The Passion of a Wonderful World

The morning of Good Friday, my sleepy child hung on my neck and looked at me with expectant eyes, seeking a distraction from his runny nose. I looked at the gray skies out the window and, reflexively, began to sing – You are my sunshine…my only sunshine!  With a quick smile, he began to laugh and bounce.

Suddenly, an old familiar tune popped into my mind and flowed from my mouth:

I see trees of green, red roses, too,

I see them bloom for me and you

and I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world...'

My son's joy prompted me to search for and play the full song. Louis Armstrong's serenade swirled us around the room as we sang and danced. The final verse arrived and, before I knew it, tears began to brim in my eyes with an unconscious recognition; I fell silent and just listened to the poignant close:

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow -

they'll learn much more than I'll ever know,

and I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world...'

I sighed and pulled my boy a little nearer. Nothing has brought me closer to a sense of my own mortality than becoming a mother. I have never so fiercely protected a life as I have his, and I have never valued mine so highly until I felt his intrinsic dependence on me. I have said many times that he teaches me how best to heal this world, and myself. He has already been a natural instructor in letting things go. He shows, again and again, that each day brings new possibility, that each new death yields life formerly unimaginable.

The night before, the two of us gathered with community members to honor the beginning of the Triduum. Imitating the symbolic image of servanthood shared in the story that evening, the entire church took turns sitting to have their feet washed and washing another’s feet. Because it was unscripted and simple, resonant icons began to take form as person after person enacted the ritual. Elders washed the feet of young members. Children washed their parents’ feet. Those who needed assistance nobly enacted the foot washing, slowly but surely, with patience and help. Publicly-known disagreements, disputes, and differences faded away as, sitting and resting feet in a bowl or taking up a towel and pitcher, companionship was recognized in the mutual act of grace.

My son was fast asleep; I cradled him in my arms as I sat down. The woman at my feet was a lifelong friend, the mother of my childhood playmates, someone who has washed my feet before in many ways and times. We both shed tears as she gently poured the water over my feet, then dried them. I carefully lowered my son over the bowl and she washed his feet, too. He sighed sweetly as he dreamt, held in the sacred space of being tended to without reciprocation. We embraced, and she held my sleeping baby as I turned to wash the feet of another.

The next morning, dancing to Louis Armstrong, my boy sensed I was crying. He pulled back and looked me in the eyes, softly touched my face, understood beyond understanding. Silently, he opened his mouth and pressed it to my cheek.

I see friends shaking hands, saying, ‘How do you do?’

They’re really saying, ‘I love you…’

It is a magnificent mystery, the truth that my son will see farther into the future than I; his eyes will look longer at the world than mine. I sing to, clean, feed, comfort, play with, learn from, and love this little boy...but I will not know the extent of his expansion. Although I receive bountiful gifts from our life together, the direction of energy most often feels outward and into him. But I trust that this watering of his small spirit will yield seeds, then fruit; I know that my life is meaningful because I try, in futile but dutiful ways, to leave this world more beautiful for him; I trust that when my body finally falls into eternal rest, the continued animations of his life will be as close to a personal immortality as I can imagine.

When I gathered at the church again on Good Friday evening (this time leaving my sleepy little one at home in his father’s arms), a familiar story of suffering-love was transformed. Rather than hearing a story of a man’s self-sacrifice for a new world, I heard the story of a son, loved and lost. In my mind’s eye, all I could see was Mary at the foot of the cross.

Mary, Mother, looking up at a son to whom she gave her life.

Mother, gazing at her suffering son crucified unjustly…the eyes of countless women watching their sons shot, beaten, executed, sent off to war.

Mother, holding her child close…waking with him in the morning, dancing and singing with him, feeling his wet kiss on her cheek.

Mother, living beyond what her son would see – the cruel inverse of the right destiny of parents and children.

Mother Christ, borne through a woman who had to watch her son die, then live into the mystery of continued life.

Mother Christ, alive in women across the globe who have died to their old selves to give life to their children and the children of all future generations.

I listened as, in the circle of silence, the millennia-old story shifted to a litany calling those gathered to open their hearts to the people of our planet still crucified. Suffering people – a people of Passion, which means to hurt. Compassion – the place of suffering together. Community – a place where suffering is transformed through our oneness. 

