A Life That Can Save You

Pieces of a life that can save you:

Waking and knowing there is something for you to do, someone who needs you, whom you need

Going to your small son, who is calling for you in the dark

Noticing by his slight movements and intuitive familiarity that he needs to be rocked and held after nursing

Carrying him to the chair in the living room with tentative steps, carefully letting your eyes adjust to navigate the strewn remnants of the day

Settling into a reflexive space of attention

Looking through the short distance of the semi-dark into his eyes, sparkling with sleep, which are fixated on yours

Breathing in unison

Tracing his soft mouth with your gaze, remembering who he has been since he came to you, and kissing his forehead with tears in your throat

Looking up and out the window to the streetlamps made hazy by rain, your brow soothed by the breeze

Feeling a small hand touch you so lightly on the cheek, he might be wondering if you're awake, and letting his fingers guide your glance back down to his searching face as you marvel at the simple beauty of this moment - a sweet microcosm of heaven, his desire to be with you

Looking at each other until he rubs his eyes

Whispering, "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always - as long as I'm living, my baby you will be"

Letting him settle and resettle until, at last, he finds the place that he needed, that you would do anything to help him find again and again

Returning through the house to his room, a sacred space you share, and taking your time before laying him down

Aching as he easily sinks into comfort and rest away from you, your sighs in tune with his heavy breath of slumber

Risking waking him to touch his cheek gently before slipping away

Remembering the full moon behind the clouds and darkness, and sitting a while longer alone, contemplative and wistful, but fulfilled

Returning to the warm bed of silence, washed by rain, and releasing memory and consciousness to the stars.

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.

White Clover

My boy sits among wild strawberries and clover,
brushes the leaf clusters curiously, plucks
white wildflowers and pops the blossoms
in his mouth, sucking what I can imagine
is sweetness bunnies crave. Morning
dew dampens his plump, strong legs that are beginning
to take him places without guidance, but never
without accompaniment. The breeze combs
his flaxen curls and the trefoil greens
deepen with each longer look of fascination.

Many say God is a Holy Trinity, three Persons
in One. The clover's thin petals form tunnels
to their centers; my child waves a complex flower
like a wand. Humbled, I wonder
how anyone could number the divine
People or Plants, Places or Possibilities,
or suppose the Creator is anything apart from
the Created, creating. Later, my son climbs
into my lap and falls quickly to sleep, sighs
in contended dreams, an earthy smell
on his breath, floral crown at his feet.

Symphonic Solitudes

"Love consists of this, that two solitudes protect and touch each other."
- Rainer Marie Rilke

We heard them before we saw them: two geese flying into the lake. They soared in from the south, silhouetted against the dawn; their trumpeting honks reverberated in the amphitheater of trees. Silenced by their arrival, my husband and I observed from a swinging bench by the water as they alighted with wings that beat the air like drums.

We thought at first there were others responding with throaty sirens, so deafening were their echoes. Soon it was clear the two were solitary, raucous companions. They swam and sang their haunting calls louder and louder. The rhythmic rounds swirled in crescendo, each honk a new verse that elevated the dissonant harmony before falling quiet in the trees. We studied their sleek movement; our spirits resonated with the symphony.

The geese took turns continuing the task of bleated conversation. With each pause, they bent lithe necks to chest and threw back their beaks to ladle down the cool water. Each dip, quick and untidy, caused spilling drops to glitter. Pale auroras of mist swirled over the ripples as the geese floated as ghostly creatures in the shadowed lake. Silent humans and acrobatic birds - near in liminal love, beautifully ephemeral as the light or mist or song - bore witness to wonder.

As suddenly as they arrived, their song shifted keys and, in lyrical synchronicity, they took to the air, mist unfurling as clouds in their wake. The song faded as our attention followed them across the lake, up to treetops, past the horizon. With thoughtless and heavy breath, we wrote in the air a wordless farewell of surprise and thanks.

Two wild birds drawing close can evoke holy terror in the heart of a lone human, but inspired mystical delight in a pair seeking the deeper nature of things. Being human can feel lonely, but two humans sharing space together transforms isolation into a warm practice of protection. Trusting that each other being seeks something the other cannot fulfill is a wisdom that sanctifies individual strife.

I have heard that sighting a pair of geese is a good omen. That the solitudes of our two companionships touched gently, like wings to water or entranced hand to hand, relays a message beyond language. It is the mystery of the realm we inhabit authentically in silence. It sings as the quickened heartbeat, the animated woods, the disturbed and enlightened water, the flight above what can be seen.

Becoming

I watch you notice the bird chirping on the neighbors' air conditioning box working to nest his children in the metal vents with sticks and thread. You gasp and point, press your cheek to mine, look with me to the warbler's perch. Eye to eye, we watch his messy but deliberate process. Suddenly, he takes flight.

The eye is an imperfect instrument made adequate by aeons of messy evolution from an underwater lens to one that translates light refracted through air. Our bodies have had to compensate with generations of mutation, making this end result make sense out of practical necessity. We marvel at its complexity and precision, though we could have mended its inefficiencies had we known where we'd end up. But we didn't. We had to make our way slowly to become a foreign lifeform, swimming and dragging ourselves to land with fingerless flippers out of our aqueous atmosphere, squinting in the hazy sunlight, assessing the risk of never going back.

This moment, your soft eyelashes rest on round cheeks pressed against my empty breasts. Your breathing, my heartbeat, this relationship with you outside of my body, reminds me of the messiness of birth. More blood and effort and pain than we would have planned had we known our heads would grow so large, our pelvises would narrow, our society would make it difficult to keep well the bond between mother and child. But here we are, our rhythms syncing, the heaviness a comfort, the birdsong an ideal lullaby.

The way you throw your head back to see the moon and stars as we walk at night looks like the beginning of a back flip, motion that defies the grounding physics of gravity. The moon feels like it could rest in a hand like an orb, but its orbit dictates our internal tides. We look up at the moon looking down on a planet it doesn't know houses humans. The way you look at me in delighted puzzlement at the distant lights in darkness is the start of a lifetime of questions.

Why only five fingers and toes, and no fewer? Why does the smell of your breath make me smile? Why feathers on birds, scales on fish, skin on humans? Why sex, or pain, or laughter? Why delight in observing life? Why death, instead of living forever?

Nothing would be the same if we'd known it was becoming. Nothing would mean anything without a history, but nothing happens for a reason except that it has to happen that way for the world to get where it is going.

Our eyes are the same as the bird's nest, brown and rich, empty for holding. Your wonderment is the Earth's bedtime story, telling us what could happen if we dreamed. The mystery of what we will become is foretold in the bird's flight, is written in blood, is promised in song.