No Dog Left in this Fight

Being in the presence of deep and abiding pain side by side with utter joy and openness is a disconcerting experience. Or perhaps it’s awakening, sobering. On a trip to Little Five Points and the Variety Theatre I witnessed both, and felt a bit like I was a traveler moving from the depths of hell into a kind of heavenly door, just witnessing what was before me, attuning myself to my experience. We’d gone into Atlanta to see Foy Vance, and had to our surprise gotten there early enough to have a pre-concert drink and a quick bite. Anyone from Georgia who’s been to Little Five, as most lovingly call it, know the atmosphere is like a pumped up Athens, and the bar/coffee shop we dipped into was a perfect example of that: Java Lords, connected to the side of the theatre. Dark and cozy and strange in its decor, there was something about being in the space that felt both like a circle of hell and a party all at once. A couple of older gentlemen were overtly aiming to get full on drunk for the evening, and starting their quest. We sat and had bourbon and then cider, and anticipated, and people-watched. The barkeep was a kind but subtle young man who seemed as clear-eyed as I was about his surroundings, though I was the one who had to pivot a bit to make sense of the strangeness, that feeling that some sadness was gnawing at the place. I eavesdrop and people watch all the time, and here I heard the jaded concerns of losing money, the despair over aging bodies coupled with the desire for dabauchery and a healthy dose of laughter.

We meandered Little Five, munching on samosas and hearing some street comedians and little groups of people lament the state of the world by making it ironic. And then we entered the theatre, and dove into the music.

The opening act, Ryan McMullen, was where it began for both of us, explaining a song that he said had touched people diversely—fans sharing with him the ways his music entered into their lives, consoled them. And these words touched us where Tra’s Uncle Sammy has just left:

I know you love me, but now it's time to let me go
And I know you're sad but please don't cry
After all it's not goodbye
We're just letting go for a little while….

Of course we realized that death is that pause, somewhere in the mind, but our hearts were still not in union with our minds, and so the songs challenged our sorrow and lifted it.

Then Foy came on, and with his whole self poured love and sorrow right into the audience. I witnessed my husband both break and lift himself; there was a man across the way who slumped in his chair beside people who moved for joy beside him, and I wondered at his fallen pizza, his half-finished drink, at his despair unlifted. There was a couple snogging and interrupted by the theatre staff. There was the woman sitting next to me, sharing the encounter of happiness even though she did not know me, finding Foy as funny and affable as I did.  Then he sang to us:

No matter how much you're hurting right now
You know that everything will change in time
Oh, I just might see you in another light
Got no dog here in the fight
I could carry your burden, oh brother of mine


Weaving through it we came up and out of the moment, as blues and soul music should and does accomplish. It was a kind of beginning to the letting go that will be necessary, if we are to move on.

Then we stepped back into the bar after the concert— the man who’d been aiming at oblivion was nearly there, weaving in his seat with a drink in his hand, sleepy, drunk, and worrisome. Some friends subtly expressed concern for him to the barkeep, who seemed to know everyone there. Equally people who were there for the evening alone had found a place to just be, and  peacefully attend to their experience; some were there with others and sharing in friendship, and Tra and I just took in our shared wonder at what we’d experienced, and what were now seeing of each other. Music drew it out of us. I felt torn between looking at the opening face of my husband and the closing face of the man at the end of the bar, wishing I could offer him some of the joy we’d just experienced. But I knew I couldn’t even if I tried, despair being cruel in this way, and I hoped he had the friends he needed to get through the night. As we left it looked like one friend had drawn him away to somewhere else. Who knows where he went to get away from—or move towards—his depths? Someone to carry the burden for a little while, anyhow. I knew each of us could if we tried do even just that.

Goodbye and Hello

Sometimes goodbyes just suck.

There, I said it.

I do know I learn something which each of the many, many goodbyes I have said in my life: the ephemeral of it all, the desperate need we should all have to cherish, the deeps of the darks and the brights of the lights—all of a piece. When I think of all the goodbyes my family alone has said, across ocean and continents, I still feel humbled, even as I feel my farewells with the pain of a thousand needles. That saudade, that old friend I want to kick out the door when she comes ringing. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know what I know when it hurts as it does.

Still, every mile, every encounter, every sharing, every gift, every holiday and illness, every loss and gain—all of it—matters. Molds me in ways I have yet to understand.

And that will have to be enough. Is enough. Is the best and worst gift, awe-inspiring.

