Edelen's World
Spiritual Growth with Bucky

by William Edelen

What does it mean to be spiritual and to live a spiritual life? It means to be awake, and to feel, touch, smell, see, listen in every sacred moment that we have been given to celebrate in this brief interlude between the mysteries of whence and whither. To live a spiritual life means quite simply to celebrate the sacred moment in every act of every day, from brushing your teeth to making love to chopping wood to watching cucumbers cucumbering to listening to the grass grow.

The great Zen Master Suzuki put this truth rather bluntly: "If you cannot find the ultimate meaning of your existence in doing the dishes and chopping wood, you will never find it," he said.

To grow spiritually means to experience what life can be when you finally wake up and begin to fill the hours of your days with wonder, awe, imagination, connections, intuition, gratitude and respect.

How many of us sleepwalk through our days, chattering and rattling incessantly and aimlessly like a seed in a gourd, about past or future trivia, with never a moment's awareness of what is there for us in the now, this moment, this hour, this day, this happening, this person, this beauty, this wonder, this touch, this one moment NOW, that will never return again, not ever in our lifetime.

You start this daily spiritual quest from the first moment you open your eyes in the new first light of a new day. A new dawn beyond which memory need not go.

On the wall of my study is a picture of me with Buckminster Fuller, that giant genius called the Leonardo da Vinci of our time. We spent a week together, Bucky and I. I learned from him about wonder and awe and beauty and celebration of the new day and the new moment. Every morning at first light I picked him up at his motel in Tacoma, Washington. He was there at my invitation to lecture at the University of Puget Sound. He wanted me to be with him at first light to celebrate the new day.

I learned the ritual the first of the seven days that we shared together. He opened the door to welcome me. Next he called his wife to say "good morning" and express his love for her. Then we went outside together and walked a very short distance into a lovely garden area where it was quiet, serene and quite beautiful. On the first day, I thought to myself, "Now what...?"

He said simply and quietly, "Bill, I always start my days in this manner, no matter where on this planet I happen to be . . . I always start with this celebration to remind me of the glory."

He faced the East where the sky was increasingly brilliant with those dawn colors that we all know (and some of us see too seldom). He held up his arms and lifted his face to the heavens - eyes closed - for at least two or three full minutes in silence, and then I heard from his heart these words . . . "Thank you, thank you, thank you for this new and wondrous day." From this genius of the geodesic dome, at 85 years of age, I was learning what it was to celebrate hourly and daily each sacred moment.

And after a moment or two longer, he would say, "Now Bill, let us have breakfast together. "Now," he said to me, "I'll put our breakfast together." He picked up a small grocery store type brown sack and began filling it with what looked like twigs, leaves, roots, nuts and grains and "ach," I thought, "are we going to eat that?" I'm still not sure what it all was. But it was lots of fiber and natural stuff, I can assure you. Swimming around in my head were my wonderful ranch breakfasts of eggs, ham, sausage and flapjacks, washed down by great hot coffee that you could cut with a knife. But, alas, it was not to be. Being fairly observant and alert, I could tell that anyone with an IQ above five could see I was not going to have ham and eggs or anything else delicious.

We left the motel room and walked over to the main lobby and coffee shop. We were led to a lovely private booth by a young thing flashing all white teeth and golden skin that would make you "swoon."

Bucky said, "Dear, I want two bowls, some milk and one banana to make our breakfast."

The sweet young thing said: "Sir - you can't do that. You can't come in here and make your own breakfast."

I said: "Please go get the manager and ask him to come here." When the manager arrived and introduced himself, I said, "Mr. Johnson, this is Buckminster Fuller."

Mr. Johnson become so awe-struck he could hardly speak. Then in almost a shout he ordered, "Two bowls, some milk and a banana . . . and no charge."

Bucky and I were now left alone in our booth. He did order coffee for the two of us. He stopped eating. He bent down close to his coffee cup, almost mesmerized. "Bill . . . Bill . . ." he whispered, "Bill, look at that - LOOK at that!"

I looked. I saw nothing but coffee. "What? . . . Look at what?"

"Look," Bucky said, "Look . . . over against the side of the cup - that bubble forming - that bubble - why? How is it forming?"

"Bucky," I said, almost embarrassed at my ignorance. "Bucky, I don't have a clue - my gawd, Bucky, if you don't know - WHO DOES?"

"That bubble," he said to me, "That bubble - I must understand how that happened and why."

Here was this 85-year-old genius, called the Leonardo da Vinci of our time, looking with awe, wonder and imagination at this bubble in this coffee cup, even as would a child with wonder-filled eyes. I remembered my 98-year-old grandmother, who had not one day of formal schooling out there in West Texas, showing me, with that same wonder and awe, a horned toad, a butterfly, a new rock, a dove's nest. I remembered that Bucky told me that all of his insights came from nature. His brilliant geodesic dome came from observing spider webs and beehives, he told me.

The spiritual life means being aware that this moment now, this day, this wonder, this touch, this smell, this event, this happening will never again come this way within this context. Celebrate it. It can change your life. I promise you. Remember that as e.e. cummings said, "life is not a paragraph . . . and death, I think, is no parenthesis."


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