Michael Valliant | Michael Valliant

Companions on the way

If we’re lucky, we don’t do life alone. We have help. On his livestream sermon this week, Fr. Charlie Barton talked about having “companions on the way.” That feels like the right way to think about this past week.

Last Sunday, while in church, I got calls from my cousin and my sister, back to back. Something didn’t seem right, so I stepped outside. Our parents’ house was on fire. My mom made it out and so did her dogs. That was the report I heard before running to my car and driving to Oxford. I learned on the drive that my father was at work.

When I got there, firefighters from Oxford, Trappe, and Easton were actively fighting the fire, neighbors and friends were up and down the street, everyone seeing how they could help. The kitchen and living room were gone, smoke had been pouring out of the house; firefighters had to cut a hole in the roof to fight the fire which had spread into the attic. The cats did not survive the fire.

It was and is surreal. My parents bought that house in the late 1960s, it’s where my sister and I grew up, and all of our family memories have been, and everything my parents own. Displaced doesn’t begin to describe what they are going through.

And all this is the first part of companions on the way. From the firefighters, to the auxiliary, to concerned neighbors and friends, to people at Christ Church reaching out, showing up, bringing food, asking how to help; insurance companies helping with the process of next steps; real estate agents helping them to find a place to live for the the next year–it’s been companions on the way.

The view from the 12th floor at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Hope shining through clouds.

On Monday it was neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. For the past few months, Holly has been struggling with Chiari Malformation, where the back of the brain blocks the spinal column. There were maybe three good days in 60+, taking someone who has been in great health and hitting her with vertigo, dizziness, skull-splitting headaches, nausea, no energy, not being able to drive at times. Surgery was the clear answer.

Companions on the way, part two. From family, to work, to friends, to prayer teams, to surgeons, doctors, nurses and medical staff, people showed up, and are showing up, to help, to pray, to bring food, to do what they can. We brought Holly home on Wednesday after a successful surgery, and recovery is underway.

A group of more than 100 bikers rolled up to A.I. DuPont on Saturday morning to drop off toys for kids in the hospital.

Part three. On Thursday, Ava and I made our way to A.I. DuPont Children’s Hospital in Wilmington. Her medicine has not been controlling her seizures this spring/summer and they wanted to keep her for an overnight EEG to monitor what is going on. As we checked in, we met a nurse practitioner who has worked in Easton and who has mutual friends. Talking to her and the neurologist on call this weekend, who is a specialist in pediatric epilepsy, someone who we had hoped to see but who has been scheduled too far out, they quickly asked if we could stay longer so they could cut back her medicine and work with some of her triggers so that they are more likely to be able capture some of her seizures to figure out the best course of action for her–whether surgery or different medications, or what.

So we find ourselves with a longer-than-anticipated stay at A.I. DuPont. We’ve watched the first Harry Potter movie and James Gunn’s new Suicide Squad (thank you HBO Max); Ava has beaten me multiple times at Connect 4 and I partially redeemed myself at Scrabble. She has a mummy headwrap on and the doctor said her EEGs are showing “sparks” (the conditions for/beginning of seizures) all over the place, much more than when we got here. So we wait, and oddly hope for seizures, knowing she is in good hands and that they can give the doctors here information that could hugely help her moving forward.

So that’s Sunday to Sunday this week. At every turn and at every corner, companions on the way have stepped up and made their presence known. Family, friends, and co-workers check in.

And I am carried by gratitude: for my parents both being okay after a devastating fire and for their finding a way forward to what is next; for Holly being able to have surgery to come back to herself and be healthy; for Ava being in great care and now on the radar screens of incredible doctors who have met her, are beginning to know her, and be personally involved in her case.

And for far too many companions on the way for me to name here. I feel frustrated for not being able to be in multiple places, this week especially, but can’t thank enough everyone who is there and helping.

In the Weeds

When I worked in restaurants, being “in the weeds” meant you were up to your eyeballs in orders, trying to make sense of everything and get the food out, and kindly don’t talk to me right now unless you are here to help. When I was writing for the Coast Guard, it meant something different.

If you were in a meeting and someone said you were “in the weeds,” it meant you were too far down into the finer details to see the big picture. You needed to zoom out.

Last night, watching the sun and blue sky battling against a weekend’s worth of gray clouds, or this morning, skateboarding around the Oxford Conservation Park and cemetery, “in the weeds” means looking from a different perspective. It is looking at the sky from the terrestrial perspective of being in the weeds. And it shifts things.

It is a way of being grounded, balancing lofty with land. There are times when it is helpful to look closer.

