beautify

“Love of beauty is taste... The creation of beauty is art.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, ch. 3


1

Years ago, I had a friend named Robert Park. He was an elderly neighbor, and I would run errands and shovel snow for him; then we would enjoy great conversations over coffee in his very cluttered and book-filled living room. He was originally from Cambridge, Massachusetts- and he pronounced his name without sounding the R’s. Invariably, we would talk about politics. With exasperation, he would say, “It just gets worser all the time; worser and worser.” It was difficult to completely agree with him, wishing so much to follow my aspirations. Even though he’s gone now, I continue to muse about his sad admittance. Is it true? If it is, would I start saying this? These are brutish and grim times, all around. Globally and personally. While I flail at my dubious career and strive against the brink of losing my housing, I remain at heart an artist who thinks about hopeful aesthetics. For a long time, I’ve been crafting things that accentuate beauty in the midst of ugly times. There is profound worth, understated as it may be, in beautifying the commonplace and the daily components of living. Having inherited aesthetic tastes from my family, I think of them when I create things and decorate, using good materials. Cooking and baking, I choose my ingredients with care, and set out meals as I was raised to do. Presenting sensitively made objects and foods to others is a way to demonstrate compassion, even if it is modest and simple.

2

Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that “beauty is a wayside sacrament.” Tangible signs of invisible grace are to be respected, and that itself is a reverence for aesthetics. Indeed, beautification and its appreciation directly affect the life of the spirit. Moreover, in such destructive and violent times, spiritual health is all the more imperative. I am well aware of the greater need for balance, eloquence, good reading, and sundry reminders of the sacred now more than ever. Recently, in the Boston Athenaeum manuscripts room, I read the words of Philip Doddridge (18th century) which include: “The care of the soul is the one thing needful, because without it you cannot avoid a state of eternal misery,” adding that- as we all know- misery can be aggravated if we aren’t paying attention to the health of our spirits. Of the topic of the One Thing Needful, as coined in the Bible, Ezra Stiles Gannett (19th century) wrote that it would be a living and active personal faith. Gannett observed that a conscientious and practical faith provides foundations for our pursuits and our work, as it can:

“...endue a person with a divine spirit, can clothe them with an invincible energy, can empower them to go on their course rejoicing through good report and through evil report, through labor and sickness and penury, through loss of friendship and of home even, till death closing this scene shall introduce them to the reward of their faith and patience. The feebleness of our faith prevents our experiencing or illustrating the full efficacy of religion. O Lord, increase our faith; that it may triumph over every obstacle, and may preserve us in obedience to thy holy will, and in hope of thine everlasting favor.”

Handmade box, which I also lined, for my typewritten manuscripts.

In my pursuits of continuing my artisanry and active faith, while desperately trying to find a place to live, I’ve decided to keep on being creative. The life of purging, packing, searching, and going to work amount to a wall of hurry-up-and-wait. Writing needn’t cease to be important; in fact, my journals and thoughts have increased as sheltering venues. Having already packed up most of my things, various loose papers accompany me through my daily rounds. I thought I’d design and create folios made with beautiful materials, for carrying and organizing my projects.

Large sheets of Tassotti paper which arrived damaged, and my attempt to remedy the paper.

Months ago, I had purchased large sheets of Tassotti paper which had arrived from Europe damaged by the shipping. The sheets were meant to be for bookbinding projects, but creased and dented as they were, the paper seemed perfect for “welding” via adhesives to rigid chipboard stock- though I still needed to flatten the damaged paper as well as possible. Trimming and designing the folios, the nautical motifs looked all the more appropriate, as I am striving to persevere in forward motions. Matching the colors of the paper, I used brown bookcloth and ribbon which were among my conservation and binding supplies. Reinforcing the folios with strong and acid-free components, I lined the interiors with thick, handmade paper: blue for the ocean and sky. I tried two different sizes, and made a few extras with an additional nautical-themed paper.

__________________________________________

Making these, and giving some as gifts, further reminded me about my love of beautifying the ordinary. Ironically, devotional books and Bibles tend to be made with drab covers and poor-quality bindings. I remake these, too, since I regularly carry such books with me, and tend to keep them for long periods of time- often personalizing their structures.

Sacred texts with sanctified bindings.

3

My toolbox which I use every day in the Archives, and I lined the trays with handmade paper.

About as ironic as drab-looking production bookbindings that are filled with inspiring words, I currently experience more stability at work than at home. The latter was always the other way around. These intensely anxious times tinge and threaten the most routine of activities. When my errands cause me to drive along pretty residential streets that are lined with neat houses and tidy lawns, my grief surfaces with the intensity of an exile. Surely a broadbrush observation, I see an ocean of haves from the excluded vantage point of a have-not. The gentrified-out are driven east of Eden. And far, far too many have much less than even my modest means and employment. So very many are homeless, subjected to misery and injustices that are unconscionable. I wonder what tourists think, when they see people sleeping in doorways and along the sidewalks of this now-blatantly stratified small city.

