Please Remember

A few years ago, en route from Basel, Switzerland to northern Germany, I spent a day in Strasbourg, France, visiting the beautiful Gothic cathedral I had fallen in love with in an art history class in college. I spent hours walking around the outside of the church, gazing at the portals with their exquisite sculpture, each figure a unique mix of the personal, the holy, and the quirky. Several times that afternoon, people approached, paused for a second, aimed their camera at the portal, walked on. How odd, I thought, they will see where they’ve been only after they’re no longer there.

Judging by an article in the New York Times Magazine on July 1, the problem of not being present for your own experience is even more pervasive than I’d thought. In an article called “Timehop,” a young man named Daniel Kolitz explains that he’s worried, because he’s having trouble remembering the details of his life. If something isn’t directly in front of him, he says, it doesn’t exist. All the iPhone photos and status updates he’s made over the years aren’t helping. That’s why he likes a new app called Timehop. It culls your photos and social media posts and gives you a record of your own life. Timehop, says the author, has “become a key part of the routine by which I try to restore my sense of self.”

My friends, that’s scary. If you need a technology tool to sort through evidence of your years on Earth, which other technology tools have amassed, giving you, in the end, a picture of your life, then you’re not living.

If we don’t have our memories, we are jetsam in our own lives. We float around from experience to experience, with each smell, sound, kiss, tear, infatuation, and jealousy bouncing off our psyches as the rain bounces off a tin roof. We are superficial, depthless. How can you fall in love if you have no memory? How can you raise a child if you can’t recall what worked and didn’t work in the way you were raised? Without memory, our life does not happen to us; it happens to our devices.

This blog, then, is a plea to build memory. Please:

  1. Pause in front of something beautiful, interesting, or potentially memorable and, before snapping a photo, spend at least one full moment just absorbing it.
  2. Pause once or twice a day and look up at the sky. Describe this absolutely singular sky to yourself.
  3. When you do take a photo, ask yourself what, in particular, you’re wishing to remember about this moment.
  4. Memorize a poem!
  5. The next time you take a walk, stand still before something (anything), gaze at it for a while, then close your eyes or turn your back and try to picture it exactly how it is. Then have another look to check your accuracy.

Whatever you do, please remember.

What I’m Reading

Everything Is Illuminated. This was the first novel of then 24-year-old Jonathan Safran Foer. It’s a braid consisting of (1) the narrator’s journey to Ukraine in search of the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis, (2) letters to the narrator from his Ukrainian translator, Alex, who speaks a form of English he seems to get by choosing synonyms from the thesaurus (when Alex writes of pretending to sleep, he says that he tries “to counterfeit that I am reposing”), and (3) the story of the narrator’s family’s Jewish shtetl from 1791 through the beginning of World War II.  There are many searches going on in this book, and parts read like a kind of a Ukrainian-American magical realism. I’m appreciating it more than liking it.

A Savory Moment

Herb walk in the Florence Shelly Wetlands Preserve, guided by herbologist and homeopath Peeka Trenkle. A young teenage girl is among the group, there with her mother. She starts adorning herself with the plants we learn about. We encounter cleaver, a trailing plant with sticky stems. Peeka says that you can make a poultice of it to treat skin ailments. She passes the plant along the line of walkers, so we can examine it. When everyone’s had a look, the girl takes it back and drapes it around her neck and shoulders, so it clings to her t-shirt like elaborate embroidery.

Things my mother told me to do… that I still do:

 

  1. Always close a book when you’ve finished reading and put a bookmark in it. If you leave your book face down and sprawled open, you’ll damage the spine.
  2. Don’t put the milk carton, ketchup bottle, mayonnaise jar, etc. on the dining room table. Transfer the contents to a bowl and put the bowl on the table.
  3. If somebody is still sitting at the table and eating, sit with them till they’ve finished.
  4. Don’t scratch your private places in public.
  5. Don’t pick the flowers in the neighbor’s garden without asking permission.
  6. Separate the whites and the colors when you do your laundry.
  7. Give your seat on the bus to an older person.