There is a non-profit organization called “The Moth,” which is dedicated to storytelling; to helping people tell their stories, “live, onstage, and without notes.” If we know each other’s stories, we become human to one another. I’m just beginning a book they put together called “Occasional Magic: True Stories About Defying the Impossible.” It’s a collection of stories told on stage, collected around a theme, some by famous people, some by people you’ll meet along the way. As for the title, it:

comes from a story told by Vietnam veteran Larry Kerr. It’s about his intense love for a young woman named Omie, whom he describes as “smart, meltingly lovely, and strong, with a fierce belief in the possibility of occasional magic.”
Occasional magic refers to those moments of beauty, wonder, and clarity, often stumbled upon, where we suddenly see a piece of truth about our life.
(from the introduction by Catherine Burns)

What if we took the time to get to know people’s stories? Like each of us, stories can be everyday, they can be epic, they can be heartbreaking, they can be uplifting, they can be tragic, they can be miraculous, they can be filled with hope, they can be funny, or some combination of each of those and more. There are more stories than people. And in taking the time to get to know them, we recognize ourselves in each other.

Maybe, on Memorial Day, we can wrap our minds and hearts around the stories of the men and women who have died while serving our country. We can remember them not as numbers or statistics, or even names, but as individuals, with stories and connections; with families, dreams, hometowns, friends; and think about the thread that they are, woven into the tapestry that is our collective story. Each thread is a story, each story a person.

These are stories to remember. And if you remember their stories, tell them.

“Sharing tales of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them.”
Mitch Albom

Today, as I think about being in the weeds, I think about shifting my perspective, being grounded, being connected, seeing into the heart of something too easily overlooked. I think about people and their stories, and remembering them.

Sometimes adventure looks like

Sometimes adventure looks like guys in their 40s meeting early on a Saturday morning, last minute, to skateboard the newest pavement in town.

Sometimes adventure looks like following a strange urge to drive on a Sunday afternoon to take a picture of a Celtic cross at a church up the road.

Sometimes adventure looks like picking a place you’ve never been and making a weekend road trip of it, just for the experience of it, and to make what Brene Brown calls “picture memories.”

Sometimes adventure sounds like saying “Here I am,” in following a path that you don’t know where it will lead, but you know it is laid out for you to walk.

Sometimes adventure sounds like taking a chance, starting something new, whether in business, art, career, love, fitness–something you aren’t sure will work, but you know you have to find out.

Sometimes adventure feels like showing up at the blank canvas, or for the morning run, or at the gym, or in front of the blank page, or the studio, even and especially on days where you don’t feel like it, on the way to something bigger, and finding a reward that you wouldn’t have found if you hit snooze, or came up with an excuse not to do it.

Sometimes adventure feels like letting go.

Sometimes adventure looks like helping a friend move.

Sometimes adventure sounds like sharing stories and connecting with someone.

Sometimes adventure looks like stretching out an afternoon, just to have a little more time together, to see the sun on the river.

Sometimes adventure sounds like daydreaming with someone and then trying to make daydreams things that actually happen.

Most of the time, adventure is a state of mind. It’s being open to possibilities. It’s being fully present in the moment, right now. It’s being surprised by something simple, something everyday, something that could be brushed off as ordinary.

There is adventure in the everyday, which is where we spend most of our lives. There is adventure in the epic, the unknown, the new. There is adventure in making the everyday new. I never get tired of T.S. Eliot writing:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets”

Sometimes adventure looks like planting a garden.

Sometimes adventure sounds like putting a dog and two teenagers in a car and picking somewhere to walk outside on a nice day and hearing what life looks like to them.

Sometimes adventure looks like parking in a different place at a state park on a beautiful morning and taking all the log crossings you can find along the way.

Sometimes adventure sounds like getting excited for opening day–of baseball season, of rockfish season, of whatever it is that is coming that puts a smile on your face.

Sometimes adventure looks like trying out for something, or trying something you’ve never done before, at whatever age you are now.

Sometimes adventure looks like spending a sunny Sunday spring cleaning the yard.

Sometimes adventure smells like a backyard fire pit on a clear night.

Sometimes adventure feels like seeing buds on a magnolia tree that you know is soon going to burst into 10 days of breathtaking blossom.

Sometimes adventure sounds like laughter that rolls through everyone in the room.

Sometimes adventure feels like spending time with the right people.

Maybe adventure looks like today.

Spring and hope are tight

Spring and hope are tight. I think they go hiking together, kayaking, catch sunrises and sunsets, listen to the birds, share dreams at happy hour. And they reunite this time of year.

If you have any doubt about that, take a walk and look for the first flowers coming through. Look at color coming into the world after a dark winter. Throw on a short-sleeve t-shirt and sit outside in the sun on the first days that break 60 degrees. There is a shift going on. Even if we dive back into a cold snap, the hope is there. It reminds us. And if we make a point to look for it, to notice it, to share it with others, it might even pull us along to show us more of what it has coming up.

