How Faithful the Trees

I wrote a story when I was younger in which a character found clarity by physically climbing to a high place. From there, it seemed she could see all the possible paths of her life stretching out in front of her. From there, she could choose clearly and with purpose,  walk on in peace, with perspective that would not have been possible in the flat, Midwestern town she’d called home to that point. It was a simple metaphor of landscape, clear and uncomplicated.  It spoke to me at the time.

For the last two months, I’ve been planning a backpacking trip with a good friend. Last week, we finally set out to hike a short section of the Appalachian Trail. Our plan was to start at the highest point, along the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, and continue from there to a point we had chosen, where we’d parked the car ahead of time.

At several points in my life, I’ve felt like that character wandering in the confusing flatland. The physical sacrifice of climbing upward has often led to revelation of one kind or another. And lately, since things have been feeling as flat as can be, as confused and lost, such a climb seemed the perfect remedy. I so wanted the perspective. I so wanted the familiar process of revelation and the subsequent downhill momentum where epiphany makes the path seem easy for a time.

There were some clues early on that it wouldn’t turn out that way. There were transportation issues, last minute logistical problems. Approaching the climb we realized coming down would be harder than we anticipated and would take more time. My friends knees ached on the downhill stretches while I struggled under the weight of my pack on the uphill. Eventually my body launched a full out rebellion. Feet blistered, muscles tightened, and food turned my stomach, making it hard to replace the energy I was losing on the day’s hike. I didn’t sleep. Sleet came on our first night and rain all the next day. Things took longer than we had anticipated, and our trek quickly turned into one long and arduous must-do list with a tight timeline.

It seems no matter how much I tell myself that what I want is peace, clarity, and gentleness, what I construct for myself is an incredibly difficult and urgent road. I convince myself that the clarity I need is over the next mountain and run to meet it, only to find another peak a little higher, a little farther off in the distance. In some ways, it’s easier to keep climbing than to just sit still.

Fortunately for me, there were others on my path who showed me more compassion than I was showing myself – my hiking companion who led the way and carried more than her share when I was too sick and exhausted to think clearly, the incredibly kind hiker who helped us find a simpler way down than the one we had planned, and my Aunt Sara, who provided impromptu assistance and a wonderful, peaceful place to recover.

Today I read a post by my friend, Wrensong, who wrote, “How faithful the trees are as they continue in their work in spite of us.” I considered the stillness and patience of these wisest of teachers, their willingness to stand still, through sleet and rain, through seasons, through decades and centuries, their faith in drawing nourishment always from this one place, and when more nourishment needed, in simply going deeper to find it. How brave this seems compared to my habit of arduous climbing. How faithful.

Poe’s Funeral

Driving home today I heard a story on the radio about a funeral for Edgar Allan Poe, who apparently wasn’t given a proper ceremony when he died in 1849. I haven’t read Poe in a long time, but I once had most of “The Raven” memorized. I used to write it over and over again in boring 8th grade English classes when I was supposed to be taking notes.  That same year, my imagination was captivated by a story in Time magazine about the Poe Toaster, who visits Poe’s grave each year with a bottle of cognac. I cut out the article and saved it for many years after.

Later, I lost interest in Poe’s work and came to consider it a bit over the top for my taste. But I look back now with fondness for the girl who discovered his poems and stories. I think we are at our best when we love what we love and follow that wholeheartedly, whether it’s over the top or not. I’m grateful to the younger me for loving poetry and holding onto it, even through awful junior high English classes that could have succeeded in killing that interest completely.  I’m reminded, I need to learn to trust that younger girl a little more often. She knows a few things I may have forgotten.

The New Wilderness

It seems most everything gets  lost in the shadow of the economic news these days, but driving home from work, I heard a wonderful news item about pending legislation to designate more than 2 million acres of land as official wilderness. 

There’s a scene in the movie Dead Poets Society in which the Robin Williams character tells his students that science, law, and finance are all necessary to sustain life, but art, poetry, love… these are the things we live for. In my estimation, wilderness belongs in the latter category as well. 

It’s wonderful to know that in a time when financial wealth is diminishing, we can still recognize wealth in its other forms, and respect t it accordingly.

In-Person Minutes

I resisted getting a cell phone for a long time. In fact, I never really proactively got a cell phone. My father, the Engineer, works for a telecommunications company, and this just baffled him. And because I often drove the distance between St. Louis and Nashville alone, at night, it also made him nervous, so I got a phone, and he added me to his family plan. 

