I’m feeling kinda partial to babies this year.. anyone with me??

I had a baby this year.

My daughter was born, this year!

Now, technically (literally, spiritually) speaking, it was my wife who had the baby.

What I had was the honor of being there to witness—up close and hands on—the primal miracle of birth.

Emma is preaching this very evening at the church where she’s been serving for the past few years. It’s her last Christmas Eve with them, as we’ll be moving up from Boston in the new year.

Over the past year and a half I’ve been splitting my time between Boston and Midcoast, back and forth a whole bunch. I wore out one Subaru, and got a whole new one.

And I’m so excited to be moving back to Maine after a few years away. And bringing my new family with me.

The sermon that Emma is sharing with her congregation this very evening—she titled: The Risk of Birth.

And it is that, isn’t it? Risky business, birth.

Not only for you mothers who have carried and birthed children. Though certainly there is a special quality to the courageous act of mothering.

But also—for every one of you, every one of us: Being born into this world is both a primal miracle and a radical risk.

Risky because the world is not as we know it could and should be.

Our world is filled to the brim with loneliness and despair, with warfare and violence, with greed and envy, with judgement and hate.

The world we all got born into is not as it could and should be.

And that’s precisely why we do things like this.

We gather to gather what we need in order to steady our hearts, boost our spirits, and ready us to go out and reshape the world.

The past several weeks here at Edgecomb Community Church we have been slowing down each Sunday morning to meditate on the world-changing qualities that this season brings to light..

Hope, Peace, Joy, Love.

We’ve looked at these things considering how—as people of good faith—we are invited to add them to the world, regardless of whether or not we’re feeling them at any particular moment.

I want to point out to you something that you probably already know:

That LOVE is not simply a warm feeling.

And PEACE is different from the mere absence of conflict.

And HOPE is something other than just optimism.

And JOY is different from happiness.

Happiness—as the writer, Frederick Buechner, pointed out to me—comes at us in predictable ways: a happy marriage, a pleasant vacation, a job well done.

But JOY is more surprising than that.

JOY, as often as not, tends to turn up when it’s not being looked for, and in places you’d not necessarily think to look.

HOPE and PEACE and LOVE have the same tendency to turn up in unlikely places.

I can think of one of those unlikely places..

a very particular—smelly, lonely, dark, dank, and frightened—corner of a stable in a small town called Bethlehem, in the hill country of Judea, a place now known as Palestine: Where the JOY of life showed up one starry night a couple of thousand years ago.

I can imagine the primal scream and the final push that resulted that night in an infant child, all gunked up with the goo of birth, lifted with LOVE to his mother’s breast for first communion.

I can feel in my own muscle the HOPE with which that child’s roadweary father scurried around trying to find anything that approximated a clean bundle of cloth to wrap his new child in.

I can look back on this story at the contours of PEACE that took shape in the memories that rippled out from every encounter with the child.

Peace, Hope, Love and Joy are not just sentimental words.

They are the qualities of an active faith.

Faith is often misunderstood as a passive thing. Something that we possess. Something outside of us that we get a hold of, if we’re pious and holy enough.

But that’s not quite right. Faith is active. It’s not something we possess. It’s something that we live. Drawing on the qualities within us, we birth God into the world again and again.

God is often misunderstood as a good luck charm, a sort of totem that we take out from time to time in order to fend off bad feelings or hard realities.

But faith is not passive. And God is not an easy fix.

Faith is active. And God is dynamic—not so much a thing to be believed in as a force to be caught up in—a movement that invites us to participate in the world—as messy as it is—with courageous and illuminating acts of HOPE and PEACE and JOY and LOVE.

The great gift of the Christmas story, in my opinion, is less about who showed up and more about how he did.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it was Jesus who showed up.

But he was never not going to show up.

God is too biased toward life to not be in it with us.

The great gift of the Christmas story is not that God showed up in human form but the particular way that God went about showing up in human form.

Jesus could have gotten here any old way. But reflecting every year on the particular way that Jesus did show up—in this unlikely story, in the midst of the mess, the child of immigrants on the move, unhoused, underresourced, in the arms of a teenage mother, under the care of a frightened father, against all odds: Reflecting on this story has got to get us asking questions about where else the divine might be showing up in our world in corners where we haven’t bothered to look?

And where else might we go about putting God in the world?

When I think about faith and God I can think of no better way to sum up both than with these words uttered by the 16th century Saint, John of the Cross: “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.”

The same can be said for Hope, Peace, and Joy.

Faith is the act of putting these things where they are not. Making Hope, building Peace, cultivating Joy and putting LOVE into the corners of the world where they are least expected.

Let it be known, dear hearts: When we move through the world in these ways, God moves through the world in us.

AMEN

Spiritual growth is not linear.

It’s better understood—and certainly experienced—in spirals.

It turns back on itself continuously, yet progresses. The new places we land as we grow are always fresh, but usually, somehow, also familiar.

From time to time I thumb through old journals. They’re on the top shelf in my office presently, a space reserved for the finest spirits and indulgences.

The other day I indulged. I stood on a chair by the shelf, pulling down journals, and taking deep thirsty gulps from the years of my life that they represent.

Why do I do this?

When I could be writing new things, or otherwise moving forward, who do I look back?

Sometimes it’s curiosity that moves me. Who was I then? And can I catch glimmers from before of who I’ve become?

Just as often it’s because I want reassurance.

I want to be reassured that I’m making progress. I want to be reassured that I did my best then with what I had.

Something I noticed the other day, standing up there looking back at all those previous versions of myself, was how much creative energy I spent trying to understand and explain myself.

I look back and I see a boy, and then a man, longing for justification and understanding; longing for a final and fixed authoritative voice that says: “You’re good.”

I look back, from time to time, in large part because I want that still: That once and for all reassurance of my goodness.

As I see the previous versions of myself doing, I still succumb to the urge to outsource the answer to that core question, which comes in so many forms: Am I good enough? Am I doing enough? Do I have what it takes? Am I man enough?

I’ve been writing myself in circles about this. (And I’ve written about it before. Likely will again, and again.)

At first I thought the lesson, the wisdom, the growth for me in all of this is that I ought never to outsource the authority to answer so core a question. I ought to draw foremost and primarily on my own inner knowing. I ought to self-assure, that: Yes, of course I’m good.

And there’s something to that.

But what I’m seeing now as I scratch these fresh yet familiar words onto the pages of yet another journal that will one day occupy the top shelf, is this:

That question—the core question in all of its quotidian guises—is going to be there yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Doubts and worries find their way.

So whether through outsourcing or insourcing, my aim isn’t to land on a final fixed answer to the question, never to be bothered by it again.

I recognize that I am alive with questions. My aim is to be fully alive. Not to strive, and not to arrive, but through every reliable source of support that is available to me, outside and in, my aim is to more readily respond to the question when it does arise, in whatever form.

I want to notice that question for what it is—the natural experience of someone who cares a whole hell of a lot. I want to notice it and more readily respond, not with analysis or justification, but with grace and action.

Yeah. That’s what I want. That’s what I’m willing to do.

To put less of my energy toward analyzing whether and how I might be good, and more of my creative energy toward the joy and privilege of being the good that I am.

That. That’s some top shelf s**t right there. I could sit back and sip a while on that.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“In my house there are a hundred half-done poems. Each of us leaves an unfinished life.” (Mary Oliver, Thinking of Swirler)

From my heart:

Isn’t that glorious, beloved one? You fill your days with purpose and your nights with reaching out—with arms and dreams—to the life you love living, and still more time flows in behind you. More days flow in from the expanse of what hasn’t been. And they will keep flowing long after your days flush through this world, like a bubbling in a mossy wood, perhaps, or like a mighty river, or a waterfall. All of them heading to the ocean. And whatever you don’t complete, whatever you leave unfinished —so long as you truly started it— will get picked up again, after you, by the clouds, and cycled back into life.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“How many times have you noticed that it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?” (Fred Rogers)

From my heart:

That’s where you’ll find me, as often as not. That’s where you’ll find what you need. And not that you have to go hunting for them, those little quiet moments. Really you just need to notice them. And then notice your own sweet heart when you notice them; what happens there. You don’t have to wait until later. The chittering of the birds just now… The velcro crash of the waves over your shoulder… The way that the shoes are piled up by the front door over there…

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“The fourth myth is the belief that it is possible to be totally logical, rational and objective.” (I forget where I read this)

From my heart:

The challenge for you, my darling, is to live among men who are deeply invested in the fourth myth, and to see the harmful effects of that myth on your own heart, while also continuing to believe that it is sometimes possible to benefit from trying to be partially logical and rational and objective. Absolutism is the spectre that hovers over and in any totalitarian belief. The very exciting challenge is to be whole, rather than ever totally anything.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.” (Steven Pressfield, The War of Art)

From my heart:

You aren’t alone, there, scraping your every effort against every day, vying of your own will for results that’ll amount to something. The gods are there too. It’s actually quite beautiful if you believe in the gods, which is to say, if you believe that you are not alone in your longing and your efforts to make of this world something awesome, something worthy to pass along. Believe that you’re alone, and you’ll run ragged with unnecessary struggle. Believe in the company that is available to you, and you’ll rest from time to time in the joyful grace of the work.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“We do not think ourselves into a new way of living, but we must live ourselves into a new way of thinking.” (Richard Rohr)

From my heart:

You can sit there in that rocking chair and run your thoughts through your head all morning until the soles of their feet bleed, but they’ll still have miles to run, and it’ll be circles they’re running in, until you give yourself something to act on. You can do the same with your fears, your doubts, your worries—and I’m not saying you never should take those things for a run around the block—but taking an actual step, out here in this world of constraints and hardship—taking an actual step, often precisely in the direction that you’re dreading the most—will free your mind to help you make new worlds.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Every step and every strain and hard breath and heart pump is an investment in tomorrow morning’s strength.” (Terry & Renny Russell, On the Loose, I think)

In my mind, I responded:

Ok. Then I’ll walk on. Though I’m done living for perpetual tomorrows. I need to be absolutely clear what it is that I’m up to, because doubts creep and there is no such thing as a clear path. Only the path as it is. Often jumbled. And knowing why I’m walking helps. Are you there, my why?

