Contemplating my Navel at 64

64 today.  I woke on my birthday with an enigmatic phrase over the doorpost at the exit of my dream: future through one.

I found the idea of a future through one to be contrary to reality.  Future comes from bee-flower combinations, from egg-sperm polkas and stamen-pistil ballets.  I lie on the sofa after my early morning walk, the furnace on now and Kathy rousing in the back of the house.  Alone, but not really.  The one-day-past-full moon was coming in through the window, and I thought of my aloneness, those words future through one and the idea of the navel that Karen Armstrong had tossed out in The Case for God.

Navel-gazing referred, in the 60’s, to a self-centered focus, an egoism that ignored the world and its needs.  But this morning I thought of my navel like Armstrong thought of it, and classical philosophers East and West.  It’s reminder of a connection, of a relationship.  If we really do contemplate our navels, we might recognize them as the isthmus of our humanity, the remains of the umbilical cord that is clear evidence that there is no life in isolation.  And for me today it is a reason to wonder about the large body on the other side of that narrow strip 64 years ago plus a day.  Actually, Eleanor Lydia Luprich Daniels was small – 5’1” and about 90 pounds.  PFC Frank A. Daniels had embarked from the war in LeHavre France on December 22, 1946 and 1 year to the day later I arrived from my own nine month voyage from their egg-sperm polka back in Chicago.

So go ahead.  Check out your navel.  Everybody’s got one.  We are, each of us, the future, and the one through which we came, quite literally, is still a part of us.  Here’s to you, mom.  Thanks. 

And this time of year, here’s to you, Mary of Nazareth, who danced with the Spirit (Polka?  Dabke?  Boogaloo?  What fun to imagine!) and gave us the One, the long-awaited one, who calls us to live in love, to live as love, to build a future without fear because we are never alone…not as long as we have navels to contemplate.