Month: May 2010

Forward and back at the same time

Be open to your happiness and sadness as they arise. – John M. Thomas

I love this (also yet another sky photograph). As my Landslide post described, happiness and sadness arise for me out of thin air sometimes, swamping me like an unanticipated wave. At other times they come up with a steadier drumbeat, reaching a more conventional crescendo.

This is, I believe, one of the major tasks of my life: to learn to ride these various swells and ebbs without fear, to honor each moment as it comes, to trust that sadness will eventually make way to happiness again as firmly as I already know that joy will fade away to melancholy.

And after all, the happiness means nothing without the sadness. That is another of the few things I know for sure. What I’m not sure of is whether this is about capacity or contrast. I lean towards capacity, but I’m not entirely certain. I don’t love The Prophet, but one of Gibran’s lines encapsulates this more perfectly than I ever could: The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

(a repost from last summer, as we cruise into summer here.  So much is the same and so much is different.  I am still oscillating between happiness and sadness, still zigzagging along the border of light and dark, still moving in those undulating rhythms of life that move me somehow forward and back at the same time.)

There is something holy in authentic presence

 

I was hugely fortunate to be able to go to the MOMA in New York yesterday to view Marina Abramovic’s performance, “The Artist is Present.” I had read some about it, and in particular love this blog of portraits of people who have sat with Marina.

I spent about an hour watching the piece. I’m uncertain as to whether I should call it a performance or a piece of art. I was struck by the austerity of the space. The whole time I was there the same woman sat across from Marina. She was a young woman in a black robe, actually similar to the one Marina is wearing above (which was identical yesterday, but white). The space where Marina and the woman sat was busy, with museum guests walking around constantly. It was noisy, open to the lobby and all of the ambient sounds produced by the hundreds of people passing through there.

Still, somehow, in the large square that was marked off with masking tape, there was a palpable calm. The woman across from Marina originally seemed agitated to me, despite sitting completely still. She seemed to be blinking fast, with a closed expression on her face, none of the emotion that is so visible in the portraits above. And yet as I sat there, she seemed to slow. Marina was shiny from the heat, statuesque, almost wax-like. She had a beatific glow to her, a stillness that radiated.

Two lines ran through my head as I sat on the border between the noise of people going through their days and the deep silence of the performance: “In the room, the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo” and “Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.” I’m not sure yet what message Prufrock and Desiderata carried in their hands; maybe I’ll figure that out as the experience sinks in.

My first and abiding reaction was that this is an immensely generous act by Marina. She offers herself, hours a day, to anyone who wants to participate, who is moved to engage with her. I’m struck by this act of grace, this offering of that most holy and rare thing: our attention. There was a potent energy between the two women, sitting across from each other, something they were sharing that was intensely private and yet accessible by all those who sat and witnessed. I felt peaceful sitting there, and also electrified. (and also old, as my knees were not happy on the stone floor).

The essential message of yesterday is that there is art, and something truly holy, in offering our authentic presence to each other. There’s never been any question about that in my mind, but Marina’s performance made this fact manifest in an indelible, inarguable way. I’m deeply glad that I went and shared in the experience, and know I’ll think about it for a long time.

We bear the scars of our journey

Last year, I read a book about a man named Wilson Bentley, who coined the phrase “No two snowflakes are alike.”  He is the one who discovered the actual reality that no two snowflakes are geometrically the same.  Bentley was a New England farmer who fell in love with the beauty and individuality of snowflakes…. What amazed Bentley was the realization that each snowflake bore the scars of its journey.  He discovered that each crystal is affected by the temperature of the sky, the altitude of the cloud from which it fell, the trajectory the wind took as it fell to earth, and a thousand other factors.

– Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Present Tense with Laura Vanderkam

My friend Kathryn introduced me to Laura, because she thought Laura’s new book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, and the philosophy it evinces, would be of interest to me. In our very first exchange, Laura wrote: “I think one of the reasons people feel like they have less time than they do is that they aren’t present when they’re doing whatever they’re doing.” And I just nodded and said, well, yes. At least that is true for me.

