It's all a Mystery

I was back in New England last week, visiting my daughter's college and staying with several dear friends. It's funny, when you live somewhere for a long time you grow attached to certain types of vegetation. I know that when I left the San Juan Islands the Madrona trees brought tears to my eyes. And when I left New England one of the things I missed the most were the Paniculata Grandiflora hydrangea trees. Out here hydrangeas are bushes at best, but in New England the stately Paniculata Grandiflora has the graceful shape of a fruit tree, and in the fall its conical clumps of flowers turn a lovely rosy pink. You can cut the flowers off and preserve the pink (I learned this in college) simply by placing the stem in a soda bottle full of sugar water.

So when I drove to the graveyard beside our old home in Vermont, I was delighted to see that someone had planted a hydrangea tree near a patch of graves, and I photographed it in all its fall glory. It wasn't until I got home that I saw the name on the grave beside it. The grave says, simply, CHILD.

Now you need to know that there is a beautiful pond across the street from the graveyard, known as Child's Pond (here's what it looked like that lovely New England morning).

... and there are numerous members of the Child family buried in this graveyard, some dating back to the 1600's. But there is something about this gravestone that speaks to me of the one loss that seems most difficult to bear; the one hole that seems darkest and most impossible to fill: the loss of a child. As I said in my very first post, this blog is dedicated to a child who was lost. And Katie is not the only child whose loss has touched me deeply; there was also my daughter's dear friend Garth, who died six years ago this past summer.

So here again the mystery emerges: how did I not notice the grave? How is it that photographing one thing I miss brings to mind others that I miss much more? How is it that this photograph is so closely tied to the holes I showed earlier? And how is it that in a world where children are dying every day we who are left behind still dare to hope and believe? I guess that's all part of the mystery.

A River Runs Through It

I could be the rocks,
glowing red in the morning light,
so shiny,
so still;
resisting the water's pull,
time's patient erosion.

I could be the water,
so blue,
so clear,
relentless, like sand,
like sands through the hour glass
rush to completion.

Somewhere a salmon
is swimming upstream
battered and buffeted,
driven by destiny.


But I, like the cedar flakes,
could cling to the sidelines
content to watch and slowly decay.

And you:
who are you?
Where are you in this photograph?
Are you the sun?
Or the wind?
Or the sky?
Are you stillness or movement,
Atom, or molecule?
Under a rock,
or up on the bridge,
driving to work with no thought of the river,
no thought of the salmon,
no thought of her children
bubbling by.

Those Black Holes

So often we see holes as imperfections, signs of failure to care for what we have been given; signs of infestation, or of weakness; harbingers of death and loss to come.

But what if, instead of looking at the holes as a kind of sieve, a sign that the goodness of life is leaking out, we saw them instead as an opportunity for God to break through? We work so hard to keep things perfect, secure; struggling constantly to shore up flagging energy, to patch the walls around our hearts, to hold the world at bay. But often it is at the moments when we realize our work has been for naught -- that exercise cannot stop the aging process, that giving a child every opportunity to succeed does not guarantee success, that carefully regulated diet will not always keep disease at bay -- that our lives may be flooded with a surprising richness.

I heard today that a former actor friend has discovered he is HIV-positive. And the woman who wrote to tell me this had the following observation:

"It seems to be the best thing that could have happened to him. He is getting assistance with health care and can get free counseling. He was as happy as I had ever seen him. Dare I say, almost grounded."

Which is not to say that the holey moments in life are not difficult or even dangerous; no one could deny the fear and sorrow, the enormous potential for loss that arises in these situations. But sometimes it is at those very moments when we face into the darkness that the rich light and color of our lives is most dramatically thrown into relief. And it is the act of facing into the darkness that is itself so often the bearer of that light.

I read a wonderful quotation this morning from Pema Chodron's book, Comfortable with Uncertainty. She says:

"The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day? For those of us with a hunger to know the truth, painful emotions are like flags going up to say, "You're stuck!"... When the flag goes up, we have an opportunity: we can stay with our painful emotion instead of spinning out. Staying is how we get the hang of gently catching ourselves when we're about to let resentment harden into blame, righteousness, or alienation."