I think God is a fan of spring days as well. They are a chance for us to notice purple–hello to Alice Walker–they are a chance to reach us where we are, in the details of our lives and whatever we have going on. We have a Lent small group going right now, reading Frederick Buechner’s “The Magnificent Defeat.” In an essay called “Message in the Stars,” Buechner writes:

“…there is a God right here in the thick of our day-t0-day lives… trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of his presence…

“His message is not written out in starlight… rather it is written out for each of us in the humdrum, helter-skelter events of each day…

“Who knows what he will say to me today or to you today or in the midst of what kind of unlikely moment he will choose to say it. Not knowing is what makes today a holy mystery as every day is a holy mystery.”

In the winter of the year, or in the winter of our souls, it can be tough to remember to look. Spring gives us a taste of warmth, first glimpses of color, a ray of hope.

If I want to see it, I have to look. I have to open my eyes. I have to look at my life and the world around me.

I like that Buechner uses muck, misery, and marvel together. We each get all those things wrapped up and included in this thing called life. Sometimes the marvel comes out of the other two. It’s not always in the places or the times when we expect it.

But that’s the thing about hope–it’s not something we know for sure, it’s something ahead; something we look forward to. And maybe we think, well, sure, sounds nice, but there is no guarantee. And that’s why spring and hope are tight. We don’t have to live for long to know that spring is coming. It’s going to happen. It’s on the way. We’ve lived through winters, we recognize spring, we know what it looks and feels like. We look for the signs.

And so we have color. And so we have warmth. And so we have spring. And so we have hope.

Can the fishes see it’s snowing?

The Christmas story I re-read every year has firemen and a house fire, snowballs waiting for cats, mentions of wolves, postmen, a celluloid duck, and a possible ghost joining in for caroling. And it’s all true. Or at least remembered true.

Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” is the kind of opening of nostalgic floodgates you expect from a poet’s vivid and quirky memory. And what he remembers aren’t gifts (those get a comic couple paragraphs) but the experiences he had, what he and his friends got into, uncles and aunts visiting, and what the town looked and felt like in the snow.

As Thomas and his friends walk in the snow along the shore, trying to decide what to get into, someone asks, “Can the fishes see it’s snowing?” Maybe those are the moments of true and honest friendship and the things we build our memories around.

Christmas is certainly a time when nostalgia hits us over the head like a cartoon wooden mallet, this year especially. I stumbled across this piece I scrawled out a couple years ago and if nostalgia is the path you want to run down, it might walk there with you. As I sit here with waves of Christmas memories crashing over me, I have written about for 30 or so and thought about Christmases past for maybe 45 years (the memories had to build up for the first three). I find myself coming back to the same thoughts, the same books, the same memories, and the same themes.

Clark Griswold understands the pressure of trying to create and re-create the perfect Christmas.

I’m thinking about the pressure we put on Christmas–finding and buying the perfect gifts, wanting to create the perfect memories for our families, wanting to get past the commercial and to the spiritual, communal aspects of Christmas. And I think about the fact that my Christmases as a kid are vivid memories, then not much to call up in my teens and 20s. Thinking about Christmases having young kids, crystalline again, and now the girls are well into their teens, into the age of unmemorable Christmases. And maybe I am caught in a place where the next memorable Christmas won’t be until there are young kids in the picture again (which I hope is a good ways off…).

But maybe that’s the key. Not young kids, but seeing things with eyes like that again. When he picks what memories to share, Dylan Thomas goes back to when he was a child. Because that’s where the vivid memories are; that’s where his eyes were fresh and impressionable. Maybe that’s what I/we need, especially during a pandemic year when I know my family won’t be gathering on Christmas Eve or Day.

Looking with the eyes of a child.

In his book, “Love Is the Way,” Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, writes:

“Jesus said, ‘Unless you change and become as little children, you will never see the kingdom of heaven’ (and thinking on a lecture he attended by Terry Holmes, Bishop Curry continues)… children have vivid and boundless imaginations. They dwell happily in that space between fantasy and reality. Theirs is often that land of the fairy tale, the cartoon. They fantasize, they imagine, they dream. I think Dr. Holmes was right. To behold the reign of God, the perfect realization of God’s peace, God’s shalom, God’s salaam–the dream of God–we must become as little children. We must imagine and… dream.”

I was talking to a friend recently about that exact thing, how Buddhists use the term “begininer’s mind” and Jesus talks about seeing with the eyes of a child. If re-think where I am right now and go back to my surroundings, I smell the evergreen/fir smell of the Christmas tree; I see the white lights on the tree that the girls asked for this year to replace the rainbow lights that I generally use to conjure up trees from my youth; I can smell and taste the coffee, which makes me think of my grandfather this time of year. I can see the cat and dog half-sleeping on the couch, waiting for movement toward the kitchen.

