It is really not out there...

I really loved this........

Anne Lamott - Facebook Post 6/10/13

It is really not out there, whatever it is you are looking for.

I hate this! So resent this! I want my money back!

Yet this is the good news and the bad news, that you can't achieve, lease, buy or date what you are looking for. Nothing out there will fill the holes inside you.

I am watching a couple of dear friends on book tour, who are with major publishing houses, who are every unpublished writer's dream come true– earlier books that became best sellers, big reviews, loyal followers. Their books are the best work of their lives, major accomplishments, and yet, did not quite take off.

So my writer friends's hearts are heavy and they have been made to feel sort of like–failures. That's really the word, and they really have. It's so crazy! Beautiful books by highly regarded artists–it's all hopeless. It's Glengarry Glen Ross out there. Coffee is for closers!

Mamas, don't let your children grow up to be writers.

Wait, wait, I don't really mean that, because creation and discipline and radical self-care WILL bring you what you seek. Creativity–commitment to the creative spirit–is medicine.

Discipline is the path to freedom. This is another thing I hate, as I am drawn to sloth and over-consumption, and squandering whatever time I have left. But it is true, I promise. Discipline frees our spirits.

(Don't get me wrong. Naps are also divinely inspired.)

Radical self-care is what we've been longing for, desperate for, our entire lives–friendship with our own hearts. I am going to put on clothes that I feel really pretty in today. I am not going to make myself get exercise, because my feet hurt. I am going to put lotion on my darling, jiggly thighs, and drink lots of water, and take a nap with the dogs, and take my grandson to church so he can be with his colleagues and I can be with mine. I am going to hug and kiss everyone at St. Andrew to within an inch of their lives.

I'm going to buy a copy of both of my writer friends' books, and foist them into someone's hand, because they are both beautiful books, and they reflect well on me, and the people I give them to will REALLY owe me now. This is the most important thing! But mostly I'm going to do it because this will make me so happy.

I am going to email my writer friends and tell them how incredibly proud I am of them; no mother could be prouder. And I am going to remind them that they are my big super Spider-Man girls. What gorgeous books!

Giving is what we are starving for; not getting.

If you want to have loving feelings today, do some really loving things.

Trying to get the world and the public to give you these feelings of huge love and fullness is like trying to get Dick Cheney to grade your value as a human being.

It is not out there. The world does not have it to give. But we do. This is going to be a magical day.

Thoughts On Aging

I'm an old man! I look it, at times I feel it. I just don't know how to think about it. I'm not “getting older” or “aging”, at least in the sense that the actuality is approaching, is somewhere in the future, although soon. It's here. Indeed, it's been here for a while.

When I say that I don't know how to think about it what I believe that means is I don't know how to make peace with it…….to settle into it………accept it…….make it part of my world. I say “I don't feel old”, or more to the point, “I don't feel 68”, quickly followed by wondering “what does - or should - being 68 feel like? And that's fair, at least as far as it goes. I doubt that I ever consciously formed an opinion of what 68 would feel like, although I probably could have described what someone who is that age would look like. And oddly, it still surprises me when I look in the mirror that I look so much older than I expected. Along the way when I was younger than today, I knew people who were "approaching 70” and I suppose that to my younger self they looked “old”. And that may say as much as is factual about whatever consideration I gave to the matter at those times. I knew very little - if anything - about the interior lives of those people, except to the extent that what they said or did revealed their thoughts and / or attitudes. Some, for example, gave up driving at night, while others traveled less, settled in and seemed ready to accept, perhaps even welcome, a more constricted life. Their minds seemed inclined to mirror their bodies, and to demand less, to accept less, just because that's how it was. Knees and hands ached, hearing was less acute, vision for reading was declining or gone. But of what they thought - really, felt - about these things, I had no idea.

In truth, it's less that I don't know how to think about being old and more that I just don't want it - don't want to be old. I'm not ready. There's so much more I want to see, taste, do, know, learn. This feeling that my time is limited is frightening, and annoying……..inconvenient. I don't want to accommodate myself to it, if that means accept it and be less, want less, accept less.