Sure, we can paper over the holes in our lives. But what if we don't? What if we allow them to show; what if we accept them, even peer into them? And if I stand before you, exposed, allowing my own weakness to show, both to my mirror and your eyes, could it not be that both our lives might be enriched? And with luck, in that last glowing moment before all fades and turns to dust, we will see clearly the soft green promise of the spring that is to come.

From a distance...

Bizarre. I am working on my friend Dave's (unfamiliar to me) laptop, and I have just erased the first paragraph of this post -- which was all about a discussion he and I had in which both of us were observing how we knew before the Iraq war that the war would not be a good idea, even though neither of us is particularly political or remotely involved in the government.

I know. Way more political than I tend to get, or intend this blog to get. But it's important because it is the context for the choice of this photograph. The important question is, how can we who are so removed from this situation, see it so clearly, when those who are in it and SHOULD be more in touch with it can be so deluded? It was with that as the last open question in the conversation that Dave left to take his shower and left me here in his beautiful kitchen in New England, surrounded by red barns, slowly turning trees, and a Maxfield Parrish sky, to look for a photograph that would speak to me today.

So I went poking around on my website (there's no obvious way I can load in the photos I took this morning) to see what spoke to me and this image emerged. And I think it struck me because I photographed a photographer. Like Powell and Cheney and Bush and Rove and all those poor misguided congressmen and senators, he is IN THE PICTURE. And because, like them, he has his own agenda, a particular photograph HE is trying to get (and I can imagine, from my perspective, that it might be a photograph in which his own reflection is possibly emerging from the mouth of that giant face behind him), he does not see that I can see the whole picture; I can see that he is photographing. I can't actually KNOW what he is photographing, but I can see THAT he is photographing. We can't actually know WHAT all those pro-war agendas were, but we can see that they had agendas.

So it seems that to see clearly the issues and challenges in our lives, we need to get a little distance -- a truism, of course, but easy to forget as we become immersed in our day-to-day struggles, battles, challenges etc. I think, for me, that this is the gift meditation provides: an opportunity to step outside my box, however briefly; an opportunity to feel more connection and compassion for all the players in life's drama; an opportunity to listen for the blessings and messages, the sub-texts and the dreams that are being played out on the tiny piece of stage that I can see.

But even then, once removed, as my camera is from this picture, like the photographer in the picture I still only see what _I_ can see, or, in this case, what my camera can see. There is no sign of the woman sleeping on the bench off to the right, or the baby splashing contentedly behind me, carefully watched by its mother, or of the taxi down the street that turned the corner too quickly and crashed into the limosine, killing its occupants, or of the young boy holding a rifle thousands of miles away, preparing to kill -- what? an animal? an enemy?

Dave is out of his shower now, and holding a phone meeting in the next room; the occasional faint hum of his voice blends with the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of his clock, the bird song in the garden, and the gentle wheeze of his old dog Dolma as she grumbles in her sleep. These are the only sounds I hear right now, except for the click of these computer keys as I type. I am in this moment, as this photographer is in his moment, as you are in your moment, and yet we are all connected. It takes a bit of distance to see that, and those of us in the picture must choose to make that leap, to step out of our own agendas and see the impact and the connections from whatever distance we can achieve.

So what strikes me is this: how is it that living in the moment can be both so infinite and so clarifying, and at the same time so narrow and stultifying? How is it that the absolute mystery of life can be so beautifully revealed by living fully in the moment -- who knows what incredible and inspired image came from this photographer's concentrated look at the reflections below his feet? And yet, at the same time, how can it be that by being so focused on what is happening in our own particular moments we can completely miss the significance of everything going on around us?

Another mystery to explore, I guess. Perhaps Dave and I will discuss this when he gets off the phone, and then another blog will emerge!

Drinking in the light

I shot this image about a month ago at a restaurant in the little town of Point Reyes Station in California, and for some reason it continues to call to me.

