Sketchbook 3

When a single coherent topic is just a bridge too far

Photo credit: https://www.perkypet.com/articles/american-crows-the-good-the-bad-and-the-noisy

Dearest Friend,

Considering memory and grace and crows and tootsie pops. Can you connect the dots? I’m not sure that I can.

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Suppose the way in which we remember is first an inheritance. A gift we are given before we even know we might refuse it, and once accepted, impossible to return. Not so different than our senses, really. And in every way intimately related. Each gift shaping the other. Our memories honing our senses. Our senses molding our memories. 

Suppose we trick ourselves into believing we are masters of the manner in which we remember. That we can choose the memories to which we cling,  or decide for ourselves the things to which we give our hearts. How often do I say, “I have to remind myself of this or that.” Has there ever been a more nonsensical, or at least a more paradoxical, statement? Who is talking to whom in this exchange?

In Flatland, Edwin Abbot describes a sentient Point in a non-dimensional world. The Point, believing himself to be the entirety of the universe, speaks to and of himself in the same breath:

“Ah, the joy, ah, the joy of Thought! What can I not achieve by thinking! My own Thought coming to Myself, suggestive of My disparagement, thereby to enhance My happiness! Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in triumph! Ah, the divine creative power of the All in One! Ah, the joy, the joy of Being!”

Of course, the irony is that another being, one outside of the point’s dimensionless world, spoke this “sweet rebellion” into the ear of the point, and awoke the disparagement which the point was able to discern, but was unable - not unwilling - but literally unable, to identify its source. So he attributed the wisdom to himself, believed himself capable of engaging honestly with himself, because he believed himself the universe, and believed the universe himself.

How often do I mistake the voice of Another for my own? And how often do I cling to the illusion that I am my own master? That the entire universe resides inside of me?

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This is one of the unspeakable treasures of brain cancer: the certainty that my body, and therefore my brain, is a gift, yet a fallible gift. And that no manner of effort can either create or preserve my ability to remember the “right things” or to remember in the “right way.”  The knowledge that to talk to myself is to be caught in my own little corner of a far broader, wider, deeper (and some other -er word that I don’t even know) universe than the one which I can perceive. But I inhabit only a corner. A dimensionless point in a grander-than-grand universe.

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I wonder if to remember “rightly” is simply to accept memory as memory is, rather than trying to shape it as I think it ought to be.  To accept that every moment is already pregnant with grace. To accept that grace lies motionless until I pay more attention to what is than I pay to what is not. To consider that until I notice the fullness of every moment, grace will continue to lie dormant. Perhaps grace quickens the moment I accept the gift of living as it has been given instead of wishing it to be otherwise. Perhaps grace abounds when I pay attention to what is, and I mean all of it - the hard and the easy, the pain and the joy, the beauty and the terror - rather than wishful-thinking the challenges away. And perhaps memory - any memory - is in some sense grace incarnate. I wonder if grace is wasted until I lean into the fullness of all the gifts I have been offered instead of rejecting those that make me uncomfortable, and wishing for others that are easier on my feelings.

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Suppose I am more than my feelings. Suppose when somebody hurts my feelings, while it’s unpleasant, they don’t lay a finger on me - the truer, realer me. Suppose I am more than my thoughts. More than my circumstances. Suppose I accept that my thoughts are fallible, but that has no bearing on who I am. Suppose I am wasting my time trying to contain my feelings in a nice, safe, unbreakable jar. Wasting my time working so hard first to control my circumstances, and then to exercise control over feelings when my circumstances take an unanticipated  turn, which they always, always, always will. 

And here is the hardest one: Suppose I am more than my beliefs. What might it mean to dis-identify with that which I believe? To recognize that my beliefs do not define me. That I was defined long before I believed anything. Before the word believe had any meaning, at all. Just suppose.

It’s hard for me not to believe this is precisely what Jesus was trying so hard to invite the pharisees to see. That they were more than their beliefs. That Love was bigger than the law. That God was, and still is bigger than any religion. That the pharisees, along with every other person - Jew, Gentile, rich, poor, well, afflicted, brilliant, or not brilliant were already beloved, and their belovedness was in no sense a measure of the quality of their beliefs. They were free, if only they dared to walk out of their cells of their own beliefs, and into the arms of what is Truer than mere beliefs.

What if the question that has been waiting to be asked is not, and never has been:

How do you find contentment and joy?
How do you find the serenity to accept what you can change?
Where do you find the courage to change what you can?
How do you discover the wisdom to know the difference?
What are the right beliefs?

I wonder if every earnest moment spent solving these questions distracts me from the more relevant question which might be, and which almost certainly is: 

How do you become Love, Chris?

And I don’t mean then and there.

I mean here and I mean now.

How do you become Love?

And if that is the question, then I wonder if the answer is this simple. 

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It’s cooler these days in central Virginia. At least for a little while Yesterday the haze blanketed the canopy of  the woods. The trees and the creek and the squirrels and the birds, and even the cicadas, all used to warmer mornings, waited patiently for the sun to melt the vapor. All the creatures slept in. 

Except for the crows. The crows were up before the woods, and they seemed to be trying hard to get my attention. They leap-frogged and waited for me on  branches just above the trail and called out as I approached, as if they had some precious secret to share. This summer I have learned some of their voices, their individual voices, but their song remains unintelligible to me.

How do I love the crows? Here. Today.

By listening? I think this is how we love all creatures. By paying attention to each creature. Mary Oliver writes:,

Attention is the beginning of devotion.   

Yes, I know we have talked about this before, but it’s so easy for me to forget. I want to pay attention, but it’s so hard. Do you remember this song from Hadestown?

Hades to Eurydice:

Hey, little songbird (crow!), give me a song
I'm a busy man and I can't stay long
I got clients to call, I got orders to fill
I got walls to build, I got riots to quell
And they're giving me hell back in Hades

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Hades wasn’t lying. I mean, who has time to pay attention when there are riots to quell? Money to make? Plans to plan? Dragons to slay? When I’m looking for the courage to change what I alone can change?

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On the first day of Abi’s chemotherapy, there was an older man in the waiting room of Virginia Oncology Associates. He was dressed neatly, but not finely. He was not a patient. He was not a doctor. He was not a family member.

He had tootsie pops, and he was giving them away.

Here is what he didn’t do. He didn’t go barreling up to every patient as they walked to their chairs and waited for their names to be called for pre-treatment labs. No. Most of the time he spent quietly, almost invisibly, at the side of the waiting room - waiting and paying attention. Occasionally, he would emerge softly, almost shyly and gently approach, and then equally gently and shyly offer a patient a tootsie pop. He would invite them to pick whatever flavor they wanted, and would ever so gently ask a question, and invite the patient into a deeper relationship, however brief that relationship may be.

I didn’t see anybody decline a tootsie pop, but there were a few people who simply chose strawberry or grape or raspberry of cherry or chocolate, said thank you, and turned their attention back to their magazines they had been reading.

Others accepted his invitation and told a little about themselves.Most of these people were new to this world, and were so grateful for something as normal as a tootsie pop, and as unusual as a man they had never met sitting patiently, listening, and paying attention as they shared parts of their story.

The man gently demurred when someone would ask him his own story. He said so very little.

I don’t know this man’s name. I don’t know his story. I don’t know if he was well or he was sick. I don’t know what church he attended, or if he attended church at all. I don’t have any idea what beliefs he held. But I do know that day he loved, and I am all but certain he was becoming Love.

How do you become Love?

You become Love by loving. 

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Oremus,

C