Useless Old Tree

“Eternity is born in time, and every time someone dies whom we have loved dearly, eternity can break into our mortal existence a little bit more.”

– Henri Nouwen

Sharing our sorrows

A friend who recently lost his own mom and knew that I had been on a similar journey over the course of the past year mailed me a copy of “A Sorrow Shared,” a collection of two short works by the Dutch priest, writer, and theologian Henri Nouwen, both written in the months following his own mother’s death in late 1978. Nouwen was living in the United States by then, working as a professor of pastoral theology at Yale Divinity School. He was in his mid-40s and living thousands of miles away from his home in the Netherlands, but he remained close to his parents and it’s obvious from his writings that his mother’s passing affected him deeply.

[Read more…] about Nouwen on Death, Detachment, and Freedom: ‘Nothing in this life to cling to’

“Intellectualisation creates a gap or lack of rapport between you and your life. You think about things so much that you get into the state where you are eating the menu instead of the dinner, where you value money more than wealth, and are generally confusing the map with the territory.” – Alan Watts, “Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks 1960-1969”

I’ll be honest and admit that “eating the menu” has, historically, been one of my favorite pastimes, and one of my favorite ways to avoid the tough work of actually putting theory into practice in my life.

Maybe it’s because, growing up, I actually enjoyed and saw inherent value in academic work, research, and the like, but it’s pretty much always been true that, when looking to explore some new topic, idea, or practice, the first place I go is usually to books and the written word. I want to see what others have to say about the topic, and to read the accounts of others’ experience with the ideas or subjects that have captured my attention. Nowadays, when recordings of the spoken word are even more readily available online, I’ve found myself at times becoming a bit of a “podcast junkie,” diving deep into interviews and lectures featuring people whose thoughts, work, and experiences intrigue me.

Now, to be fair, this is often a great way to learn new things and develop our own thinking and connection with others and the world around us. But I suspect it also has the power to become a kind of trap – especially for those like myself who love gnawing on the menu so much that we forget we came in the first place because we were hungry for something a bit more substantial and filling, something ultimately a bit more satisfying.

[Read more…] about Today’s Menu – Eat it or Starve

When we lose someone we love, a part of us just wants to be relieved of the suffering, and we naturally think of our grief as something that must be endured or as a necessary stage to pass through or to get over. We might say we’re in a period of mourning, or talk about “getting through” the grief or “dealing with” it – as if grief were an unwelcome detour down a brambly backwoods path, or a rough adversary barring our way forward. And it certainly feels that way sometimes, like the grief has slowed us down, waylaid us, and made it difficult or impossible to get on with life. Sometimes it even makes it difficult to do the simplest of day-to-day tasks, things that would normally be second nature for us. It’s easy to feel a bit lost in it.

There’s no doubt that this is a true representation of grief and our experience of it, but I wonder if I’m not doing grief a disservice when I think of it as basically an obstacle, as something to get over or around or through so that things can get “back to normal.”

[Read more…] about With Only Our Grief to Guide Us: On Sorrow, Comfort, and Kindness

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

– Romans 12:2

As we moved into the season of Lent this year, I also found myself in the midst of a physical move – packing up boxes of books and clothing, taking donations to Goodwill, going through the things that I own and trying to decide what needed to come with me and what didn’t. It’s had me thinking a fair bit about the things we carry with us through life, about how life changes (or doesn’t change) over time, about our relationship to the past and the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives, and about how all of this relates to the present and future.

[Read more…] about Repentance and Metanoia: A Lenten Reflection

“We are already in the ocean of Buddha’s world, but we don’t know where the water is.”

– Dainin Katagiri, “Each Moment Is the Universe”

Dainin Katagiri was born and raised in Japan and did his early training in Zen there before coming to the U.S. in the 1960s to help support the growing interest in Zen study and practice in the West. I’ve been reading a collection of his talks titled “Each Moment Is the Universe” and trying to make some sense of it. The title itself is like a koan to me, mysterious and elusive, but also sweet and rich with implicit meaning.