We’ve always got all the tools we need to build the perfect Christmas. If I choose to focus on sitting down to have a Sunday afternoon lunch with people I love rather than looking at what I find or don’t find shopping, I am creating the right kind of memories.

This isn’t a post about what Christmas is or what it means, but more about what lenses/eyes we use to approach the whole experience.

Our dog gets up and runs to the door or window every time the same neighbors walk by. It’s a new experience for her every time. Even she has the child-like enthusiasm and wonder idea down. I can learn from her example and reminder.

If I am open. If I see with the eyes, imagination, and wonder of a child. Maybe I won’t be stuck having a conversation with the ghost of Christmas past. Maybe I will be in the moment, caught up in wonder and conversation, and I can again ask questions like, “Can the fishes see it’s snowing?”

In Search Of

I didn’t find Big Foot. Or an Indigo Bunting, for that matter, but neither of those things is the point. It’s about searching. More than that, it’s about being out there, and being grateful.

September has been a month of making the most of weekends and doing things that I’ve been wanting/meaning to do for some time. Earlier in the month, the girls and I drove to Asheville, NC, to catch up with friends who moved there three years ago. We hiked, played in streams, visited some breweries (not the girls), sat on decks and caught up, and I even got a happy hour, back porch haircut. It was a great reminder to stay connected to good friends and change the scenery.

After a spring and summer at home and working, September made for a second opportunity to do something different. I stumbled across the C&O Canal Trust. The canal and tow-path are so close to home and so cool–we would occasionally run along it for cross country practice at St. James School, and then I got a 26.3-mile taste of it as part of the JFK 50-Miler more than a decade ago. Future adventures will include staying in canal houses, but in this case, the Trust website pointed me towards canal towns. And in particular, to Shepherdstown, WV, the former stomping grounds of a friend, artist, and mentor of mine. And the weekend assembled itself upon finding Sundogs Bed & Breakfast.

I can’t sing enough praise about Shepherdstown or Sundogs.

Shepherdstown is a college town that reminds me of Chestertown, MD, here on the Shore, but if you put it in the West Virginia mountains. It’s cool, funky, with shops, cafes, restaurants, theaters, a weekend farmer’s market, all built around Shepherd University. And as cool towns do, Shepherdstown has a get-lost-in independent bookstore in Four Seasons Books. It’s still COVID time, there aren’t any sort of gatherings or events going on, and masks were the norm and required to go in anywhere.

For us, looking for a weekend to unplug, unwind, and recharge, it was more about being outside than in town, and Sundogs hit the spot.

When one of your B&B hosts is a horticulturalist who has designed and revitalized gardens for *Dumbarton Oaks, The American Horticultural Society River Farm and George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate*, you can bet you are in for something incredible.

It’s maybe a 4 to 5-mile drive out of town, to a 46-acre retreat with trails running all over the property. The five rooms are named after dogs that the owners have rescued, and it’s a dog-friendly inn. Small B&Bs reflect the character, passions, and interests of the owners, and a horticulturalist who designs gardens and a NOAA meteorologist, who are both conservationists, animal rescuers, and fix vegetarian breakfasts for their guests in the morning.

Holly and I spent early mornings with coffee literally surrounded by hummingbirds, reading and bird watching, before hiking trails late mornings and early afternoons. I’m not much of a birder, but the list of birds I saw includes: Goldfinches, hummingbirds, Nuthatches, Tufted Titmice, Cardinals, Red-Bellied Woodpeckers, Downy Woodpeckers, Eastern Bluebirds, Carolina Wrens, Cormorants, Pileated Woodpecker, Red-Shouldered Hawks, and Cedar Waxwings.

Shepherdstown and Sundogs are both places I hope to return to. Which brings me to Indigo Buntings, birds that are around Sundogs, and I am sure were around us. It’s a common enough bird, even on the Eastern Shore where we live, I’ve just never really gotten good eyes on one (I may have seen one fly across the road into the woods while I was driving in Caroline County, it was the right blue, but I can’t count that).

We spent some time at Sundogs searching for Buntings, but not much time. We tried to learn and listen for the song, and walked the edge of the woods and trees in the field where they are often seen. But didn’t make it the focus of the weekend. Nor have I made it too big a focus of watching birds–just something that will be cool when it happens.

What it requires to be ‘in search of’ something is to be out there, to show up, to make the attempt, and that means something. A few years ago, I wrote about being in search of the Snow Bunting (Buntings are a theme), and so much of what I wrote there still stands. It’s more about being tuned in, mindful, and grateful for the search and for the experience. What it means is to get out in nature, to look around, to keep my bird feeders filled and notice who shows up.

As we gear up for fall, there are a number of adventures I am gearing up for, some physical, some mental, some spiritual.

