FilmOnDeepWater

Undertaking
22 March 2004
Philadelphia, PA                                                                                    

What actually is taken under when I begin some endeavor, when I take something on?  And why is overtaking not the opposite of undertaking?  I sense that this notion of taking something on means that I will be pulled down, even weighted down by it – whatever the “it “ is.  Not necessarily a bad thing.  Maybe our undertakings ground us, give us mass and substance, purpose and meaning.

An undertaking is also a bit like a declaration – it stands on its own authority.  It exists, or begins anyway, when I say so freely, or at least act on it freely.  When I undertake something, I literally take it upon myself.  It cannot be imposed because, if it were, it would then be an order, or a directive, or an imposition.  An undertaking is a commitment then.  No wonder, when we are awake, we are apprehensive about the potential weight we are taking on.  Yet weight is not really the apt word here.  An undertaking has no more weight than the sound of a ringing bell.  It is more about the awareness of the irreversibility of it all.  It is about the transformative qualities that come with each undertaking.

And I can’t gloss over the reality that in the past we had undertakers, but today we have "funeral directors".  I guess now even death is so much more about presentation and show than it is about sitting with one of the great undertakings, one the great mysteries of life.  Funerals now are “produced and directed” much the way films are.  In the past there was more honesty about this undertaking business.  And there was the sense that someone had to do it for us.  In a spiritual sense the undertaker in his worn black suit, white shirt, dark tie and scuffed black shoes was there to “takes us under” and then lets us go.

Embedded then in every commitment, every undertaking, is a kind of death. Undertaking a relationship is a death to the solitary life I had before.  Undertaking parenting is a death to that untethered life I had before a child came careening into it.  Taking on a new career means letting go of what had been my path previously.  No matter how much I wish to avoid or deny this at times, it is there all the time nonetheless.  A little death, and sometimes a big death.  I guess in the moment I never really know which is which.

And then looking even deeper embedded in each of these deaths – both big and little – is the possibility for a life full of purpose.  Purpose, as I envision it here, has an abrasive quality to it.  Purpose can scrub away every vestige of inauthenticity I try to smuggle along with me from one life into another, from one undertaking to another, from one death to another.  Each undertaking - when I am fully awake to it – is a kind of cleansing, an opportunity for sacrifice and letting go, a promise of irreversible change, a commitment, and an invitation to love and be loved.