While I’ve been pushed to the brink, I also bear witness to the present landscape along with the years that led to these prohibitive conditions. Mere observations with open eyes reveal the sicknesses of these times. But alongside sensitivity and acts of compassion, mental strength is vital. But we must also attend to the immediacy of our midst, particularly as it involves matters such as housing and sustenance. While distracting myself with slivers of creativity in a wilderness of undetectable mercy, my thoughts ponder the question of what to do when something beautiful comes to an end. It has long been in my nature to preserve, to restore, to reinforce. Perhaps the wider question is to consider that which should be designed to last.

il dolce far niente

“I'm going nowhere
And I'm going to take my time;
All the questions in the world
I can leave in my mind.
I'm waiting on the sunshine;
The sunshine.”

~ Sixpence None the Richer, Waiting on the Sun

1

Writing daily in a journal as I’ve been doing for many years, I’ve come to use my dated entries as an archival chronicle. As with most any manuscript archive, the journal entries are first-person and in real time, bit by bit amounting to something encyclopedic. Surely I’m doing more writing than reviewing with my journals, though milestone anniversaries are what send me back into my own words past. Often, they are very interesting to read. I’ve used journaling to write through events in order to try making sense of what I witness and experience. The more descriptive, the better. The arrival of the spring season reminded me that the pandemic has cycled into its second year. I re-read what I wrote in February 2020 and because the writing was in real-time, I was using terminology used back then, when many thought of this as a passing “flu panic,” along with describing the intense uncertainty of the extent of things to come. My entry on March 13th describes the national state-of-emergency and the frenzied supermarket-ransacking that followed. That was last spring.

11 March 2020 : "It's as though horizons are closing."

Now a year later, I’m comparing then and now, remembering my first weeks of working from home (which has become much smoother, quite normal, and remarkably productive). Throughout these times, I’ve become aware of the accompanying pandemic inertia that has also become part of life. Last year, because I was struggling to describe it, I referred to my sudden, reluctant, and stifling boredom produced by quarantining, curfews, closures, and no-travel regulations. The overpowering boredom was something as unexpected as it was unfamiliar. Obviously during my on-the-clock workplace hours, I’ve never had to scrounge for projects and duties, and I’ve been grateful to have that constructive framework to stay focused. But outside of those hours, the old compulsion to redeem the time combined with contending with uncharacteristic confinement. After the Philosophical Society conference to which I had been invited last year at Oxford University was cancelled, I had to cancel my travel plans along with scores of people like me around the world having to cancel all kinds of plans of their own. The conference seminars were later held via Zoom- and I did “attend” and participate, albeit beginning the days at 3am Eastern Time. Having that connection gave me needed energy to continue my own studies at home, fueling my insistence upon getting through the pandemic with more knowledge and insight to share than before. I have also continued teaching. Studying has been more of a nourishing means than ever, during these times.

All the while, these times have forced self-confrontations of varying degrees with the incidental aspects of doing nothing. It’s easier for some than for others. Descriptions of that state of being which Italian-speakers call “the sweetness of nothing-doing” has found its way (ironically) to more computer newsfeeds lately. I remember how when someone would ask me, “whatcha doin’?” and I’d answer with “Oh, nothing, really,” the connotation was one of embarrassment at the admission of not being constantly constructive in every sphere of life. The covid era has everyone reckoning with the passage and the uses of time. A culture that increasingly celebrated “extreme” sports, raising the bar with every physical fad, has quieted the quarantined to consider simpler pastimes- including baking, sewing, puzzles, writing, absorbing the outdoors safely. And doing nothing- just being. Simplicity, for many, has become as much choice as necessity. I spoke by phone with a colleague and friend about the recognized value of not-doing. Her response included the merits of simply sitting outside, and that “doing nothing is all right.” It’s a reckoning for my friends, too, as another said, “you know, it’s ok to be bored.” This was journal-worthy, as I’ve never heard anything like this before.

One of the last places I’d expect to see a celebration of nothing-doing is the industrially high-minded Wall Street Journal. This recent March 16th the WSJ published an article about the connections between accomplishment and doing nothing. “Giving your brain a rest” means giving yourself unstructured time to regroup, gather thoughts, and rejuvenate. Admitting that too easily we turn everything into some kind of competitive task, the author suggests doing something essentially mindless, such as taking solitary walks and just sitting down. “Absorb the scenery in silence,” wrote the journalist Annemarie Dooling. I am now more aware of this, and have taken to recollecting with my books closed- or in my own combined way, writing slower in my journal. In appreciation, I’ve become less berating and remorseful about puttering at my writing table and taking aimless bicycle rides. The mind and spirit need to do their own versions of breathing, especially amidst stress. The article quoted a neuroscientist who said, “Rest is one of the most important ways to enhance the neurological flexibility to build the kind of conceptual understanding that is related to identity and purpose.”

2

A cursory online search reveals an abundance of new articles endorsing a “practice” of nothing-doing. The benefits of doing nothing, published by the Erlanger Health Institute, advocates unplugging from technology and “sitting alone in silence” for a while. They also cite the Swedish expression, lagom, which is to say “moderate” oneself (sounding like the way I intersperse some “nothing” with writing). The health institute lures readers by saying that integrating nothingness into our days can reduce stress and boost creativity. I agree, though it would be a conflict in terms to say “I’m going to immerse myself in a state of nothing-doing, in order to be productive.” On a practical level, there are also short “time out” periods, though I’ve never found regulated time-outs to offer enough space for mental meandering. One true and leisurely luxury is to not think about what time it is.