From my heart, I heard:

I am the walk.

My mind:

So, tomorrow’s strength isn’t the why that I’m after? So, strength is a by-product then?

My heart:

Yep. Strength is a by-product. And a young man’s game. You’re already strong. Whenever you’re doing what you’re here to do—no matter your pace, no matter the stretch of your stride—you’re moving with strength. Trust that your heart will pump, your blood will flow, to feed the next step you need to take. And take it.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“...men of intelligence who formerly possessed an ordinary amount of refinement.”

From my heart:

And what is the ordinary refinement that you are shedding? I know you care a lot, my hearty soul, about the hopes and dreams, desires and priorities, the wants and needs of others in your near orbit; of those especially who, through admiration and gratitude for your gifts, stake some claim on your time and your attention. But care a little bit less today. Give more thought to what is yours to make and offer, and do that a little bit more today. No one has a viable claim on your time, unless you elect to give it to them. Give your time and your care to whom and what you wish. Trust that. This is your next level of growth.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.” (Mary Oliver, To Begin With, the Sweetgrass)

From my heart:

Like the rough Father says, though a little bit gentler. Like Jesus said, more or less. Like the Mother does, when the babe screams. Like I’ve shown you all along. Like you yourself recite everyday: “...to freely give themselves to the world.” Eventually no sacrifice remains. Eventually I’ve consumed all sacrifice in the fire of my truth: That when you give, in just such a way, you will receive it back. I love the sound of your cries, my beloved. I love your protestations, my darling. They tell me of your heart and of your appetite—and there is nothing more that I would rather know.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Rest thee by many brooks and hearthsides without misgiving.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

In my mind I responded:

But I don’t feel okay. I don’t feel at rest, at ease. Everything’s just a little bit uphill.

From my heart:

It’s been that way ever since you started walking uphill, hasn’t it? What’s up there, do you think? What’s up there worthy of the slog? Is there any other route to the magic? I hear you thinking: “If it’s going to be like this, then I don’t want to do it.” So: Do it different. And I know. I know you’re trying to. I see your efforts, dear heart. You’re doing great. And don’t forget: You can do better without having been bad.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“For afterwards a man finds pleasure in his pains, when he has suffered long and wandered long.” (Homer, the Odyssey)

From my heart:

I know, my love, you think of others first when you read of the hope that pain may amount to life, even pleasure. But you see it for yourself as well, don’t you? You see it, and can barely begin—but surely must begin—to see that it is actually so. Your pains tinge your life with growth, which gives life its arch and its hues, which is pleasant to behold. “Afterwards,” the young man says. While: “Now,” is the utterance of the elder. You, my child, are somewhere in between. You have not been long enough at anything to know its culmination. But you will. You will.

Thanks to those of you who joined me day-to-day, or from time-to-time, during my 25 days of listening to the loving voice of wisdom. When I set out with that commitment—not only to do the listening, but also to share what I heard here—I did it in part in hopes that a number of the folks who follow my Substack would unsubscribe.

Let me explain.

I am very interested in having hosts of you out there regularly reading what I offer through writing. I am not, however, interested at all in anyone coming along for the ride or cluttering up their inboxes with the things that I’m writing if the things that I’m writing are not the sort of thing that—at least from time-to-time—serves them in their growth.

We all have worlds to explore and worlds to make. No one owes you or me or anyone else their attention. And you sure as hell don’t owe your attention to anybody. That s**t’s yours to dole out as you wish. (The barons of distraction aren’t making that easy on you. But your humanity depends on keeping a good grip on what you lend your curiosity to.)

That’s why, when I say thanks, it’s more than sentimental.

It’s an honor and privilege to have every one of your sets of eyes and/or ears and individual hearts giving me heed here.

With my loving voice of wisdom series it was my hope to allure a few more readers, and it was my goal to lose about 50. (I only got half-way there, but it was worth a shot.) I hoped that, in posting more regularly and having the audacity to take up a bit more space, those who didn’t really want my reflections dropping into their sightline in the first place (or who thought they might at first, but upon inspection decided otherwise) would take the necessary action to filter me out.

When we filter one thing out it makes room for another. Our most enthusiastic “yes’s” are the direct offspring of our most clear-eyed “no thank you’s”. Everything is a tradeoff, dear hearts. That’s the way it is. And it’s glorious, once you truly get a handle on it.

You have my blessing (which you don’t need, by the way, but there you go) to cease, pause, or be sporadically engaging with anything that I write here going forward.

More than I want more readers, I want those who are my readers to be giving themselves to the world in all the ways (and, as close to possible, in only the ways) that are right for them.

Some of the growth and learning for me, in this process, has been letting go of the illusion that the work I do in the world is meant for everyone. I’ve been learning this as much strategically as I have spiritually.

It’s a marketing insight: Better to offer something specific that is carefully designed to provide value for some people, than it is to try and Frankenstein together a supposedly all-pleasing-monster-of-an-offering that doesn’t really end up being for anybody.

I write the things I write hoping that they support you in your growth, which is to say, your journey of becoming ever and more fully who you are. I figure that’s at least somewhat specific. Confounding as it is to me, it seems that not everyone is interested in spiritual growth.

There’s another angle that I aim to play at, too. It’s not just your growth that I’m writing for, but your growth for the sake of your contribution to the common good.

I don’t want to help anyone grow who isn’t already committed to that. I’ll not be expending my energy trying to convince anyone that the common good is a worthy endeavor. (And if you’ve slipped through the cracks somehow, you’re reading this with an eye out only for your own growth and not for bettering the world to boot, then now’s your chance to graciously head for the exit.)

Alright, so it’s decided: You’re interested in your own spiritual growth and you’re committed to making your particular contributions to the common good.

Here’s one more angle, to really tighten up the Venn diagram and be clear about what it is that I’m up to. It’s been sneaking into my posts occasionally, but it’s something that I’m going to focus on for the next little while:

I’m writing for those of you who want to specifically contribute to a vision for a world where men embody a more mature form of masculinity than the one that’s been dominating our culture for far too long.

I’m writing for the men who are scrapping like warriors to break out of the oppressive chokehold that patriarchy has on their lives. I’m writing for the men who, like kings and mages, are alchemizing the chaos of their days into fresh creations and good medicine. I’m writing for the men who, with fire in their bellies and hearts aflame, are sparking deep love.

And I suspect that it will resonate too with those of you who don’t identify as men, but who nevertheless believe in and accompany those of us who are doing the sacred work of striving to embody personal, loving, and liberating forms of masculinity.

This isn’t for everyone. But it’s for all of you who are nodding emphatically right now, who see that such efforts to make such a world will benefit people of all genders, not to mention the other wild creatures with whom we all live and the habitats that we all share.

In the soil of these fresh intentions for my writing, coaching and my personal work, I’m also giving shape to a new offering that will be specifically for men: A coaching and support group for men who give a s**t, that’s focused on spiritual growth and taking action in personal ways to make the change that our relationships and our world needs us to make.

I’ll share more details about that when it’s ready.

In the meantime, it would support me to hear from you:

* If this is something that you personally would like to participate in.

* If there is someone in your life who you would like me to invite into this.

You can send me an email, or set a time to talk with me about maturing masculinity.

And please share this with the men in your life who are willing to change.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“We aim a black box and scratch on beaten wood pulp.” (Terry & Renny Russell, On the Loose)

From my heart:

I put that smile there, my darling. And it delights me. If I had a black box to aim, I’d aim it there, at that smile, to freeze your happiness in time. But I don’t deal in boxes. And happiness that is frozen is a prison along with any other static state. So scratch on, my darling. Scratch your way through the infinite of your thoughts, your emotions, your ambitions. Scratch as a practice to orient you to the immediacy of your experience. And then step away from the pulp, and into the action. The action is where happiness goes to live free.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Now we know what is trivia and what is real.” (Terry & Renny Russell, On the Loose)

From my heart:

It might take you a while to discern between the two, beloved. And it won’t come without mistaking one for the other on more than one occasion. And then—even after knowing the difference—mistaking them still from time to time. It might take a while to discern between trivia and what is real. Especially when it comes to love, to sex, to religion, to family, to faith; to any good means of occupying your time. But in time, gradually—you might even say progressively—when you’re willing and heeding—then you will see what is real. You’ll see it. You’ll experience it. And you’ll know it. Like an old friend. Like a child of your own.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“There is nothing like the perils of the wilderness to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy.” (Herman Melville)

From my heart:

Free. And easy. Sort of genial. Desperado philosophy. I heard a man once call his brother cavalier, and he meant it as an insult, but his brother surfed, and raised his children to be free spirited and strong. So relax, my child. Don’t give away your freedom. Use it to give yourself to this world.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come.” (Wendell Berry)

From my heart:

No matter the trials of today. No matter the weariness in the present moment. No matter, even, the regrets you maybe carry from yesterday, yester-year, yester-life. The songs that are to come chatter faintly. And have been chattering all along, faintly yet persistently. And will not cease their faint, persistent chattering. Not until they are sung full-throated by your heart and your actions. Not until you are an ancestor singing loud your song through the lives of long distant kin. Put faith in those songs, my love. And hum along.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Use even this sadness to carve out spaces in our souls where still greater repositories of holy affection might be held, unto the end that we might better love, in times of absence and in times of presence alike.” (Every Moment Holy)

From my heart:

You have a spacious soul, beloved one. Made so by my hewing, the carve of life, with strong hands and rough yet precise fingers, the skilled carving of life. Soak in oil, anointed one. Lest you crack when carved. Let me buff your edges, human one. You are loved, always and regardless. And if that is enough, then bask in it and let be. But if you wish, as well, let me make you useful and refine you to serve this world with love.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Watch, now, how I start the day…” (Mary Oliver)

From my heart:

I will. I do. There is nothing more that I love than that: To watch you start—and then live—a day. This is the day, they sing, that I have made. Full to the brim with joy and gladness, for those who go looking for such things, for those who sing along to the song of my ever-created world. So I’ll watch you do as I do, and make a day with your living of it. And get this—my morning glory—it’s you that fills me up with joy and gladness.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Thy name is as ointment poured forth.” (Song of Solomon)

From my heart:

And I am pleased to call you by your name. To give power to you by naming you so. You have the name your parents gave you. It’s the one your siblings and neighbors and students and friends all use. It’s the name that lovers use in bed with you. It’s the name they use when making vows to you. You also have a secret name, that only I whisper, and that only those who still themselves and their worlds, enough to listen, truly do hear. Have you heard it? Don’t write it here if you have. Don’t write it ever, or speak of it. Only contemplate it in your heart. And if you have not heard it, then walk with me today and ask to hear it. And listen.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and elsewhere in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Come into the presence of still water.” (Wendell Berry)

From my heart:

Beloved one, though all around you life travails, be like me. Be the quiet water that you are. Yes: Depend on flow. What pours into you and what pours out. Yes, of course: All is dynamic, even the quietest of still waters. But pool up, beloved. Gather yourself in stillness. Take all that comes to you, and hold it in your belly. Let go of all that comes, that you may be the source that floods and waters all those who are nearer to the ocean and further from the heights than you. Gather. Pool. And pour, beloved. And know that I am in it all.