Laura’s book “is a fun, inspiring, and practical guide that will help men and women of any age, lifestyle, or career get the most out of the time and their lives.” Kathryn is interviewed and profiled in one chapter. I had three immediate reactions to this idea, at least with respect to the issue of presence. The first is that yes, it is absolutely true that careful allotment of our time can result in more time, or at least in the hours rolling out in a more orderly fashion. A correlated observation that I’ve long wanted to write about is that the way we spend our hours really says a lot about what our priorities actually are (more on that another time).

My second reaction to the blurb about Laura’s book is that well, yes, that’s true … but. I’m a very organized person and I have been known to structure my time with ruthless, military precision. My obsession with timeliness can make me humorless, and I certainly struggle to relax and let go of the fourteen other more efficient things I could be doing at any given moment. And yet, despite all of that, it took me a long time and a far more ineffable kind of effort to finally figure out how to be more present in my life.

The third reaction was to hear in my head one of my very favorite quotes. At least daily this scrolls through my consciousness, and I immediately thought of it when I read about Laura’s book:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. (Annie Dillard)

So what’s more important than a thoughtful approach to how we fill our hours, for example the 168 that we get each week? I would posit: nothing. I was thrilled when Laura agreed to be interviewed for Present Tense, and think her answers perfectly conjure the combination of careful, logical planning and inspired, emotional commitment that I believe can add up to a life of really paying attention.

1. When have you felt most present? Are there specific memories that stand out for you?

I try to enjoy moments as often as I can. One of the great things about writing 168 Hours is that it’s forced me to really think about my own time, because enjoying your life is largely a matter of enjoying your hours. I try to build joy into my days: savoring a cup of strawberries, for instance, or since I work out of a home office, sneaking in a quick snuggle with my baby when I’ve got a break. But here’s one that popped into my brain when I read this question. I was in Israel about ten years ago, and riding a bike on a road along the Egyptian border. The sun went down, the moon came up and looked so ghostly on the sand. There is something about riding a bike, pedaling hard, feeling the night wind on your arms, that just forces you to be in the moment. Pure bliss. I think the moment stood out because it seemed so much holier than the Disneyland atmosphere around the actual holy sites I’d also visited on the trip. Perhaps I’d been hoping for some grand religious experience at the site of Jesus’s tomb. The night wind was like a reminder that the divine is all around, that it’s silly hoping for a religious experience at the tomb, because the whole point of the religion is that He isn’t there.

2. Do you have rituals or patterns that you use to remind you to Be Here Now?

Running keeps me firmly in the present tense. While training for a marathon recently, I did weekly speed sessions and long runs (up to 20 miles). By the last lap of an 8×800, or mile 18 of a 20-miler, there is no where your mind can be but where you are. You may wish it to be elsewhere, but somehow your mind keeps coming back to your breath and the rhythmic pounding of your feet. I also keep a journal. I don’t write in it nightly, but I do most days, and recording the days helps cement them in my mind.

3. Do you have specific places or people that you associate with being particularly present? Who? Where? Any idea why?

My apartment balcony is nice for this. When I get the chance – the kids are asleep or I have the house to myself – I like to sit and watch the city 43 floors below. When I’m sitting in my living room, I usually think I should be picking the toys up off the floor. I don’t feel that way when I’m outside, taking in the view.

4. Have you ever meditated? How did that go?

Not as such. Sometimes I repeat certain phrases while running to get through those last miles. Sometimes I count my blessings while waiting for the elevator. I find that’s a good way to use those few minutes.