Things my mother told me to do… that I now ignore:

  1. Don’t lick your plate.
  2. A nice girl never lets a boy know how much she likes him.
  3. Nice girls don’t show their emotions.
  4. Don’t just sniff; blow your nose.
  5. Don’t drink right out of the milk/orange juice carton.
  6. You know, the birds aren’t really talking to you.

What advice did your mother give you? And how are you doing with following it?

Wishing America Could March Like This

Vast Forward

Toyi-toyi—the protest dance of South Africa.

I heard about it last week from an American friend who’s currently living in South Africa. He was responding to a frustrated post I wrote on Facebook about the lack of fervent, committed, regular protest in the U.S. in the face of daily assaults on justice, fairness, diplomacy, and common decency. Toyi-toyi—that’s the way South Africans protest, he said.

I looked it up.

Here’s how you toyi-toyi: you jog up and down, bringing your knees up high. You hold your left hand in front of you, as if bearing a shield. Your right hand carries an imaginary sword and pumps the air in time with your feet. And the words—the words are whatever you want them to be, but they will most certainly express the indignation that’s at the root of your complaint and a fierce demand for your rights. Here’s a video of a black South African teaching a white South African how to do it.

I watched this and a few other toyi-toyi videos for a while and I could hardly contain myself. For an hour or so, I was convinced that a dance like this was the way to get Americans engaged in fighting for our country. Toyi-toyi combines outrage, community spirit, a united voice, and energizing movement. You could stand on the Washington Mall toyi-
toyi’ing or you could jog down the street toward Congress together.

Of course, my focus for many years, expressed in the organization I founded, Radical Joy for Hard Times, and the subject of my new book (coming in September) is finding a way to express beauty and joy in hard times. Toyi-toyi is impassioned  Movement moving forward. It confronts, but it also celebrates the power of people confronting together. It acknowledges the worst even as it mounts a determination not to succumb to that worst thing. I’d say it’s joyful. I wish we could do it here.

What I’m Reading

Eva Saulitis, Becoming Earth. Saulitis, a wildlife biologist who studied orcas in Alaska, started writing the essays in this book when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010 at the age of 45. Three years later, as she chronicles in the essay called “When What I Most Feared Came to Pass,” the cancer returned—metastasized, terminal. This is no peppy, positive, pink-ribbon book. It is the grit of a woman who spent her life wading as deeply as she possibly could into the muck and froth and gale of the natural world and kept doing so as her body transformed. Her journey with cancer is instructed by her encounters with nature: a deer nibbling kelp, holes in trees, falling golden birch leaves, a crippled calf. From them she gleans the holes in her own life, she grabs a moment of vitality, she mourns the loss of her own hair. Saulitis died in 2016. This book is not depressing. It’s actually not even sad. It’s dark, but in the way deer bones in a wood are dark, the way fungus on a tree is dark. It’s gorgeous-dark.

A Savory Moment

Saturday morning. Woke up at 10 minutes till 6 to a gentle rain falling. I went downstairs and made myself a cup of tea and got back into bed. Andy still sleeping beside me, my book, the hot tea, the rain, the day so fresh and early I was absolved even of asking myself to start getting things accomplished. Bliss.

How Lilacs Can Save Your Life

The motto for this website is “Grabbing the Great Now from the tiny now.” That refers to my conviction that what makes life worth living is noticing the unexpected moments in which the world extends an invitation and we say Yes and grab it.

It’s especially important to grab the Great Now in times of stress and sorrow.

Today I want to thank a lilac bush for offering delight in a difficult moment.

On Friday morning, my husband had to go to the hospital for unexpected surgery on his bladder (he has bladder cancer). After only one hour’s sleep the night before, when we finally tumbled into our bed after returning from a local emergency room, I drove us two hours up to Ithaca, NY, where his urologist has his practice.

