Day 80

modesty

I was in a conversation with my mom yesterday about why we dressed rebelliously (immodestly) in our teens and early twenties. More specifically we were talking about what we were taught about our bodies and modesty, and how it felt to ignore that and wear short skirts, etc.

It struck me that when I was young and showing off my young body, I wasn’t consciously rebelling. I remember simply enjoying the power that I felt when there were desirous eyes on me, and also felt confident that I would withhold myself from them. In short, I was a tease.

I definitely feel more guilt and shame about the way I actually used their objectification to feel powerful. I was not a disempowered young woman. I had a good education, was praised by all who care for me for my beauty, my intelligence and my maturity. There was something about the fact that by revealing a bit more of my body, I could push buttons in men and watch them squirm a bit, without giving anything away.

While I definitely believe that women cannot take responsibility for the objectifying thoughts of others, and definitely not for the degrading language or violence that might be perpetrated when the buttons are pushed, I look back and see how I was, even then, using my body as a tool to elicit reactions and feelings in others and in myself to increase my own sense of power. As I still often do, I thought of my body as nothing more than a tool for getting validation and approval, or any kind of attention.

This is just another way that a culture of commodification and capitalism has taken root in me; and these roots are insidious.  It has taught me that my body is a thing to dress up, to show off, to elicit whatever kind of attention that I want. What’s worse; at this point in my life, when no amount of make-up or flattering fit is going to get that attention, I question my own beauty and worth.  This body of mine allows me to make love, to walk a mile through the woods, to move a kayak through the water, to work, to play, to speak, to write, even to formulate thought…is that not enough?

Day 79

vocation

It can mean simply what one does for employment. But it can also mean a strong call, summons, inclination, impulsion towards a specific career for which one is particularly suited. It is often used in relation to the priesthood or other religious careers. I think this is because sometimes one is drawn to something in a way that feels like they are being summoned by a force beyond them. At the same time, they realize they are particularly good at the thing they are drawn so intensely towards. They may be acutely aware of the compromises and sacrifices inherent in choosing that path, but find such joy in the idea of doing it, that they can’t bring themselves to make a more “pragmatic” choice involving money or security for instance. This tension and drama deserve a word like vocation. It is a word that describes doing what one is meant to do, to the extent that one is meant to do what one loves most and is good at.

I have tried and succeeded, many times, in giving my vocation the slip. But I think it may have finally cornered me and I may now have to sit down with the pen and accept my fate. The truth is that all these years reading and obsessing over language has pushed me towards writing. I have no idea what that means for my future. I know it doesn’t mean I have to write. But it means that if I’m going to be honest with myself, I’m going to have to admit that there will be moments when the only path to my happiness or fulfillment involves writing. What I write and why and for who are questions with only one answer: “to be determined.” The important thing, I believe now, is to keep writing.

Day 78

behind

I hate time. I really hate it. There are so many days when I just want it to stop, or definitely slow down. Then there are meetings and conversations where I just wish time would shrink and shrink and the hour would become minutes. What about mornings after a bad night’s sleep? Don’t you just wish clocks would die?

In this last quarter of this project, I’m draggin’ a bit. The season for tourism is kicking off amidst the virus here and we are back to work. This is where finding the Time to write and relax, or even eat, becomes challenging. Everyday starts with an assessment of how much time I have to work with and how much time each thing will take, then drive time, coffee prep and drink time, mid-day snack time, sheesh! I get tired just writing about it.

I’m behind, behind, behind, all the time, and I feel the minutes ticking while I try…to…catch…up.

So this evening I got in the kayak on the lake for just over an hour and tried to forget that I was behind. I took MY time (which is much slower and easier than regular time) getting out into the lake. My shoulders and back found some kind of rhythm, and I curled up against the bank and watched a family of geese. I talked to my lover, who was fishing from shore, while the sun set behind him.