Crossroads

I find myself in a cacophony of ideas stemming from so much newness in my life, and I’m pausing to consider it. By the end of my reflection I hope to get to this: that life is not about fixing but about serving.

But we’ll get there.

First, my littlest has gone to school—willingly, excitedly, and wholeheartedly, the way I wish I could be with all things. She’s become an example to me in this endeavor, and a surprise. I love surprises. So I relish it, and I take pictures of them walking into school, big and little sister; they will only cross paths these two years of their little lives. It’s precious, in more ways than one. And I get to witness this. I get to be thankful for this, too, and that gratitude is washing over me right now in a way that allows me to open my eyes to other things less beautiful, dark. My deepest misgivings about children who have been orphaned lay side by side with these images of my children entering their school with teachers who care about them in a place they enjoy being. These same teachers, by the way, have supported local families torn apart, too. And so I become part of a cloud of witnesses.

That lesson, that ability to see past the ugly, is the gift of witness and service.

I am also embarking upon a journey to discern becoming a spiritual director—really merely someone who accompanies others on their path in a more formal capacity. I have prayed for and longed for this opportunity for many years, and now in this window of my life there’s a moment to accomplish the goal and give back to my community which has so richly given to me and my family. I have been gifted with many guides in my life, and have always felt I need to give back, to be of service to others in a real, tangible, authentic way. I get to be thankful for this, too, in a moment where much service to humanity is needed. My hope is that you might read this and find your own path, your own way to serve others.

Ultimately many years of facing dark nights of the soul, as St John of the Cross considered, in others and in myself has led me here, to the lines at the end of this reflection, and beyond. There’s so much hope in this: my heart is full as I contemplate what this means. So much yet to learn, so much to share with you, my friends. Pour out your hearts into this world desperate for love. You won’t necessarily fix it, but you will, by your contribution, create a new space.

Miscommunication

There’s honestly too much to share, too much breathless heartbreak in the world today, so I won’t pretend to be able to address even half. Where I find myself today is in a space to recognize the notion, if not the reality, of miscommunication, something so central to our daily ills I feel like I have to address it. It’s been my year to sit up and pay attention to this problem especially, because it’s multifaceted, and not what it looks like on the outside so often, it’s a wonder we’re all not disowning each other on a  daily basis.

I know that my pitfall comes with the expectations I was brought up to have, something ingrained in me even after years of being a full-on adult, and I find this tension in the way I parent. It’s forced me to come to terms with seeing others—my children, my students—as they really are. To meet them and accept them as they are, where they are, instead of as I wish them to be. When I don’t do this, and see in my mind only my sense of who they should be, things go very poorly. Seems elementary, but honestly, it happens so much more often than I want it to, this tension between what I think life should be and what it actually is, right before me. I’m grateful my children have, in a way, forced me to sit up and pay attention to this spiritual lesson.

Now that I’m seeing it (half the battle, right?), I want to apply this in other ways, and it feels trickier. There’s moral ground that I won’t back away from, and this becomes a kind of bias, but, as I teach my students, bias is my favorite four letter word. I grin when I say this, and then ask them to consider the fact that every last person on this green earth has a bias. It’s not the bias, really. It’s how we use this, in what way we foist our bias upon others, and whether we use a bias for good or ill that makes the difference. Seeing this starts to shift things a bit. I’ve been able to carry the lesson of bias into my personal relationships and, to some degree, into the hot mess of a world we’re living in today, which is a bevy of miscommunication, and of moral testing ground. In this space I call upon the lesson—and because of my beliefs I call upon the Spirit—to see what really is, and then to act in a force of good for the world. I hope in the process I am both water and fire, both a cooling and a rising, that makes for real, sustainable change.

Pouring Beauty

This weekend I felt moved by Fr Frank’s admonition to use our tongues wisely, inspired in part by today's readings and the gospel finial:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.

 Indeed we can get into the excesses of gossip, eating, and hurting each other, but equally we can draw each other up from our darkness, or speak up for the right thing. I puzzle over the fact that lately no one seems to agree on what the right thing is—or, more accurately, on what the wrong is. There is an outpouring of action, and this gives me hope—I especially love the pouring out of beauty into the world, and though I am a huge proponent of action (I am passionate about being active in my community school, helping local homeless families by spending time with them, and the like), I want to pause today on the power of beauty in its various forms.