As we got out of the car and walked up to the hospital entrance on a cloudy early morning, we were frightened and sleep-deprived, and Andy was very uncomfortable. Just before entering the building, we passed a blooming lilac bush. I insisted we stop. I drew down one of the branches to our faces, took a whiff, and passed it to Andy.

That in-breath bore more than the fragrance of the flowers. It carried the assurance that, no matter what is going on in a human life, nature has a will of its own. That scent declared that lilacs don’t care if they’re in a royal garden or outside a hospital; when it’s time to bloom, they bloom with all their might. The lilacs told us that life is always going on—fiercely, wildly, indomitably.

Those lilacs gave us a moment of joy on a very difficult morning.

Thank you, lilacs.

Momentary Sanctuaries

Sanctuaries are places of refuge where a sense of the sacred emanates so powerfully that those who enter feel infused by that essence.

But occasionally we can experience sanctuary not as a place we enter but as a moment that enters us.

Last weekend, April 22, I had the privilege of co-leading a service with Stephen Blackmer at his Church of the Woods in Canterbury, New Hampshire. When Harper’s Magazine published an article about Steve, “Priest of the Woods,” a couple of years ago, about half a dozen of my friends sent it to me and urged me to get in touch with him.

I did, and he has been a friend of Radical Joy for Hard Times ever since. Recently, I decided to visit him and attend one of his services, and to my delight, he invited me to join him for the Earth Day service.

Several years ago, when Steve started hearing voices telling him he was to become a priest, he resisted mightily. He was an agnostic, a forester, an environmental activist, and  he was not interested. But the voice would not be still, and in the course of exploring where it led him, he has carved out a beautiful liturgy and worship affiliated with the Episcopal Church, yet centered on the natural world. The prayers and reflections are related to nature. Every service includes time for the congregants to spend alone in contemplation in the woods or by one of the deep, mossy pools, and when they regather, they can share what they discovered. (Jesus never went to the temple to pray, Steve points out, he went to the mountains and desert.)

As for me, I grew up in the Episcopal church, but I have not associated with that religion or any other for many years. Still, I am fascinated with the spiritual search in all its forms, with the quest—and the questers—for that which is beyond the ordinary, that which connects all beings, that which transcends reason.

I drove up to New Hampshire on Saturday, and Steve took me for a tour of his church. Truly, this church is not in the woods, it is the woods.

I love being shown a special place by a person who loves it, and this walk would have been a treat if we had just walked around and said nothing. But as Steve and I walked, we would stop occasionally and have these marvelous little dialogues:

Is nature sacred?
Or does it bear the sacred?
What was going on in your life when you started hearing those
voices?
What does it mean to say that nature is alive?
I think this pool tolerates, but does not invite.

In those moments, with ice still coating the black north-facing wetlands and wood frogs awakening in the warmer southern ponds, with sun dappling the hemlock woods, and periodic pauses to delve into questions like this, I thought, This moment is a sanctuary. It is a place of peace, beauty, and delight. Its depth is bottomless.

Momentary sanctuaries can pop up at any time. The trick is to catch them and marvel.

What are some recent Momentary Sanctuaries in your life?

(Photo above: Rev. Stephen Blackmer (center), Bishop Rob Hirschfeld, Bishop of New Hampshire (right), and me at the newly blessed Church of the Woods well, where the congregation made an act of beauty.

 

 

Imagining the Incognito Window

The other day, I was having trouble logging into the Radical Joy for Hard Times on-line Quickbooks account, so I called the support number. After helping me, the tech person suggested that the next time I logged on, I should use an “incognito window.”

An incognito window! Immediately I was intrigued. “What’s an incognito window?” I asked.

She told me it’s a way of logging in to a website that instantly erases your browsing history. It would be useful in this case, because my previous efforts to log in would be inaccessible, and I could start the process afresh. I tried it and it worked.