Morning Prayer

Lord, in the quiet of this morning hour I come to you for peace. Give me the power to see the world through love-filled eyes. Help me to be patient, gentle, wise; to see beyond what seems to be and to know your children as you know them. And so naught but good in anyone behold. Make deaf my ears to slander that is told. Silence my tongue to all that is unkind. Let me so kindly be, so full of cheer, that all I meet may feel your presence near. Oh, clothe me in your beauty; this I pray. Give me the strength to do your will, just for today.

Resurrection

Recently, I was listening to a podcast of an episode of "On Being", Krista Tippett's radio show that she describes as "...a spacious conversation — and an evolving media space — about the big questions at the center of human life, from the boldest new science of the human brain to the most ancient traditions of the human spirit." She was talking with Vigen Guroian, who is a professor of religious studies in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Virginia. In the course of the show, Krista described Mr. Guroian's background further and discussed some of his published works. From one on of them, she shared the following story about gardening and resurrection that I found to be both touching and enlightening:

"Several summers ago, my children found two turtles and put them in the vegetable garden. During a thaw the next February, as I was digging up the soggy soil where the peas go, I lifted a heavy mound with my shovel, and then another. The two turtles had burrowed down for winter sleep, and I had rudely awakened them too soon. So I carried them to a corner of the garden where I would not disturb them and dug them in again. When my wife said that she feared the turtles might be dead, I said I did not think so (though I wasn't as sure as I sounded). I insisted that in spring, they would come up. And they did in Easter week.

Lilies and hyacinths signify the resurrection, and I can understand why. But I have a pair of turtles that plant themselves in my garden each fall like two gigantic seeds and rise on Easter with earthen crowns upon their humbled heads. With the women at the tomb, I marvel."

From "Inheriting Paradise" by Vigen Guroian.

What We Nurture

In a recent show of On Being, Krista Tippett engaged in a long and wide-ranging discussion with Sylvia Boorstein. The Jewish-Buddhist teacher, mother, and grandmother speaks about loving and teaching children in a complex world. Unsurprisingly, she observes that, no matter what we try to impart through teaching, our children are most likely to grow up to mimic what we do and how we live in their own lives. Thus, if we want to find a way to nurture their spiritual lives, it is essential, then, that we nurture our own inner lives and growth. The show can be found here: http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/what-we-nurture/, where one can also hear Dr. Boorstein reading the following poem, which she identifies as one of her favorite pieces and that she says she always has with her when she travels. For me, it too speaks about What We Nurture.

Keeping Quiet

by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve 
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth, 
let's not speak in any language; 
let's stop for one second, 
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment 
without rush, without engines; 
we would all be together 
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea 
would not harm whales 
and the man gathering salt 
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars, 
wars with gas, wars with fire, 
victories with no survivors, 
would put on clean clothes 
and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused 
with total inactivity. 
Life is what it is about; 
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded 
about keeping our lives moving, 
and for once could do nothing, 
perhaps a huge silence 
might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves 
and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us 
as when everything seems dead 
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve 
and you keep quiet and I will go.

—from Extravagaria (translated by Alastair Reid, pp. 27-29, 1974)

Ambushed by Truth

For me, this poem is a reminder of how easily and often I forget the truth that, like all of my human brothers and sisters, I am a child of God, unique and perfect in my essence, needing only to share my love - my truth - to manifest that essence for myself and for the world.

Still
by A. R. Ammons

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

Let's make s'mores!

Here in New Jersey, it's been a tough winter so far, mostly because we've had several storms in a row with lots of snow. Outside my office window, it's piled higher along the roadway than I recall seeing in a long time, and summer seems so, so far away. But it will come, and when it does we need to have a campfire..... nice sized, and some logs to sit on, or lean against. There should be a few guitars, and at least a few songs..........preferably ones we can sing along with........but not Kumbaya. And we should tell stories. It doesn’t matter about what. And jokes.......good, bad, even groaners would do. Most importantly, we should laugh.....even be a bit silly.......and stretch our legs, lean back, feel the warmth of the fire, and the group, and the moment. Later, we’ll sleep, listening to the breeze on the canvas of the tent, and the forest bedding down around us. You should come.........we’ll have fun.