The starving, the tortured, the poor, the oppressed…Christ borne as Children deserving of restoration of dignity so that they may live into the future they have come to manifest.

I watched as two women danced around a simple, wooden cross that had traveled across Louisville earlier that day, carried by pilgrims who stopped at living stations, places representative of the injustice that still harms our human family. The women danced, and I saw them as two spirits swirling around this wonderful world, burning with flames that held the hurting, blazing with fire to heal the harm. 

There is death…and there is resurrection. Life is unfailing and resurrection prevails. This is our Passion story of Easter hope: to continue to make the world new for our children.

Sunday dawned with brilliant sunshine. The birds sang, the light drew the curtains, and my husband, child, and I basked in the relaxed freshness of Easter morning. 

Spring always returns; babies continue to be born. The light always arrives after the rainfall. Eternity comes in moments; salvation, in love.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white,

the bright, blessed day, the dark, sacred night,

and I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world...'

To my astonishment, at my in-laws' house, there was a little board book in my son’s Easter basket with a familiar title. My mother-in-law said she just knew we had to have it when she saw it. Tears again filled my eyes as, Mother and Son, we read the Passion of this wonderful world – one of brokenness and blessing, of hurting and healing, of loving so fully that, when we let go, we know we will be reborn.

…Yes, I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world.’

A Day's Work

I find myself on the other edge of a night - closer to the moment of surprise when, nursing Oak, I glanced outside to see the round moon caught in the cage of budding dogwood branches. The laughter of playing children grew quieter; Oak's breathing grew heavier. Settling, the world dropped its shoulders and admired its work. I, too, allowed myself to step off the balance beam and fall into a more organic alignment, simply resting with my baby, content with what accomplishment I could attribute to the time since sunrise. As the sky darkened, I felt lighter.

I am sitting in the dark on the edge of my bed, already beginning to mentally measure the obligations of this new day, which still feels like tomorrow. These stolen moments of silence - when Oak is content to lay alone, when Robby's breathing from the other room leaves a small ache in my heart from the distance - are when I want to capture the moonrise of thought that sneaks up in a moment. My spirit whispers, "Write!" My mind races with anxious questions that narrow my scope. Can I get the work done tomorrow that I wasn't able to finish today? How will our family juggle sickness, childcare, work, community...rest? So, I type what is true and trust that making just a little space is a gift I can give myself in this time between days.

I hear Robby stirring in the other room - perhaps I woke him. There is a strange intimacy in darkness that brings everything closer. I can hear his movement like the taps of my fingers. Oak's sudden intake of breath is in my chest. These moments, like the moment of holding my baby close at the end of a day and trusting that I have done enough, throw into relief the power of moving one step at a time: noticing, not hoping. I will finish typing and turn off the screen. Sleep will return, likely in ample measure to sustain me through. This will not be the last glance inward I am offered. Everything is held within me - my work is always done, and not yet started.

Tears come to my eyes as I feel in my heart the innumerable parents cradling their children in the dark, the lovers forsaking sleep for a more physical union, the workers whose work will continue until sunrise: the body of humanity laboring away, making something new.

Robby comes to bed. Happiness is a full bed of sleepy bodies to warm you. I prepare to turn in again, to slip off the edge of knowing, to let my soul rest like the eternally evolving stars.

One Dark Morning

Greetings to the dark morning, a cave of quiet inside gentle raindrops' canopy. The dripping window panes are a looking glass, welcoming me to recognize my reflection in the wet, budding trees receiving the day and the deep clouds of refreshment at their upturned fingertips. The warmth of the armchair and comforter ask me to be soft; my baby's restlessness and his heavy breathing compel me to stillness.

Hunger and exhaustion, insistent guests in this body, are telling me with their urges that I am alive, I am awake. As my child cries out in his sleep and nestles closer to my chest, these rhythms - our parallel heartbeats, our complimentary breath, the rainfall of a beginning spring day - align me to awareness. For a time, I hold what is vulnerable and yearning in the world. My ears are tender to the cries, my heart to the heaviness, my body to the weariness.