Still curious, I googled incognito window. Turns out it’s a useful tool if you’re sharing a computer with your partner and want to do some on-line birthday shopping without leaving a trail of the enticing presents you’ve been considering and hence giving away the surprise. With an incognito window you can check your social own media sites to see what other people see when they view your page. Or you can google yourself to find out what others see when they google you. Some people use it to look at porn without anyone finding out.

But the phrase “incognito window” is so evocative. What do you picture when you hear the term? I imagine myself staring out a special kind of window, perhaps from a second-story flat in Amsterdam or Brussels, and being invisible to those on the street. Or maybe a person who stands in an incognito window looks entirely different than they usually do. Maybe a  middle-aged white woman would look like a young Latino to anyone who happened to glance in. Maybe someone framed in an incognito window would turn into a superhero or a version of themselves in a different time period or their own avatar.

Or maybe it’s the world that looks different when I view it from an incognito window. At any rate, I think we all need at least one in our homes.

(Painting above: Woman at Window by Eastman Johnson)

 

 

Noticing Fathers and Their Children

Last Saturday I took the bus from my home in northeastern Pennsylvania into New York City to meet my friend Eugene Hughes, who was in town for a few days from London to teach a workshop. As I walked from the subway to the restaurant where we were meeting for brunch, my attention was drawn several times to fathers out and about with their children: a father and two little kids looking in the window of a toystore; a father and daughter, about 9 years old, having an animated conversation about their dog; a father pushing an infant in a stroller. My own father was a workaholic and alcoholic and I never got that kind of time with him, and I am always so touched when I see a father  and his daughter or son casually and comfortably enjoying each other’s company.

Eugene and I had brunch on the Upper West Side, then walked across the park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the David Hockney retrospective. On the way, even as Eugene and I talked intensely, I noticed and admired more fathers and children.

We arrived at the Met and made our way to the exhibition. And then, as I was looking at one of Hockney’s more recent paintings, a large Yorkshire landscape painted on six canvases, the subject of my attention boomeranged back to me! A father and his son, aged about 13, who had also been looking at the painting, approached me.

The father wanted to know if they could ask me a question. Of course, I said. He said that he and his son were having a discussion about whether Hockney had painted each of the six canvases separately and put them together, or whether he’d painted one whole canvas and then cut it up. The son was of the latter opinion.

Together the three of us studied the painting closely and in silence for a few minutes. I told the son that I thought was right, because the foliage from one panel to another didn’t quite match up. We all considered the painting again, more in unison this time, and agreed. They walked on in one direction and I in another.

All morning I had been touched by fathers and children and then a father and child reached out to touch me directly. Such synchronicity is so sweet.

Photo above: A Closer Wind Tunnel, February-March (2006), by David Hockney, now at th Metropolitan Museum, New York City.

Watching Nature Breathe

To me, one of the most engrossing things to get seduced by is what I call “watching nature breathe”. This practice simply entails sitting or standing still, focusing on a place where the stable and the temporal meet, and then just waiting to see what happens.

The possibilities for such enchantments exist all over the place—and not just in the countryside. For example: you can watch the morning sun gently sink over the face of a rock, through the trees in a woodland, or even down the side of your house. You can get absorbed in how a breeze riffles long grasses. You can gaze at a single bough on a tree on a spring day and see what birds and insects come to land in it. You can witness clouds and sky interacting in the windows of a skyscraper.

Here’s a little video I made the other day as I watched nature breathe in the form of water flowing over a patch of ice in a hemlock forest.

8 Tips to Survive Hard Times

I’m a member of the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation of Binghamton, New York. Once or twice a year, I lead the service. Last Sunday, I did a service called “Creative Endurance.” The sermon was based on the extraordinary voyage of Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 in the schooner Endurance.