The quotable business school aggregate IvyExec also published an article about the benefits of doing nothing. A more universal appreciation of the Italian “il dolce far niente,” translated as “the pleasantness of doing nothing,” is portrayed as helping multitasking individuals maintain a sustainable pace in their lives. The pandemic has clearly forced reconsideration of how we’ve been doing things, constantly “being busy” to the extent of avoiding healthful stillness and extraneous “screen time.” “Unplugging is difficult,” the article states. “In many ways, it is easier to stay busy than to do nothing.” We are left to wonder about the qualitative aspects of the “busy” of our pre-pandemic compulsions. Further, the article admits how “this culture exalts workaholism,” and that “people feel guilty when they are idle,’ reminding me that I’m far from alone in suddenly having had to deconstruct my breakneck paces. Allowing oneself to do nothing and not feel embarrassed about it, the mind has opportunities to process experiences, make sense of memories, and derive the learning. By our very nature, our imaginations will find ideas and inspirations that may have been smothered under the busyness that we intentionally interrupted.

Lao Tse famously reflected about how a person can accomplish much by not overdoing. His quote is often loosely paraphrased as: “Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.” Having grown up and formed in both European (French) and American (Northeast) cultures, I’ve had my own interior ways of observing the differences and the common points as I found them, amalgamating what I’ve admired along the way. In the U.S., hyperproductivity is the stuff of heroism, and we are identified first by our job titles. Evidently, we are the tasks we do. In western Europe, relaxation is essential- even if it’s simply sitting outside. The articles I’ve found about the merits of stillness point out how the time-honored European custom of “just being idle” is an event in itself that needs nothing else. I’ve always admired how Parisian cafés stay open until late hours, filled with people just sitting with their small coffees (and not in “grab and go” thermal cups) and facing out toward the streets, just being. This is also one of my favorite journaling settings. On this side of the pond, having no utilitarian purpose makes Americans uneasy. Generally speaking, our puritanical selves need to have our dithering tendencies condoned. If constructively doing nothing sounds ironic, so does the idea of not being able to hide from ourselves during our pandemic quarantining. Under the limitations of these times, I’ve been using my paid-time-off to give my musing as much perimeter as I can provide. As weather permits or deters, I’ll choose to perch on a rock along the ocean, the front stoop, or my candlelit desk, and simply be.

3

This time last year, many of us at our jobs and schools heard about a hiatus of a couple of weeks. Then a month. Then more. Then it became realistically impossible to predict a duration. Then the word “hiatus” ceased being used. Much of this world has had to move with moving targets, while we no longer hear about the novel virus and the new normal. Everything has had to change, and it remains to be seen whether there can be any reverting back to “before.” How will our societies be affected in the long term? We are yet to see whether our forced “idling” will permanently become part of how we live our lives, and how the adapting we’ve had to do for our survival will alter us.

Photographic paper processor- with the lights on and doors open.

The other day, I was explaining to a friend that I saw a metaphor in something from my days in the custom photofinishing industry. Handmade color prints were individually imprinted in darkrooms with enlargers, lenses, and easels. The paper had to be carefully carried in a lightproof passthrough box into another completely dark room that included the entry for the paper into a roller-transport developing machine. These machines had two modes: Constant Run, and Automatic Standby. We always used the standby mode, to be energy efficient: when there was no paper in the machine, the rollers would go into an idling standby while the chemicals continued to pump at the regulated temperature. As soon a sheet of photographic paper was fed into the machine, the drives would start roaring at full-tilt, taking the machine out of standby, and running the print all the way through the process- as we used to say- “dry to dry.” This present odyssey has taken many people from constant run to automatic standby, and I’ve been in a state of preparedness to have to return to full perpetual motion as needed.

Stillness also becomes an unlikely way to find solutions and even resolve. “Sitting with one’s fears,” means ceasing the flailing and to visualize better outcomes. It doesn’t have to be quite as rarified as it sounds. I had a neighbor on my block who regularly sat out on the front stoop of her building with a cup of coffee and her everpresent cigarette. Of the latter she would say, “they’re what I’ve got.” This was shorthand for describing how she needed to just think, simply sit with her thoughts, and the cigarettes bought her some time and airspace to be able to ponder. Nowadays it may be easier to find this sort of time, yet the stresses of pandemic life can clutter the sanctified stillness right out of the day. Inhabiting a “holding pattern” is very different from reflective time. And these days demand a distinction between hypervigilance and wise caution. Somewhere, in between rocks and hard places, living and looking forward have to continue reaching up. I’m among very many that have had to acclimate to “bubble” work environments for safety’s sake, stricter physical boundaries, leaning heavily into my creative imagination to positively persist. Off-duty hours have had to comprise healthful idleness, and at best the time spent in solitude becomes an investment toward well-being.

far away on the other side

"The trees that whisper in the evening
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Sing a song of sorrow and grieving
Carried away by a moonlight shadow

Stars move slowly on a silvery night
Far away on the other side"

~ Mike Oldfield, Moonlight Shadow.