This is the only way to deal with the feeling of being behind. Rather than pushing back, you sometimes have to resist, carve out some space in that day to breathe. I have learned that it is possible to step out of the stress and into a boat or a deck chair. I’m still behind this evening, and I’m not sure I’m catching up; but I’m putting that clock in its place and remembering to operate on MY time.

Day 77

software

A huge part of my office jobs over the years has been to test, purchase, install and use software. It is actually unbelievable to me how many different software installs I have done, and to think about which software has stood the test of time (Adobe Reader, Quickbooks) and which did not (ACT, MSAccess.) I have learned to sense when the problem is not the software, but the limitations of the hardware, and when software is just crap out of the box. I’ve always appreciated describing software as “intuitive” or not. This is exactly what good software is: intuitive.

I also really enjoy thinking about how hardware is this concrete tool that you touch and actually work with, while software is more…well…soft. It is code, we don’t actually ever see it, but we interact with it and command it, play with it, manipulate it, etc.

I’m just going to throw this out there: I think of my spirituality, my rituals and religion as software. It is ephemeral, but I work with it all the time, and I have learned to look for spiritual practices that are intuitive and that integrate well with my hardware—my body, mind and emotions. I think so much religious life is not intuitive and it forces you into ways of working and thinking that feel slow, inefficient, or just ineffective.

I think of the best spiritual practices as being something like Microsoft Excel, which has always been so versatile, so useful in every business or organization I’ve worked with. It also has a lot of depth; beginning computer users can use it just to make and sort lists, but in the right hands Excel is accounting software, or a full-on database. I could describe meditation or contemplative practice the same way; always useful, versatile and in some cases, with certain practitioners, transcendent. But, even if you are just trying it out, you can take a deep breath, close your eyes and listen as the heartbeat of your hardware slows to a nice steady hum.

Day 76

sunday

My father worked for churches while I was growing up. He directed choirs, played his guitar, and was a pastor. For that reason, my siblings and I were up early on Sunday, foam rollers pulled quickly from our hair after fitfully donning tights, dresses and patent leather shoes. We ate donuts, Danishes or coffee cake before rushing off to church to stand around for thirty minutes or so while mom and dad prepared to make Sunday morning service happen. I recall big (well, big to a five-year-old anyway) churches with wood pews and scratchy cushions, a small church in a small town surrounded by tough grass cut short and lots of pavement, school auditoriums and a brief stint where church happened in someone’s home.

Regardless of where, Sunday was church, the center of our life and the center of our livelihood. For this reason, I never considered that people did anything else on Sunday besides religion. It was many years before I understood the irony of having a “day of rest” that was, for my family at least, a day of hard work in the most uncomfortable outfit of the week.

I haven’t regularly attended church in my adulthood. The culture of Sunday Morning Service is so familiar to me, but having been behind the scenes for so many years, having struggled to maintain my faith through my adult years; I find that when I do go I am mostly distracted by memories, frustration with the lack of authenticity and most of all, the lack of vulnerability. Getting up early to drive to church also makes me feel that Sunday is not actually a day of true rest, but a day where a different kind of “work” must be done for a different kind of “earning.” I have had enough of work and earning in my life.

Thankfully, I have made my piece with the fact that I will likely remain a practitioner of my faith, even if I never come to a place where Sunday morning services make sense. I do recognize that resting once a week is one of the most sage and useful teachings of my faith (and many others, to be sure.) I do appreciate that when I am organizing my week, I have a natural inclination to keep Sundays free of work, even housework, and am able to simply walk out my back door to enter my preferred sanctuary. The altar is a distant mountain landscape, the altar rail is my deck rail, which right now is sporting some flowers. I am not the first to recognize that trees and sky provide a more than sufficient cathedral in which to contemplate the movement of the Divine.

Day 75

collaboration

One of the most exciting developments of my middle-life is the ability to exercise the art of collaboration. I have tried and failed at it many times, including a marriage and a couple business ventures. Collaboration takes more than just the desire to work with someone, a good idea, or even complimentary skills. Good collaborations are built on the foundations of good relationship and solid disciplines.