The crew set out in August 1914 to sail to Antarctica and then cross the continent. However, their ship was trapped in pack ice and eventually sank. They then had to make their way overland on foot, sail 800 miles in lifeboats, and finally some of the crew hiked over glacial peaks to reach a remote island whaling station. They arrived home in England more than two years after they embarked—and every person survived. (A great book about the journey is The Endurance by Caroline Alexander, which also includes photos by the ship photographer, Frank Hurley.)

On Sunday I told the story about the voyage and then offered 8 Tips for Surviving the Hard Times that I made up from the story:

1. Persist—but not foolishly. The mistake many polar explorers made was pressing on even after they began to suspect it wasn’t safe to do so. Shackleton was determined to protect his crew. That was his first priority. He didn’t achieve his goal, but he lived to try again.

2. An open sea lane is not necessarily a path to freedom. The crew of the Endurance learned that a sea lane would open tantalizingly in the morning sun, only to slam shut again at night when the water froze. When we’re in desperate circumstances, we’re tempted to grab any possible avenue toward freedom. That’s not always a good idea.

3. “Look to the day ahead.” That was Shackleton’s motto. If today isn’t working out so well, start planning how you’ll respond tomorrow.

4. Stay busy—but with meaning. On the Endurance, Shackleton made sure each member of the crew was assigned to do the kinds of jobs best suited to him. Sometimes when we’re having trouble, our anxiety persuades us we’re capable of doing absolutely nothing—or that we have to stay busy every moment of the day. It’s important to do the things that have to be done, but also to do things that are important to do for our sanity—like weed the flower garden, meditate, go to an art exhibit, call a friend.

5. Look for what’s wonderful in others. Shackleton chose his crew not just for their seafaring skills and sense of adventure, but for some uncommon reasons as well. One man remembered how bewildered he was when he came for his interview and Shackleton asked him if he could sing. The captain wanted people on the journey who would bring the best of themselves out, in bad times as well as good ones, and he actively looked for those qualities.

6. Take smart risks. Shackleton made tough decisions that saved lives. He risked staying with the ship. He risked abandoning it. He risked marching ahead. He risked halting the march and setting up a camp. Each risk required a different kind of strategy.

7. Acknowledge when something isn’t working, abandon it, and immediately set a new goal. The day after they had to abandon the sinking Endurance, Shackleton said to the crew: “Ship and stores have gone—so now we’ll go home.” The original plan wasn’t going to be feasible, so they set their sights on a new one.

8. Know when it’s time for a treat. On February 29, 1916, in honor of Leap Year Day, the Endurance crew was treated to three full meals and a hot drink. When we’re suffering, we think we don’t deserve treats, but that’s when we need them most of all. They can be simple, spontaneous, inexpensive—but they can provide a few minutes of joy in a tough time.

Photo of ice: Steven Kazlowski / Barcroft

The difference between listening and hearing

I know a lot of people who are smart, funny, creative, and in many ways fascinating and who simply don’t know how to have a conversation. It’s a situation I find quite painful.

Here’s what happens: When I toss out a story, idea, or opinion to them, it seems simply to drop at their feet. They don’t even try to pick it up. Often, after I have tossed that conversational ball, there’s an awkward pause as the other person considers what to say next. Then, unless I fill the chasm of silence, they will just carry on with what they want to say, and it usually has nothing whatsoever to do with my offering.

These people are hearing, but not listening. Listening is a game of catch. I say something and then you respond. Then I respond to you. It’s actually pretty easy. Here are a few tips I myself have picked up over the years from the great listeners I know:

1—When the other person is talking, look for enticing little tidbits you’d like to know more about and then ask them about that. There’s always something.
2—Listen for a  point of view that you agree with or disagree with, then venture that.
3—Mirror back to the other person what you hear. This does not mean analyzing what they say or giving advice. It just means letting them know you’ve really heard them.
4—Pay attention to how something they say elides with something that arises in you… and when you speak, pointedly make the connection.

In a great conversation, the people engaged lose themselves in the ocean of topics and ideas. You hop on one and ride it for a while to see where it goes, and eventually it slides up close to another topic that you can ride for a while.