Sunday Best – November 13, 2022
I have the honor of serving on the Santa Fe Institute board with Cormac McCarthy, who has not one but two novels being published this fall. This inspired me to listen to a long-form conversation Cormac recorded with SFI President David Krakauer a few years back. It’s one of those discussions where each thread can be unspooled to reveal the most essential wisdom, the most worthy questions.
At one point, Cormac reflects on his fondness for mathematics, noting, “Working on a mathematics problem – sometimes for a long time – and then coming up with the answer, it’s like a lost animal coming in out of the rain. You just want to say, ‘There you are. I was so worried.’”
Friends, our lives are all full of problems that worry us, whether mathematical or relational or spiritual. May we all know that feeling of relief when an answer is found, the one that has been there all along, wandering out of sight.
Like a lost animal coming in out of the rain.
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In case the links above don’t work ,you can listen to the conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUy1Vn2KdI
And you can explore Cormac’s new books here: https://amzn.to/3X0lFcW
Sunday Best – November 6, 2022
It is important to find wisdom but not answers because to do so represents an end point.
Insight is enough.
– Artist Max Cole
How wonderful to have a meeting in a museum, where coffee breaks offer art and inspiration instead of just a chance to catch up on emails.
In our tumultuous world, we are all yearning for answers, sometimes squeezing tight to analysis or conviction even as they fail us.
Friends, let’s try to loosen our grip, and open our explorations. Sometimes there is no tidy answer to be found.
Insight is enough.
Sunday Best – October 30, 2022
A wonderful invitation to speak at the PopTech gathering this week had me musing on the topic of remembering – more precisely, re-membering, putting things back together again. Maybe differently. Maybe better.
Within my own re-membering is the vivid childhood presence of our playground, built for us kids by the grown-ups of the neighborhood. There were endless games of box hockey, baseball, and our own invention, “roofball,” along with a powerful classic merry-go-round that would never make it through a modern safety inspection.
The playground was the first place that felt like my place – a spot away from home that I knew inside and out, better than my own parents did. I knew every person, every creak of the monkey bars, every worn-out scuff mark under the swings. I knew when the neighbor on the hill would summon her kids home with a duck call, and when the soda machine would be restocked with grape soda. I knew when the blackberries along the road were ripe, and when the fireflies would start flashing, and when the corn in the field beyond the park would be poached for Halloween “raiding.” What a gift, to know a place like that!
Dear friends, as we re-member the arcs of our own lives, let’s treasure the places and the people and the times that make us, us.
May the roofball match go on and on.
I call next up!
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Short read of the week! Foster, by Claire Keegan. Spare and heart-rending and a beautifully printed new US edition.
Merry-go-round photo pulled from the internet, no attribution available.
Sunday Best – October 23, 2022
This past week one of the greatest investors of our time, and one of my first investment mentors, passed away. He will long be known for his terrific stockpicking and “10 Commandments” of thoughtful investing, but the most important lesson I learned from him involved a simple triangle pasted to his desk. The points were labeled H-W-T, for Health, Wealth, and Time.
After months of looking at the triangle upside-down when we met in his office, I finally got up the nerve to ask about it. He explained that it was a way to remind himself how rare it was to have all three of these dimensions of life at once, that each phase of life naturally is a little wobbly in one main area.
It was this kind of understanding that caused him to take an sabbatical to go hiking, when he seemed impossibly old and experienced to me, but was probably around 45. Coming at a time when people in my field would laugh out loud at the phrase “work-life balance,” this made a big impression.
Dear ones, if we have time, or health, or wealth, let’s give thanks.
If two, let’s celebrate.
And if we find ourselves with all three,
let’s rejoice.
Sunday Best – October 16, 2022
MYSTERIES ARE NOT NECESSARILY MIRACLES.
– JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
It’s true, mysteries are not necessarily miracles. Sometimes a heart-shaped cloud is just a cloud, not a message from beyond. A gorgeous flower in an unexpected place might have been transported by squirrels and not angels.
But the reverse is true, too. Have you ever really looked at a pine cone, or considered the circulation of air through your lungs, or seen one small child comfort another? There’s some awfulness in our world. But it is full of miracles too.
The leaves are turning in New England, and I have know that this is a perfectly explainable scientific phenomenon. But that does not detract one scintilla from the miracle.
In fact, it amplifies.
Dear friends, let’s look for spots where science reinforces spirit, and vice versa.
Miracles need not be mysteries.
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This post is a rare repeat, inspired by seeing our own Month of Sundays on the shelf at the Omega Institute bookstore, just after a restorative tromp through the woods. Here’s to the comfort of dependable miracles, through the joys and sorrows of our lives.