Noting contrasts that accompany the sands of time, has become more of an understanding and less of a conflict. Navigating dark nights of the soul produces an acumen with which we can savour our days and broaden our vision. And then, on further reflection it occurs to me the contrasts are rarely quite so hard-edged and extreme as they superficially appear. We photographers are surely aware of the range of fine gradations between what we call "paper white," and a rich black that is the absorption of all colors. At times either brightness or shadows become clear to us, and knowing both sides of the spectrum there comes an appreciation of tones and colors that span and reflect. Experiences of healing, as well as those of grieving, occur to me as fragmented and unpredictable courses which cannot be hurried. Thankfully, transition has varied durations, and that allows for opportunities to acknowledge our lives. Perhaps it’s a bit like looking over travel photos that attest to experiences and context. Re-reading journals often has that effect. Occasionally, as a point of reference, I’ll look at written reflections from a year previous (or even more), to the exact calendar day- even if just to see the time and place of the entry. As it can be on a drive through the old neighborhood, or past the tired old workplace, such landmarks are indeed and fortunately on a very large map. Vivid memories can detrimentally embitter, but instead they can be recollected to draw our gratitude.


In striving and so forcefully desiring to transcend duress, reaching for brighter and calmer paths, something of the darkness does travel alongside. Once more, there is a fine edge between identifying with what was endured, and referring gratefully to the sources of gems and metals brought out of the dark times. Certainly there is more than enough that is best forgotten, giving plenty of space for the moment and confident looking forward, but remembrances of how the dark nights can reshape a soul become worthy souvenirs. Nicholas of Cusa, in the 15th century, wrote that, "to understand the darkness, you need the night-eyes of an owl." Concurrent with our emergence is a sharp awareness of our own luminosity, quite like the frisson of the Emmaus sojourners at the very precise instant they recognized the Stranger at their dining table. It is as though the darkness passes just as we identify the divine spark, and such recollections will reconcile darkness with light. The voyage is replete with visual symbols that serve as signs of what is not readily visible. Emerging from dark nights of grief, and even momentary discouragement, whether protracted or fragmented over time, it becomes possible to refer to our own lunar light. Paradoxically, both leaving behind and reaching ahead are forward movements. The ancient Psalmist had been brought to remember his source of strength as he looked up to the moonlit and sunlit skies alike, as they delineated the mountainous landscape around him.

hiraeth

"What is longing made from?
What cloth is put into it
That is does not wear out with use?

Gold wears out, and silver wears out,
Velvet wears out, and silk wears out,
Yet longing does not wear out.

The moon rises and the sun rises,
The sea rises in vast waves,
But longing never rises from the heart."


~ Welsh poem, 17th century

The ancient language of Wales has given the world its poetic language, including the word hiraeth* which roughly translates as an abiding sense of longing. Not simply a momentary yearning, but to the strength of a sort of homesick longing. Something that is intrinsic to the human spirit. Martin Lloyd-Jones used the word to refer to a consciousness of one being out of their home place and that which is dear to them; he equated this hiraeth to a soul’s yearning for the Divine. And in that context, Saint Augustine’s legendarily penitent restless heart looks more to me like a heart longing for a home place of recognition and acceptance. Home can tangibly manifest as a knowing and unconditional embrace, even more profoundly than as an edifice of bricks and mortar. We long for signs that we belong.


Light sources and shadows live noticeably side by side. When I have endured crises of traumatic loss, the longing followed later, after the stabilization of survival with a quieter yearning to regain my sense of self. But indeed, when what we imagine as our selves has broken to its foundations, the yearning desire is to rebuild- but indeed the new structure will not be the same. It takes time to believe the new will be better. Of course, there need not be crises to set off a profound sense of longing. There can be simple reminders, and such insights are well worth our attention. Longing for the familiarity of home, especially when far away from those reassurances for extended periods of time. One afternoon, during a sojourn in Paris, my customary long walk along the Seine caused me to notice the absence of the salt aroma of the Maine coast. My adventures along the Great Lakes were wanting for the deep dark blue of Casco Bay. More overtly, I recall being aboard an eastbound, cross-country Amtrak train reaching the Berkshire Mountains. A man stood up and began regaling nearby passengers about his home town, with a hiraeth worthy of the Welsh definition, but with an eastern Massachusetts accent thick enough to place him in Dorchester or Southie. He was pronouncedly homesick. It was all really entertaining (especially the anecdotes about his favorite bar), and it seemed to syphon off some of my own sense of displacement. All it seemed to take was for the Lake Shore Limited to transition from the flat Midwest by barreling across the Housatonic River.


