By Extension

This past week, I've been helping a friend who just lost her father.

Last night, she and her family joined me and my boys for dinner in my home.

There were eight of us at my table.

To seat eight, I had to pull out the sliding panels from both ends, leaving my table fully extended.

This extension felt good.

I enjoyed the warmth of everyone's presence in the room.

I enjoyed the rhythm and harmony of conversations, both parallel and interwoven.

I enjoyed the contentment as everyone ate the food I had cooked.

I enjoyed the random dance of condiments across the table, impossible to choreograph, satisfying in its fulfillment of everyone's needs.

I enjoyed the music of glasses clinking.

I enjoyed the fullness of eight spirits communing, celebrating life together through the ritual of a meal, even as we mourned the loss of the ninth no longer among us.

I enjoyed the comfort given and the comfort received.

After dinner, with dimmed lights and glowing candles, we broke into song for the eighteenth birthday of my friend's daughter, marking a rite of passage only days after the passage of last rites.

Even in the darkest darkness, joy shines bright.

Blessings live in a belly laugh, a happy sigh, a smile formed in the midst of grief.

And when we turn to the eternal, they inhabit the most mundane moments.

My dishes are put away now, my table folded back up to its smaller size.

But my heart remains extended, not only to my friends, but by extension to all in need of care, support, and solace.

Grace

Skipping past wisdom for a moment - perhaps not the wisest move - I will visit, and surely revisit, the fourth attribute of aplomb: grace.

Grace is standing tall when everyone in the room tries to knock you down.

Grace is knowing when to walk away without saying a word, even under your breath.

Grace is doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons and not expecting reward or congratulation.

Grace is forgiving old slights, real or imagined, that have shattered the bonds of family or friendship.

Grace is never sacrificing your dignity for anyone.

Grace is leading, quietly, from above or from below.

Grace is establishing healthy boundaries, putting up sound walls, without barbed wire or electric current.

Grace is dispensing dearly bought wisdom freely.

Grace is never hoarding or withholding.

Grace is finding the power in fear.

Grace is listening with an open mind and an open heart.

Grace is sharing your blessings.

Grace is realizing it is not about you, unless it is about you.

Grace is recognizing when leaving something or someone hurtful is not about giving up but refusing to give where your gifts are devalued, scorned, or wasted.

Grace is knowing when to walk the line, when to draw the line, when to cross the line, when to blur the line.

And grace is knowing when to let the line disappear and trust your next steps to faith.

A Measure of Understanding

Death, the universal inevitable, is barely understood.

Science monitors the signs of life, and history records the time of their cessation.

There is breath and then, there is no breath.

The doctor says, "I'm sorry," and moves on.

Time now exists for us in terms of before and after.

But what happens in the moment remains a mystery.

There is a tear in the fabric.

A flap opens.

The departing spirit escapes as it closes, leaving a perfect surface and an invisible scar that only the bereaved can feel.

The tear on the surface disappears.

But the mirror tear, the one inside the heart, does not.

The change in the living brought on by the change in the dead remains.

We bury the body, fill the grave with dirt, but the gaping hole, the grievous wound, remains open.

Open and raw.

Deepened by shallow thoughts.

Widened by narrow-minded platitudes.

Caved in by the sudden avalanche of memory.

Absorbing tears the way water sinks in to beach sand as a child pours from her bucket.

And the hole never quite closes.

We stitch it up, as best we can, eager to feel whole again.

But the moment we do, start to feel whole again, we finger the jagged, bumpy scar with perverse curiosity until it throbs, overcome by the guilt of forgetting fused with the need to remember.

Pain cannot be buried in a box or sealed in an urn.

It must be taken out every so often, so we can feel its weight, its heft in our hands, its sharp contours that cut to the bone.

Acknowledging the suffering, refusing its denial, and embracing the excruciating growth it brings, is the only way to hold on to the joy the pain took from us, to carry it forward, and to be free to create joy in our remaining moments, knowing, that at any moment, we may lose that joy again.

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How To Do Your Best Work

This morning on NPR, still half asleep, I heard the tag line for the program's sponsor: something about promoting creative and defective solutions.