When Kari invited me, and herself, to collaborate for 100 days on this project, I hesitated only because Kari knows me so well that her invitation was a lightly veiled challenge. I don’t believe she necessarily saw it this way, but close friends have a way of encouraging you by demanding that you actually step into yourself. The lovely part is that collaborators step in to themselves alongside of you, and so a project becomes an exercise in mutual self-awareness and growth.

I am also stepping into collaboration with my parents and my sister (with whom I live in a sort of life-long collaboration) and find that I am less skeptical than I thought I would be and more hopeful. My only explanation for this is that I am learning to trust that even a bad collaboration teaches us something.

There’s a lot of talk and teaching these days about interconnectedness and the need to find each other and develop communities in order to enact social justice, create a prime local for spiritual growth, etc. Community is just another word for collaboration. Community is built and fortified by large and small collaborations fed by common experience, vision or mission.

I think it is interesting, and lovely, to enter into a phase of life where, having lived alongside someone for twenty years or more, you begin to look at each other not just as companions or “friends,” but as people you can work with. That person next to you, anticipating your moves, knows just when to hand you a tool, and you trust them enough to take it. Log by log, word by word, line by line, you create something. It is not what you are creating that is important, so much as that you are doing it together. There is such joy, such anticipation. It is like returning to childhood, a box of blocks between you, playing…yes, in the best moments it is exactly like play, and we all need a bit more of that these days.

Day 74

receiving

One of the epiphanies I encountered as I moved through the end of my first marriage was this:

While much is made of one’s ability to love, not enough is made of one’s ability to receive love.

In a culture that is obsessed with individual success, there can be no less obsession with skill, for the self-made human that scales the highest ladders available is the one who has mastered all of the necessary skills. In the context of the less material, but no less valuable area of “success” that we call interpersonal relationships, there is little doubt that the skill of loving is paramount. One’s ability to love is the foundation of their success as a parent, spouse, adult-child, sibling, or friend. Even one’s ability to love their work is one of the cornerstones of success in a career.

In my early adulthood, I held fast to this belief and nurtured my ability to love as if my very life depended on it. I was proud to have been raised in a loving family where I was taught to love, not just in word, but, in deed. I waltzed into my marriage at nineteen with a silly amount of confidence because I knew the secret to success: all I had to do was Love him. And truly, I did.

When, ten years later, it became clear that no amount of loving was going to cure our marriage, I was not only devastated, but confused. How could I have been so wrong?

This is when I was granted the insight that my marriage did not fail because I did not love enough, or because the love was of poor quality, but because love has to be received in our depths in order to be experienced in a way that touches those places in ourselves that are wounded, in order that we might begin to be healed, in order that we might become the great lovers we long to be. If we are unable to receive love, we are unable to be transformed by it; and Love’s most sacred and true purpose is to transform us. It takes even the most adept lover and challenges her to surrender her pride and naïveté, it asks her to break and to become vulnerable, that she might not just give love, but also learn to receive it. Love teaches that success in love is not only—not even mostly—dependent on our ability to perform it for the sake of self and others, but also to embody it, which one can not do if one does not take it in.

The greatest gift children give us is to model, which they all do, the skill of receiving love. A child that is suspicious of love is a child that has been damaged already by the lack of love, or worse, has been fed and given shelter, but is otherwise abused. This is why we consider child-abuse the most abhorrent crime—it robs a child of their ability to receive love, which makes it impossible for them to embody it, even if they somehow learn to perform it. So, later in life, they may be able to act loving, to even give love to someone, but being unable to take love in and allow it to continually transform them creates limitations that are often overcome only through leaving those they love and who love them, so that they can start over in the early stages where love does not require transformation to grow and remain relevant.