Who do you know who needs to hear this?

In this post: I’ll share a listening practice, and then I’m going to invite you to join me for the next month, for about two-minutes every day, to practice listening with me.

The thing we’re listening for is a simple note from the loving voice of wisdom. That voice is part intuition and part divine prompting, and it is always eager to whisper sweet guidance to any and every quiet and attentive heart.

At the end of this post I’ll let you know how you can follow along, and even participate.

Last week when I wrote I want my attention back, I told you about a few practices that I do in order to subvert the things that distract me from my glorious-god-given-sacred-as-all-get-out capacity to pay attention. Some of the practices not only subvert distractions, but also strengthen that same capacity to pay attention.

I began one of those practices about a month after my daughter was born.

What led to it was one of those simple follow-your-gut-and-Google-it moments when I heard a friend say something about “two way prayer”.

Cautionary side note about Googling things: Outsourcing your curiosity to search engines and AI for immediate—and fleeting—intellectual satiation, is one of the things that tends to atrophy our capacity to pay attention. Our attention appreciates mystery, and, in fact, thrives on wonder. We have a primal need that often goes unmet. It is the need to wonder about things long enough to let our hearts and minds be massaged by the experience of not always knowing.

Even so, I let my curiosity roam. I searched out two way prayer. I listened to a couple of podcasts. And I learned about Elizabeth Gilbert’s stunning community, here on Substack, of two way pray-ers out there writing letters to love.

And I took what I learned and I adopted and adapted the practice for myself, giving it the shape I needed it to have in order to practice it consistently in the context of my daily living.

Side note: Read that last line over again. And next time you come across something you admire that someone else is doing, something that you want to weave into your life, consider that you might very well need to reshape it in order for it to weave well into your life. Redesign the thing so that it works for you. Don’t muscle someone else’s practices into your life. Give yourself a shot at success by making things easier—I’m not kidding. Make things easier and then do them that way consistently, rather than making things harder than they need to be and then quitting when they prove to be, well… too hard.

My practice of two way prayer was born.

This is what I do:

* I open my notebook to a blank page and write the date and this question at the top of the page: “What would you have me know today?”

* I set the notebook aside.

* I pick up a book that I suspect has some wisdom in it. A book of poetry, or some other sacred text, for example.

* I read, more or less at random, until something from the page snags on my heart. It doesn’t usually take much more than a few minutes, if that.

* I stop reading.

* I pick up my notebook and write out the line that snagged my heart.

* Then I listen for the loving voice of wisdom and I write down the message that it has for me—which is, of course, always a blend of universal wisdom and my own personal inner knowing. And it is always rooted in care for who I am as a beloved being who longs to generously, wildly, daily give myself to this world. It’s often quite direct, and it never fills more than a page.

That’s the practice. Now, your invitation.

Beginning on Monday, for five weeks, five days a week, I’m going to share with you a portion of what the voice of wisdom has been offering me day-to-day. Some of them will resonate. Some of them may not. None of them will take more than a minute or two for you to engage.

Here are four ways you can participate, each one deepening on the last:

* Read along via Substack. (Or listen via podcast.)

* Comment regularly—when it resonates and when it doesn’t—with the insight that you’re gleaning about the wisdom that I’m gleaning.

* Adopt (and, as needed, reshape) the two way prayer practice for yourself, and weave it into your life.

* Invite two friends to join you in doing any of the above.

See you on Monday for day one of paying attention to the loving voice of wisdom.

I thank god that I spent the bulk of my childhood in the 90’s. Me and my best buds riding bikes alongside the White River in the Indianapolis suburbs or adding to our rickety treehouse in the sycamore in my backyard or playing street hockey at the end of the cul-de-sac. And playing a little bit of Nintendo, too, here and there. But never once having to navigate the pings of a dumb phone or the siren call of anti-social media or the desperate screams of so so so many screens.

It’s tempting to stand now and holler from the platform: “Make childhood the 90’s again!”

But that kind of wanting to go backwards, that brand of nostalgia, doesn’t tend to lead to much of anything good. And it certainly doesn’t lend us the spiritual muscularity that we need in order to navigate novelty, integrate change, and make creative contributions to the here-and-now, right in the midst of whatever realities we and our children are living out.

Sometimes, when I’m reflecting on why I’ve led wilderness trips periodically and professionally for over two decades—and why I’m drawn to the wilds personally—I understand my propensity for wild space as:

* An escape from the spiritual clutter of so much consumer driven culture.

* A venue for sturdying up our spirits in order to be able to deal with those demands once we inevitably return to our front country lives.

I go to the wilderness for the same reason I write, the reason I pray, the same reason I read poetry and go for walks and paused just now to take a deep breath and feel the air rush into me through my nostrils:

I want my attention back, and I mean to have it.

Who else out here is in constant pursuit of their birthright?

Your attention is your birthright. What you give of your birthright should be yours to give, purposefully. It’s often not though. Which is not your fault. The attention economy grabs at your birthright pretty well everywhere you might cast a glance.

But is there anyone else out there keen, nevertheless, to keep on wrestling back your attention? You with me?

Here are three things I’ve been doing lately to help me pay attention better to the things and matters and moments that I want to be paying attention to:

* When I get home from the grocery store I take a minute or two to peel ever single sticker off of every piece of produce that I’ve purchased. It’s not as good, I acknowledge, as planting the garden or the orchard and growing the fruit myself, but it slows me down enough to see the thing for what it is. Every plum is a miracle.

* I’ve been religiously waiting, every day, to check my email in the afternoon. Not a moment before. In the mornings I’m committed to making something—anything—of my own volition, before opening myself to the asks of others.

* For about a month now I’ve been playing with this really great prayer practice, where I start my days asking, “What would you have me know today?” and then paying attention to what I hear back, and jot it down.

I’ll tell you more about that last one soon.

Meanwhile, how might you slow down a little bit today and wrestle back some of that attention that is rightfully yours?

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Well I’m damned, this is the end.”

“We could probably make it farther if we wanted to.”

(Terry & Renny Russell, On the Loose)

From my heart:

I would go, and have gone, to the end for you. And by “the end” we both know I mean “the edges”. And by “for” we know I mean “with”. I love to travel with you to the edgiest places. The places where life screeches like a banshee, where paradise sloughs its sheer golden facade and basks in the soft pervasiveness of dusk. Still gold, but better. I am your companion. Nearest to you when you’re on the road. And when you’re off the maps. And waiting for you, as often as you need, whenever you need, to root back home to the hearth. Wherever you are, I’m always near. Keep listening…

My friend Danielle sent me a book full of prayers and liturgies for all sorts of quotidian occasions. Every Moment Holy, it’s called. Every moment really is, isn’t it?

The table of contents is full of titles like: liturgies for daybreak, midday, nightfall; liturgy for the preparation of a meal, for the keeping of bees, for the planting of flowers, for the morning of a yard sale; liturgy for a sick day, for missing someone, for the death of a dream; liturgy upon seeing a beautiful person, upon hearing birdsong, for the paying of bills. Things like that.

There are a full two separate liturgies for changing diapers. For there are, I now know more intimately than ever before, oh so many diapers in this world that need changing.

Emma and I have a daughter now. Her name is Juniper. She was born in early May.

I have become a father now. I have become it, and am becoming it, every holy moment of every day since.

And yes, of course, in so many ways I was becoming it all along with stacks and stacks and years and years of holy moments that preceded Juniper’s birthday. But the holiness of every moment really stands out, all on its own, at those sharp thresholds that carry us officially from one identity into the next.

At the threshold, I was rooted in the radical honor of being with Emma—witnessing her power in spirit and muscle—during every single rush of her labor. I was immersed in the ineffable privilege of receiving my daughter as she somersaulted out of her mother’s womb into this world, first submersed in the waters of the birthing tub, and then surfaced for a first breath and brought to her mother’s breast, the new center of her world.

At the threshold, I was mesmerized, washed in every small detail of that stretch of hours while Emma labored, and of those first hours (or minutes? or eternities? holy moments!) gawking at our child. The one right there. That one, in this very moment. The one with her own appetite, her own pulse, her own spirit, her own bowels.

Every moment is holy. And sometimes life makes that obvious.

It’s fortunate for us, how life works. Though it doesn’t always feel fortunate, because it’s not always birth, sometimes it’s birth’s opposite, or something in between. But one way or another it’s fortunate that life, from time to time at the sharp thresholds, takes us by the scruff and demands that we be awake to the sacred.

Here’s the thing though: Barring life’s occasional insistence, it’s up to us to make a practice of being awake to most of the holy moments.

A word of caution, however: Try not to put it on yourself to be awake to every holy moment. That’s simply too much for any single practitioner to contain. And it’s okay. It’s not up to you to imbue moments with holiness by noting them. They’re sanctified all on their own, and your consciousness at any given moment will not add to or detract from the sacred authority of every single moment.