I could attribute it to the colors (I'm partial to blues and greens, and the little touch of orange definitely perks it up) or the memories it evokes (which are pleasant) or to the intriguingly similar textures of the dry glass tabletop and the wet glasses. But I think the real reason is just because it looks so refreshing. Clarity, color and subject all speak to the pleasure of a cool drink of water on a hot day, and there's something very pleasing about that.

I think it may be the clarity that I find particularly appealing. There's so much about life that's muddy and confusing; so many decisions to be made where the choice isn't that clear; so many people we meet that we'd like to welcome into or reject from our lives and always one factor that doesn't quite go with the rest of the data. I think, as humans, we long for clarity; long to have someone tell us the answers so we don't have to make these difficult choices. Not just the little ones -- should I go right or left at the light -- but the big ones as well: should we try another round of chemo? Should we pack up and leave? Should I tell someone about this discrepancy I found in the books?

Dostoevsky, in the Brothers Karamazov, has this intriguing chapter called "The Grand Inquisitor" which fantasizes a meeting between Christ and the Grand Inquisitor. Christ doesn't speak, but the Grand Inquisitor more than makes up for that by rambling on and on about how Christ screwed up by only leaving us with one rule -- Love God, love your neighbor. That's too much freedom, says the inquisitor: people want rules, people want to be told what to do.

And yet it is often around the muddiness and the confusion that life becomes richest. I remember vividly sitting in the Sanctuary of St. Joe's, Seattle while on a prayer break from an Ignatian retreat, and looking at an absolutely glorious image in stained glass. There was one piece of glass in the image that really stood out for me: like the image above, it had blues, greens, a trace of purple, a dash of brown to set it off... and I remember staring at that piece of glass and longing -- praying-- desperately for some clarity, and, more specifically, for the innocence and purity of spirit that had been mine before I began working for the church, for a release from the muddiness; from the sense of having been soiled that permeated my job.

When the break was over I went over to take a closer look at the window. And I realized, looking at it, that actually it was a clear piece of glass: the artist had covered the clear glass with a sort of muddy glaze, and it was only when the light shone through the mud that the glass began to glow with the rich colors that I had found so appealing.

So maybe that's the key to this image. It's not the color, or the texture, or the composition, or the promise of refreshment. It's really the light that draws us; the light, that shines so particularly on the one glass; the one glass, standing so strong and proud and ready, the chosen glass, crying, "here am I; drink me!"

A Longing in their Hearts

When my daughters were little I used to listen to a lot of Bonnie Raitt songs, and there was one entitled "A longing in their hearts." I don't remember much about the song, but as I wander through my days I still think of the title from time to time. It seems to me that much of the good -- and the bad -- that we do as human beings stems from that "longing in our hearts." The longing may manifest itself in different ways -- for a child, it could be a longing for a bike, or a gold star from the teacher; for a true friend, for a square meal... and for an adult there are equivalent longings -- for a new car, a raise, a loving mate, a square meal -- or at least the chance to provide one for your family.
But how do we play out these longings? Do we ask, or manipulate; work harder or cheat; offer or demand or complain -- or just plain struggle? The choices we make often depend on how desperate we are, and the levels of desperation can vary considerably with economic circumstances, childhood upbringing, social connections, personal or parental expectations...

But at the heart of all those longings and the behaviors they drive, for me, is just the desire to be heard, to be seen, to be valued -- and, really, to be special.

A friend once told me she was often perceived at work as very difficult and demanding. And one day in a staff meeting, she was being stubborn and the other members of the staff were growing increasingly angry, and her boss called a timeout. "Listen," he said, you need to understand. Lena does not need to have everything done her way. She JUST NEEDS TO BE HEARD! You can choose to go down this path; Lena just needs to know that you made the choice having actually HEARD the data she has to share that contradicts the choice." Listening to him, Lena realized he was right. She didn't NEED them to do things a certain way, she just hated to be ignored when she had important information to share.