One adventure coming this fall that has been more than a decade in the making is skateboarding the 26-mile Western Maryland Rail Trail in and around Hancock, MD. A friend read about the paved trail when we first found long distance longboarding/skateboarding, it’s just never materialized into an adventure. We’re looking to change that in early fall, likely with a camping/backpacking element to make the most of the trip.

For anyone looking for a cool, scenic biking trek, the Western Maryland Rail Trail Supporters spell out what’s cool about the trail:

The Western Maryland Rail Trail (WMRT) is a 26 mile long paved trail that stretches from a mile west of historic Fort Frederick State Park in Big Pool, Maryland to its western terminus at the Potomac River in Little Orleans, Maryland.

Spectacular river views, vistas of hardwood covered mountains exploding with color in the fall, rock formations, dramatic tunnels, transportation history and pristine wilderness all within a few hours drive from Washington, DC, Baltimore, MD and Pittsburgh, PA.

The WMRT is perfect for hiking, biking, inline skating (rollerblading) or, weather permitting, cross country skiing. One excellent feature is that the entire trail is handicap accessible. The trail is especially suited to families, novice cyclists (it’s almost completely flat), and for anyone seeking a pleasant, leisurely ride.

Biking is the most popular use of the WMRT, with 26 miles of paved trail. The excellent western section follows the rugged mountain terrain west of Hancock, offering great views of the Potomac and surrounding mountains, and no interstate noise!

The more time I spend skateboarding, the more I realize, for me, it’s not about doing crazy tricks or accomplishing epic trips that are hard to pull off–it’s about being outside, having fun, skating with friends, with wheels rolling on pavement. In the spirit of being “in search of,” it’s a way of being in search of fun/stoke that only requires you to do it in order to find it.

Adventures of the mind can happen daily. And as a book nerd, those are journeys I look forward to every morning with my coffee. And there is something just cool about mind adventures with a group of fellow readers. We’ve had group reads of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” (some actually finished that doorstop of a tome), and some of Thomas Pynchon’s “Mason & Dixon,” which also involved hiking to find Mason Dixon markers.

This fall’s first literary journey was inspired by the trailer for the forthcoming movie Dune. A fairly common view is that Frank Herbert’s epic novel is the best science fiction novel ever written. And I’ve never read it. So we have a group of five of us (so far, two of whom are English teachers, which speaks to the book being literarily legit) who are making the journey through the book. I am a little over 100 pages in, and I am looking for more time to read because it has pulled me in already. I am sure there will be more to come on this front. After Dune, I have been really looking forward to Robert Macfarlane’s “Underland.”

Another adventure of the mind and heart I have begun is reading and learning about Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Bendectine monk, who along with Thomas Merton, has been a big part of conversations in the Buddhist-Christian dialogue (for which Br. David was given Vatican approval in 1967). Through this pandemic time I have been a big fan of “A Network for Grateful Living,” without knowing much about its founder. Much more to come about Br. David. For any who would like to watch, here is a conversation he had with Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh about gratefulness. Each of them glow and laugh and remember, as if they were gratitude personified.

“We were doing peace, not demanding peace… If you are not able to be be peaceful and happy in every step, a peace march is not a peace march.”
Thich Nhat Hanh

The kind of “in search of” that is common to all of these things, is that to search, I have to show up. I have to be an active participant. And that is where the adventure is. Adventures in life, of the mind, and in gratitude.

Saturday Tangents

On any given day, my mind travels far more places than my body does. On the best days, both get to roam free and find beautiful places and experiences.

Yesterday was Saturday, a day that started in downpour and ended in sunshine. It was a typical day on the outside–I didn’t have a single in-person conversation with anyone, which isn’t unusual on weekends I don’t have the girls.

Saturdays start with coffee, reading, prayer, daydreams. When the rain let up, rescue dog Harper and I wandered around the yard a bit.

TANGENT 1 – BACKYARD PURPLE. If I don’t notice flowers, birds, and butterflies in my own backyard, how will I spot them anywhere else? I can’t count how many times I have walked out to the writing shed since our COVID-19 quarantine began. Each time I try to take in and appreciate something different. As we’ve discussed with Alice Walker, God gives us purple in our lives, it is up to us to notice it.

Thanks to adventurer Beau Miles, who has re-thought what to do with 24 hours, even if you don’t leave your own block, I am trying to be more conscious of what I do with my time, giving myself permission to chase down tangents, which is how my mind works anyway. So here are some more tangents from the day.

Three men who shaped the Black Panther. From left: Christopher Priest, whose epic and iconic run writing the Black Panther comic book made the character cool again; Chadwick Boseman, whose incredible on-screen performances brought T’Challa to life for all new audiences; and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the powerhouse writer and thinker who currently writes Black Panther and who has elevated him even higher in cultural relevance.