So sleep sometimes too. Sleep is vital. But how about we make a practice—or better yet, just today, one time that you wouldn’t have otherwise—how about you be awake to that one moment, the one you’re thinking of right now. How was that moment a holy moment?

And with that, you’ll have to pardon me. I need to go wake a sleeping baby and change a diaper.

**Shared at the Christmas Eve candlelit service at Edgecomb Community Church**

Good singing! Good reading! Good songs! Good story!

Don’t you love a good story?

And what is it that makes for a good story?

What are the elements of a compelling story?

High stakes. Surprising characters and character development. Nefarious plot twists and near misses. Journeys full of obstacles. Encounters with implausible messengers. Fate. Purpose. Urgency. And of course, the emergence of new possibilities.

Good stories don’t leave the world the same as it was when the story begins.

Good stories are full of transformation—the characters change, the more central the character usually the more radical the change they experience; and their world changes too.

Good stories don’t leave us the same either, when we hear them, read them, witness them, take them to heart.

Good stories invite us to change, right along with the characters.

In good stories we find ourselves identifying—in big ways or small—with the characters.

Just like the characters in good stories:

We’ve also been asked to carry more than we sometimes know how to carry.

We’ve also been turned from time to time away in our moments of need.

We’ve looked to the heavens for answers and guidance.

We’ve longed for someone to come to our rescue.

Some of us have carried children—and know what is, through the children you’ve carried, to touch the divine.

Everyone of us was carried in someone’s womb. And since God Speaks Through Wombs, every one of us is a unique utterance of the divine.

Good stories invite us to be God-bearing; to bear God in our hearts— carrying and experiencing change in our own aching, angsting; curious, courageous; swooning, soaring; thirsty, weary, wandering, wonderful hearts.

And good stories invite us to be midwives, birthing new life into every conceivable—and perhaps especially into every inconceivable—corner of this world.

Don’t you love a good story?

Don’t you love a good song?

Early in her pregnancy, Mary sings this song that we call the Magnificat.

In it she sings:

“God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

The poet, Drew Jackson, has a poem about this called “That Girl Can Sing!” It goes like this:

Watch out! The sound of her voice

will cast them down! Way down!

No doubt they will try to quiet you,

soften you, make you into

a domesticated maiden,

but we’re gonna play this song.

Go on, Mary!

Bless our ears with your sonic theology.

Lift us up with your melodic doctrine.

Magnify! Magnify!

This voice is magnificent.

You can imagine this magnificent mother, Mary, singing lullabies to the little baby Jesus with that voice of hers.

Lullabies full of grit and glory.

Honest lullabies. Powerful lullabies.

Lullabies that echo the heartache of living through hardship, and yet that resound with melodies of possibility.

Can you imagine Mary’s lullabies ringing through the night, stirring the spirit and soothing the soul. Can you hear her singing?

The light shines in the darkness…

Can imagine Mary singing to her baby? Her baby still splotched with blood from birth, wrinkly and hungry and wet, vulnerable as all get out, surrounded by the sweet stink and warm breath of barnyard animals, right there in the middle of their poverty, and displacement, and her justified uncertainty about the future—you can hear her sing, nevertheless:

The light shines in the darkness…

That’s the voice that was there to meet Jesus when he was born. That’s the voice of the mother and the message that helped to make Jesus into the man he became. That’s the voice that echoed in and through all that Jesus was and did and became and inspired.

The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness does not overcome it.

That’s the message that echoes through the lives of all of us who are compelled and inspired by this good story of a mother—against all odds—giving birth to a child who would change the world.

These days I have been praying more than I have in years. I have mostly been doing this in private, with a candle and some sacred objects, a few words and some silence each morning. Everyday, along with asking for divine help, I invoke the presence and companionship of seven archetypal figures which, to me, represent qualities of my own being. 

These archetypes are qualities of being that are already true. But what’s beautiful about this prayer practice is this: The archetypes that I invoke each have their own gravity that tugs on me as I strive to demonstrate the truth of them in my relationships, and in all the ways that I move through the world.

They are noteworthy rings of an integrated whole. They are who I am. And, at the same time, they are who I may become.

INVOCATION (a poem I’m writing)

I stutter through the fog of prayer.

I am always learning to pray,

Striving to get it right.

I call out for echoes.

Grace shimmers elusive on the other shore.

I know that I effort too much.

I try on different tongues, to embrace the mystery:

Il y'a en moi quelque chose plus moi que moi meme.

There is something in me more me than myself.

I try on different skins, to play with multiplicity:

I am king and fool.

I am warrior and lover.

I am mage and maker and scribe.

I try on different winds.

I pull out my charts.

I do my best to navigate the archipelago of my heart.

I call out for echoes.

I spot the shimmer,

And don’t mind the fog.

I learned to pray when I was four years old. My sister taught me how. She modeled for me the way we can bow our heads, fold our hands, open our hearts, and ask for the presence and strength of something outside of us to become a part of us.

Growing up as a person of faith implanted in me the idea and experience that some sort of relationship with prayer is important. My prayer practice was consistent for a couple of decades after my first lessons, then it dwindled and shifted.

I needed space as a young man. Space to differentiate myself in the world in the context of my relationships, to work out my understanding of divine energy, and to seek my calling. I needed the space to invoke less and explore more.

Yet that presence of something-outside-of-self that I invoked when I was a child—it’s almost as if that presence remained part of me, into and on through the spaciousness.

I’m still figuring out how to pray, which I think is good indication that I am doing it right. I wonder if prayer is the sort of thing that, if we think we know what we’re doing, we’ve kind of missed the point.

My prayer practice today isn’t actually that far off from what my sister taught me in the little house in Sussex, New Brunswick, in the shadow of the bible college where our father and our grandfather worked. When I pray today I am still opening my heart, and drawing on sources of presence and strength, to help me become more and more who I want to be.

I used to mostly pray with words. These days, along with some words, I mostly use objects and images and actions.

It used to be a one-way affair, asking the stuff outside of me to come be a part of me. These days my prayers are more of a dance between immanence and transcendence. Invoking the help that I need to become who I already am.

How about you? How do you pray?

And do you mind if I share more with you (i.e. explore more out loud) about the archetypes and qualities that are ever tugging on my heart?

This is a meditation that I wrote for another thing, which I will tell you more about later, but meanwhile I want to share it with you here…

In the poem that she called Wild Geese, Mary Oliver tells us directly: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body // love what it loves.”

Lest we forget, we are animal every bit as much as our mammalian kin. Our tenderness and our ferocity are both animal qualities. We express and convey ourselves through the soft squish of our animal bodies and in our fierce compulsion to love the life that we are given.

Mammals with imagination. That is what we are.

We distinguish ourselves—or do our best to—by what we imagine, by making meaning. With our stories, our myths, our rituals, ceremonies, and symbols we take the raw matter of life and shape it into something lovable. 

We are mammals who imagine. Our imagination is informed by our animal instincts. Hunger compels us to eat. Fear compels us to flee. Frustration causes us to freeze. Injustice stokes in us our fight.

When we dance in our fullness we wed our instincts with imagination and find the audacity to feel our way into relationship with wild nature. As wild beings we conjure courage and playfulness to experiment with our own wild ways of being. 

Simply put, we make up ways of moving in this world.

So: Do that now. 

Move your body in some small way. 

Swivel your wrists.

Make a fist.

Scrunch your face.

Lift your chin.

Stick out your tongue. 

Or some other small movement. Or all of them at the same time. 

Move your body for a span of several breaths in ways that are informed by only your own instinct and imagination.

Go ahead, take ten seconds, do that now.

“Whoever you are,” Mary Oliver writes, “No matter how lonely // the world offers itself to your imagination.”

You make up ways of moving in the world, and your movements bring you into meeting with the movements of others. We are curious creatures. So of course we heed the urge to explore the movements beyond ourselves.

We love to learn from the wild ways of others. 

When we dance with others in our combined fullness we wed our imagination with our capacity to imitate. 

Salvador Dali said, “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”

In a sense, every swivel of our wrists, every vowel from our throat, every tilt of the chin is built on some imitation of those we witness around us and those who came before us.

So why not look to other wild ones, from time to time, and pretend we are them? 

Why not meow and howl?

Why not nap in puddles of sunshine?

Why not run in packs?

Why not, right now, up from where you are, go and do any of those things. 

Meow, growl, or howl. Nap or run. 

Or purr softly.

Or sit simply still like a stone for a while.

Or sway subtly like a tree.

Or honk like the wild geese “harsh and exciting // over and over announcing your place // in the family of things”.

Excerpts from Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

In my last reflection I wrote about the practice of having the audacity to suck at something. Here are two things that I have had the audacity to suck at lately:

* Improv comedy

* Fly fishing

And it isn’t even that you have to be terrible at the thing, really, to get the full benefit of the practice. It just has to be something that you are not already excellent at, that you are a little bit intimidated by, and that you are willing to try nevertheless.

Both improv and fly fishing are things that had lingered a long time on my bucket list before I opened myself up, through them, to the various practices of audacity, courage, deliberate mediocrity, good-enoughness, and being more comfortable with feeling a little bit uncomfortable.

Read to the bottom to explore how I can support you in your practices of audacity.

With improv, “Yes, and…” is the big thing. Holding a posture and practice of “Yes, and…” is about being willing to go with the flow of whatever emerges in the scene that you are creating with your co-creators. 

If your scene partner waddles up to you like a penguin, the best way to kill the scene is to fold your arms across your chest and say, “Penguins are dumb.” 

The best way to keep the scene going is to start waddling like a penguin right alongside of them and say something like, “I can’t believe we finally got out!!”

In the first scenario you end up with a stage with a grumpy guy on it standing at odds with a poor dumb penguin. There’s not a lot of juice to that scene.

But in the second scenario you’ve got a stage with two penguins who just escaped from the zoo. That scene can go somewhere.

With fly fishing, “Yes, and…” also applies. I think. I’m still catching on. But I know last month when I was standing in a stream in North Carolina and my line got tangled up I didn’t just chuck the rod into the water and walk away. I said yes to the tangle, and took a deep breath, and took my time untangling it, and noted why my cast went awry in the first place, and smiled at the all around beauty of the moment, and and and.