Finding ourselves far from home, and far from those who recognize us, will set off longings we may had forgotten about. Distances may be geographic, and they may be metaphorical. Reminders can be subtle, but what they reveal comes with a tenacity that can span many years, even to childhood. A profound sense of disenfranchisement and disregard that I knew as an adolescent brought its tiresome residue into adulthood. Having endured harshness so many years ago- surely enough years for anything to lose its strength and worth- challenges us to choose to treat ourselves with the gentle compassion by which our hearts and souls were created, in order to retrain the mind away from cataloguing and maintaining regrets. Loss and absence can provide the crossroads of our vision. One evening, a few years ago, I had been awarded an extraordinary honor at a special reception. Many of my friends and students were there, but during the drive home I glanced at the inscribed plaque on the passenger seat, and powerfully felt the absence of my parents- not just then and there, but for nearly all of my years. Along the road that night after eating and enjoying, in my good clothes and hearing my gold watch chain whenever I turned with the contours of Route 302, it became vital to enjoin myself to remember who was there, and my own profound gratitude. We must recollect what confirms to us that we belong- especially that which transcends our titles and trappings. Our friendships, our soul’s kindredships, have the potential to be the witnesses our lives long to have; and I am certainly part of the reciprocal. By caring, we instantly become earthly signs of grace, drawing from sources that far precede and exceed us. A very wise friend once reminded me to “treat yourself the way you treat your friends,” and I have never forgotten that gentle admonition.


How we long for a communion that will reinforce and confirm us! Reassurance comes to us in the forms we are best able to comprehend, and can be thankfully unpredictable (unconfined by our finite notions). And then our longings are reciprocated. “The assiduous heart is an open door,” wrote Saint Mark the Ascetic, in The Philokalia. Our souls’ yearnings, the prayers of the heart, can be catalysts that turn our embrace toward the present, giving a renewed sense of what is yet ahead of us. Such thirst for authenticity of spirit keeps us from standing still, quite like Augustine’s aggrieved and restless heart motivated him to reach for a place of peaceful abiding. But our hearts’ desires are surely meant to be answered, and when that happens we can surely rejoice and be strengthened in our hopes and the hope we are for others. Truly we temporarily can only know in part, but it is well worth looking ahead to the time we will know even as we have always been known. Such longings founded upon our faith bring us to risk everything in order to gain everything. Thomas Merton called it “gambling on the invisible.” Merton wrote, “we have to risk all we can see and taste and feel, but we know the risk is worth it, because there is nothing secure in the transient world.” Steadfast love is the good investment, the treasure compounded in heaven, and a worthy risk. I have seen the forward steps of trusting faith as embodying the very opposite of cowardice. Hesitation represents a fearful clinging to what anchors us to the temporal trappings of this world, and such hesitating will cloud what dynamic hope- even our heart’s deepest longings- can clarify.

___
* rhymes with "clear scythe"

le feu qui ne s’éteint jamais

"Prisoner of the dark sky
The propeller blades are still...

Climbing out - climbing climbing
Five miles out - climbing climbing

Five miles out
Just hold your heading true
Got to get your finest out
Your number one anticipating you"


~ Mike Oldfield, Five Miles Out

My traversals of lands and waters, the known and the unknown, through deserts of crowds and solitude, have brought my steps well into this new habitation. I had been eager for the shock of the new to wear itself into the din of daily chores. And yet, even with tangible signs of living hope, I cannot completely refrain from looking back. It does happen, though with less frequency. There is still more area to cover. At times, the faith my friends notice is more a lack thereof, but strength notwithstanding- it is faith indeed. Like the biblical Thomas, I say tangible signs are certainly useful, at the very least providing the spiritual abstract with something solid to behold. Indeed, though it may be necessary for me to entertain more doubts now, it may not be later on. My own sea-change becomes evident to me, with each morning's venture; I tread the old familiar streets with the renewed stride of perseverance. Perhaps that is sufficiently a start, for me to believe in my own transformation.


At last, I have navigated to the other side of a protracted, albeit intermittent, sea of anguish. Most surely, the journey has never been without oases, little islands and way-stations of respite and celebration. One does need to be faithful to the letter of happenstance. And with that in mind, I am consciously acknowledging those souls whose paths mine have met, and whose steps have paralleled mine. It is a well-established dividend of friendship, that conscious presence sown inevitably reaps harvests of communion. After a certain number of years, and discovering enough concern from close friends to displace some of the isolated, solitary suffering, I became far more capable of earnestly supporting others. Perhaps it is the upside of down; the vitality of knowing despair equips a soul to savor the intangible gifts of compassion- and to witness and attend to others' lives. How I have always desired to be useful to people around me! And indeed, I am surely not so naïve as to expect that after barrages of storms there will never be another. Among the residual uses of the past is preparedness, and a prologue to the present. All need not be perfectly well-and-smooth; that would be unrealistic. The Great Apostle knew how to be brought low and how to abound, both to be full and to suffer need. About nine weeks ago, a monk suggested to me that I tout jettez en Dieu : Not simply surrender all that I am, but throw. As in a courageous leap. This thoughtful brother added that if all eternal spiritual things were accomplished in this provisional life, he'd simply retire; there'd be nothing left for him to do.

Brightness in the simplest tasks, familiar voices and embraces, and in even in the taste of food, attests to the sea-change after lengthy and battering storms. The dark night of the soul has another side, and I have traversed from desolation to consolation. I did not fully know this, even though I'd experienced this before, and had helped others through theirs. But it is clear that a transforming crucible, what can cleanse me of my obstructive attachments to selfhood, has brought me to a shore- not to encamp there, but to inhabit the new land. It is good to go to the water, and I gratefully do so, but there is a world upon which to live, to move, and to be, and be there for others. I was driven from my old purported paradise, and am evolving another storey to my soul. The depth and breadth of hope must exceed the shadows of fear, and the inviting passover is to embody the life of trust- even as a partaker of the divine nature* in this flawed world. For the indefinite time being, it is sufficient for me to know in part, to accept to see some things through darkened glass. But I am sure I shall see, as it becomes unpredictably necessary. The light after dark reveals a transmuted self , an embarkation, and suddenly evidence of having already covered some miles in this new life.


