Discipline

The cries begin suddenly from the room next door. Our house is small, each space intimate to the other; it is less than ten steps to his crib, where I pick him up gently. His heaviness settles like silence in my arms. We lay down - he nurses, then rolls away, asleep again. I hardly want to take him away from the warm bed to the place he now prefers to sleep, but I bend my body, sway to the crib, and settle him inside.

It is 5:09am. My eyes bleary and my head achey, I walk into the kitchen and turn on the oven. Soon, I will be dropping off breakfast for 22 hungry boys at the retreat center I love. I will pay attention to the people coming and going in these early hours as I drive through the heart of my hometown. I will nurse my baby when I return. I will take a hasty shower (blowing kisses back and forth with my boy while he leans on the tub), sit mindfully with my husband for ten minutes, connect about our day, then go to work.

Rising with the sun calls to my mind the millions of beings waking at the very same time. Whether their bodies compel them naturally or their will forces movement, when all is aligned toward life within a creature, the instinctive direction is growth. My domestic and mundane rituals may seem like lesser rites than chanting great prayers or joining in ancient songs, but they are the disciplines that, when I practice them in surrender, become deep teachings.

Each time I pass a certain opening in the woods near my house - a small wilderness in the heart of the suburbs - I look to see if the deer are there. Each time I pass a certain spot on the expressway, a place where the world of speed and concrete comes close to that ephemeral, slow realm of the natural, I look for the deer, too. My husband says the early morning is the best time to see them. No matter the time of day, I look. This, too, is a discipline: to seek a connection to the beautiful fragility of existence in the form of an animal that is both soft and spirited.

I listen to the names of black people, fellow U.S. citizens, killed in racial hatred, and mourn with my co-workers their lost lives, the most recent casualties of domestic terrorism. I listen to the news and hold it. I hold the woes of my suffering family. I read the words of a prophetic leader who speaks my heart by calling for a more integrated awareness of humanitarian and environmental crises. I spend time sitting in my yard, watching the coming and going of squirrels, chipmunks, birds, and bunnies. I rock my feverish boy and let the heat of our closeness and my fiery love cleanse me from the need for comfort. I reflect on the ways I numb myself to participating in my days fully, journal, and ponder better presence. I admit I have been wrong - controlling, fearful - in a conversation with my husband. I shift my body closer into his merciful, tender embrace later as we fall asleep. I notice flowers growing by a telephone pole, creative inscriptions on a gray backdrop like the graffiti behind them.

We can wake up to the world and choose to be tender, no matter how tired or distraught or seemingly inadequate. Like green things that refuse to be deterred by the weight of synthetic barriers, I hope to rise again and again into this earthly tradition of pilgrimage through each day. I hope my short steps, my simple acts, my meager offerings as a disciple of Living Well are helping to carry us all to a richer place. My teachers surround me: each one, every part of the One, enacts a salvational mantra from the core of their self. I bow inwardly over and over.

4th & Oak: Louisville's Crossroads

How many times have I stood on that corner? Hundreds, perhaps thousands. Every day, real life happens at the intersection of 4^th and Oak Streets. People come and go - on and off buses, in and out of stores - at this Louisville crossroads. Less than a mile east of CrossRoads Ministry, the little retreat center where I once worked, this intersection has been a regular stop along my journey of integrating different factions of my community and my life. This is where East meets West, Downtown meets South…the head meets the heart, compassion meets action. Every Louisville citizen could find their way to such a crossing.

Saturday, a man was shot on that corner by a policeman. A man died from injuries inflicted by an officer. A policeman defended himself against the threat of a drunk man wielding a metal flagpole. An officer overreacted to a confrontation. A mentally ill Sudanese man responded to a cop by attacking him with a pole. A refugee was provoked by an officer and defended himself. There are countless ways to tell the story; each added perspective is another path along the topography of truth, making the map more accurate and more complex as we gather, watch, and listen. Outrage and despair, grief and regret, questioning and challenging – these are the roads I traverse again and again as I revisit the news. These lanes draw me no closer to conclusion but carve deeper trails in my exploration of what it means to be a community.

Deng Manyuon was a Lost Boy of Sudan. He was a victim of immeasurable trauma and pain, someone who came to the U.S. but struggled to find security. He suffered from chronic mental health troubles and homelessness. He drank. He assaulted a woman the day he died. He did not speak English. I wonder what his thoughts were as he walked away from the officer yelling at him, reached for a crude weapon, and charged. Did he meet the officer’s eyes? Was he confused, afraid?