So, we must balance the skill of giving love with the skill of receiving love. At the root of my decision to leave the city and return home to the mountains was the intuition that here, surrounded by this wildness, there is nothing to do but receive love. Of course, receiving it in great gulps, with tears in my eyes on many days, I feel it working in me and moving me to love back. Finally, I begin to taste love-embodied. I feel it, like electricity in my bones, and there is nothing to do but let it use me. Even way out here, separated from “the world,” I know that I am loving more deeply and more effectively because I am not doing love. I am love.

Day 73

stride

The irony is this: you spend many years trying to be a certain kind of person, the person you believe is you, the person that you hope is good, right, relevant, etc., only to discover that trying to be is not being. You realize that your emotional messiness, your physical imperfections, your lack of skill in certain areas, do not need to be charming in order for you to like yourself—only you do have to acknowledge them and make your peace with them. Just at the moment that you are beginning to do that (if it happens in middle-life, as it does for many of us) you see that the messiness and imperfections of your earlier life are rapidly deteriorating into even greater imperfections, and you struggle to keep up with “accepting” yourself as you are, even as you begin to experience the aging process in earnest.

In fact, hitting your stride, so to speak, is more about pacing your self-acceptance and the awareness of your mortality and irrelevance, with the process of aging, and less about becoming adept at whatever you have been working on for twenty-years. I wonder if the rapid growth of our minds, demanded by the rapid growth of technology is not just requiring us to become smarter or more skilled at a quicker rate, but is creating existential crisis because we are trying to keep up rather than learning to recognize and live with our limitations at a younger age. If, in the early years of our adulthood, we could learn to see ourselves as we are, reconcile ourselves to death without fear or anxiety, and let go of the very real expectation that we will keep up…perhaps we would hit our stride earlier; becoming healthier in mind, body and spirit, thereby becoming more effective.

Of course, this requires that we learn to take in more than just the needs of the world around us, the demands of our education or gifts, and the sense of urgency; all of which are very real and profound. We also need to take in the beauty that still is, even if it is seeping through the widening cracks of climate change. We need to find the common threads that run through all humanity, even through those who are made foreign to us by their convictions, or actions that we find abhorrent. We need to ground ourselves in the joy that is embodied in our relationship with family, friends and lovers.

And though I am in the middle of my life, I say “we” because my heart is held together in part by my children and their generation. If I am finally finding my own stride, working at a healthy pace, then I must act and live to a great extent, for them, that they are not left alone, without hope, in the mess I created when I did not know better.

Day 72

creature

When we see a person’s face grow fierce with animal anger, or a pet turn his head in a way that seems intelligent in a human way, we are seeing a creature. The line that we perceive exists between us and the animal world is blurred all of the time, and we use the word creature. It is a word that evokes mystery, imagination, something more than this, less than that, odd, beautiful or terrifying.

It is one of my favorite words

I try to notice when I am doing something that brings out the creature in me. When I am less in my head, more in my body, aware of my skin and heartbeat. I have always loved myths of humans turning to wolves. It seems almost, not quite, natural. Why is it so hard sometimes for us to feel our kinship with animals? Are we so different? If you take our words away, if you remove our clothes, if you catch us naked, just out of the shower, crouching and rummaging through a cupboard…we are just creatures.

 

Day 71

success

Here in the middle of life, I’m not sure how to think about success. The way success is defined by American culture has always been suspect for me as I was the child of parents who worked in religion, which in most contexts, doesn’t fit that definition. Success as a parent was whittled down to getting them into adulthood and to this day, trying to let them know on a regular basis that they are loved; which they are.

While I have always wanted to be a writer, I never really thought it was possible, so success in that area is still ephemeral. Success at work is generally just a paycheck—has been for most of my life.

When I think about success now, I mostly feel at odds with the idea. It is like thinking about my own physical beauty. Early in my life I thought it was important to be beautiful, I cared about being beautiful. Now, I just hope that my husband sees beauty when he sees me. When I was young, I thought of success as something public, something everyone needed to recognize for it to be real. In this part of my life, I can feel that shifting. Perhaps success is only ever going to be defined by me. That is somewhat hard to swallow; it sounds lonely…it feels true, but inadequate.