I let the rain seep into the Soul of Life I carry and quench the parched thirst for rest and comfort. There is no insulation from the worries and woes but there is cleansing. I allow these burdens to feel malleable and mutable - they atomize and fall like drops to water seeds of attention in my being. I touch my child's hand though I cannot see, inhale, and sigh. I accept. I hold. I release.

The birds begin their singing.

Growing Softer

I run a hand along my calf to feel the difference. Raising my arms above my head, I notice the dark patch between my arm and torso. A new portrait of myself: bare face, stretched belly, hairy legs and underarms. More roundness, less symmetry.

My son crawls up to me as I dress for the day, catches my eye in the mirror, and smiles his two-toothed grin. Arriving at my feet, he reaches out and gently rests a hand on my leg for support as he wobbly stands. The months have flown, my hair has grown, but my fuzzy shins cause my baby boy no offense. As I scoop him up and he wraps my neck with his arms, I realize again the many levels of my life he has reformed.

Because of my son, I have made the intentional choice to let my body hair grow. I could half-joke and say the reason is that I no longer have time to shave in the shower. The real reason is that, when I thought about why I did, I could not convincingly say it was because I wanted to. When the day comes that, instead of babbling sweetly, he offers a question about my choices, I want to answer him with honesty.

I remember the embarrassment and shame I once felt as a young woman when signs of maturation first sprouted. The hair on my legs was a glowering advertisement that I was not yet allowed to shave, physically and emotionally caught between stages of adolescence. The hair on my underarms was a bitter annoyance as, drawing a blade across delicate skin, I felt the sting of shearing unsightly evidence of womanhood. Like menstruation’s secret rhythm of moods and months, hair removal was a private ritual that punctuated my weeks and demanded investments of time, money, and energy. Whether or not I had shaved dictated my clothing choices, my confidence, and my sense of acceptability. Rather than an initiation into womanhood, I felt hair removal to be a necessary burden in the business of becoming a woman.

According to one British survey, women spend 72 days and $10,000 shaving over a lifetime. I could craft feminist arguments on the origins of this beauty regimen, capitalism’s perpetuation of the practice for profit, or the political statement made by shaving, or not shaving, or being a conscious person and still choosing to shave. I am not interested in making an argument, but in making my life a reflection of truth for a small human whose inquisitive eyes will see beyond smooth skin and shallow defenses. It may seem silly, but this concrete preoccupation is one of my many. What other ways do I conduct my life according to thoughtless conformity?

This whole-self alteration is harder than lathering up lotion and grabbing a razor. It means that, when I slipped on my first skirt of the season, I had to relive the awkwardness of adolescence all over again. Will anyone notice my leg hair? It sounds shallow and self-absorbed, but it was real. Then, of course, I saw it was unreal. No one noticed or, if they did, it did not matter. The practice of bearing my body just as it is requires that I find ways to look at myself as beautiful without mediation. I must take control of my opinion of my appearance, the way I spend my money, the matters to which I give my hours. What will I do with 72 days and $10,000? with a newfound authenticity?

By letting go of this cumbersome ritual, I am discovering the value of being less polished and more vulnerable. In my son’s smiling eyes, I am painted in motherhood’s media: more pastel than pen-and-ink, less like a sculpture chiseled from blades but more like a molded clay figure – earthy and honest, a figure growing softer for the sake of living truthfully.

What We Can't Keep

There are days that defy description, that cannot be captured in any dimension but the aligned experience of the present. Today became such a series of moments that led to greater luminosity and clarity. 

Sharing a spontaneous morning heart-to-heart with a mentor helped to reconcile my immanent personal discernment with a vision of my Life Path. Spending time charging my spirit in the sunshine as I did work that connected me to the stories of people in prison in our country - that brought into relief new understanding of how my freedom is bound to theirs - reminded me of the privilege I am granted to bear their lives in my heart. Writing notes to strangers while seeing them through the eyes of people who love them drew me deeper down into the vibrating network of relationships that I am ever enmeshed in, but often forgetful of. Making another spontaneous connection with a friend who is a flame of inspiration to me grounded me in gratitude for the vital necessity of his life - of all manifestations of Life and the helpers, like him, who tend it.

