We are each born helpless. How we got from there to where we are now depended on the generosity of many people. Among those are our teachers, those people who devoted their time to making sure we understood the world around us and how to negotiate the ups and downs of the road ahead. Those teachers who went beyond the lesson plan to help us learn not just facts, but how to think and analyze, how to care and feel, and how to reach out to others deserve our unending gratitude.
Sometimes I think saints must have been extraordinary people, somehow different from the rest of us lugs, vested, perhaps, with some superior spiritual gifts or insights.
But then I realize, as did Vonnegut below, nope, just people like us, doing their best.
Whether we are ever canonized or not, this is our ‘job,’ isn’t it? To ‘behave decently in an indecent society’.
And then comes the hard part, to trust that your behaving decently will make a difference, whether you ever know about it or not.
I’m listening, world. What do you have to teach me? Where should my attention be, to understand and, finally, get it, the great purpose and plan of it all?
Annie Dillard, in Teaching a Stone to Talk writes:
At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world’s word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum is the silence. Nature does utter a peep – just this one. The birds and insects, the meadows and swamps and rivers and stones and mountains and clouds: they all do it; they all don’t do it. There is a vibrancy to the silence, a suppression, as if someone were gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life’s length to listening, and nothing happens. The ice rolls up, the ice rolls back, and still that single note obtains. The tension, or lack of it, is intolerable. The silence is not actually suppression: instead, it is all there is.
And later:
The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God’s brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray into this silence, and even to address the prayer to ‘World.’ Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.
Perhaps the aha moment isn’t in understanding as much as in being, a part within a vast whole, caught up in the mystery and the magnitude.
Have you ever wondered why everything is so beautiful? Have you stood rapt in the brilliant colors of a sunset, or listening to birdsong in the morning, or watching the way a caterpillar humps along with all its little feet working together? Perhaps there are logical, book smart reasons, like flowers are beautiful to attract bees, or animals are beautiful to attract mates or to warn predators they’re toxic, or some such thing, but don’t those answers beg the question really? Why is beauty? Could the answer be that it is to inspire awe in us? And our job is to notice.
A master violinist can play Bach on a precious instrument, and most people will just walk by:
We are living in a place filled with beauty if we only stop to notice. For inspiration, consider Mary Oliver’s poem, The Summer Day:
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
What a gift we have been given to have the chance to notice the beauty all around us today!
What does it take to prevent a country fracturing from disagreements and divisions? Perhaps it is the same thing that keeps any relationship from severing. First, a deep desire for reconciliation. A laying down of arms. A recognition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that there is value and growth in working things out. Next, perhaps would be a deep humility, a recognition that one side doesn’t have all the answers while the other is ignorant and foolish, but an understanding that both sides have stories to tell and an eagerness to be heard. And finally, perhaps would come respect. Each side coming together voluntarily, knowing their future strength is in union rather than destruction.
Sometimes you can lift out of a moment and say to yourself, ‘This is a wonderful moment. I am so content.’ Everything has a new luster. And sometimes a song might come to mind.
In my case, I was sitting with my husband, watching our two cats (pictured) and thinking about how homey everything felt. It brought to mind the CSNY song, ‘Our House’.
Here are the lyrics:
And, while we were sitting so inclined, my husband did a Google search about the song and learned that Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell had been shopping after dining at Art’s Deli, bought a vase, came back to her two cats, and lit the fire on a drizzly day. Nash sat at her piano and wrote this song in an hour. He must have been feeling what we felt. Content. Full.
How lovely he memorialized it for all of us to share.
Sy Montgomery’s delightful book, How To Be a Good Creature, is a ‘Memoir in Thirteen Animals‘. What an interesting way to organize a memoir, focusing on the impact various animals have made on her life and what they have taught her about co-existing as fellow creatures on this planet! It is a profound, yet simple, book.
If you were to write a memoir of your life through that lens, who would the animals be that impacted your life in meaningful and enriching ways? What life lessons did you learn? How were your limits expanded from sharing space with that fellow creature?
For inspiration, consider Montgomery’s words:
All the animals I’ve known–from the first bug I must have spied as an infant, to the moon bears I met in Southeast Asia, to the spotted hens I got to know in Kenya–have been good creatures. Each individual is a marvel and perfect in his or her own way. Just being with any animal is edifying, for each has a knowing that surpasses human understanding. A spider can taste the world with her feet. Birds can see colors we can’t begin to describe. A cricket can sing with his legs and listen with his knees. A dog can hear sounds above the level of human hearing, and can tell if you’re upset even before you’re aware of it yourself. Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways.
I often wish I could go back in time and tell my young, anxious self that my dreams weren’t in vain and my sorrows weren’t permanent. I can’t do that, but I can do something better. I can tell you that teachers are all around to help you: with four legs or two or eight or even none, some with internal skeletons, some without. All you have to do is recognize them as teachers and be ready to hear their truths.
Today, consider the wonder of creation around you and thank your teachers of the non-human persuasion.
Perfection can be the enemy of progress. When we need to move forward, we often wait until we come up with a perfect solution, sometimes so long that the opportunity to make our contribution passes. It is not only ok to be fallible, it is all we’ve got to work with: Our imperfect, fallible, often short-sighted selves doing our best to make the world a better place right here, right now, with what is right in front of us.
Take a minute to watch this lovely video of Leonard Cohen singing a reminder that perfection isn’t an option; we must do our best now.
Have you ever been lost? Perhaps in a crowd when you look up and realize all the people you know are gone, and, despite the crowd, you are alone. Or maybe driving when nothing is familiar, and you are getting farther and farther from your destination. Or maybe you’ve been lost emotionally, confronted with too many choices and unsure of which way to move forward.
In most of these scenarios, when we are deeply and profoundly lost, we need help. There is someone who knows where you are and where you are trying to be and can help point out the way for you. Or someone who can make an announcement over the PA that they are holding on to a lost child. Or someone who can help you walk through your choices and make the best decision.
There are times when asking for help is our best option. And despite all our tendencies to want to solve the problem ourselves or keep the problem hidden from the world or to tough it out, seeking help is a brave and rewarding choice.
If you are feeling lost, do not be afraid to ask for help. And for a heart-warming video that demonstrates how rewarding it is both to be found and to help someone who is lost, go here to see a baby bird stuck in a PVC pipe and separated from its parents get reunited through the help of a young man who finds the experience one of the most meaningful he has ever lived.
QuotableCreek.com 