The middle of anything—a story, a song, a day, a life—is so confusing. You know with certainty that things are uncertain, that it can go a thousand different ways. You know that you have little control, that you can be effective, and still everything can go off track if there is the smallest stone. What you hope for is some kind of resolution, fulfillment. I am not sure what we actually get, in the end. What I do know is that I am almost daily redefining my expectations and what I think of as “success.”

Today I did small things; cooking, cleaning, a bit of computer work, a walk while holding my niece’s hand, while looking in the woods for some fairy house materials. We built the fairy house from twigs and leaves, even gave her a pool. This felt like success…at least to me.

Day 70

peace

Is there anything so elusive? Yet, there are so many moments, like this one, when the only reason I am not at peace is because I am unable to stop the incessant chatter in my head.

The most impressive people, in my humble opinion, are those that in the midst of violence and chaos, have inner peace. The dying man forgiving the other dying man—extending one final time before the end, to offer the olive branch.

I am a person who really, very strongly, dislikes conflict. But inner peace is still difficult for me. I do not like to be at odds with others, but am constantly at odds with myself.

In nature, there is an illusion of peace. When you look closely, there is destruction and rot, violence and death everywhere. Life exists at the surface of layers and layers and layers of decomposition. There is almost no thing sitting still in what we call the natural world; least of all ourselves.

Yet, through the window the sun is gliding down toward the horizon casting a last long warm golden finger across the valley. The sky is mirrored in the pond, interrupted by the silhouettes of a family of geese. The green is aggressively sweet and smells like freshness itself. The air is almost stock still, birds are hushed in thick pine branches. I can sense dusk and then darkness hovering just beyond this moment, and I am calm. It is the very portrait of Peace. Only this landscape and I know the unrest that inhabits this hour.

Day 69

marriage

I once described my first marriage as a river I was crossing by jumping from one stone to the next. The stones were so close at first that I barely had to reach to get from one to the next. Then, as the relationship progressed, the stones were further and further apart. I was jumping, then leaping, then wading through cold water to get from one stone to the next. It was when I crawled up out of the water, drenched and exhausted, and realized I had made the last half of the journey alone, that I knew my marriage was over.

Looking back, I still taste the abandonment and the loneliness that settled into my bones at the end. I remember the rage and the grief. I also see that I was so focused on getting across the river that it took a long time for me to notice that I was doing it alone. I’m not even sure exactly when or where he and I parted ways.

So, this time, in this marriage, I am taking it slow. I realize now that getting across is not the goal. The goal is to hold his hand tight, to remember to look into his eyes and not take for granted that I “know” him, that he will always be there. I try not to take too many steps without him, and to let him know when I feel like he is getting ahead of me. The goal is to stay together, even if we never make it across. Like the best things in this life, marriage is not something two people accomplish together, but a journey they take together. Every moment that they remain together, that they hold each other’s eyes, steadying their lover before taking another step, is an accomplishment.

Day 68

hear

I hear you. This sensation is familiar. It is as if you are following me silently and allowing me to believe that I am choosing the direction; but all the while, your hand is at my back, pointing me here and then there. Then in some moment, by some trick of time or consciousness, you slip past me, take my hand and lead me through the crowd. I just want you to know that this time I noticed almost immediately.

That Solstice in New Mexico, ten years ago, you were like a child running everywhere. You lit up the sky with none of your usual subtlety. We would have noticed the sunset even if we had been blind. Did you set me under that clear canopy of sky like you set those stars? You pulled me hard that night, right into the middle and I felt everything revolve around us. We are so, so small.

For weeks after the eclipse, my dreams were full of omens.