As is the case for many people, I began as something of a technology contrarian, but my resolve has steadily eroded. I now work for an international organization, and a good chunk of the human interaction I engage in most days is via email or conference call. But I have held my ground about some things. I refuse to in any way attach my cell phone to my body. I recently uninstalled an IM application from my office computer in silent protest, but I don’t know that I’ll be able to get away with that for long. In all truth, the technologies that enable us to stay connected to one another have been Godsends in a lot of ways. But I also feel the pressing importance of drawing a personal line in the sand. 

A post at Soul Shelter outlines some great values when it comes to using cell phones: looking at the world and not the phone, spending “in-person minutes” with people, willingly disconnecting.

My additions are: take real vacations and real time off, recognize when technology is enabling me to connect with someone and experience the world vs subtracting from those aims, insist, sometimes, on only doing one thing at a time.

An Unusual Sense of Direction

In Bill Plotkin’s excellent essay, “The Art of Being Lost,” he writes of the different types of lostness: You know where you are but not where you are going; you know where you want to go but not where you are; you know neither where you are going, nor where you are. 

Some months ago, I wrote about getting lost in the woods of Vermont, how getting lost seems to be part of the way I move through the world sometimes. I find my way, but it’s not always to the destination I expected, and I don’t often take a straight, clear path. It’s hard to be honest about this, especially in the face of life-altering forks in the road. Lately I’ve been interviewing with graduate schools, and most aren’t too keen on a candidate who finds her way by wandering on all the various different paths she finds appealing at any given moment. But that is, in fact, what I do, and only in retrospect does a coherent theme become clear. I’ve learned to trust that wandering instinct, but it has taken a long time. Perhaps it makes sense that most psychology programs seem more apt to trust the candidate who is devoted to one path and one alone, never deviating. That, certainly, is more predictable. But I find it difficult to get excited about that prospect, or about studying in a place where such a thing would be expected and valued. 

So I find myself becoming acquainted with one of Plotkin’s central truths about being lost, that it is possible to benefit from it, if one is willing to give up old goals in favor of new, more soulful ones. It may be that the old destination is not actually worth reaching. 

I looked at my journal from that time in Vermont and recalled what had come to me on that walk on which I got lost to begin with, that the point was not to conform to a teacher’s (or program’s) ideals; the point was to find a teacher who would support an unusual sense of direction.

On the Backburner

An art therapist I know talks about the importance of empty space in the creative process. Just as fire needs oxygen if it’s going to keep burning, she says, you have to have empty space in which ideas can grow.

I’m not great at this. Call it enthusiasm for life, but I have so many things I want to do, I rarely allow for much empty space in my life. The side effect is that I get worn out. Then nothing grows.

Recently, the same message seems to be all over the place. A friend recently told me that her favorite “empty space” activity is playing the computer game Bookworm, which delights her to no end. A talented poet I know has been writing recently about playing World of Warcraft, and how games fit into creative life. If I pay attention, the theme seems to pop out everywhere: Take some time. Have fun. Play a game.

And yet, there are plenty of counter-influences.  At work, my colleagues and I have been asked to create status reports each week, accounting for each hour of our time. The “status report” model assumes one task or project at a time, every moment spent doing something. Last night, NPR ran a story about how “mind enhancing” drugs (think Ritalin) could soon be marketed to healthy people in order to increase concentration and, presumably, productivity.

My goal this week is to appreciate the backburner, that back-of-mind space that prefers to do its work outside of the cognitive spotlight, when the mind thinks it’s doing something else. On a day when I’m feeling particularly ambitious, I might also attempt to create some empty space, without immediately moving to fill it with something “productive.”

The Central Question of Responsibility

A recent article on NPR.org tells the story of Alice Waters’ argument with a former White House chef about sustainability and the use of local food. The article is essentially an opinion piece arguing that the “food fad” emphasizing local ingredients has gone too far and that Waters herself has turned into the some sort of food fascist. “…do we really need to know the provenance of an egg?” the author asks.

I was stunned by the question and absolutely astonished at how ill-informed this piece seemed. To my mind, there seemed no reasonable question here; we absolutely need to know about the origin of our food. We are absolutely responsible for how that food is obtained and for the practices we support when we pay for our food. Certainly, we are all quite ignorant of where some, perhaps most, of our food comes from; such is the reality of the culture we live in. But given a choice between knowing and not knowing, deciding for ourselves what enterprises our food dollars will support, who would willingly give up the privilege of knowing?