TANGENT 2 – CHADWICK BOSEMAN/BLACK PANTHER. Friday night brought the sad news of Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman’s death from colon cancer at age 43. When actors, musicians, or athletes that we’ve never met die, maybe it shouldn’t feel like a big deal, but the ones who have touched our lives have real presence with us.

The three biggest common interests my daughters and I share are: Marvel movies, Washington Nationals baseball, and the show “The Office.” We’ve watched pretty well every Marvel movie together, multiple times, many in the theaters on their debuts. It’s a way I share my lifelong love of comic books and stories with them. More than any other Marvel movie to date, Black Panther was a cultural event. If you want to get a sense for why, check out this clip from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where they had Boseman surprise movie-goers who thought they were filming a video thanks to the actor. Boseman’s graciousness, humility, humor, and humanity off-screen, in his personal life made him every bit the king he portrayed on screen. Do yourself a favor and Google his name and watch clips and read articles.

Yesterday I spent time watching Marvel movies with Black Panther in them, as well as reading more of Christopher Priest’s character-resurrecting run, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s mythological and epic first arc.

TANGENT 3 – RUNNING IN THE RAIN. There are times when I have to let my body catch up to my brain. Early afternoon the rain had stopped for a bit, so I added a run to the day. As I started up Rails to Trails, about a mile in, the rain started again, first as a slow drizzle, building to an ever-present curtain, then to a downpour by the last half-mile of my 4.5 miles. There is a feeling that warm rain on a run on a hot day brings, that makes the run worth it just for that.

TANGENT 4 – MIND FOOD. I’m a believer in the notion that what we take in is what we put back out, and formative in who we become. If I read Scripture, imaginative, thought-provoking stories, poetry, cosmic graphic novels, world-building fiction; watch movies and documentaries that open my mind and heart and help me see and dream, maybe that is part of my path?

Krista Tippett, in her book “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living,” reminds us that, “what we practice, we become. What’s true of playing the piano or throwing a ball also holds for our capacity to move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully.”

After running, it’s orange slices and water, it’s chopping peppers from the garden into tuna salad, and making time to read, to imagine, and to be still.

Tippett continues:

“I believe that mystery is a common human experience, like being born and falling in love and dying. A new openness to the language of mystery–and the kindred virtue of wondering–across boundaries of belief and non-belief, science and faith, is helping us inhabit our own truths and gifts exuberantly while honoring the reality of the other.”

I want to believe that. And I can see evidence in pockets, or more like veins running through rock, but there is a lot of rock too. Tippett published the book in 2016 and wasn’t looking at the nastiness and yelling and how divided people are right now. But maybe it’s times like now that we need to focus on the veins of hope and not the rock itself. Maybe now hope and love and mystery and wonder are everything, in part because of their scarcity on the national stage.

The apostle Paul wrote letters of encouragement and hope and thanksgiving from prison and gave shape and direction to a young church. He was looking forward. Poet Ross Gay, in his book “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” and poem of the same name, in giving thanks to different aspects of his life, looks back:

...thank you
the ancestor who loved you
before she knew you
by smuggling seeds into her braid for the long
journey, who loved you
before he knew you by putting
a walnut tree in the ground, who loved you
before she knew you by not slaughtering
the land; thank you
who did not bulldoze that ancient grove
of dates and olives,
who sailed his keys into the ocean
and walked softly home; who did not fire, who did not
plunge the head into the toilet, who said stop,
don’t do that; who lifted some broken
someone up; who volunteered
the way a plant birthed of the reseeding plant
is called a volunteer…

And there it is. There are our options laid out before us. This is our time (and I have “The Goonies” in my head typing that); we are here as volunteers the way plants are–we aren’t here by our choosing, but this is where we have sprung up.

What will we do? What will I do?

Will we choose to bulldoze, fire, and plunge heads with our words and actions? Will I incite violence, confusion, and add to the hate?

Or will I bring seeds, plant trees for shade and sustenance? Will I throw the keys to hate’s bulldozer that everyone is so quick to put in our hands–will I sail those keys into the ocean; will I say STOP, and instead try to lift some broken someone up?

Saturday was a day of running down tangents and seeing what was down each. When I take the time to follow tangents, to follow those paths my mind and heart open up, I find things I might not find otherwise. Down each of them, I find gratitude, mystery, wonder, and hope.

Those are the things I choose to share and hope to pass on.

Repair the World

“Sometime in the early life of the world, something happened to shatter the light of the universe into countless pieces. They lodged as sparks inside every part of creation. The highest human calling is to look for this original light from where we sit, to point to it and gather it up and in so doing to repair the world.”

That’s how Krista Tippett tells the Jewish legend behind the idea of “Tikkun Olam,” or “repair the world.”