This time you are not asking me to move mountains—you are asking me to watch while you move them. I hear you. My ears are clear after the silence eradicates the buzz of my fear. You are clearing the trail ahead of me and I am supposed to watch and learn. I am getting the hang of it.

I just wanted you to know that I hear you. It is not such a mystery this time. I am watching, and listening. I am making myself comfortable in this time between times, as the mountains move around me, making way for new rivers and roads. When you fall back I’ll take the lead and we’ll keep on together, as always, as friends.

 

Day 67

saturday

Sometimes I imagine myself living out here before computers, before the internet, before paper and pens even. I imagine that all these thoughts and ideas would just live in my head, or would be shared only with my husband or close family and nearby friends. I imagine that in that reality it would be possible to just receive the beauty of this place and spend my time protecting and caring for it, as one of its own, rather than using it constantly as a metaphor, as a mode for talking about spirituality, politics, psychology, etc.

I am one of those people who often wakes up in a state of agitation, feeling all the things that need to be done. Even on a day like today, a day “off,” I feel a certain pressure to relax and get something out of the day, while also getting domestic tasks done that work leaves little time for. My morning practice of coffee, reading, writing and listening, is less rushed on days when I don’t have to get to work, but I still feel the need to “be productive.” Lately, I am also super aware of how fortunate I am to have this time and space, and I spend considerable hours each week feeling waves of guilt followed by pressure to make the most of what I have.

I still haven’t learned how to process these feelings; how to let go and lean into this beautiful place, how to receive. Writing helps. Just watching and listening helps. It is interesting to notice how hard it is to just receive the beauty and let it work in me. As soon I really absorb it, I feel an immediate need to regurgitate it usefully. As if I am just here to make something of all of this, and not just another creature in her habitat.

The technology that allows me to process and share my experience publicly, also allows me to take in the suffering, injustice, and difficulty of human life. When I permit it to, the access I have to all these stories and experiences, drowns out my own.

I am not sure exactly how to articulate it, but I think that what I experience when I interact with the world through my computer, and even through books, is a different kind of receiving than when I am standing in my front “yard” in the middle of the woods. What I receive out there comes at me through all of my senses, and while I do “think” about it, I also know the limitations of these thoughts.

Maybe there is room for a new practice in my life. Going through my day as if I am just a creature in her habitat. Feeling connecting to the immediate surroundings while letting go of the need to be relevant.

I saw a sandhill crane in the meadow below the house. Through my binoculars, I watched her eat. I want to be her today, just Here.

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Day 66

stillness

Here’s the thing: when we “escape” into nature, we find more life. Life is everywhere, from the limit of our vision as we gaze into the sky, to the depths of the ocean and soil where we have yet to travel. We are surrounded by life and there is no escape. Every year, we become more aware of how our lives are intertwined with this natural world. We learn that our bodies are full of microbial life, that our dirt is full of life-giving fungus; that there are networks that connect all living things and we are part of those networks, whether we understand them or not. Stillness has explained this to me in a language that my body and my imagination and my intuition speak fluently. Science is explaining it too, but we do not really need science to comprehend these connections. We just need time, and a moment of seeing and listening to what is going on around and amidst our human words and bodies.

Stillness is teaching me that we do not need to wait for science to explain to us that we are part-of—not in-charge-of, not at-the-mercy-of, not the-beneficiaries-of—a vast cosmic, life-giving, reality. We know this already when we sit in the stillness and discover that what feels calm and void of activity to our over-activated minds and bodies, is in fact full of activity.

Surrounded by this activity, what I actually experience is a stillness within. As if I become the pond whose surface is finally undisturbed. Underneath, the tadpoles and nymphs of my sub-conscious may be churning, and all around me there may be other forms of life doing their thing, but my mind becomes clear and still, my body stills, my heart slows, my breath settles. Perhaps there is a moment where my stillness and a stillness around me converge, particularly in the winter when almost all mountain-life is dormant. From that stillness, I feel the tendrils of connection to my children, who are 2000 miles away, to my ancestors, and through memory and stories, to places I may have visited once or never at all.

