Sunday Best – March 3, 2024
This weekend I happened upon a beach full of seashells, heaped in great piles like some sort of salty sunny Aladdin’s cave. The abundance was astonishing, and unsettling. At first I stood dazed and dazzled. Then I started darting from pile to pile, sure that the next one was somehow better than the one I had already visited. Others had similar reactions, stuffing bags full of souvenirs until they were staggering under the weight. A sort of giddy greediness floated in the air.
After a little while, I slowed down enough to appreciate a few individual shells, marveling at the perfect Fibonacci spirals at their hearts and at the way that such strong, gorgeous structures emerge from nothing but calcium carbonate and protein. I picked one favorite. Then another. Then another. Finally I sat still and sighed with the wonder of it all.
Friends, we are surrounded by the abundance of our world.
May our greed give way to gratitude.
May we treasure each tiny element,
and the miracles within.
Sunday Best – February 25, 2024
Friends, it is a loud loud world. In an effort to set aside the daily news one night this past week, I watched a shocking number of Taylor Swift reels and learned that butterflies sometimes drink turtle tears.
While these were worthwhile distractions, they were just that – distractions. Thankfully there was also a chance to get really, really quiet – the quiet beyond scrolling, beyond lists, beyond even poetry or music. The bedrock quiet where we can hear our truest selves. Like visiting a beloved sacred place, or a cherished friend, even a moment in this realm brings a great sense of ease and replenishment and homecoming.
Dear ones, may we all have joyful distractions of the outer world to brighten our days.
And may we rest with faith upon our foundations within.
Think of the world you carry within you…be it remembrance of your own childhood or longing for your own future. Only be attentive to what is arising within you, and prize it above all that you perceive around you. What happens most deeply inside you is worthy of your whole love. Work with that and don’t waste too much time and courage explaining it to other people.
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Sunday Best – February 18. 2024
Friends, I am happily unplugged today, and wishing you a pocket of quiet reflection as well. Here with a similar and more completely formed wish is Invitation from Mary Oliver’s Red Bird :
Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy
and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles
for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,
or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air
as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine
and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.
I beg of you,
do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.
It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.
Sunday Best – February 11, 2024
Not all those who wander are lost.
I heard a terrific academic presentation this week which made the point that conversation is a highly advanced technology, full of signals like facial expressions, pauses and responses, and pacing and tone of language. This is one reason I still listen to corporate executives on earnings calls instead of just reading the transcripts, and why it is so wonderful to hear the voices of our loved ones, no matter how frequently our texts shuttle back and forth.
Another point the scientists made is that conversation is anything but linear – as shown in the graphic depiction above, it zooms hither and yon and loops around whatever the central subject is – and not due to inefficiency. The twists and turns are sometimes the most important part of the discussion.
Dear ones, in our busy world,
full of checklists and straight lines,
let’s leave some space
for the wandering
that brings us together.
This quote is from JRR Tolkien in Lord of the Rings, “The Riddle of Strider,” a poem left by Gandalf to help Frodo.
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
The graphic and research referenced above are from Dr. Thalia Wheatley, SFI & Dartmouth.
Sunday Best – February 4, 2024
When I visited Japan last fall, I kept having flashbacks to my 20-year old self, the person I’d been when I first traveled there. Every Proustian taste and every recollected phrase pulled me into a strange parallel universe, where I was simultaneously then and now.
Then I happened upon this passage from Zora Neale Hurston, where Janie is reconnecting with her own self after a long separation.
Years ago, she had told her girl self to wait for her in the looking glass. It had been a long time since she remembered. Perhaps she’d better look… She took careful stock of herself, then combed her hair and tied it back up again. Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see.
Friends, we’ve all left little bits and pieces along the pathways of our lives, breadcrumbs that we might follow to mark the way back to ourselves.
What might we find if we gathered them up,
re-membering as we go?
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
– Derek Walcott, Love after Love