It seems like nothing to post on the effect of soul-lifting, attitude changing music, or thought-provoking art, or fragrant and God-touched nature, or even a good, delicious plate of food. In fact, some of us seem to poo-poo each other at the frivolity of these things, but I think they’re necessary side by side with calls for action. And perhaps equally if not more effective alongside meeting people in person rather than just engaging online—something about looking at a living, breathing human being with opinions and biases and realize you like each other even if you don’t agree is enlightening to say the least. A couple of friends of mine have made it a habit in the past couple of years to meet regularly over lunch or coffee, and we found it to be joy, a kind of soul-balm.

I am not saying at all we should not be upset at the state of the world, at the rate at which we’re trying to hurt each other. That is indeed a worrisome and ever-present battle each of us should fight in our own way, each small action one step closer to the way things should be. In adding beauty to the world we’re sweetening the deal; we’re creating a swifter passage for right and good to pass through.

Reconcile

Happy Easter—to all, even those who do not necessarily celebrate it: I wish you the joy of the 50 days of celebration I’m aiming to stay present for—but life certainly has its distractions.

I had a number of interesting observations I wanted to write about, mostly involving my children’s cute way of looking at life that has given me some perspective, sometimes, even when things are at their most chaotic. Thing is, something happened this past weekend as I hurried through grading essays and practiced music for services and met with students and played with my daughters. Something which reminded me of the tenuousness of life, and of the importance of a reflection on what will come beyond this earth on which we stand. I can’t shake the feeling of it, and somehow I want to try and tie it in to these other neat observations during a kind of life-changing Lent for both myself and my husband, one in which we grew exponentially from within.

I learned that a friend named Bill, who was once much a part of the choir I’d sung in these many years, had gone missing, and on Easter afternoon, his body was found.

That fact alone stands solemnly, but what’s attached to it gives me almost more pause. You see, he’d lost his wife in the past months, and he’d long suffered through bipolar disorder, though, until now, he’d found various ways to feel belonging and gain support, among them our little choir, and the power of music. Just a few weeks ago he’d come back to sing, and I watched him from my pew where I was wrangling the little ones to stillness during the service, and thought—O good. He seems happy.

Then this. His choosing to let go.

The various times now I’ve reflected upon the dead has grown, it seems, in just these past years, but this time, I want to say, in a messy way, something that I hope makes modicum of difference or sense. Because while Bill had support—of family and friends and community—he chose to disappear. To run, quite possibly legitimately, from something. And at any time any one of us might feel the pang of despair cut so deep it’s too hard to ignore. There’s only so much that can be done in the face of mental despair, especially when it comes from a place that can’t be be controlled, not easily, anyway. I want to strive to better understand the position of those who struggle with this, and aim to be a companion along the way for anyone who needs an ear. I want someday to be a kind of witness in the ways I have to other’s suffering and to have made a real difference for them—and I want to call on you to do the same, for those you know, those you might not know so well. Pause, say a word or two, be there. Be. The simplest acts of presence for others can have a far-reaching effect. It may not solve the issues bigger than the individual, but it will mean something. And it will be an act of prayer itself, this presence. It is hard to feel helpless in the face of despair, but I know the comfort of a well-placed supportive ear or shoulder.

I can barely tie this to the cute and surprisingly wise ideas from my little ones, but I will say here that Isabella caught me off guard the day she and I went to receive the sacrament of reconciliation as part of our Lenten practice with our community. On the way home she said to me, “Mama, that felt like a wipe off board being cleaned—brand new space for more to come, for something better.” In the driver’s seat and the semi-dark car I could not suppress a smile, knowing she got it at a young age—that sense that sometimes, indeed, we need each other, we need sacrament in its many ways, to get through, to strive, to thrive. This is what I wish for you today, dear ones. Peace and All Good.

Past the Break

In 2000 or 2001, before 9/11 and before I moved well past my graduate school days, I went with my friend Iyabo to Barbados for a conference at which each of us would present. We made time for the conference (being the nerd I was I wanted to meet some of the big literary critics at this event), but definitely made time for leisure (thanks, Iyabo, for pulling me away). Top of our list was the beach, particularly one called Enterprise (Miami) beach in Oistins, where there was a food truck and men played dominoes on a card table at the edge of the sand, which itself was fine and easy on the feet. The waves rolled in shades of pale and medium bright blue, and patches of that color gave way to turquoise and lay ahead for the eyes toward the horizon. That water on my skin has become a core memory for me. I didn’t and still don’t know how to swim, but I do wade—over the years that fear has abated some. That day we alighted upon the beach I had fear and curiosity on me. Iyabo and her friends had waded out past the breaking wave line and magically floated and bobbed up and down on the ocean surface, turquoise where they were and enticing. I wanted to go past the break, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. They called their warnings—the waves will get you!—and, too late, I was picked up and tossed upside down and spat out onto that fine sand. Sputtering, my ears picked up on the girl’s laughter echoing out over the water. My ego stung more than my nose and lungs with salt water, I marched back to my towel to dry in the sun, defeated.