In another example, there was a recent article in the New Yorker about the rise in malpractice suits, and, in his interviews with the plaintiffs, the author of the article learned that in many cases all the patient really wanted was an apology. Again, they just needed to be heard. But because of litigation fears and insurance costs, the doctors no longer felt they could admit that something might have gone wrong. As a result, accusations of malpractice continue to rise, insurance rates are skyrocketing, and doctors become less and less able to admit their weaknesses and failures.

I suspect that as Americans we are particularly vulnerable to this need to feel special; honored, or recognized. Our capitalist society has always had a bit of "every man for himself" at its heart, and we tend to be stubbornly competitive as a result. At the same time our families and communities are often fragmented, so the traditional channels for appreciation and affection may be blocked, through no fault of our own. Some say religion should help, but does it really help to know that we are special to God if EVERYONE is special to God?

Only if we understand that we are all inextricably linked together, sharing together in the building of our common future; that if one child is hungry, all feel the pangs in some way; that if one soldier is wounded the wounds in all of us will ache in sympathy; that each person's success or failure can bring joy or sadness to all. And, in that way, each of us IS special, and each of us not only longs to be heard and seen but DESERVES to be heard and seen, because we are all participants together in the divine experiment we know as life.

As my husband and I adjust to our newly emptied nest, we are finding that we need to brush up our communications skills a bit. One way this problem manifests itself is when he raises his head from his computer and realizes I am not in the house and he has no clue where I am. Worse still, he'll call my cell and I won't answer. So by the time I come home he's a little grumpy about my perceived disappearance "off the grid." And usually I say, "But I told you I was leaving" or "you know there's no reception on that part of the island." He's developed the perfect response: "Did you have eye contact when you said that?"

Which is really an important point. How we learn that we are special, both as children and as adults, is when people look at us, look us in the eye, and listen to what we have to say. It's very easy to just go charging (or drifting, whatever your personal style may be) through life without actually stepping outside your own concerns and agendas to see and hear those around you. Instead of going through your days consumed by your own thoughts and to-do lists, take time to pay attention -- not just to your family and friends, but to your surroundings as well. Because I think the way this linked universe works is that if we pay attention to it, it pays attention to us.

This morning, while sipping my coffee, I looked out the window and saw a pair of loons paddling just off our beach. Though we've seen loons before, this is the first time I've seen a pair. But to see them I had to look. I had to take my eyes away from my food, from the mess in the kitchen, from the book I was reading. And this is my point: when I did that, when I looked up and paid attention, I got to see the loons. And you know what? It made my day -- and made me feel -- special.

Yup: in the words of the immortal David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame), this post is truly a "Celebration of Special-NESS."

I think that I shall never see...

In March of this year I decided to begin an intensive study of the Gospel of Thomas. With the help of Lynn Bauman's study guide, "In Trouble and In Wonder", I explore a logion a day; sitting down with it over breakfast and then meditating after reading. Today's Logion was the familiar Mustard Seed Parable (Jesus says, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a tiny mustard seed, which, despite its size, grows into a huge bush that provides shade and shelter for so many.)

I wonder if each moment in the present is like a mustard seed, ready to burst into a whole tree, rooted deep, touching the sky, providing shelter for the winged ones and fruit for the footed ones. Or what if each choice we make is another mustard seed, ready to explode into a whole decision tree, full of ramifications for all of creation? It all becomes so multi-dimensional that it is unfathomable, but if I sit with the analogy it helps me to see that everything is linked together.

Which could mean that we don't have to become a politician or travel to third-world countries to make a difference: it's possible that every little positive act could have an enormous effect on the world. Or, as my friend Anne says, just by telling one of her piano students that they may not speak to her in a contemptuous tone of voice, she could be averting a major war sometime in the future.

But what strikes me most today is that each of us can be a tree (how hokey does that sound!) -- rooted and grounded in the earth, always reaching and growing upward, changing with the seasons, offering shelter, bearing fruit: a noble aspiration.

I think there are far too many days when I am just the squirrel in the tree, hoarding nuts and chittering away in my own little space...