That's right, creative and defective.

Then I thought, that can't be right.

I was three-quarters awake now, drinking some coffee.

Ahh, creative and effective.

It was my listening that was defective.

Or maybe, just creative.

Creativity, by nature, is defective in the sense it is imperfect.

And the best solutions are often defective ones, in that they leverage a small departure from the norm, a slightly greater tolerance for difference, to create something that would not have been possible using standard methods, tools, and deviations.

Demanding perfection impedes creativity by discouraging experimentation, ruling out the fruitful exploration of how flaws, differences, quirks, and accidents might actually ripen instead of spoil the process.

Striving for perfection makes our work better, but insisting on achieving it in every outcome dries up our creativity and makes our work impossibly depressing.

We can only demand our best from ourselves in the process and let the outcome flow from that.

When I studied creative writing, I learned that a novel is a work of fiction with at least one mistake.

I thought this meant at least one place where the writer had screwed up, but now I see it differently.

The mistake is the place where the writer tried something different, something creative that missed its mark.

That missed its intended mark . . . and hit another one.

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Attribution: 

({{Information |Description=An official 80cm FITA archery target 

|Source=own work 

|Date=2006-06-01 

|Author=Alberto Barbati }})

Measureless Moments

This morning, at breakfast, we were going to Google an answer for my younger son, J, but I couldn't remember the question he had asked me the night before.

It didn't matter, because he quickly offered a different question:

"Why does winter come?"

I explained how the earth rotates around the sun, how our side of the planet is farther from the sun's light and warmth during the winter months, and my older son S, weighed in, adding that the other half of the world was currently experiencing summer.

J's eyes brightened, and he added, "So when it's summer here, it's winter there."

"Yes."

"And when it's April, it will be spring here, and  . . . winter there?"

"Fall."

"Falllllll."

S made sure I knew he knew the earth circles the sun once a year, and I explained the concept of leap year and this February's extra day.

The whole conversation took maybe three minutes.

J's wide-eyed smile, and S's knowing look of wisdom will stay with me forever.

I thought of all the work, not just the work of supporting my family, but the seasons of parenting work, from summers of diapering and sterilizing bottles to freezing midnight runs for formula, from sunny walks in strollers (and the cuts and bruises from constructing them) to rocking swaddled babies to sleep at night, from calming baths to crazy birthday parties, from fun trips to the toy store to frantic ones to the ER, of the constant love given 24/7/365, the patient discipline of keeping one's course, and the space allowed for each individual spirit to expand, for my little stars to shine their own unique light. I thought of all the years of time that enabled our three-minute moment.

When winter comes for me, when my days are shorter, my nights colder, and everything starts to wane, I will warm myself with the sunshine of these moments. I will measure time not by its passage, the change of seasons, or the earth's orbit around the sun. I will know that time, experienced as moments, is measureless. Because I know that in three minutes, there lives a lifetime.

Psyche's Geometry

A circle has no corners.

A circle has no sides.

A circle is infinite, endless, beginningless.

When we travel around a circle, we never change direction, and yet, we are constantly changing direction.

A circle is not right or left, north or south, black or white, up or down.

A circle is all in and both and.

Sometimes, we try to square the circle.

We force corners where they don't belong, cornering others and ourselves.

We take sides in an effort to make sides.

We see our journey as ending in a box, instead of continuing on a continuum.

We get stuck, fearing the difficulty of the sudden, sharp turn, ignoring the effortless beauty of the graceful arc.

"Which way?" we say.

"Is it this, or is it that?"

We choose the ordinary over the sublime - not so much a conscious choice as the default setting of ignoring consciousness, of unconscious ignorance.

We split, fracture, and break, often living whole lives in which we are unable to be whole.

We fail to come full circle, to come into the fullness that never fails to fill.

Our hearts have four chambers, not four sides, and blood circulates - such intelligent design.

Have you ever wondered why some people are dull and dark, others bright and radiant?

In Latin, radius means beam of light.

You Are Loved

It is hard not to write about Valentine's Day on Valentine's Day.