Walking with my dogs, my husband, my child into a beautiful sunset moved me to try to take a picture, for I so wanted to hold it, to keep it...but I found the photo a far inadequate visage of the sunset's beauty and power, the way the light held everything in that moment, the way all our eyes were drawn into the vastness of a sky heralding transition, the fleeting illusion of color and contrast that, in all its ethereal wonder, was real. All I could do was look at my son, my husband, my dogs - beings I love beyond love - glowing in the close of the day, and feel the ache in my heart that reminds me that I have been touched, that I am alive.

The way my life is shaped by the people who form its lattice of love is beyond explanation. The hazy film of energy I see settling on an evening, the atoms pulsing and swirling as trees and fields of grass, surpasses my ability to ask if anyone else can see it, too. A day that can carry me from one place to another, though I find myself tonight in the same bed from which I rose this morning, is a mystery to cradle in sleep. In awe, I surrender to dreams this transitory gift as an offering to be woven into my neural memory, to be sacrificed to the common spirit, to be let go with bewildered thanks.

The Teacher

to Oak Olivam

This morning, I watched your delighted eyes
observe the squirrel snacking on crabapple berries,
grasping bare branches, limbs clinging to a cold sky.
Each quick movement of paws and twitch of tail was
caught in the lattice of your unfolding awareness -
tracery of wonder. You held your gaze. I wanted to see
how rhythmically the small mammal plucked and chewed
and paused, the bobbing dance of skillfully traversed treetops,
but I could not look away from the profile of your sunny brow,
your lashes laced with light pouring in through the window
and settling like a traveling cloak on your small body.
Where will you journey, little one? I wanted to listen
for the note in the chattering birdsong that made you smile,
but your mesmerized mouth breathed a quiet poetry
that softly filled my ears with its thoughtlessness.
What mysteries will your life reveal? I wanted to catch
the moments of blossoming beauty that animated your fingers
to trace the air as if memorizing the movements of gathering,
but I accomplished nothing I can capture or measure or recount
with the clarity of your awe, the power of your attention.
How will your learning teach this humble disciple? In silence,
you turn to me, your eyes offering countless wordless answers.

Not Someday - This Day.

When do we arrive at the end, having learned all we need to know?

Someday, I believed, I will find the secret to being a perfectly attentive mother. I am still new - my babe is only six months old; I have time to grow and practice and perfect. I will learn the trick to encourage him to sleep through the night. I will understand how to balance my priorities as an adult engaged in the world with the responsibilities of being a mother. Someday, the mystery will lift like fog and the ideal alignment will settle like sunshine on my shoulders.

Someday, I will have a perfect confidence with myself as a wife, co-worker, friend, daughter, sister, employer. I will stick to a meditation routine that gives me pause every morning. I will limit my groceries to all local or organic, whole, unprocessed foods. I will study the daily news and research its authenticity. I will better educate myself on the history of structural oppression, philosophy, politics, global economics, poetry, and writing composition. My yoga practice will be daily and reflexive. I will revere my body as a temple that is the gateway to earthly salvation.

Someday, I will offer perfect compassion to everyone I meet. I will work for justice in the world to forge new possibilities for my child and the world's children. I will speak to amplify unheard voices. I will express myself eloquently through written word and speak with clarity. Each act will flow as an extension of my most core values and visions.

Will this ideal embodiment culminate in a moment of perfect enlightenment, an irreversible occurrence of self-actualization? Will thunder roll, the clouds part, and light shine from the tips of my fingers? When will I know that I am close to this illumination?

I once thought of this life - the adventure of personhood - as a linear journey with clearly demarcated steps of advancement. I looked forward to finding my way to the end, taking a deep breath, and settling beneath a welcoming tree for a rest. I could imagine reflecting on my life and connecting one place to another in my mind to reveal the elegantly simple plan that led to my finale. What contentment and peace that would bring!

This old vision lingers as a mirage at times when I wonder selfishly how and when my hard work will be recognized. Its temptation shimmers when I think I have arrived at an ultimately right idea. I long for the false refreshment of satisfaction in knowing I completed the Task, finished the Race, and stand correctly in the best place.

