Sometimes I’m drawn forward and sometimes I am turned to circle back, usually so I can pick something up I need to go forward. That’s an eyebrow-raising, quizzical-look statement, I know. Let’s try this:
This past weekend, I went for a run–my first run since early April. It was slow, but it didn’t matter–the smile on my face running through John Ford Park, saying good morning to folks I encountered, feeling air in my lungs and my feet in motion, even if stumbling slowly, was something I have been missing.
Running, skateboarding, and writing are three life-giving activities I discovered in my early teens that sustain and stoke me in my early 50s. There is a thread that connects them.
I’ve been reading Mark Nepo’s book, “Drinking from the River of Light: the Life of Expression,” which I take in small bites, so I can savor it and let is wash over me. Nepo circled me back to one of my favorite writers, poet William Stafford, by sharing and talking about Stafford’s poem, “The Way It Is”–
“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.“
Nepo writes, “To discover the thread that goes through everything is the main reason to listen, express, and write… I began to realize that listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” Then he invites us to think about, write about, and try to discern what that thread is for us, individually. What is the constant that is with you, through joy, pain, sadness, lows, highs, that makes you, you?
As I sat there, coffee, sunlight, and summer-breeze-fueled, scratching out a few notes, the thing that hit me was: a sense of wonder. That’s the thread. From marveling at honeysuckle and marsh grasses in the neighborhood as a kid, to Morning Glories and Great Blue Herons as an adult, a childlike sense of wonder has underpinned it all.
Nepo is a writer I’ve just found. He circled me back to Stafford and a poem I’ve been reading for years–something I needed to pick back up to move forward with new eyes.
Running, skateboarding, and writing have been wonder-stokers for me all along. Somehow they have distilled over time to where the wonder is there now as soon as I step on a board, pick up a pen, or put running shoe to pavement.
Yesterday morning, Landy Cook and I met at the Oxford Conservation Park to start the week off with a sunrise longboarding adventure. The sun was smiling with us and lent its rays to every moment and every photo. It was a morning to catch up, to laugh, to skate, to enjoy the moments, to breathe in the day. It’s a place we skate frequently, it’s not new scenery, but every morning is its own, there is always something new or different to catch, to appreciate, to be grateful for.
For me, part of those experiences, those moments, of being given a gift, is wanting to communicate it, to share it, maybe if I am lucky to wake something up for someone else, to connect in some way.
Nepo says it: “listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” That’s what writing brings to my aesthetic and Spirit-filled table. Even rolling on a skateboard, I make sure to have a pocket notebook and pen to try to catch something of the wonder of the experience.
A couple weeks ago I was sent back to another favorite writer, John O’Donohue. Last summer we led a small group discussing his book, “Anam Cara.” A friend from church continues to read and reflect on it regularly and he wanted to pass along a copy to someone who is going through profound loss, hoping it might give them something to latch onto–perspective, compassion, care, connection, hope.
The class last summer was right around this time of year and a memory, a quote from “Anam Cara” circled its way back in front of me. It’s a thought that struck me as something Holly has been working through after coming back from a 12-day mission trip to Amazon river villages in Peru, where the life of the villagers was deliberate, present, and connected to the days and nights, the land, and each other. O’Donohue wrote:
“It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here.”
The miracle, the wonder, of being here. That’s our connection to each other, other living souls, to God, to the living Universe; whether we are in Peru, the backyard, or skateboarding with the sunrise.