* 2 Peter 1:4

always and never

"‘This is the land of Narnia, where we are now’, said the faun. 'It is all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Caer Paravel on the eastern sea.’ It is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long. Always winter and never Christmas."

~ C.S. Lewis, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe


It is in the very face of howling winds that I listen hard for the still voice of mercy, and on dry, barren lands I am pursuing new growth and living waters. This winter I was anticipating encouraging a loved one for whom winter has a depressing implication. Ironically, in the wake of loss and grief, I am the one that is being consoled by every other caring person in these times. Indeed, as I strengthen- I, too, can continue being a consoler. It has never been certain what events and people are found beyond the known lands and boundaries, but there must always abide a confident hope, an aspiration that breathes an affirmative to go forward.

harrowing movement

"Now I climb the steps to freedom.
The open gates, I can see them.
Hands that I once knew
Beckoning me through."

~ Mike Oldfield, I Can See the Light


My town, my home, my place of refuge has been strangely unfamiliar. New eyes battered by crisis cause me to see the known as unknown, ground to be explored afresh, acquaintance to be made. To be re-known. A ship guided by radar and sonar proceeds, notwithstanding the white void coming over the deck that makes the sky undifferentiated and seamless from the ocean.

I have set forth undaunted, and must have enough trust there will be calmer and better waters. An authentic pilgrimage is an earnest one-way voyage; it is the opposite of a closed loop. And it is a voyage of faith. Maps and prescribed descriptions may indicate localities, but these are merely two-dimensional representations of living and breathing places whose futures are as provisional as mine.

ne laisse pas mes ténèbres me parler

"There is a light, a light that never dies
See it shine, shining in my sorrow
There is a light, a light in my desire
See it shining, shining for tomorrow

Only love can give me an answer
Oh I know that love can heal
From the dust a new hope rises up
Only love can set me, set me free"

~ Mike Peters & The Alarm, Only Love Can Set Me Free


Just as I have begun to resume a modicum of regular sleep hours and at least a daily meal, the restless nights have returned. This time, though knowing I’ll pay for it later this evening, I simply woke and washed at 4am. It was a chance to watch for the gradual sun rise by candlelight. In due time, the exterior gradations of ambient illumination exceeded that of the lit votives and tapers on my writing table.

So very hungrily and tirelessly I have been pressing on for wholeness, navigating the dense and grievous haze. At times I can wake with a forward sense of the moment, otherwise my thoughts are invaded with imagined reasons why I must be so detestable. But then, if loving gestures reflect the hearts of those who give, perhaps in a similar sense hateful actions reveal the essence of their origins. While the life of the mind lends itself to the temptations of rationalization, my recent learning is giving way to regarding such thoughts from more of an observer’s vantage point. Indeed, there have been- and there will remain- unreasonable actions and sentiments that will never make sense, however what is always at hand is my ability to go forward without capitulating to morose principles. Even this far down the line, after things that would desensitize anyone, I am positively sure I will always love and proceed from my heart.
It is the only way.

resist voluntary squalor

"Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
and death shall have no dominion."

~ Dylan Thomas, And Death Shall Have No Dominion


Though I move among all of you, chatting with you, serving you, sipping coffee, and doing the normal day’s commerce, my open gashes are invisible to all. It is a tangible perplexity I have known before, in rare instances, that I pursue a normalcy albeit in the form of some eviscerated animal. Indeed, this is self-perceived, otherwise the responses in employment, cafés, post offices, and shops would be entirely different than the usual cordialities. Nonetheless, emotional wounds can cause a sense so pervasive as to debilitate. Or, at least to feel as if this is really so.

Surely, I have enough presence of mind to draw contrasts between the actual and the unreal. That is among the fringe benefits of gainful employment. No matter how I am feeling, I know what is required of me, and how to make the best connections between what is needed and what to provide. It is an undersold skill, and I’ve seen myself capable of such acute performance in the midst of harrowing grief and desolation. And yet, even now- as then- I count it a blessing that I have refused to opt for the cowardice of frivolous amnesia and willful squalor. Rather than slink away, I am engaging the battle to decimate the cumulative pain-body. Non-dealing is no way to deal. Even with the rawness exposed, I could never imagine squalor to be an option. Hardship indicates that sights must be set higher, not lower. Even the depths of crepuscular valleys can reveal gratitudes. One such unwitting blessing is the flat refusal to embrace insensitivity. Feeling wretched may run its temporal course, but it certainly does not imply a choice in favor of wretchedness.

violent for mercy

"God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

~ 2nd Timothy 1:7


My physical steps are labored, on the steep uneven sidewalks of this seaside city, under burdens of books, work accoutrements, and this anguish that can tether even the strongest soul to the hard pavement. But with each day's worth of measured strides, with each planting and pushing-off of my feet on the bricks, I am sensing the depths of my strength. I look at the skies, even at night, and begin to ponder the concern and uplifting love that is around me, that is presented to me. When I can't find healing imagery within, my friends provide the healing words and gestures. When I have not been able to cook with my usual alacrity, I am breaking bread with dear souls who invite me to their tables. And so many, with such astonishing abundance. It makes me spin. I wonder if all these good people know who they are talking with, but I can do nought but to trust. To be loved is an even greater wonder for me than to love others. Pangs of abandonment cause me to flinch. Ultimately, I believe, we all get to serve one another and it must never be about keeping tallies.