Tippett goes on to talk about how Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen sees this legend not as just some far off fantasy, but as hopeful and empowering: “It insists that each one of us, flawed and inadequate as we may feel, has exactly what’s needed to help repair the part of the world that we can see and touch.”

Living in a clearly broken world, as clearly broken people and individuals, what is more hopeful than realizing that despite the darkness around us, that there are sparks of light lodged everywhere. And that we can find those sparks, help point others towards them, and gather the light to help diminish the darkness.

For the last eight weeks, we’ve had a small group through Christ Church Easton reading Tippett’s book, “Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters and How to Talk About It.”

This week we looked at Tippett’s calling to “Expose Virtue,” which is a wonderful way to think about the ability and power of conversation, journalism, communication–to show the goodness in the world, one story, one life, one conversation at a time.

Tippett talks about kindness:

“Kindness–an everyday by-product of all the great virtues–is at once the simplest and most weighty discipline human beings can practice. But it is the stuff of moments. It cannot be captured in declarative sentences or conveyed by factual account. It can only be found by looking at ordinary, unsung, endlessly redemptive experience.”
Krista Tippett

Kindness can’t be abstract. It has to be seen, practiced, experienced in the world. It’s not a stretch to connect kindness with repairing the world–it is one of the most needed tools at our disposal.

Tippett talks about “ubuntu,” an African word that points to humanity. “It says, I am through you and you are through me. To the extent that I am estranged from another person, I am less than human.” We can look at this as connected to Jesus telling us to love our neighbors as our selves and/or the Buddhist way of thinking about interdependence.

Something that becomes clear to Tippett as she talks to people is that any notion of kindness, of ubuntu, only start to mean something through telling stories.

“Stories of children changed by adults who care, of groups of colleagues making a difference in a particular corporate culture; of role models and teachers and friendships that altered perspectives and lives. Human relationship–which begins with seeing an “other” as human–is the context in which virtue happens, the context in which character is formed.”

“Speaking of Faith,” as a book is filled with these stories. “On Being,” Tippett’s radio show and podcast is all about sharing these conversations, telling these stories.

Studying the book as a group has made me want to seek out, listen to, and tell the stories that are around me. Our community, and every community is full of people, stories, and kindness, if we shine the light on them. Four Sisters Kabob and Curry and their generosity is a recent one that comes to mind.

But it also makes me want to be a part of more stories, connected to more moments and experiences. Like not missing the opportunity to come together to socially-distanced serenade, with accordion, one of the kindest, most giving, light shiners I have ever encountered, for his 80th birthday.

Tippett talks about a “clear-eyed faith” that–

“asks me to confront my failings and the world’s horrors. It also demands that I search, within all wreckage, for the seeds of creativity, wisdom, and strength. It frees me to see the contours of virtue come alive in the world–of ‘thick’ religion, grounded and refined in practice and thought, text and tradition, and responding in differentiated ways to human reality.”

Despite our failings, we have a chance. Despite my failings, I have a chance.

Especially when it is so easy to be overwhelmed by darkness, our highest calling is to look for light where we sit, where we live, where we work, and share it with others. And in so doing, repair the world.

Here to Wonder

Do you ever get to wondering? I seem to spend a lot of time that way, wondering. There is a conversation towards the end of Alice Walker’s novel “The Color Purple,” where Albert gets to wondering:

“You ast yourself one question, it lead to fifteen. I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women… It didn’t take long to realize I didn’t hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don’t mean nothing if you don’t ast why you here, period.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Our lives are often defined by the questions we ask. So let’s ask the big ones, the juicy ones. And the right ones. So why does Albert think we’re here?

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering about the big things and asting about the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.”
Albert, via Alice Walker, “The Color Purple”

The more I wonder, the more I love. Yes to that, and so much more of it.

I wanted to read “The Color Purple” because of a quote; a quote I read and loved immediately; a quote that spoke directly to my soul and I have thought and used and felt so many times since, that I knew I needed to read the book where it came from.

And when I read it in context of the story, it was even better and deeper. Two of the main characters, Celie and Shug Avery are talking about God. And about how God is not an old white man in robes sitting on a throne. And how “God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for.” Shug talking. And what a wonderful way to describe the Holy Spirit.

And Celie asks what God looks like, if not an old white man. And Shug says:

“Don’t look like nothing, she say. It’ ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe that God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It.”

Shug says people “come to church to share God, not find God.” And I love that thought and thinking that sharing God is what church is for.

But none of those are the quote that made me want to read the book. Here’s the conversation:

Shug: God love everything you love–and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.
Celie: You saying God vain?
Shug: Naw. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

And there it is. “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” That quote has been a part of me since I first read it years ago. It describes how I go through life. God made a flower, a field, a planet, a universe for us to wonder at. To ask about. And the more we wonder, the more we ask, the more we love.

