Sunday Best – October 9, 2022
At a recent dinner with friends, we were discussing the importance of place, and realized that all but one person at the table had left their homeland. Several families had left war and violence, several had left collapsing economies, and several had ventured for happy reasons like school or love. Whether a few miles or a few continents, even for moves with joyful outcomes, there is a certain heartbreak in feeling far from home, a constant running current of loss.
Yet there are also so many ways to find home – in the company of loved ones, in the clouds of ideas and art, in Proustian tastes or smells, and in the tangible rooting of places that shelter and support us. And in the grander scheme of life, as Ram Dass famously noted, “we are all just walking each other home.”
Dear ones, be it the embrace of a person or an idea echoing across time,
the scent of an apple cake or the knowing of the pines,
let us all experience the soul-deep comforts of belonging.
Let us accompany others.
Let us all be welcomed home.
This NASA photo was featured in the first – and last – issue of the Whole Earth Catalog. I’m reading the terrific biography of Stewart Brand now, where the notion of home is woven throughout.
I’m also diving back into this classic from Ram Dass, inspired by the memory of a dear friend.
Sunday Best – October 2, 2022
I met up with a colleague this week who was delighted to report he’d just learned of a potential solution to a water shortage in his area. In describing the solution, it became clear that there was not actually a shortage of water, but rather a terrible system of use and distribution, which could be altered and improved to provide for all.
Friends, we are so trained in the language and thinking of scarcity, and indeed some resources are both precious and rare.
But sometimes – often – we see shortage where there is plenty.
What might be possible if we recognized when there is plenty of time, plenty of ingredients, plenty of wherewithal?
What if there is also plenty of smartness, plenty of beauty, plenty of kindness, plenty of love?
What if we ourselves are plenty, too?
Sunday Best – September 25, 2022
Getting started, keeping going, getting started again – in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground of convinced action, the basis of self-esteem and the guarantee of credibility in your lives, credibility to yourselves as well as to others. – Seamus Heaney
This week I am thinking about compounding, and how a tiny choice, when it becomes habit, can be magnified beyond measure. Whether hiking or savings or friendships, the getting started is great, but the keeping going is what creates a life.
Friends, it’s great to be flexible and spontaneous, and there’s no need for a lifetime of repetition and routine. But let’s reflect on the things that matter most, and how molehills can become mountains.
Let’s put on the boots. Make the deposit. Show up for each other.
For the things that are most dear,
let’s get started;
let’s keep going;
let’s start again.
Sunday Best – September 18, 2022
On my way to the airport in California this week, I was caught up in the me-me-me that travel sometimes entails. My ride was late, my hotel bill had an error, my stomach was rumbling, my mind was preoccupied.
When I finally looked up from my phone, this smiley sight greeted me, the work of someone on the big construction site along the road. Instead of slashing random vents into the fencing cloth, they’d taken the time to carve hundreds of happy faces instead. Who knows how many days have been brightened by this choice?
Dear ones, we can’t always muster up the wherewithal to choose smiles over slashes.
But let us thank the ones who do,
and join them when we can.
*****
Small Kindnesses, by Danusha Lameris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
Bonfire Opera, Danusha Lameris.
Sunday Best – September 11, 2022
In honor of Mary Oliver’s birthday this weekend, a selection from A Thousand Mornings:
Sometimes I spend all day trying to count
the leaves on a single tree. To do this I
have to climb branch by branch and
write down the numbers in a little book.
So I suppose, from their point of view,
it’s reasonable that my friends say: what
foolishness! She’s got her head in the clouds
again.
But it’s not. Of course I have to give up,
but by then I’m half crazy with the wonder
of it – the abundance of the leaves, the
quietness of the branches, the hopelessness
of my effort. And I am in that delicious
and important place, roaring with laughter,
full of earth-praise.
Dear ones, let’s find some foolishness today.
Let’s go half crazy with wonder.
Let’s roar with laughter.