Lots of people, it turns out, including the author of this article. He and I are on opposite sides of what seems to me the central ethical questions of the time we live in: For how much are we responsible? Do we see ourselves as self-sufficient individuals or as interconnected facets of living, dynamic systems? And what does it truly mean, these days, to live by the ubiquitous golden rule: Do under others as you would have them do unto you? 

It all seems so clear to me. In order to “do unto others,” we must know what our actions actually do unto others. We can’t turn a blind eye to the effects of buying coffee that is not fair trade because it’s cheaper. We need to know how our actions, such as eating food that’s been flown in from another continent, impacts our environment, and what that means for the global ecosystem. It doesn’t mean we expect ourselves to be perfect. It does mean we can’t ethically embrace ignorance.

New Year, New Mind

Photo by Lauren Luton Stinson

I got to ring in 2009 with family, including my fabulous new niece, Elisa, who is just a few weeks old.

I watched her experience everything in the incredibly complete way only a new mind/body can experience things. She can get lost in an interesting pattern on someone’s shirt, or the contrast of black and white in a picture. Watching her process the sensation of being lowered into a warm bath was amazing (she still isn’t quite sure how she feels about the whole bath thing).

I was reminded of the practice of beginner’s mind, which entails putting away preconceptions, beliefs and expectations in favor of experiencing the moment fully and directly. At this point, Elisa has little choice but to experience a great deal fully and directly. She brings her new mind, her new body, to everything. We lose this new mind of ours quickly; we have to if we are going to thrive in the world. We can’t be endlessly fascinated with things all the time. But I also believe that developing into an adult doesn’t mean we lose our younger selves. We still carry the ability to be fascinated by simple experience on that level. We can chose to go through the world that way for short periods of time.

Watching Elisa’s beginner’s mind at work at the start of the New Year provided a timely image for me. Usually the new year is my time to return to basics. I clean up my living space, throw out what I don’t need, incorporate some new ideas, and remind myself of how I want to live my life.  This year, I returned home with a powerful reminder of what beinnger’s mind is, and what it means to experience life fully. I take that into the new year with me.

Promises to Elisa

About a year ago, the Deacon asked me what I thought a good brother was. He had given a great deal of thought to what it meant to be a good husband, but he wasn’t really sure about being a good brother. I was stumped and told him I’d have to think about it. Fortunately, the Nurse came up with a response that captured what was in my heart pretty well. It was about accepting each other as we are, and expecting only that each of us will be true to ourselves and what is in our hearts.

These days, the Deacon is no doubt busy thinking about what it means to be a good father, since his beautiful daughter, pictured here, was born just a few days ago. For my part, I am definitely thinking about what it means to be a good aunt, since this is a new role for me.

Today, I came back to the Nurse’s words, and they helped remind me that being a good aunt, a good sister, a good parent, a good anything, means being true to one’s self and one’s heart. I hope I will be able to serve this little one well in the years to come by doing exactly that.

So, little one, here are my promises to you: I will try to be a good aunt. I will try to show you, by example, what it is to be true to yourself. I will support you when you follow your own heart, even if it means disappointing someone else’s expectations (even mine). I will always be on your side, even when it means disagreeing with you in the moment. I will teach you everything I can about this beautiful world we live in. I will try to calm your parents down when someday you get a freaky tattoo. All my love now and in the years to come… Aunt Kat.

Bare Branches

Last weekend, my cousin got married in a beautiful little church on a historic property in Tennessee. It was a cold, rainy afternoon. The sun was just going down. The altar was decked with candles. Very simple, very quiet.

The minister said, before things began in earnest, that the ceremony presented would be just as it would have been on this same property in the 1830’s. She indicated the plants that stood over the ceremonial space and the near-winter landscape outside and said, it takes courage to stand here in this space, with no distraction or lavish wedding elegance, to  declare love for one another under bare branches.

She was right. It was a powerfully simple, emotional ceremony.

The time of year when summer cools and begins to turn into fall always feels like a relief to me, the frantic, heated energy of one season giving way to  the cool calmness of the next. It feels like coming home, like remembering some deeper peace that got lost, for a moment, in the heat of things. This ceremony felt like that too, like a remembering of something ancient and true, like a peace that could only have come in this season, with its bare branches and cold rain.