Do I need to reel you in on this one? Or do you see it? 

Do you see the ways that a practice of “Yes, and…” might help infuse some juiciness into your relationships? how that conversation with your partner or that interaction with the stranger might have played out differently by approaching it with a posture of possibility and co-creation?

Do you see how a posture of “Yes, and…” might help you untangle tangles in your work day? might help you shift from frustration, desperation, cynicism to patience, dexterity, perspective?

“Yes, and…” isn’t always about literally saying “Yes.” 

It’s about staying open, to the river’s flow. It’s about listening deeply, to your scene partners. It’s about being brave with your creative ideas while holding them generously enough to engage the co-creative process of a day.

It’s about showing up on the stage of your day paying attention, with curiosity, and ending up somehow on a penguin heist.

It’s about showing up to catch fish, and catching maybe a few fish (though maybe, also, none at all) but hooking firmly on, nevertheless, to the ways that the river moves and the fish think and the insects hatch and the shadows form.

Thank you for reading. This post is public so feel free to share it.

How can I support you?

I am now accepting clients who need a coach! 

If you want to make a difference through your work, if you’re striving to make a change in the world, and you feel overwhelmed, frustrated, or stuck:

* Read the About Coaching section below.

* Schedule a 30 minute Discovery Call with me.

* Then meet with me, to see if coaching might be the best next step for you.

About Coaching

Some people come to coaching because they have a big dream but they aren’t doing it. Some people come to coaching because that don’t have a dream but want to discover one.

Either way, coaching is a chance to meet purposefully with someone who has the heart to see you as you truly are (spoiler: you are a hero, whole and complete!), and the skills to help you discover possibilities that you haven’t seen before. 

It’s a process of getting the support that you need in order to clarify your intentions, design accurate goals, and take authentic action toward them, all within a consistent and supportive relationship.

With me, it’s also kind of like having Ted Lasso in your rolodex.

I have been combing the internet for sources of insight at the confluence of wildness and spirituality. The internet is not the most relevant place to search for such things. The most relevant places to search are wild places and wild spirits, your very own and those belonging to others. But there is no shortage of wild wisdom out there—even among the ones and zeros—for those who have eyes to see. 

Along with everything else it is, the internet is an archive of story, conversation, perspective, poetry, and song all telling the tale of how a bunch of featherless bipeds made their way on the crust of this planet.

So I have been compiling sources from the archive to weave into my own contribution, the online course that I am designing, which is getting close to ready for release into the wild.

In my search I came on a conversation that adrienne maree brown had with Marcia and en Lee, the founders of Taproot Sanctuary, a permaculture community in Detroit. The conversation meanders a little too much to fit the constraint of the learning experience that I am designing, but I have gleaned some welcome wisdom from listening in. 

They spend the hour talking about the people who have shaped and inspired them, about the way that the world tilts toward change, and about how to go about getting in right relationship with change.

At one point en Lee says, “We have to skill up.” And that got me thinking about the sort of skills I spend my days trying to gain and trying to hone.

He says: “It should be a human right to be able to live in right relationship with our bioregion and with our neighbors, but we’re deprived of these skills that may have been passed down to us in the past.”

Then he says something that I found so delightful and true, as he was reflecting on the ways that we block ourselves from seeking new skills. We block ourselves with fears of failure, with imposter syndrome, with the misconception that we need to be properly enrolled on a path of expertise before we can even begin to glean and hone new skills. We block ourselves from acquiring the things we need in order to live our best lives.

To all that, en Lee said we should go ahead and give ourselves permission to suck at things on the way to getting better at them. “I can really suck at this,” he says, “But as long as I have a relationship with it I will get better and better.”

So today, rather than asking you: “What have you learned from life lately?” I am asking you this: “What have you sucked at lately, but had the courage to try nevertheless?”

This isn’t quite the same thing, but it comes to mind just now as I squint out the window into the the sun: That the flowering trees lining the sidewalks in my Cambridge neighborhood don’t get every blossom just right, but you wouldn’t know it from across the street, looking at the way they burst with the audacity to bloom, bloom, bloom.

After Easter this year I flew from Boston to a conference center in a little corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They are called the Blue Ridge Mountains because the trees on the mountainside emit hydrocarbons that—when seen from a distance—huddle over the mountains in a haze of blue. When you are in the mountains, and not just beholding their hazy edges from afar, things are more vivid. Up close each tree communes with well-defined and tangible edges.

In the mountains, among the vivid trees, each day for a few days, I took folks out for a saunter on the trails. This was the third year in a row that I have traveled south to North Carolina to help shape the Discovering Renewal retreat.

The first time I guided hikes for Discovering Renewal I landed at Montreat a few days early. I had scouted the trails as best I could on some digital maps. But I hadn’t done much actual walking on the trails, which felt important to actually do before taking actual people for actual walks. 

I traipsed around the trails solo for a few days, took lots of notes, came up with a route or two that would work for a big group full of folks with different abilities and needs, then awaited their arrival, and dove in.

Last year, when I returned, I went a couple of days early and reacquainted myself with the trails, and with my trail liturgy, before guiding the retreat.

For every trip, retreat, workshop, course, or talk that I offer, I make some sort of liturgical flow to ground us and guide us through the experience. The liturgy tends to originate in my mind and notebook. Then, with a walk, I massage it into my heart. 

Usually the liturgy is a variation (or a collection of variations) on a simple thematic spiritual progression: Wrestle, rest, return. Sometimes I share the liturgy out loud, and sometimes I just use it as a quiet compass to keep me oriented in the work of facilitation.

But always, one way or another, I put the liturgy into practice by extending it to the group. They embody it. Usually there are as many ways to embody the liturgy as there are bodies engaged in it. By taking what I offer and embodying it, they transform the liturgy from something with hazy hues to something with sharp edges; from an imagined vision to a lived encounter.

This is like what happens at church, or any community of spiritual practice. When those who gather begin to embrace a string of stories, symbols, and songs with their voices, postures, emotions, and actions—worship takes place. The hazy hues of the divine come into focus through the expressions of practitioners.

This year, going back to Montreat, I felt familiar enough with the trails to not need a review. But I still flew in a day early, and took to the streams to commune with the trout. 

I caught only nibbles—and the branches of trees leaning over the stream above me, and the undersides of rocks, and the radical understanding that no matter how many times you step into it, you never step in the same river twice.

Speaking of, I’ll be back again after Easter next year, if you’re keen to join.

PS – Beginning next month, as part of my rigorous training with the Academy for Coaching Excellence, I will be taking on new clients who are in need of coaching.

If you are developing a liturgy (or outline or concept or plan of action) for any sort of creative project, and you could use some support to see it through: Touch base with me!

I’d love to connect and see if what I have to offer can help you bring into focus what you have to offer.

A sunrise like today’s makes me think about that sentiment that appears through the pen of the prophet who wrote: “His mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning.”

Sometimes I procrastinate a long while from doing a thing that I want to do, and then I wake up one day and I’m like, “Ahhh *deep sigh* new mercies.” And I just go ahead and do the thing.

I like to sit every morning at my desk and peek out the window askance at the sunrise, and write. 

But I don’t always do it. 

Because: Plenty of reasons—I have ten other projects going that all want my attention, I went camping for a few days because I needed some rest, and now I’m behind on my list, and I have to go to the dentist, and the grocery store, and make phone calls, and walk the dog, and fold the laundry, and put out the compost, and go to the library, and go to the coffee shop, and zero my inbox. 

I do have to do all (most) of those things. And honestly, I love the ordinary things that fill up life. All those things are beautiful. My dentist is great. But, sometimes when there is a simple thing that I truly want to do, like sit down and write for thirty minutes, I let all of the rest of it pile up in my mind until I’ve built a mound of justified inaction.

Then, when several days go by, then a week, then two, and I haven’t done the thing that I want to do, what I usually think that I need is a boost of intention to get going again. I think that I can shovel my way out of inertia with intention.

I’ll begin setting my intention at some point each day, noting how important it is to me to sit down and write the next day. 

“Here is a mound of inaction, and intention is my shovel,” I’ll say to myself. 

And intentions are like shovels. They can be useful. When they’re put to use. But, after a week or two of stating my intentions, I often end up with that original little mound of inaction sitting right next to a great big pile of shovels.

And I’m like: “Hmm, now all these shovels are in my way. Surely I need to build a shed so that I can store my shovels.”

You see how it goes. That’s familiar, right? 

For you it might not be sitting down to write. The thing you truly want to do could be pretty well anything. It’s probably something creative. It’s probably something that’s good for you. And—in order to do the thing—it is very unlikely that you need any more shovels or sheds.

Once we step around the mound it can all feel a little silly that we were treating it like a mountain. Haha. Silly me. Deep sigh. New mercies. 

But it’s no wonder we get stuck, because sometimes the legit mountains also get in the way. (Even though they are the way.) 

We have great big mountain sized ambitions: “I want to write a book.” or “I want to grow my business.” or “I want the lead role in a play.” 

These dreams and desires and ambitions are mountains, glorious in their grandeur!

And in the shadow of these ambitions it’s easy to let slip our grip on the value of the next doable thing.

“I want to write a book” is not my next doable thing. “I’m going to write for thirty minutes” that’s my next doable thing.

“I want to grow my business” or “I want the lead role in a play” are not the next doable things. 

If those are the mountains that you’re climbing, hurrah! I can’t wait to give you my money or watch you perform. And also, I can’t tell you what your next doable thing is. No one can. 

But I can tell you this, whatever mountain you’re climbing: 

* Your next doable thing is a whole lot smaller than the mountain itself, it’s something you can—well—do, in one stride. 

* If you’re willing to look—not up at the mountain (you can bask in its glory later) but right down at the path by your feet—you’ll see it.

* It’s very unlikely that you need a shovel or a shed to do it.

As a wilderness guide, the ability to pivot from your itinerary when the weather, terrain, group, circumstance, or who-knows-what requires it—that’s one of your most vital capacities. The same goes for any practitioner of wild spirituality.