It is hard not to ruminate and grow misty-eyed on the day we all want to feel loved, to know we are loved, to have the proof of holding a heartfelt note in our hands, finding a carefully wrapped package on our pillow, placing those brightly colored blooms, balloons, and boxes of bonbons on our tables.

But love does not prove itself with these things. Oh, it is nice to be the one who receives them. And even nicer, to me, to be the one who gives them. But love does not prove itself with these things. And asking for proof of love is like questioning the existence of God.

It starts with this: you are loved.

You are loved despite your human flaws.

You are loved despite your failures.

You are loved despite your deficiencies.

You are loved when you stand up, and you are loved when you fall down.

You are loved the way a father loves his child, with hope and expectation and without condition.

You . . . are loved.

When you feel this love, when you hear it in the soothing sound of a gently flowing river; when you see it in the harmony of sun, moon, and stars; when you touch it the way a child hugs to her hollows a favorite stuffed friend; when you smell it in the divine smell that can only be described as fresh air; when you taste it like the sweetness at the center of sorrow; when you finally begin to speak this love's language, you begin to translate it into how you love in the here and now.

You give presence.

You give attention.

You give appreciation.

You give understanding.

And you guide your lover to a place of peace.

A place where the sun shines brightly but never burns.

A places where night falls gently, never before you are warm and safe.

A place where morning always breaks open with a smile.

A place where each day is dusted with liberal sprinklings of joy.

And the notes, the packages, the flowers, balloons, and chocolates, these are freely given, never demanded, always appreciated, never a source of disappointment because something was somehow not enough.

You shouldn't have.

You didn't have to.

I know you love me.

But I am glad you did.

Glad . . . and grateful.

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The Other Hand

I am working on another story.

Yesterday, I dug deep into the channels of memory, scooped up the rich silt, and held it, in my hands, before letting the liquid of life experience flow through my fingers onto the page.

I am always surprised, grateful, humbled, and comforted by what comes out.

And I humbly acknowledge where the best of what comes out comes from.

It also amazes me how the selected childhood memories we carry with us into adulthood fit like puzzle pieces into the odd-shaped openings within the tales we are destined to tell.

Here is how my father taught me to walk.

He walked by my side, holding one end of one of his white handkerchiefs, while I held the other. As long as I saw him next to me, holding his end, I kept walking. After a few steps, he would let go. I kept walking, until I turned and saw he was no longer holding the handkerchief - and immediately fell.

I'm sure my father had read Milton - he read everything in college - but as I write this now, at 46, I am, like a child with his crayon in the workbook, just starting to connect the dots.

"Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall."

A white handkerchief, the symbol of surrender.

And the trick of knowing you can walk without a visible connection to your father because the invisible connection is always there.

Coffee for the Tillerman

I am listening to Tea for the Tillerman by Cat Stevens.

I downloaded the deluxe edition on MOG, a music service I use on my iPhone.

The deluxe edition of the album begins with the classic, studio-recorded versions of the songs with which many of us - at least from a certain generation are familiar.

Listening to these songs, which I know intimately from hearing them hundreds of times, is comforting, because I know exactly what to expect.

The album continues with live or demo versions of Wild World, Longer Boats, Miles from Nowhere, Hard Headed Woman, Where Do The Children Play, and several other songs.

These versions, which I had not heard before, are different. The best description I can offer is that they have heart. That these performances shine with the musician's light, his love for his craft and his audience, his embrace of his calling.

There is something about the perfect, endlessly rehearsed, carefully edited, and professionally mixed versions of the songs - when compared to the live ones - that comes across as heartless, not in the sense of cruelty but simply lacking heart. Sort of like coffee without caffeine. It tastes decent and won't keep you up at night, but it will never set your soul on fire.

There is no substitute for live, spontaneous performance, for filling a familiar song with your feelings as they arise in the moment, for spinning a story in front of an audience with the raw threads of emotion that surface as you speak.

Afterwards, as you stop to breathe, your listeners say to each other, "I hadn't heard it that way before."

And you say to yourself, "Neither had I."

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Thanks

Each year, on the anniversary of my father's death, I send my mother a rose.

She calls to thank me and says, "It's been . . . 37 years . . . a long time."