And God made us for each other. He made each of us, to love each other and to love Him. And I don’t and won’t ever claim to speak for God, but it seems in the same way, it pisses Him off when we don’t love each other; when we spew hate and not kindness; when we divide, point fingers, and blame, instead of helping each other up, lifting each other’s spirits, using our gifts and His gifts to connect us to each other and to God.

Celie and Shug keep talking (Celie writing) –

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.
Oh, it make something else. People think that pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.
Yeah? I say.
Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when we least expect.
You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say.
Yes, Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved.

Everything wants to be loved. Everyone wants to be loved. God is giving us opportunities–what are we doing with them?

What if we try to notice the color purple? What if we try to see, to really see, and get to know each other? What if we wonder? What if we ask? What if the more we wonder, the more we love.

What does love look like?

It’s hard to know what to say, so I can only speak from my life and experiences. And my life is one of privilege. I haven’t earned the life I live based on my own sweat and effort–I was given a gift of an upbringing and a social and economic status that I had nothing to do with. I try to live up to and into that gift, and I am grateful for it daily. I try to dream and picture what my daughters’ lives might look like, and I know they are only limited by themselves.

When I run through town, I am the maybe overly friendly guy who says good morning or hello to everyone I pass. And I have never gotten weird looks–usually a wave or smile back. People aren’t generally intimidated by or suspect of me at first encounter. Again, none of this has much of anything to do with anything I have done. If my skin were a different color, I’m not sure reactions would be the same.

In my teens and early 20’s, we were troublemakers often enough and had run-ins with police, but I never feared for my life. We live in a small community and over the years, I have come to know more and more police officers as friends, and I know them all to be amazing human beings who help people at an instant. Theirs are friendships I am blessed to have–getting to know the people and not just their jobs. And they have seen me for who I am.

Over the years my heart has hurt and my mind has been jarred by so many events on the news, or listening to others’ experiences of the world. And these stories rise up, make their rounds, and then life goes on. For those not directly affected. But each time, it is only a glimpse; only a flicker. Too many people can change the channel and not have to face something directly.

When people speak up and speak out, they are quickly silenced. Yes, you can protest, but not like that. And no, not like that. Yes, we believe in your right to be heard, but we are watching football right now. How about some other time, some other place, where I can still watch what I want and think how I want and not have to pay attention?

Right now, there is attention. We are not promised tomorrow, so right now is what we have. I can’t know or understand what it is to be black, but I can listen and I can stand.

I am a part of a faith community where I know that people of any race, culture, or religion are welcome, and I consider that a blessing. I have watched our rector befriend a Hindu man who was working in Easton and loved coming to our 5:00pm service. He was happy in his faith, he just loved the music and energy of the service, and it was a beautiful thing.

After the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protests and riots, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, an African-American man, on Sunday published an op-ed in The Washington Post about choosing love over hate. He also talked about what the path of love might look like in these times:

“Love looks like all of us — people of every race and religion and national origin and political affiliation — standing up and saying “Enough! We can do better than this. We can be better than this.”

“What does love look like? I believe that is what Jesus of Nazareth taught us. It looks like the biblical Good Samaritan, an outsider who spends his time and money healing somebody he doesn’t know or even like.”

There is a way forward through this that looks like love. That looks like the self-sacrificial love that Jesus showed us, taught us, and modeled with his life. And it looks like coming together, in love.

In Bible studies over the past months, we have been studying Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, in which Paul is emphatic about the unity of the church. In his commentary on Chapter 2, scholar and former bishop N.T. Wright says:

“If our churches are still divided in any way along racial or cultural lines, (Paul) would say that our gospel, our very grasp of the meaning of Jesus’ death is called into question. How long will it be before those who claim to follow Jesus, not least those who claim also to love Paul’s thinking, come to terms with the demands he actually makes?”

The way forward in love right now is not about doctrine. If we look at Jesus, when he dealt with the hurting, the sick, the lonely, the disenfranchised–he saw them, he healed them, he loved them, he brought them into the fold. Where Jesus is love, Paul also calls that love into unity.

I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet. But I know I can’t really think or write about anything else with it so large on my heart and mind right now.

In talking about love and faith, Krista Tippett, author and the host of “On Being,” writes:

“Every time I let myself go deeper into the mess and mystery of human loving, I am hit over the head again by theology–an insistence that the love of God is so much fuller than we can usually imagine or take in… I keep pursuing faith, if for no other reason than because it is the place in our common life that keeps reminding me of the necessity of love–not the romantic love of poets, but the practical love of sacred texts–however fraught and imperfect our practice of it may ever and always be… love is not the starting point, but the goal. It is not something we are born knowing how to do, not something we fall into. It is something we spend our whole lives learning.”

That is a love I want to learn to do better. I want to spend my life learning and practicing it. Right now it feels like it starts with listening and with standing.