It’s interesting though, because it’s seldom crystal clear whether the pivot is entirely necessary. It’s always some combination of managing risk and expectations, and about moving through with the confidence that you can alter course without needing to compromise the purpose of the experience.

Sometimes it is clear. Sometimes it’s clear because the risk calculus makes it so: The river is heavily flooded, this is no longer where we are going to cross. 

Sometimes it’s clear because an opportunity to enhance the experience becomes available: The group has been moving more quickly than I anticipated, turns out we have time for this epic side hike to a natural arch, and the group is game. Duh, let’s go!

I’m making a pivot.

This pivot is the latter sort. As I gathered some feedback from folks interested in Spiritual Formation in the Wild, and consulted with my collaborators at The School of Global Citizenry, I got a vision for a new route that is going to enhance this particular experience. 

I’m redesigning the course that I told you about earlier this month. I’ll be offering two experiences of learning and formation, rather than one:

* The first offering will be a stand-alone offering, with much of the same value of the original course, but more financially accessible as an on-demand, self-paced course. 

* The second will be a cohort-based experience that I will facilitate for folks who want to apply what they’ve learned on a deeper personal and vocational level.

Spiritual Formation in the Wild • Coming very soon!

This will be a self-paced online course with guided nature connection practices, lessons about the methods, history, and benefits of nature connection, and audio reflections by yours truly.

It will qualify learners for 2 continuing education units (20 contact hours) certified through The School of Global Citizenry. 

The course fee: $89 • Enrollment opening later this Spring. I’ll keep you posted!

Spiritual Leadership in the Wild • Coming in 2025!

This one will be a guided online cohort experience for folks who want to strengthen their calling and creative contributions. This experience will build on the personal practices and lessons from Spiritual Formation in the Wild, as I guide you on a multi-week delve into exploring wilderness as an arena of communal formation, and helping you find applications to your work in the world.

I’ll send out more specs around the bend. Meanwhile I’m keen to hear from anyone who might be interested in either or both of these courses: What excites you about them? What are the barriers that would keep you from joining?

Because I really hope you will join.

“We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators, but for thunder and mud.” — Jay Griffiths, Wild: An Elemental Journey

Perhaps you’ve heard: Loving on nature is good for us. A little biophilia goes a long way toward making us feel better. 

In 2017 The Nature Fix, by Florence Williams, landed on bookshelves. In it Williams explores a host of efforts to study the biophilia hypothesis, which posits that throughout human evolution “peaceful or nurturing elements of nature [have] helped us regain equanimity, cognitive clarity, empathy and hope” (page 22).

Williams structures her exploration on the layers of positive effect that nature has on how well our bodies function when near to nature. Just five minutes of exposure to nature, whether looking out a window or standing in a park, can serve to drop our blood pressure and wash us in a sense of calm (part 2). Several hours immersed among trees and the sounds of birds and the sight of moving water provides rest for our fatigued brains and can even strengthen our bodies’ immune responses (part 3). And several days in the backcountry, removed from screens and the constant barrage of consumer driven society, can be enough to give us a full cognitive overhaul, rendering us more calm, creative, and kind (part 4).

Makes sense. We are, after all, animal in our brains, in our blood and in our skin.

In 2012 Amos Clifford founded the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy. If you’ve heard about forest therapy or forest bathing, Clifford probably gets some of that credit. His outfit has helped to popularize a guided approach to forest therapy, based on the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, which is essentially a multi-sensory immersion in a forest environment for the sake wellness.

Good, simple, structured, slow, immersive, communal encounters with the lovely stuff that lingers in the resins of trees, the mycelial cocktails of soil, the presence of wild kin, and the noted absence of digital pings.

In 2005 Richard Louv coined the phrase “nature-deficit disorder” with his book The Last Child in the Woods, where he pointed at the harms that come with too many digital pings that keep us (and our kids) from getting not-enough-immersion among the elements. 

In 1990—among those blissful days before we carried digital pings in our pockets—my dad picked me up one afternoon from Skiles Test Elementary School and drove me to Turkey Run State Park where we hiked on trail #3 and climbed a forest hillside littered with oak leaves. 

I had never struggled as much, in my 7 years of life, to get from one place to another, as I did on that hillside. The slope was steep, the ground soft and slick, the gravity heavy. I applied myself with Sisyphean dedication. I sunk my fingers into the soil, clawing as I climbed toward my dad’s hand stretched out at the top. I’d get close, and hit a loose patch of leaves, and slide in the mud back to the bottom. And then, with glee, claw my way back up again.

I didn’t know that I was stirring up and ingesting all kinds of phytoncides, giving my immune system a boost. I wasn’t tracking my blood pressure, my brain function, my levels of equanimity or cognitive clarity. 

But I knew—in my little animal self—that I was right where I belonged, rolling around on the forest floor.

There are books you can read. There are training programs you can take. There are skills to acquire, explanations to glean, guides to seek, inspiration to find. Which is all grand. To whatever extent the science and testimonials and experiences of others motivates you to go find your own regular rhythms of biophilic renewal, beautiful. 

But at some point—maybe even at this very point—stop reading what I’m writing, and for God’s sake don’t Google another goddamn thing about the benefits of nature, and go ahead and carry the elemental fibers of your blessed animal body through whatever threshold stands between you and something wild. Go love on nature a little.

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“By keeping in touch with wildness we preserve our sanity, and our world’s health.” (Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put)

From my heart:

Which is a thing you do so well, dear one, and often—touch the wildness. But those cracks in your sanity, those wounds on the world, body, and soul—all that that means, all that it urges is to let more wildness in. If not more frequently, if not greater volume, then touch it more thoughtfully, with greater attention. And always remember: You are the wildness that you touch. You are wounded by the same world wound. And healed in the same wild ways. And healing.

Wilderness therefore is for everyone—the hardy hikers as well as the vast majority who have never known what it means to carry a pack… Wilderness is more than camping or hiking; it is a symbol of a way of life that can nourish the spirit.

– Sigurd Olson, Living Wilderness (1968)

Update about Spiritual Formation in the Wild here.

Life is wild. I am wild. Wilderness is powerful. Wilderness is dangerous. Wilderness is in me. Wilderness confronts me. Wilderness calls me. Wilderness points me home.

The idea of wilderness—and the material stuff of experiences that we call wild—are brimming with vitality, complication, and invitation. This is what Sig Olson was talking about when he wrote that wilderness “is a symbol of a way of life that can nourish the spirit”.

I was paddling on the Wisconsin River with my dad and my friends John and Peter. This was several years ago, but I remember it vividly. We were paddling downstream into a fierce wind that was whipping up waves, and that all but reversed the current. Cold rain stung my eyes and cheeks. It was precarious. It was tohu va bohu—the chaos of wildness that precedes creation in the origin myth of the Hebrew bible. It was glorious.

I was in the stern of one of our two canoes. I was responsible for keeping the boat rightly oriented to the wind and the waves. A touch too much in one direction and the wind would catch the bow and twirl us broadside to the waves, which would swamp us with one gulp. But if I kept our nose pointed into the waves, we’d ride through, soggy but afloat.

My mind was empty of all but the task of holding this balance. 

I say mind, but there wasn’t time between gusts for conscious calculation. My whole body—my whole sensory self—partook in the task. And for all of their ferocity, the wind was not a foe, nor the current, nor the waves. They were companions in this play of balance. 

Each tilting wave informed the way I angled my wrists and thereby angled the blade of the paddle in the water. Each gust that I felt on my cheek informed how I leaned my torso; informed the muscle that I put into each stroke, or my restrained pause between gusts.

That dance with the elements, that’s my understanding of spiritual formation.

Spiritual formation is the wild practice of living in balanced relationship with every element and quality of human nature. And wilderness—above all—is a venue for that practice.

I almost came to tears holding the gaze of a giant beech tree the other day. It was midday, clear skies, Emma and I and the golden doodle were out for a walk to the river. It was cold but comfortable. We were talking. My gaze was inward, clutching at my thoughts.

Emma and the doodle went across the street to deposit a bag of dog s**t in the trash, so I paused for a moment. When I pause, sometimes I remember to look around. This was one of those times. I looked around, and caught on the largest wild being in sight: A century old beech tree in the lot of a schoolyard. 

Old trees of any sort—whether gnarly, sprawling, or tall—have always made me emotional. This was that, but also beyond that. In a brief and subtle encounter with the beech tree I let my thoughts go and for a moment I felt the fullness of the world around me.

I was talking with a friend the other day. She’s going through a tough thing with her family, and she’s feeling like she can’t fix it, because, well, she can’t fix it. She’s been holding it together really well, but one evening earlier in the week, she told me, she couldn’t keep holding it together. The flood of feelings broke through. She lost her composure.

In her words, she said: “I just had an unfortunate moment of insanity.”

I laughed. We were at the stage in our conversation where it was possible to laugh with each other, where neither of us where taking ourselves too seriously. Which is an important stage in a conversation to be at if you are going to laugh at an otherwise serious thing that someone shares with you. 

I laughed and I said, “Everything you’re feeling makes so much sense, and maybe feeling it that strongly, given the circumstances, was actually one of the more sane things that you’ve felt.”

And there it is.

We’re holding our composure or clutching our thoughts, going through our day innocent to the fact that life is forcefully flowing through the earth beneath us and stretching out into the sky above us. Then something shifts. Something catches us unguarded and gaping. Or something releases in us. In wonder, awe, or confusion—for whatever reason—we surrender ourselves to the lunacy of the unbound moment. We let ourselves feel what we feel with complete precision.

It would be too much to maneuver through each day with constant precision. But may we all, from time to time, be blessed with such subtle moments of temporary sanity.

The more I practice paying attention, the more readily I am able to notice that mole hills are, in fact, not mountains.

When I was a child my favorite line in the bible was the one in Peter’s letter where he tells his readers: “Cast all of your anxiety on God, because God cares for you.” There is a container that is big enough to hold what I am not big enough to hold. I can feel the big things that I feel and spill them into the trustworthy presence of the divine. Well before I had any significant cares of my own to feel anxious about, I latched on to that sentiment.