[Read more…] about Karma and Freedom: “Each Moment Is the Universe”

We recently lost Ursula K. Le Guin, a writer who spent decades inspiring readers with her fantastic – and fantastically human – tales. Her voice will most certainly be missed, but I think it’s safe to say that her novels and other writings will continue to speak to readers long after she’s gone. It’s a clear example of the way in which a person’s life and what they choose to do with it can continue to resonate even after they’ve moved on. Like an ever-expanding ripple across the surface of the water, our lives will continue to have an impact on others in ways that we can hardly begin to imagine.

It’s easy to see this phenomenon at play in the case of a well-known author, whose books will survive as tangible evidence of the contributions they made, but the effect can’t be ignored in the case of any life. One way or another – in our families, in our communities, in our work, and in our acts of creativity and compassion – we’re all leaving a legacy as we pass by. Most of our names will be forgotten eventually, just as most of what we did in our lives will sooner or later be lost to all memory. Taking the long view, we’re really only here for a moment, and life as we currently understand it will go on and leave us behind, literally, in the dust – and much sooner than we might prefer to contemplate.

But the ripple still echoes outward, and onward.

[Read more…] about The Ripple Effect and the Resonance of Life

I wrote previously in this space about the notion of practicing imperfection, which, in turn, got me thinking about the idea of “beginner’s mind.”

Beginner’s mind is one of those paradoxical concepts that’s both easy to grasp and difficult to understand at the same time. Putting it into practice can also be a challenge, especially in a fast-paced culture that celebrates expertise and competence, one in which most of us would prefer to look like we know what we’re doing most of the time. Even in situations where we’re obviously out of our depth – for me, it might be when talking with an auto mechanic about some complicated issue with the inner workings of my car – we still have a tendency to put our game face on and try our best to convince those around us that we’re no fools, and that we know what’s going on.

It’s worth saying that there are times in life when jumping right in – or setting out on the journey before we have a fully formed plan – is the best thing to do. And sometimes you really do have to “fake it till you make it,” as people like to say. Approaching new endeavors with confidence (and maybe even a certain degree of chutzpah) is often an effective way to get started. It certainly beats crippling fear and self-doubt.

But beginner’s mind is something a little different. In a way, it almost flips the old “fake it till you make it” formula on its head, encouraging us instead to approach what we’re doing with the openness, curiosity, and receptiveness of an absolute beginner – and to keep doing so long after the work has begun, long after we’ve overcome some of those early hurdles that we usually associate with being a beginner. We’re often impatient to get past the beginner phase of whatever it is we’re doing, to learn the ropes and all the basic moves, then move on to developing skill and excellence. But maybe there’s another way to wrap our heads around it, or to get our heads – and our non-stop thinking minds – out of our way.

[Read more…] about The Benefits of Being a Beginner

When I decide to do something, I like doing it well. Especially when it comes to activities and projects that are important to me, I want to feel like I’m really accomplishing something when I set myself to it. And I want my passion and my attention to detail to show in the results of my work, no matter how many people – or how few – will ever see or experience those results. The truth is, I can be a bit of a perfectionist sometimes.

[Read more…] about Giving Everything Its Due: Practicing Imperfection

“All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.”

– Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”

New Year’s resolutions are a funny business. Culturally, we love them, even though, privately and individually, I’ve found that people often express more skepticism than hope when it comes to their effectiveness – a sentiment that seems to be supported by the many such resolutions soon abandoned as life gets in the way of our own best-laid plans.

Nonetheless, there seems to be something about the beginning of a new year that calls for reflection on what’s past and a resetting of our plans and aspirations for the future. And although many a New Year’s resolution, made in deadly earnest, has been subsequently flung to the wayside – sometimes by late January or early February – still the allure of change, and our deep and sometimes desperate hope for it, is most definitely real.

[Read more…] about ‘A Miracle to Contemplate’: Resolutions and Change

This Christmas was a little different than usual. My mom died earlier this year, and this was our first holiday season without her. I’m sure it’ll get easier in the years to come, but, for now at least, I’ll just say that it’s been a really tough time. The absence of a loved one, always a kind of tribulation, is something we often feel even more keenly at times like Christmas, these periods that are so full of memories and traditions, and when the presence of family means so much.

[Read more…] about ‘This Beautiful Moon’: A Few Thoughts On Christmas Presence