And in the numerous conversations, I get to be thankfully distracted from what grieves my heart. It is the gift of the present, and I am able to view my life in the healthier context of being part of a great many lives. No person's life is perfect, least of all mine. Ironically for these times, I find myself in the familiar place of pointing others to hopefulness, and in the process there is the sprouting seed of encouragement within me. My profoundest wishes and desires are released into the universe, and now detached from me. It is all so raw and paradoxical, but now impossible not to notice this is the eve of the feast of the Epiphany.

i'll fly away

"sunlight has not found us
over forty days or more
while the flood outside proves no guide
to bring this little boat ashore

what we know this hour
is not what we will know
when these liquid days are done
in a turn of light like sun on subtle rose
we will see what’s just begun."

~ Charlie Peacock, Liquid Days


Simply the intense desire to turn the corner, to wish with all my strength that I be awash with the tide of sea change, is the tiny and extremely fragile mustard seed of trust. If it is so, as with ancient traditions, that we can keep company with our forebears, those who lived in other times with other deprivations and challenges, then I not only begin to sense their presence but as well that of my esteemed and living friends. The communion of the saints comprises those I know and trust, but also the comrades on the journey who have been corresponding with me. For years I have served and given, to the point of physical and spiritual exhaustion, and suddenly in the vulnerability of feeling the depths of the backstabs of time, I am recipient of the gifts of the graces of others. Grieving has broken me into many pieces. The wings of entrusted friendships have just begun to bear me up out of the trench of miry clay. All of which causes me to redouble my honest endeavour to be healed and whole, so that I can continue to be a presence to others, as I am gifted with the sanctity of the precious souls who give safe harbours in the torrent. Indeed, one might say hurricanes have eyes. I want to return to being a refuge, and as well nurture the trust that is being recovered.

Though overwhelmed and bereft, it becomes necessary to go forward. It is vital to call to mind that what is ahead is what exceeds that which is before me. The movement cannot wait until tomorrow; it must urgently happen, and in that uncertain dynamism I can just start to sense the excitement of the unknown. Daring to reckon with fears, and not delaying the process, is to throw off the burdensome yokes of servitude to negative forces of betrayal. The new and reinforced self is forced to leave behind the obsolete. Inertia will be overcome, and it is surely easier if we support one another, and it is certainly sweeter when we can share the good momentum.

yet to be

“You will have nothing but love
Nothing but hope, blue sky above
You will find nothing but peace
Nothing but the sun shining on your face

When you open your eyes

You will feel nothing but free
Nothing but trust that's how it should be
And one who cares about nothing but you
Watching close by the whole night through

When you open your eyes.”


~Mike Oldfield, Nothing But


Indeed it is a gift not to be dismissed, to have the ability to see. Clear vision is an almost effortless ingenuity that allows us to recognize a situation and notice open doors and possibilities. For those whose perceptive skills are finely tuned, potential can be glaringly obvious. Conversely, visionaries have the added dilemma of respectfully comprehending those who, for their own reasons, cannot bring themselves to see what is good. Frequently, the limitation lies in forms of prejudice- an irrational unwillingness to acknowledge worthy promise. The prejudging can take on varying aspects of unchecked bigotry, as much as a constricting naïveté that has yet to be challenged. Still further, the formidable twin saboteurs known as apathy and lethargy serve as obstructions to clear sightedness.

A wise and trusted friend and I were talking about the two-edged gift of sensitivity. Amidst intense anguish, with a memory of how this culture frowns upon the sensitive and vulnerable, I denounced the worth of compassionate awareness. It all looked to me like a debilitating course of overconcern and so much more work than the average person should be subjected to assume. But the alternative state, that of insensitivity and neglect, is so much more detrimental to personal growth and to participation in this existence and in the lives of those around us, that one would find themselves in far worse of a disjointedness from this precious life through which we only travel once. My good friend pointed out that as much as those who are sensitive are open to the pains of rejection and misunderstanding, we are equally open to the sublime, to beauty, and to profound joy. The successive outworking is that we who choose not to be calloused and cynical are also those who freely and gratefully give.

leave the schoolyard

"When we were children,
we thought and reasoned
as children do.
But when we grew up,
we quit our childish ways."

~ 1 Corinthians 13:11


Growing up in the asphalt jungle of inner New York City amplifies the metaphor all the more. Schoolyards are nominal, hard-paved spaces between the school building and its neighbors: chain-link enclosed, inhospitable, littered, constraining. If indeed it really is our tendency to carry deeply ingrained childhood experiences into the collective mélange of our adult years, we may even find that we take some kind of twisted comfort in the familiarity of penned-in incarceration. Though known and seemingly safe, the vandalized schoolyard is the narrow world of irresponsibility which we must all outgrow.