Then I grew a little, got some life under me, and still I held fast to that idea. In that idea I found the comfort of surrender that I needed as an adolescent in order to navigate the worries and losses that clustered around my parents’ divorce. In that idea I found the confidence and inner-company that I needed in order to untether from safe harbor and set out, into the world, as a young and sensitive man, full of feeling and tenderness. 

Once abroad, in a way, I held fast to the idea even as my concept and experiences of God flowed into a salty worldview that was broader and deeper than the one I’d swum in when I was a child.

In a way, I hold fast to it still. I have been deliberately practicing surrender in the face of overwhelm for over thirty years now. I’ve grown strong as I’ve grown up in the practice. But the clusters of care have grown too. 

Tangles of hardship grow up alongside us all. We who dare to engage the wildness of life without numbing ourselves to its joys and discomforts will inevitably find ourselves snagged in the thickets of loss—the fears of loss and of actual loss.

And there is not a direct path through the wilderness. Wilderness paths fold and bend. They circle, turn, and spiral, even as they progress. So it goes with our formation as wild beings. 

Spiritual formation is not linear, it’s lived. And everything alive has curves and ebbs and flows.

And, sure, the more we practice taking deliberate steps on the path of our formation, the more readily we will notice that mole hills are not mountains, and bumps are not blockades. But still, we’ll wobble.

It’s okay to wobble. At least I hope so. The past couple months I’ve been wobbly as hell, getting snagged most days and thrown off balance by overwhelm and self-doubt. Coming from the ruptures and radical change of my midlife moment, I’ve got plenty of reasons to be off balance. Though, in my experience, self-doubt doesn’t really need reasons.

My self-doubt shows up gnarly—pretty well anytime I have a chance to lean in to life with fullness, or with greater ease, or with clarity, or something to offer. My self-doubt shows up mean, insisting that I’m a poser, a fake, a fraud, an imposter.

Nevertheless, when I’m stuck in thickets of self-doubt, I find that it suits me best to be gentle with me. To look that doubting part of me square in my beautiful eyes, and say gently, firmly: “It’s okay. I hear you. No wonder. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

How about this: The harsher the thorn, the gentler we pluck. 

How about this: Rather than running headlong into the thicket, let’s pause.

Practicing pause lets us get a little bit of distance between what we’re feeling (the doubt, the worry, the smallness) and what’s available (our fullness, our toughness, our gentleness), so that the obstacles can become invitations for brave and honest reflection, for humble and active response.

It’s simple, but simple isn’t easy. It’s not linear. Access to our own best wisdom is going to ebb and flow. We’re going to wobble. That’s okay. But it’s okay, too, to find your balance again. And again and again.

Earlier this week I shared that I launched a business. The thickets, and my response to them, have been a big part of getting there. Next time I write, I’ll share a few more ways that—smack dab in the midst of the wobbles so far this year—I’ve had the audacity to show up with my fullness, joy, and creativity. 

And I’d love to hear about your maneuvers of resilience in the wilderness too.

I just launched a business! Now it’s time for show and tell. And I feel like a kid standing up in front of a classroom of his peers, excited and nervous.

I’ve been toying with the right analogy, actually. Do you launch a business? or build a business? or plant a business? or grow a business? or conjure up the audacity, against the odds, to become a business?

Whatever the analogy: I made a thing!

And it’s designed to be a living thing. Like every lasting creation, it’s meant to be something that is continually made. 

After all the work that I have put into building the foundation—after all the self-doubt and self-talk, all the coaching and feedback, all of the reflection and gathering and drafting and revising and framing—I am now occupying this precise moment where:

* I either stand back by myself and admire the thing in its static, unchanging form;

* or I risk sharing, and thereby changing, the thing.

Because the nature of the thing I made has to get shared to come alive.

It has to flow together with others—with folks like you—who are alive to the things that they want to make and birth and steward and champion in this world. 

It has to flow into the hearts and minds of people who are awake to themselves, and who are willing to entertain the possibility that—smack-dab in the midst of life—they can keep on becoming who they were born to be.

Here’s the thing I made: Confluence Formation | Coaching & Spiritual Care.

And here’s how you can help it come alive:

* Schedule some time to talk with me! I want to hear your feedback and curiosities, and any ideas or leads that you have about how to channel Confluence Formation into the lives of people it would help.

* Share the coaching page specifically with people you know who might need help getting past obstacles that are blocking their creative flow.

* Look at the spiritual care page and consider joining me for the 8-week Spiritual Formation in the Wild course that I will be teaching this Spring.

I’m going to keep at it. Keep on making this thing. I’d love for you to join me along the way, in whatever ways you’re able and interested. 

Meanwhile, thank you for being part of this Substack community of practice. Your presence is an encouragement and inspiration to continue following Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

Right alongside of today’s creative practice: Make something. Get excited. Tell about it.

So, what about you? What’s wowing you of late? What have you been making recently? 

Tell us about it.

I almost slept in, but when I got up to turn off my alarm and cancel my appointment, well, at that point I was up, and I might as well make some coffee, and scratch some pages, and do the thing that I said I was going to do.

I think a lot, and hear a lot, about softening the edges of the grasp that productivity culture holds over us. The admonition to soften those edges strikes me as wise, especially as a corrective to the too-muchness of all of the capitalism that’s run amok, that’s running the world and making a mess.

But when I read a book or an article or a poem about not needing to be quite as productive as all that, I think about how whoever wrote the piece did manage to get up yesterday morning and make some coffee and go to yoga and sit at their desk and write something.

I feel two things about the matter. I have two thoughts.

My first is that, yes, pretty much everybody is trying too hard. Hustling too much. Pretty much everybody deserves a nap. Naps are subversive and powerful. The earth welcomes us at the angle of repose. There is wisdom in letting a field lie fallow. In practicing unplug. In observing sabbath. In being enough. In being a human being not just a human doing. In letting the day suffice. In honoring the labor of nurture. In activating pleasure, following whims, the peace of wild things. In letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

The second thought is that I’m made of muscle and creative genius. So are you. So are we each. And I relish some struggle. I like to work, to produce, to create, to make. I stand tall in the presence of the pull of gravity. I have edges and I find life, feel life, taste life, give life when I press into them.

Of course, the best critiques of productivity culture are not a dismissal of the creative spirit, but rather, protective of it. The end goal of productivity culture is the accrual of passive income. The end goal of creativity is the active production of life. 

I like a world where we’re all free from unnecessary struggle, free to make the creative contributions that we’re here to make. 

How many of us are unnecessarily struggling through our days in order to produce things that aren’t quite aligned with our creative edges?

I drift toward utopian thinking when I start walking with such questions.

I suppose, though, at the end of the day, when well-applied, utopian thinking can be a very creative, even productive, use of our time and imagination.

PS—This post pairs well with Kirsten Powers creative contributions on Changing the Channel.

PPS—And also with this conversation between John Dickerson and Brad Stulberg…

Most mornings recently I’ve been doing morning pages. Before anything else (by which I mean: wake, brew coffee, do Wordle, then…) I open a notebook and uncap a pen and scratch out three pages of whatever comes through my scrawling hand.

One morning last week I wrote: 

I have a list of eight things to write taped to my wall. And a list of twenty odd things to accomplish before lunch, before peace can wash over. I have a list of four things I’m meant to always be. I have a list of things that make for a perfect day, but not that make for a perfect life.

So later—I can’t remember if it was later that day or a day or two later—and I’m not saying that a perfect day or a perfect life are either of them achievable or, for that matter, desirable, but—I took out my bigger notebook and made a list of the things that, for me, would and do and will make for, colloquially speaking, a perfect life.

* Make meals and memories with loved ones.

* Help people experience life to the full.

* Walk paths near rivers and fields and in cities and forests.

* Paddle canoes. Tend fires. Sleep outdoors.

* Explore my lover’s body. Make love.

* Make children. Support their genius and joy.

* Plan, fund, and facilitate feasts and adventures for my family.

* Enjoy good stories in many forms.

* Grow old in wisdom and in good company.

* Pay attention. Write about it.

So, now I have that list too. Today I’ll tape it to the wall too. As a declaration, and a celebration. To help me remember, and stay the course. A cluster of actuality and aspiration.

What’s on your list?

I once helped a farmer bury a goat who had died during a cold December night. Or, come to think of it, the ground would have been frozen solid. Maybe we just moved the goat to a resting place and covered him with as much earth as we could muster, biding time till the thaw.

I used to wake up at first light even though the blackout blinds kept the sun out of the room. Bombadil, the bantam rooster that we accidentally got with a batch of hatchlings that were all meant to be hens, ensured my wakefulness with his cock-a-doodle-do’s.

A few weeks ago I tended the chickens—who still live with Lauren—while Lauren was out of town for Christmas. Then, on the first day of this year, Lauren messaged to let us all know that Bombadil had died defending his flock from a hawk.

That’s quite a way to go. That’s quite a way to start a year.

I called Lauren to lament. In the text thread my niece named how apt and valiant and poetic Bombadil’s ending was. I thought of the other three backyard chickens that I buried over the years under the flowers in the front yard. I thought of the John O’Donohue prayer that I read from a book of blessings for the first hen that died, standing at her little grave, shovel laid to the side.

I sobbed on the first of January, over Bombadil’s death. Rest in peace, darling little frenemy, whose morning cries warned of the new day and forbade further rest.

My tears for Bombadil were laden with the weight and the spin of the earth. Endings and beginnings. The uncertainty of creation. Is this as true for you as it is for me, that: Every day, when I set out to make something new, I fear that the spark of creativity won’t be there if I reach for it, that it won’t meet me if I show up?

But I usually do anyway, show up. And it usually does, meet me.

In a dream, my first car, a ’91 Mazda Protogé, won’t start. Mazda is the Zoroastrian god of wisdom, the creator deity. 

Nevertheless, I show up.

Because the man with the meditation practice met me in the basement and recited a poem about princes and kings and fools being makers of eternity. 

Because Keisha E. McKenzie wrote about how irrelevant it is to credit one moment of turn as any more significant than another moment of turn.

Because Tillich said that god is the ground of being. 

Because Maria says that being is the thing worth tending. 

Because Tom gave me feedback, encouraging me to be authentic.