I think often of that day. It still hasn’t inspired me past the physical fear of water, but it always makes me think of my soul—leaning toward a break, leaning past it. The breaks in life are many and varied obstacles which keep me from the floating peace. That giving in, succumbing the what is. To the beauty of what is or is not perfect. To this being tossed, headlong, backwards. Then retreat for perspective and try again. Every soul endeavor can be this, and who knows what may come. I’ll keep reaching past that breaking point for the buoyancy of my creator, for that lift off the vast ocean floor up toward the sun.

Beginner's Mind

Beginner’s mind. The ability to approach life from a fresh angle. I’m striving toward this daily, and know it’s a daily practice, not something you achieve and finish, swipe your hands and call it done. In the earthly form life is ever-shifting, and embracing the shifts— the movement under our feet—is the only way to go.

My favorite thing to do now is to read like I am drinking deeply from a well of the good stuff: books by mystics and visionaries, by humans who speak truth to power, who see the world in terms of what we cannot see as much as by what we can. Evelyn Underhill tops my list lately, especially her reflection on the “Our Father,” entitled Abba: Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer. In it she says “Love is a grave and ruthless passion, unlimited in self-giving and unlimited in demand….May all my contacts and relationships, my struggles and temptations, thoughts, dreams, and desires be colored by this loving reverence.”—a reflection upon “hallowed be thy name” as “the first response of the praying soul.”  She goes on to point out our need for humility, and by golly I have been humbled over and over enough in middle age to see this point clearly (and yet somehow still question and doubt and wonder at these words): “Thus the four words of this petition can cover, criticize, and reinterpret the whole of our personal life; cleansing it from egoism, orienting it toward reality, and reminding us that our life and work are without significance, except insofar as they glorify God to whom nothing is inadequate though everything is dear.”

Equally on the bedside table is  James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk.  In it there’s a moment that stopped me cold: “Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.”

In both these approaches to humanity there is centrally love—the love which has made us, which continues to make us. The reality of which Underhill speaks is our reality as much as it might have been hers, in a time post-WWI, in the early 20th century. Baldwin grasps a core element, a consideration of the human spirit which rings true today as well—that indifference is the true villain of our lives in the 21st century just as much as it was in the 20th. Indifference is what drives an empty reality.

I have certainly felt both love and terror—sometimes both at once. Baldwin’s statement inhabits what I know in my bones, but put together he and Underhill have reminded me about looking toward what God has placed within, and shakes me out of my doldrums, out of my dull stupefaction too easy given the state of our world, never mind the deep challenges each of us face daily. I hold you dear, beloved; do the same for someone else.

Intention

Trying to look at everyone with new eyes, with the eyes of God. I don’t mean that in a trite way, in the generalized “call if you need me” but then not really pull through kind of way. I mean this in a radical way: looking to someone I loathe or struggle with and seeing the arm of God wrapped around him or her and considering what it is that God can see I can’t. God nurtures all.

It’s not that God doesn't incite or instigate or inspire or create change in the hearts of the worst—that’s happening, too. I’m trying to figure out my place in helping that along, in bringing goodness to the world. Admonish the sinner. Instruct the ignorant. To not know is the Latin base of this word  ignorant—so many do not know. I do not know—I cannot possibly know all that comes with the suffering in this world. I do know that I suffer, members of my family and my friends suffer, and when I am compassionate, and suffer with them, meet them where they are, I come to know that all over the world there is more of the same, and that different souls take on the suffering in different ways.

I spend time looking at people now and again—not stalking them, just gazing when the time is right, like on the bus or in line somewhere waiting for something. We’re all waiting for something, after all. If you look at someone’s eyes when they’re speaking, you can catch a glimpse of soul, of that unnameable thing that makes the person, the body, be. It’s easy to value that in those we love or get along with, though I’ll admit it’s equally easier to take that life-force for granted. My intention this year is to pay attention to that, to look into others’ eyes, to see them as souls caught in this living experience, just like me. To wonder what will come of seeing souls in this way and what will join us together now and evermore.