .

call of birds

While in Sao Paulo, I gave a lecture on my book, Transforming Depression: Healing the Soul Through Creativity², in a large hall at a Catholic university, as well as a workshop on writing haiku that was held in the home of a Sao Paulo resident. I was struck by the sophistication and the beauty of the latter, smaller gathering. There was a bartender who took orders, a cook who prepared a meal, and an open space to the garden which included a fountain. I was impressed by the mixture of people, the beautiful clothing they wore and the wonderful drink we were immediately offered; a brazilian specialty, cachaça. I gave an afternoon presentation in a large, lovely room of a house that opened to the outdoors. I asked a woman in attendance, Why are the people being fed here? And, I was told that Brazilian tradition is all about furnishing good drinking and food for guests; even at a haiku presentation! It smelled good, so I asked her what it was. Bobo. It’s like gumbo, she replied. I said, What’s in it? She said, Shrimp and mandioca (also known as cassava, a root similar to potato) served over rice. The spices were similar to the ones used in New Orleans. It was delicious.

White butterflies. . .

blooming poinsettias-

sunny day in Sao Paulo

From Sau Paulo I went first to Lima and then on to Cusco. I was going to Cusco because my daughter, Laura, was there on a Fulbright Fellowship regarding micro-lending. The capital of Peru, Lima, was huge and busy, like Sau Paulo. Flying to Cusco, the seventh highest city in the world (at 10,800 feet above sea level) was quite an adventure. There was turbulence, fear, and excitement. When we finally landed, we were all so relieved that we broke out in spontaneous applause. Laura met me at the airport and I was a bit shaky. She said, Oh, it’s the altitude but I said, Well, maybe, however it also was the plane ride! To help bolster my spirits, we went to a local cafe to drink coca leaf tea which apparently is a cure-all for altitude sickness. It was damn good, and afterwards I felt much