My living has brought me to the edge of this imagined oasis and, at times, I have had a seat and patted my back. Soon, however, a challenging friend or sharp insight or internal voice of consciousness identifies the hole in my self-constructed landscape. The mirage melts away with my sense of certainty. Lately, my primary mentor has been my child - his vulnerability presses against the edges of my self-preoccupation and I see that my previously defined boundaries of care must again expand. I begin to realize how easily I succumb to distraction and how ardently my love for him fuels my renewed focus. My once firmly established understanding of my physical, emotional, or spiritual needs have shrunk or expanded in direct proportion to his more earthy rhythms.

At some point, I started to wonder if perhaps I might never arrive, but perpetually travel in ebb and flow through this life. I began to imagine this path not as a destination at which to arrive but a state of being to practice every step. The only adventure on which to embark is the journey of now. No achievement, only work. No end, only endless beginning. No fulfillment, only flourishing.

Not someday, but this day.

My path led me to fertile ground of receptivity and, in this soft soil, I planted myself as a seed. My becoming is now blossoming; layers of personal evolution unfurl around one another. Like a complex lotus flower, there may be a shifting and temporary center or edge, but the waves of potential are the points of exploration. By the time I feel I have learned something, the ground shifts - either the object of knowing or myself have changed. Both seem to transform with each emanation of wisdom that situates me at another beginning.

In my former life as a wanderer, I created the fear that I was always in the wrong place, the space of not-quite. While I undoubtedly have aeons to go and light years to travel, I now hold a different perspective: that we all are ever in the place of possibility, space of abundant resources, framework of infinite opportunity. The only real chance is this thought, feeling, word, action, response. We do not have somewhere to go, we have somehow to be.

This shift is seismic though elusive and at first imperceptible. As a person, I find that I fall in and out of this perspective from step to step. But the beauty of the vision is that it is always possible to begin again. The sum of the beginnings amounts to something more than the eye can see. It plows the furrow for more seeds, more chances to say yes, and creates soft places for others to pause on their paths and sit long enough to remember and root. My wandering has turned to wonder at my, our, privilege to be something new every moment. The collective fruit could nourish a revolutionary appetite for interconnected efforts to manifest lofty potentials in the here and now.

As a national and worldwide community, I wonder what could happen if we paused and planted. Imagine a country where assumptions of what constitutes progress are relinquished for a vision of radical presence. Imagine if citizens looked one another in the eye, listened, and then decided how to be. Imagine if politics were dominated by the constant attempt to see and tell the truth that there is no placeholder for the greatest country or ladder of economic achievement to scale - there is only a more real way to be together at this moment. Not someday, but this day. There is no Worse or Better, only Less Life or More Life flourishing.

In these times, I hear all around and within the protest that it is too difficult to change, as if the tide of possibility has swept us away beyond agency. I hear that progress toward the non-existent utopia of our dreams is a valid path, as if all people currently have equal or any access to lives of meaning. I hear denial that things need to change at all, that the world is fine as it is, as if the clamor of myriad animal and plant species did not resonate with urgency. These counterpoints ring with the vibration of my own fixation on the false comfort that we have somewhere to be, or are already there.

Not someday past or future, but this day. We cannot, should not, deny our history; if only we knew the reality of where we have been, we might not recreate its horrors or triumphs so thoughtlessly. We cannot, should not, deny the need for forethought; if only the generations of Earth creatures to come were accounted for with each breath of Life, there might not be so much work to do. These form the yoke on our shoulders as we walk and till each attentive second; these are the frequency gardens to marvel and examine as our present flowers of awareness grow into new dimensions. This day, we can move in a less detectable direction - not backward or forward, but outward.

I wake and turn my thoughts to gratitude.

I celebrate my child how he is.

I look a homeless passerby in the eye.

I listen to the words of my enemy without prejudgment.

I choose the simpler, more sustainable meal.

I acknowledge every person I encounter.

I write to my representative.

I pay careful attention to my husband.

I rest and reflect.

I try the bus instead of driving.

I do not buy anything new.

I examine my position as a person of privilege.

I speak the kinder word.

I notice other forms of Life throughout my day.

I ask a question without assumptions.

I demand better treatment of marginalized people.

I negotiate for peace.

I am.

I wonder. I plant. I wait. I act. I nurture. I hope.

I make connections and affirm I do not have the whole vision.


Where will these practices take us?
How will we know we are doing the right thing?
When do we arrive at the end, having learned all we need to know?

No Where. No Way. No other time or place.
But this day, we can begin, and begin again.