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.

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.

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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.