 

Day 65

deconstruction

There’s a movement among young religious people today, where, as they try to grapple with and maybe either exit or re-enter the faith practices they were raised with, they are choosing to de-construct what they were taught. There are lots of reasons for this, but I’m not as interested in those as I am in the act itself.

These last two weeks there has been a lot of talk about disruption and change. I am so excited to see the energy, even the angry energy, that has taken hold and is demanding a shift. It has inspired me to extend the deconstruction of my religion and faith to the deconstruction of my whiteness and privilege.

The beautiful thing about the word “deconstruction” is that it contains in it the word destruction and construction. So, for me, I think deconstructing is not just destroying, but also constructing something new. Lately I feel like I’ve left a space where I was carefully removing, brick by brick, the things that were keeping me from engaging my faith, my community, my country, etc. and now I’m in a phase where I’m swinging a sledgehammer.

I am realizing there are whole walls that need to come down.

This is scary, exposing, upsetting, etc. I just keep thinking though, that I truly want to be a person who is open, loving and protective of all humanity and not just the parts of humanity that I’m comfortable with (and I want to be clear here that I am not just sometimes uncomfortable around people of other races, religions and backgrounds, but I am often uncomfortable around people who are extremely poor, or in a tremendous amount of pain, or mentally ill, or terminally ill, or expressing rage or hate.) If I want this, I think I have to take most of my life down to the studs.

I am hopeful that once I am done with the sledgehammer and have taken out the trash, I will find a community that I can work with to construct a better shelter for us all.

Day 64

jesus

The skin tone of Jesus was most certainly darker than mine. He was poorer than I am. He was more courageous and honest than I am. Jesus walked more than I do, he spent more time outside than I do. Jesus listened more than I do. He was more confrontational than I am. Jesus was less literal than I am. He was more political, more of an activist than I am. He was less protective of the status quo than I am. Jesus was more vulnerable than I am, and at the same time, much stronger and more certain than I am.

Jesus was not white, or privileged, nor was he silent.

Like most Christians (thankfully fewer now than when I was young) I was taught a lot about how Jesus’ death was about me (and anyone else who chose to be a Christian) and almost nothing about how his death was an act of suppression and hate by those in power, who feared him and deeply resented his anti-violence, anti-power, anti-religious message.

I was not taught to see Jesus as a man who died because he had no friends in power.

I was not taught to see him as a man who lived in an occupied land, who had seen his people revolt against and resist those in power.

Like most Christians, I did learn that Jesus taught his friends, and anyone who would listen, to respond to hate with love, to stop fearing death and focus on serving all living things that are dismissed, oppressed, abused, exploited and ignored. It is not typically emphasized, however, that this man, by nature of his ancestry, heritage and place of birth, had no power or privilege. He spoke his truth from the dirt, not from a stage.

To say that I believe that Jesus loves me—a complicated metaphysical statement, to be sure—is to say that I am loved by a person that is more similar to those people that my people have enslaved, oppressed and killed, not just historically, but even today. I know that this has been done in order to maintain for us the kind of privilege and power that allows us to re-imagine our most sacred texts, centering and celebrating our individual worth without addressing all those bits about justice, dignity, the sacredness of this planet and all of her inhabitants.

I can no longer claim to be practicing Christianity if I am not practicing the kind of honesty and humility that allows me to see Jesus for who he really was. I cannot practice Christianity as a white person of privilege, unless I am able to see that if Jesus were walking the countryside teaching today, I would be complicit in the occupation of his land and the oppression of his people. I would be the enemy that he was telling his friends and followers to love. If I was compelled to listen to Jesus in this scenario, it would not be because I understood him or felt that he was here for me. It would not be because I identified with him.

I hope I would be drawn to his message of peace—and standing there, a person of privilege among a crowd of people trying to figure out how to be seen, heard and even loved in this oppressive world, I am sure I would not feel comfortable. I would likely feel confronted, hopefully convicted and held accountable. And I hope that, fed up with the violence and pain, I would be inspired by his simple underlying message: “love one another.”