So many times, I stood at that corner waiting for the #4 bus to take me and dozens of high school young people to Americana Community Center where we made friends with refugees. Even if we spoke different languages, we found ways to connect and communicate. Catching the #25 on Oak Street carried us to St. Vincent de Paul – an organization at which Deng found food and shelter – where we sat and ate and met people on the fringe of our city. Over a shared meal, we often discovered that the directions of our different lives led to disparate places but reflected similar journeys. Back at CrossRoads, we processed our day’s experiences and found what had changed for us was not where we stood, but who we stood with.

Nathan Blanford felt threatened. He had to make a split-second call. His hand followed an instinctive path toward an automatic weapon, a familiar and fatal mode of defense. As smoothly as a finger pulls a trigger and a bullet thrusts from a barrel – seemingly effortlessly, without thought, but in truth after years and years of training – he took Deng’s life. His service in the name of the public good led him to this moment. I wonder if he was able to look Deng in the eye. What would he have seen if he had? Was Nathan Blanford confused, afraid?

I am a middle-class, cisgender, straight, white woman who is native-born to this country and has no significant mental or physical illnesses. I recall times I acted in self-defense; sometimes, I in fact acted on assumptions about what, or who, was coming toward me. Foreign and unfamiliar people or circumstances have confronted my security of identity. They have disturbed my knowledge of my place as “right.” I have been humbled to learn that justification is not justice. By receiving mercy for my ignorance, I have been better able to bestow it.

Each time I stand on corners like 4^th & Oak, I discover again the unending work of deconstructing the internal highway that traps me in a one-way ride to isolation. Each time I cross the street and look at life from another perspective, the revelation chips away at the corrupt foundation of unjust systems that keep me separate from my fellow Louisvillians. The rubble of my individual highways and byways has become the material for restoring my life and community. Each connection is an opportunity to explore how, together, we might walk in a new direction. As relationships form, a neighborhood is built.

Saturday, each of us stood on that corner. As citizens of Louisville, we find ourselves at a complicated crossroads of compassion. Blame and excuse are ugly cement on divisive walls. Lack of opportunities to facilitate cultural sensitivity, practice peacemaking, and examine our language are unmapped territories of common ground. Dismissing people who challenge us dishonors all potential servants of the public good. Posing dissimilarity as a threat puts a gun to all of our hearts. For the privileged, ignoring the imperative to name our advantage and lend it to amending broken systems is a death sentence…to us all. Refusing to mourn our lost brothers, both of them, is to forget that we can find unity in common suffering.

Every day, real life happens at the intersection of our lives with others'. We can choose our route. Louisville’s citizens can look their neighbors in the eye, put down defenses, and extend hands. We can take a trip to the other side of town. We can listen deeply, dialogue, ask difficult questions, and be patient with one another. We can restructure our hearts to create a nonviolent neighborhood where all are protected. We can imagine support networks for our most vulnerable citizens so they are not a threat to wellbeing. We can revolutionize our training of public servants to facilitate nonviolence. We can create a truly compassionate city by standing together.

Let’s start by coming to the crossing and meeting one another.

Light Falls

The bright light and warmth of June is already pressing down today, giving depth to my movement through this morning. A sleepy baby brings pause to my activity. In the stillness, my memory is drawn to the luminous intersections sparkling in my heart - they are flight trails from this past week's new patterns of friendship, celebration, heartache, hard work, and gratitude.

A dear friend embraced me last night and told me I am radiating happiness these days in person and word. She's absolutely right; I know and feel it. My life is abundantly blessed and my cup continually runs over with ease, spilling out in words on a page or spoken affirmations to friends or other creative expression. I have never felt so generative. Most moments, my spirit feels like its wings are stretched in achy release with miles and miles of space to soar, the winds of possibility lifting each feather.

However, this work week was particularly trying. The subject matter of the program I've revised - a module on incarceration and prison reform - is gut-wrenching; it is impossible to forget the stories and realities of people in prison when I am "off" work. Ongoing news of my black brothers and sisters' continuous oppression evokes helplessness. My baby boy's sleep habits have been challenging - thus, my communication with my partner has been strained. I have been tossing in a sea of hormonal tides that make no sense. I have not been able to connect with friends with whom I have long wished to share time. My body is still sore from surgery. I am tired.

Listening to the drumbeat of Michael Franti's lyrical mysticism recalibrates my perspective: "It's the sound of sunshine falling down..." Even the light descends. Trees stretch to the sky. Sink down, lift up - it is the ebb and flow of a meaningful, engaged life. In one of her poems, Mary Oliver asks the ocean in despair, "What shall I do?" The ocean, she says, "in its lovely voice," replies to her, "Excuse me, I have work to do."

What I marvel at most is that a community of people have collected around me; they trace with loving fingers the lines of light that carve dark recesses and add dimension to my days. In summer's night, fireflies glow. Falling to fly, each up and down of the wing causes motion and mystery.