Our school districts may graduate us, but truly we must each decide to graduate ourselves out of the confines of bullying, pettiness, and puerility. Such cultural phenomena as that which sees numerous individuals dragging their adolescence well into their grownup years demonstrates a bizarre pulling-behind of the schoolyard. The intersection of current and counterculture forces the choice between apathy versus awareness. The cutting edge is in the realization there are others around us in this world, and that our thoughts, words, and deeds actually have consequential effects on those whose lives we touch. But we can’t embrace this difference, this challenge to pursue an expanded life, until we boldly leave the schoolyard.

simply broke

"I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow however turns out to be not a state but a process."

~ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed


It is Christmas Eve day, sometimes called Little Christmas. As it had been necessary in past times, amongst the polite festivities, I am seeking refuge in the constructive distractions of labor, assisting others and working at my employment with hopes of redeeming the time and just getting through the season. Notwithstanding, I can neither be immune to my grieving, nor dismiss the summons to offer prayers.

When I began writing, this medium so resembled the gesture of scrolling messages into corked bottles and setting them forth into vast waterways, not knowing where or how or if they would reach anyone or anything. The very act of prayer is itself the supreme gesture of faith, that my hopes and sorrows will be heard; they will not fall on deaf ears. Even to imagine human ears belittles the forces of creation and divine compassion. But my comprehension has its limits. So I send my prayers, albeit in my simple and imperfect words. And I know you are out there, reading this. Perhaps you are alone right now; perhaps you are at your employment while it seems the rest of the world is out doing their commerce and either tolerating or exulting in the pageantry. You read this because you may be curious, you may still value some connection, you want to see if I am enraged. But I am not. Last night I dreamed that I told you that when you used to prefer me, you saw and conclusively experienced that I put my creativity, energy, and genuine love right into tangible action. Action is not passive and compassionate action is not wasted. "Even if the truth is not heard," Mahatma Gandhi once said, "it's still the unmistakable truth." "Talking a good game," is something anyone can do, without risk. The cutting edge is to love and say it with one's life; to consider others. Such vulnerability reminds me of how breakable earthen vessels can be, but it also attests to the courage of the giving of oneself and the vitality of survival.

heart open wide

"It’s funny how they put you down when your hands are held up high;
And you open up your heart and soul,
but that’s not enough for most."

~ Mike Peters (The Alarm), Going out in a Blaze of Glory

On the premise that all life and faith culminates in relationships, and still further that all relationships involve choices, I am determined to continue to develop my emotional fluency and spiritual articulation.

Even from the amplified vulnerability of abandoned ruins, this is still the course to take. It is a kind of responsibility. A response-ability, we could boldly say. To be a complete and self-respecting individual, and to be faithfully compassionate toward others, I insist on better comprehending how to love and how to enunciate it with the whole of my being. And I’m doing it. It’s palpable.

I prefer it that way.

transcending defeat

"This overacted part from this never ending play
Is just her substitute
For reality anyway.
I've tried and tried to tell her
It's not what you do
It's what you've done with what you did."

~ Pray for Rain, Tried to Tell Her


Accepting loss and recognizing ineptitude forces a crossroad. One might choose permanent residence in the slough of despond, or choose the struggle to emerge from the trough. And this is not to attempt to build upon old ruins, but instead by reaching forward into the unknown I become aware I am no longer who I was a month or two ago, but am becoming newer and more improved. To be an appropriate steward of the life given to me, there better be improvement; otherwise it's back to the slough. In addition it helps to recall the transitory, provisional nature of the grand picture. It's a healthy sense of humility, the good kind of surrender, and the beginning of an openness to better things. But if the transition is growth in a positive direction, the invisible infrastructure of responsible love is revealed. Nothing in honest faith can be done at the expense of another soul.

forgiveness

"Peter got up the nerve to ask, 'Rabbi, how many times do I forgive someone who hurts me? Seven?'
Jesus replied, 'Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.'"

Matthew 18:21-22


Living conscientiously, when I say something from my heart, I mean it and back it up with my very being and movement in this world. I keep promises, even the small gestures and offers. And when I unintentionally transgress this ethos, with short accounts, it is instantaneous to ask pardon. Far from being a compulsion, it is really a refusal to ethically bankrupt myself. By the same token, rather than creating a claim to be all "high and mighty," it's actually choosing the inconvenient road of humility.

Now the heat of the spotlight takes effect when, amidst painful injustice, I come to desire nothing less dignifying than to be the forgiver. Pondering even the word forgive, it is indeed to fore-give: to offer compassionate acknowledgment and respect ahead of how it might be received. The giving is at the forefront. Once I get out of my own absurd sense of self-entitlement and forgive, relief sets in. I forgive those whose unkindnesses are reflections of their limitations. I have these, too. And, yes, for the time you chose me, though I ate and drank with you, walked, bicycled and traveled with you, laughed and sang with you, listened to your stories, hoped and planned with you, made gifts and meals for you, I forgive you. It is all for love and for the faith of the divinity of hearts that call to one another. In this spirit, situations, loyalties, and agonies recede beneath the torrents of the heavens. I forgive you; please forgive me. When the night becomes dark, divine love is a fire that never dies away.