Yet, hearing this message would not be the end of it. Having heard the words, in an attempt to embody that message, I would have to be humble enough, present enough, and peace-loving enough, to stand with and for him as he was murdered at the hands of people who look just like me.

I can avoid the trauma of being the enemy of Jesus and all those he spoke on behalf of, only by continuing to imagine him and his story as something that happened in the past, or not at all. As soon as I see that his story is incarnated every day in those that are left to die at the hands of a power I am conditioned to protect, I am undone.

Day 63

breath

Use your breath to sit down, and to wake in the morning. Use your breath to reach for that pen or for that glass. Use it to render that song you have been hearing lately into a composition entirely yours. Use your breath to move into the work and use it when you cash that check. Use your breath to pay your rent and taxes and use it when you make frivolous purchases. Use your breath to bite, chew and swallow; to sip and to gulp. Use your breath to drink wine and use it to slow the spinning room when you have drunk too much. Use your breath when you are thinking of ten things at once, to sort and prioritize and un-muddle the confusion. Use your breath to empty yourself and then fill yourself and then empty yourself again, inhale to exhale.

Above all, use your breath to love; to access and regurgitate that deepest affection that you have for your mother, or your child, or your friend or lover. Use your breath to take in more love, more love and more love from that sky above you (which you can even see when you lie down on the concrete between two close and very tall buildings.) Use it to take in love from the experience of breathing itself (which you can have even in a padded cell.) Use your breath to use and recycle and recreate love, that you might live longer and in peace.

And finally, use your breath to die—to release and to relinquish all ties to this heavy world.  Let that final exhale carry you where it will.

For breath is your anchor and your sail. It is both the suddenness of epiphany and the vast dark of unknowing. It is the first and last gift of life and threads itself through every inclination, emotion, thought and deed. It is there in the unconscious sleep and the sub-conscious dreaming and the full awareness of waking life. Use it.

Day 62

generosity

Yesterday I watched giant trees bend in the wind, and it seemed impossible that they would survive to stand tall and still again. I also, watched a tree fall. It is intense to see a tree that may be thirty to forty feet come crashing down. I know though, that it will nourish the forest over time, or that it will provide heat for us in the winter. Once again, the trees are my teachers. They model peaceful resistance, simply using every resource to become stronger, giving shelter to all the more vulnerable plants and creatures. They literally give us the air that we breathe, and in my case, the wood that keeps from freezing to death in the winter. They are powerful, but peaceful. They are not passive, but industrious, efficient, resisting all kinds of disease, weather and even the destructive force of human appetites. Yes, they succumb; but in their deaths, they surrender every cell to the soil that fed them. They become a different kind of shelter for different kinds of creatures, and they give life to their own kind.

Oh, and they are beautiful.

I have decided to model my life after the lives of trees. I will learn to lean into the seasons of life, some that take me to dormancy, some that come like spring-explosions of growth, and some that require me to surrender all that I have become, again. I will learn to embody strength and bend in storms, only to come back to my tall, stately stature when it passes. I will grow slowly, with patience, taking what I need in balance with a deep and indiscriminate generosity. I want each exhale to benefit all life. Like a tree, I want to be here as long as possible, reaching for the sky while mindfully stretching deep into this earth. And when I finally wither, or crash to the ground, I want that too to be an act of generosity and love—a falling down to meet again the very thing that gave me life.

Day 61

holding

I am holding space
               Holding ground

I am holding myself upright
               Holding my heart in my chest

I am holding your hand now
               Holding your face in my hand now

I am holding your hurt
               Holding your hope


Not gripping in fear
               No strangle hold

I hold you like I might hold an injured bird
               Fluttering heart and wings against my palm


Holding can be done with open hands
               that we might be ready, at any time

To let go.