5. Has having children changed how you think about the effort to be present?

Having children has made me try to appreciate the little happy moments that the universe grants in abundance if you’re willing to pay attention. Small children are obviously a lot of work – work that takes up a lot of our hours – and there are certain moments that no one enjoys. Changing multiple kids’ dirty diapers at the same time comes to mind, or having your own breast milk spat back up on you. But then this morning as I was getting everyone dressed, we started jumping around on my 3-year-old’s bed. He was just wearing a Pull-up and my 8-month-old was just wearing a diaper, so it was all one jumble of baby fat and little limbs and giggles. I try to burn these images into my mind, because I know time keeps passing and they will grow up soon.

6. And just cause I’m curious, what books and songs do you love?

Too many books to mention, but my favorite work of music is Bach’s B-Minor Mass. I’m mildly obsessed with it. I learned it in choir in college, and I continue to be amazed by the absolutely intricate polyphony of the choruses. The Agnus Dei is one of the most amazing alto solos ever written. It is mostly low and hushed, but then the occasional high note pierces through and just compels you to listen – and be present.

*************

Laura, thank you! I love this sentence: “Having children has made me try to appreciate the little happy moments that the universe grants in abundance if you’re willing to pay attention.” Thank you for so elegantly and lucidly saying the very thing I keep stumbling around in this space!!

I relate most powerfully to two of your responses. The first is that running is where you find yourself, eventually, to a place where your mind and your body are one. I agree entirely with this. And you are so right that sometimes I wish my mind could go elsewhere, do the jumping monkey thing it seems to do the whole rest of my life … but at mile seven (I have not done a marathon, thank you very much!) I simply can’t get it to go away from my lungs, my legs, the distance from here to there.

The second is the memory from Israel, and the observation that the spiritual moments are sometimes different than we might have assumed, somehow less obvious, more around the edges. Or simply the recognition that, as you say, the “divine is all around.” Indeed, it is. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that the task of my life now is realizing that. And living in accordance with that knowledge.

Thank you, Laura … I can’t wait to read the book. You can learn more about Laura here, about 168 Hours here, and can pre-order it here!

Earthquake of the soul

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I am terrible with endings. Equally terrible with change. The school year draws to a close, the air fills with humidity and the thick, sweet smells of spring moving into summer, and I start to cry. This isn’t even the “end of the beginning” anymore – we are well past that now. My baby is graduating from Beginners. My older child is moving out of the very youngest building at school. Sob. I am already aware of how few days are left in this school year, and I wake each morning with a tangible sense of loss hanging on the horizon of my awareness.

But this year, along with the traditional end-of-school year melancholy, there are other things ending. Our beloved nanny of 5 1/2 years, who joined us right when Whit was born, is leaving. This is her last week. I am leaving the job I’ve been at for 3 1/2 years. I will have the summer without work for the first time in 10 years. There are numerous tiny ways in which I feel like the life I know is about to shift irrevocably, and I do not have steady footing for this ride. The terrain of my life is beginning to move around, I suspect there is an earthquake coming, and I don’t know what to do to keep myself safe. Where is the doorframe, in which you are supposed to seek stability, in an earthquake of the soul?

My parents are sailors. Growing up on boats I encountered my share of those frayed, brittle lines whose protruding roughness can cut your hands. You grab them wrong and you can wind up with a sliver of fiberglass embedded in your palm. That’s how this feels right now: all of these losses, all of these endings, are wound together in a knotty rope whose power is undeniable but whose touch on my hand stings badly. I don’t even want that rope near me, but I can’t get away from it.

These changes flicker at the edges of all of my hours now, and like flames eating a piece of paper they consume them from the outside in. I don’t know how much is left in the middle, so voraciously do these endings seem to take over my thoughts, my feelings, my very life. I know intellectually that the anticipation of a change has often been worse than the reality for me, but this knowledge cannot possible compete with the roaring fear in my spirit. And so I go out into the glorious spring day, trying to keep my hands from being cut by the rope I cannot avoid, trying to keep my eyes on what is in front of me, trying to keep my heart from leaping out of my chest. It’s not simple, this part, for me.