Category Archives: Meditation

Books, Meditation, observation

Sounds Like What It Is

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Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2018

Chomp. Flush. Hoot -Onomatopoetic titles all. Carl Hiaasen’s titles are sound tracks for the stories they front. Full of humor, life in Florida, and the courageous young vanquishing the crooked old, they are quirky tales of hope and working for something larger than personal gain. But the word squirm induces the action in a way that the others don’t.

What makes me squirm isn’t a snake, although snakes play a major part of the plot. It’s not an upcoming test or the high expectations of others. It’s likely to be something I’ve done that’s come to light, something I’d rather others not know – and what I do when confronted with it. It’s hard to sit still, hard to stay put when I’d rather slide out of my chair and sneak out of the room. It’s what I do when I’d rather not admit to my own failing. I squirm when the smallness of my actions breaks through the carefully crafted inflated persona I offer the world. That deflation that reveals my true self makes me squirm.

When I get squirmy in my spiritual life, it’s a sure sign that I’m trying to present a false face to God. Like a child, I do my best to wriggle out of the encounter. But when I stop squirming, when I drop back into my true self, I learn the truth that’s so simple and so hard to keep hold of: that false face, that public persona – it’s too small to contain the image of God which is who I really, truly am.

And it’s too small for who you really, truly are as well.

[This is one in a series. For more information, click Title Search above…]

Meditation, observation

Asphalt Thinking

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Penguin Press, New York, 2023

It’s a famous line from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi. They paved paradise, put up a parking lot. Behind the title, you’ll find pictures of city streets full of cars and empty of people, stories of murder over parking spaces, and the headaches parking codes create for building lower income housing or repurposing abandoned buildings for inner city housing. I finished Henry Grabar’s book over a year ago and it still haunts me every time I see acres of asphalt surrounding empty malls. I doubt I’d have thought much about it if I hadn’t been captivated by the title.

For most of my adult life, and now, I’ve owned a car – and I’ve lived within walking distance of almost everything I need to live. I’m planning on retiring in such a place as well, making it easier to give up driving when I’m no longer capable of doing it safely. I’ll lose a bit of freedom to remain independent post-driver’s license. I’ll have to plan around train and bus schedules rather than drive whenever it suits me. I’ll need sturdy shoes and outerwear for walking around in inclement weather.

I won’t have as many choices. I’ll have to limit my groceries to what fits in my wheeled cart. I’ll end up waiting at train stations and bus stops, and I’ll have to accept things running behind schedule with as much grace as I can muster. Such a life may not be paradise, but it just might be a dream come true.

[This is one in a series. For more information, click Title Search above.]

Meditation

The Final Bell

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The day begins with a bell. Bells ring throughout the day to mark when it’s time to move between the many classes and activities. Then comes the final bell, ending the school day and prompting everyone to leave the school grounds and move into the bigger world waiting beyond them. For school is a temporary place of learning, meant to inform and prepare but not contain or restrain. The bell is the prompt for moving within and moving beyond.

There aren’t many bells beyond high school, and precious few other markers that spur movement within and beyond; it’s up to each of us to keep an eye on the time, to create a life pattern with built-in bell equivalents. It’s also up to each of us to remember that there’s a bigger world beyond whatever work fills our days.

How do we know when it’s time to leave behind that part of life, that temporary place that was never meant to contain or restrain us? How do we take what such a place taught us and move into the larger world? How do we recognize and accept that it’s time to move on and beyond? How do we trust that there’s something more that waits beyond?

Books, Education, Meditation, observation

Why Do I Have To Read This?

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I can’t remember every title on those high school required reading lists, but here are some of the highlights:

Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, MacBeth, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew

East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, The Catcher in the Rye, Ethan Frome, To Kill A Mockingbird, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Once and Future King, The Scarlet Letter, All Quiet On the Western Front, Profiles In Courage

There were also poets – not whole books, but select pieces: Choose Something Like a Star, The Red Wheelbarrow, How Do I Love Thee?, Because I Could Not Stop For Death, Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night, For Whom the Bell Tolls(No Man Is an Island), The Raven

And there were excerpts: The Grand Inquisitor (The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky), The Allegory of the Cave (Plato’s Republic), the Bible, Aesop’s Fables, Grimm’s Fairy Tales

For almost every book assigned, someone in my class asked the teacher why it was required. Most answered with a perfunctory It’s good for you, and you’ll need to know it when you go to college. Only two of my teachers gave different answers.

Because through these words you will come to understand what it means to be human. (Mr. Quimby)

These books will help you ask the truly important questions. (Mr. Hewitt)

The first answer was an honest one, and a small one. Wasn’t anything valuable about the reading other than some future benefit exclusively for the college bound learners? Shouldn’t learning be about something bigger than this?

The other two answers left some breathing room; they included and were big enough for every student -in the present. To be drawn into the story of someone else’s life, to experience another way to be human, to ask the big questions: the right words can do this.

So can the right teachers…

Meditation, observation

Recess

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It was the fifteen minutes around 10am. The bell rang and everyone headed outside. Sometimes, it was to a playground with swings and slides; other times, it was just cement with a four square court and a couple of red rubber balls. Unless it was raining or really cold, everyone left classrooms and books behind to get some fresh air and run off some excess energy. When the bell rang, everyone went back inside to their desks and the next subject.

Recess is good for many reasons. Children can concentrate better if they get a break in the learning to move around and rest their minds between subjects. There are fewer disciplinary problems because recess lowers frustration. Having time to talk with friends means fewer side conversations during class time. Because it doesn’t produce quantifiable results, its value is noticed more in its absence. And it is noticed.

Taking a break, going outside for some fresh air and a quick walk, having a conversation – a few minutes away from whatever we consider our important work may not result in more pages written, more spreadsheets filled, or additional organizing accomplished. But it’s silly to think that recess isn’t just as valuable for us after our school years as it was during them.