A long time . . . yes.

A lifetime.

A lifetime . . . but the tears are still fresh.

Fresh as the rose due to arrive today.

Thanks, Mom, and Steve, and Jim, and all those wonderful friends for not letting it sink me.

I know people who have been sunk by it, and I am blessed and grateful not to be one of them.

Thanks, Maurice, for helping me understand I never lost what I didn't have.

For showing me that when the projection on the screen dissolves, shatters and scatters away into tiny pieces, we're left with a blank white expanse on which to shine our truth.

Thanks S and J, for bringing me into the fullness of fatherhood, for challenging me every day in the best of ways.

And thanks, Tom, for being exactly who you are - not in spite of it all, but because of it all.

Thank you.

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Close Your Eyes

Being present and making conscious choices is all about living with your eyes wide open.

Seeing what's happening, understanding why, and changing what doesn't work to make things better.

Acknowledging that what you're doing is as much a part of the equation as what others are doing, because you can't get from one to two without another one, and you can't get from 99 to 100 without another one either.

So I'm all for achieving the highest level of awareness.

I'm also all for closing my eyes and allowing the details, specifics, and particulars of an incident, situation, or relationship to dissolve into the whole of how I feel about it.

I like to feel the flow and determine whether it's churning or soothing, whether I'm riding atop a warm and pleasant wave or being sucked down into a vortex of dysfunction and negativity.

Closing my eyes helps me focus less on who did what when, less on the roots of the behavior, and more on how - and even whether - the person, job, activity, or other pursuit I'm examining fits into my life. And by my life, I mean not the expanse of days I've been given but the free will I've been given to determine how and with whom I live out those days.

Next time you have a confront a complex or difficult decision, go ahead and lay out the pros and cons, the whys and wherefores on your legal pad. Then turn the pad over, close your eyes, and stop thinking. Remove the word "but" from your vocabulary for the time being. Because everything you wrote on both sides of the line is true. You love your job and you hate it. You can't stand your partner and you can't walk away. You need to lose weight and you can't stop eating ice cream. And you didn't get stuck in these situations because you consciously thought your way into them. So why do you think you can think your way out of them?

Close your eyes and let the dark surround you. Start to feel your way around the room. You will begin to feel obstacles you can't see with your eyes, those invisible walls and force fields you keep bumping into because you don't know they are there. And you will begin to feel your way around these blockages. And then, you will feel the opening without seeing it. You will sense which way you need to move and where you have to go. And the most amazing thing is this: when you turn around, open your eyes, and look back at what you crossed through, you will simultaneously experience the elation of accomplishment and the peace of relief. And that is a feeling to savor.

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What It Takes

Borobudur 4 (Photo credit: Praziquantel)As an eight year-old child, I traveled with my family to Asia, then quaintly referred to as the Orient. One of the trip's highlights was our visit to Borobudur, a ninth-century Buddhist monument in Indonesia. My memories of Borobudur are distinct: we were constantly approached by the most piteous beggars I had ever seen anywhere, and an army of lean, dark-skinned men had been deployed to clean every inch of the dozens of bell-shaped stone stupas (I didn't know they were called stupas then) - with toothpicks.

Yes, toothpicks.

You can imagine my eight year-old questions:

Why are they using toothpicks?

How much are they being paid to do that all day?

How many years will it take?

How did it get so dirty?

My primary amazement was with the care and patience of the restoration project, and the sheer volume of painstaking human labor being applied to it. Other than my mother's efforts to teach me long division, this was my first taste of the true meaning of patience.

Looking back, I see it was much more than that.

Those men displayed tremendous strength as they crouched under the hot sun from morning to night, scraping centuries of neglect from the stone.

Those men possessed measureless reserves of patience, watching their daily progress move forward not by feet or even inches but millimeters.

Those men respected the wisdom of the slow, thorough restoration plan, understanding that rushing would cause irreparable damage and lead to disaster.

Those men were given the grace to know that their individual actions each constituted a tiny part of the collective work to restore Borobudur to its original splendor.

Looking back, I see now why the memory of those men with their toothpicks has stayed with me for so long: the whole thing stinks of aplomb.