It’s good for the soul to take a break, to look up and out at this big, beautiful world and marvel at the life around us and within us. Grow into the wisdom of childhood: get outside and reclaim recess.

Education, Meditation, observation

Three Tickets, One Lunch

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It was common practice, although it isn’t any longer: handing out three different colored lunch tickets. The red ones were for children who paid full price for lunch; the blue ones were for children who paid a reduced price for their meal; the green ones were for the children who got their lunches for free. It was an easy way to count up how many of each were purchased every day. It made it easier to know the percentage of students who were in each category, and to report the numbers to the federal agency in charge of funding free lunch programs. But revealing for all to see who could pay full price for lunch and who could not was a daily exercise in cruelty. Humiliation was portioned out just as surely as the whipped potatoes and carton of milk. As they got into the upper grades, many students skipped lunch altogether, preferring hunger over embarrassment.

One of the blessings of the digital age is that every child does the exact same thing at lunch: they punch in their student ID number, they grab a tray, and they pick up their lunch. No one knows who receives assistance and who doesn’t (in my sons’ elementary school, food assistance forms had to be filled out for each child, whether they needed the help or not. Everyone handed in the forms, no exceptions and no embarrassment.). It may not be as flashy as multiplying loaves and fishes, but it’s a miracle of hospitality and generosity all the same.

Meditation, observation

Taking Attendance

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I never thought about it much – what I said every school day morning when the teacher took attendance.

Here.

I am here. I exist in this time and place. This unrepeatable day brought me here, of all places. In this space, with these people.

Here.

This is where I live and breathe.

Here.

To be fully in the present moment. To be called by name. If I’m at all aware, then this is a sacred moment.

But that’s a big if…

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me – I am too often unaware.

Education, Meditation

Home Room

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It’s the place I began my school day, seventh through twelfth grade: art studio, math class, social studies center, history room, physics lab, and English literature classroom. Only twice did I have an actual class in that year’s home room; only once out of those two times was it with my home room teacher. The only effect my home room had was that it governed where my locker was located.

The others sharing my home room changed yearly. Sometimes, I was assigned a seat in alphabetical order; other times, I could choose my seat but could not switch it; once, after the home room teacher had learned everyone’s names, I could sit anywhere I wanted for as many or as few days as I wished. Rarely were any of my friends in my home room. School began with a bell, a settling down in home room, roll call, then announcements, perhaps a short conversation with the person next to me. Eight minutes and a second bell and home room was over.

Home room was the one place, the one time of the day, that I had no common goal or activity with the others in the room. There was no shared subject, homework, or guidance for conversation or getting along. Home room was a randomly assigned time and place that asked nothing of me beyond acceptable behavior. If any friendships were going to grow, any connections made, I had to work for them. I could engage with whomever was there or keep my distance.

Although it wasn’t really a class, it taught me a lesson. The spaces in between intentional work or study, the times when I found myself among strangers without a common purpose, would be what I made of them.

That stuck with me. It’s the quick conversation in the grocery check-out, the moment passing someone on the sidewalk, eye contact on the subway, or the occasional catching up with the neighbor down the street these days. Some of these lead to deeper connections, most don’t. But each offer a moment, an hour, a day, a lifetime lived better for its happening.

Meditation

Bus Stop

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We moved to Virginia just before my fifth grade year began. The week before school started, my mother took me to Kingston Elementary School for registration and placement testing. An hour and several tests later, the vice principal told me the name of my teacher (Mr. Blake) and asked me if I had any questions. It went something like this:

Where is my bus stop?

What do you mean?

Where do I stand to get the bus to school?

I don’t know. Just ask one of your friends.

Is there anyone else here who knows where the bus stop is?

I don’t know. Ask one of your friends.

I stopped asking. There seemed to be no point in pointing out the obvious: I didn’t yet have any friends to ask. After an hour of testing my language and math skills, the grown-up in charge of registering new students couldn’t answer a very simple and practical question, and didn’t take the time to find someone who could.

On the first day, I found the bus stop by walking up the road until I saw some kids standing together and asking them if this was the bus stop for Kingston Elementary School. A girl named Rita Weimorts said yes, beginning a friendship and helping me get where I needed to go.

The vice principal wasn’t a bad man, but he lacked the ability to put himself in the shoes of a child who was new to the area. He had forgotten how to reason like a child. Since he was in charge of registering new pupils, that shortcoming had consequences for who knows how many children. He could have offered the grace of true hospitality for the time and effort it took to regain his childlike perspective by asking himself: how would I feel if_______________?

art, Meditation

Pencil or Pen?

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Writing Implements

Something written in pencil can be erased, making it easier to correct mistakes or remove a foundational sketch once it’s been inked. Something written in pen shows up more clearly on the page and cannot easily be removed. There are advantages to both. I used pencils a lot more than pens from kindergarten through high school. In college, it was 50-50. In graduate school, I favored pens – not because I liked them better, but because there were very few pencil sharpeners on campus.

These days, I’m back to the 50-50 ratio. Pens are for cards, official signatures, and crosswords; pencils are for grocery lists, brainstorming, and daily math. If I’m drawing Celtic knots, I use both. Pencils are for letters and figures that are transitory, that I might need to change and adapt; ink is for the more permanent words and images.

It’s rare that I cannot quickly and easily choose between pencils and pens for a given task. I can’t say the same in the larger, existential sense. There are times when I mistake what is transitory – what needs to be flexible and changeable – for what is permanent. There are times when I mistake the permanent – what is foundational – for what is short-term. Both are necessary and life-giving. Wisdom is knowing which one is which. Wisdom is knowing they are not interchangeable.