I’m planning to launch a business as a life coach and a retreat guide. The specter and possibility of failure wakes me up in the morning before first light. “Cock-a-doodle-don’t!” it croaks.

In the field of human potential everybody’s promising something, and those promises are washed up in so much noise that it’s a wonder when any value manages to crawl through and evolve into transformation.

In the efforts of beginning a business there is so much earth to move. 

In any effort to create anything there is so much former life to compost.

Nevertheless. 

Because it feels good to muscle my way through this world of feather and flesh.

I am the hawk and the cockerel. 

And the man with the shovel, smearing earth on the corner of the page with a prayer.

Last week I was on an island in the Caribbean. Some of the trees in the Virgin Islands National Park wink at you when you walk past them. They flex and whisper their age. They tell stories, if you listen, about the ecology of the place and about a whole history of happenings.

Ferns grow on the trees’ trunks and contribute to their whispers. It is a rather elegant arrangement. These ferns are epiphytes—they don’t put roots in the soil like many plants do, but instead they attach themselves to other root-bound plants and gather nutrients direct from the light that filters through the canopy, and from the midday rain.

We were on the island because it’s beautiful, and also to spend a week at the outset of this new year catching some rest and preparing for what’s ahead.

Emma and I got engaged over the holidays. On a rainy day in Boston in late December we gathered all of the house plants in the house and placed them in the living room for company and witness. We lit candles and built an altar with objects and words that told of our promises to each other. I gave her a ring that sparkles with gems that are situated along the band asymmetrically, like stones crossing a shallow riverbed. She gave me a beavertail canoe paddle made from alder, basswood, and walnut, with an oiled grip. It feels like a scepter and an heirloom in my hands. 

In witness of fire and life, we flowed around the bend, crossing a threshold into the next chapter of this story that we are authoring together.

One of the witnesses was the staghorn fern—an epiphyte by nature—who lives in my office near the windowsill over my desk. 

Last week I spent an afternoon swimming in the waters, among the reefs and over swaths of sea grass. I floated for I-don’t-know-how-long-because-time-melts-in-salt-water gazing at a sea turtle who found me while I was out snorkeling. When she surfaced I surfaced with her, and held her gaze, our heads bobbing together above the water and then below again, above for a deep gulp of air, and then below. She dove down to the grass to feed, and I waited ten or twelve feet above until she was ready for another breath.

And there was a third with us, her remora—one of the suckerfish whose custom it is to accompany other creatures, attaching to their bellies or the backs of their shells, like finned epiphytes of the sea.

Share this with someone who’s got your back.

Which all has me wondering what remora fish I carry with me into my days and into my relations. What are the sometimes pesky, sometimes graceful, always present companions that move with me? What skills, wounds, stories, needs, uncertainties, gifts follow and attach themselves to me wherever I swim? 

And what epiphytic instances of life have endured long on the trunk of my soul, drinking from the emotional weather around me?

With all of these hangers-on, it is brave of us to interact with one another. All of us. Any of us. It takes courage to explore the places where one ends and the other begins, to color new worlds with bold ecotones.

An excerpt from an encyclopedia article about community ecology:

No interaction between species fits neatly into the categories of antagonism, commensalism, or mutualism. The interaction depends on the genetic makeup of both species and the age, size, and physical condition of the individuals. Interactions may even depend on the composition of the community in which the interaction takes place.

Healthy ecosystems depend on variety and diversity; on the mixing and weaving of many. That’s why, after our engagement ceremony, Emma and I drove across town where our families had gathered to root for and bless us—and join us—in new formation.

Our worlds meet and we give shape to new ecologies. New patterns of atmosphere emerge with new formations of community. We lock eyes and take big gulps of air together. We tend to each other’s soft bellies. We have each other’s backs. Sometimes we stand tall on our own like trees, and tell the stories of everything happening around us. Sometimes we hold to those stories like thirsty ferns.

Always, in defiance of the categories that we create to make sense of such things, we interact. 

How very wild of us. We are brave and beautiful little ecosystems, and continual creation requires us to risk and celebrate proximity.

How very wild, that it implores us to explore our evolutionary instincts to share space; to nurture our particularities in the weather of community. 

How very wonderful, that the world depends on us being wild, and on the generative wildness of our many mingling loves.

PS – This post pairs well with Soul Mate by Flora Cash.

The boy followed his father through the palms to the sand. When his feet touched sand the boy ran toward the waves, then a sharp left. He darted along parallel to the surf. Down the beach a ways he found a broad swath of wet sand and dug the toes of his right foot into the sand, hobble stepping around until he’d drawn a big circle in the sand, twice as wide as he was tall. 

If you’ve done this yourself you know it takes concentration not to lift the foot that is serving as your stylus. It’s an awkward and muscular art form, with unruly media. No wonder, then, that upon completing the circle—the very moment that his right toes plowed the final push of fresh sand into the valley where he’d began his mark—the boy’s brown face shifted from pure earnestness to unfettered victory.

“I did it!” he announced.

His father was already in the waves out of earshot, and the boy wasn’t announcing it to me, and I feel confident that he hadn’t been given instruction to do the thing that he was announcing that he’d done. So I’m left with complete admiration for this boy’s initiative; for this boy's self-determination; for this boy’s audacity—independent of any audience—to ensure proclamation of his incomparable accomplishment.

Once the circle was made and his victory sufficiently proclaimed he sprinted after his father into the waves, and left me sitting in the sand gobsmacked with inspiration.

Some people spend their days drawing lines in the sand, building walls, making barriers. These have their function, I suppose. But straight lines are a flirtation with abstraction. Walls are built to crumble. Barriers invite trespass. The lived world is alive with shifting curves. Curves circle the world. 

Let’s practice curves. Let’s be like the boy who makes circles bigger than himself. Let’s make circles bigger than ourselves, then bigger than those, then bigger than those. Let’s circle the world with circles that shift, then dive into the waves with victory in our throats.

Last month I got curious about Transcendental Meditation so I signed up for an information session with a local instructor. Curiosity takes us places. There is so much world, and so many souls exploring it from so many angles.

I met the meditation instructor and one other interested soul, a chef, on a rainy mid-December day in the basement of the historic Cambridge Masonic Temple in Porter Square. The instructor gave me and the chef each a clipboard so that we could fill out a form with our email addresses and reasons for being there. 

My reason was something like: More levity, doing good work with a greater sense of ease. 

I might have just as honestly said: To drop down, for a time, beneath the chatter, and to bring back a boon of clarity.

Also, I was curious what sorts of things Transcendental Meditation instructors talk about in the basements of Masonic Temples. The space smelled of patchouli from the other room where the group of ecstatic dancers were just finishing their mid-day romp. My meeting place was a smaller room with six folding chairs, a dry erase board, a stack of books, and the clipboards on a low table against the wall—plus me, the chef, and the instructor. 

The instructor held court and did his song and dance. I was as intrigued by the caliber of his performance as I was by the content of the pitch. Who says a sales pitch can’t be woven together like a one-man show? I love getting to witness people giving their gifts to this world.

I walked away soggy from the rain, and curiosity sated for now.

The Midwinter Revels show, that I wrote about before the holidays, was set in a medieval court at solstice, and it centered on the tandem trope of the king and his jesters. They are mirrors of each other, kings and fools. The king and the fool are an inhale and exhale of the same breath. 

At winter solstice the king is traditionally charged with the curious duty of descending to the nether world to retrieve the light to bring back for the realm, ushering in a new cycle of creation and growth. In the Revels things went topsy-turvy, as they often do in a good story, and it ended up that the three fools were the ones who were called on to fulfill the king’s task. And so—faithful to the realm in their own ways—they descended.

In the basement of the temple the meditation instructor recited a poem that I had never heard, penned by R. L. Sharpe around a century and a half ago:

Isn’t it strange

That princes and kings,

And clowns that caper

In sawdust rings,

And common people

Like you and me

Are builders for eternity?

We’re all making something, or meant to be, at every given moment. 

Making love. Making amends. Making art. Making room. Making friends (or the reverse). Making home. Making memories. Crafting our contributions and building a legacy. We are—moment by moment—makers of eternity.

The poem continues:

Each is given a bag of tools,

A shapeless mass,

A book of rules;

And each must make—

Ere life is flown—

A stumbling block

Or a steppingstone.

I like it. Though, certainly, by God’s grace, it’s not that binary. After all, I might stumble over something that causes you to leap. The builders, along with those who are making their way, share responsibility for the outcome of the walk. 

But the fools do return with light for the realm, making it possible for us all to identify, and then avoid or utilize, whatever the obstacles in our way. 

And, in case you missed it, we are, each of us, a court unto ourselves. We are, each of us, common people and princes and kings and clowns that caper—descending, transcending, dancing, stumbling, strolling, transgressing, and jesting—our way from moment to moment, day to day, season to season. That’s what it is to be alive. That’s what it is to be human.

So, whatever you are feeling today, and as you lean into this new year, may your heart be open to the full expression and experience of your humanity. You are royal, you are tricky, and you’re not alone in this world that is drenched with curiosities. 

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“There is a creative, life-sustaining, life-enhancing place for the masculine in a nondominator culture. And those of us committed to ending patriarchy can touch the hearts of real men where they live, not by demanding that they give up manhood or maleness, but by asking that they allow its meaning to be transformed, that they become disloyal to patriarchal masculinity in order to find a place for the masculine that does not make it synonymous with domination..” (bell hooks, The Will to Change)

From my heart:

Be disloyal to patriarchy, dear heart. Don’t go in for models of manhood that appeal to subjection. With your strength serve, listen and love. Be emotional when you need to. Cry those tears, my child, that you’ve been holding on to for dear life. I don’t mean only be disloyal to patriarchy in a grand and glorious save-the-world-systemic sort of way. I mean be free right now, yourself, this moment from all that binds you. Refuse the bondage that masquerades as power.

During intermission at Midwinter Revels last week I sparked connection with the man next to me at the sink while we washed our hands. When he bent toward the faucet, his glasses slipped from where they were perched on the top of his head, and he caught them midair.

“Nice snag,” I said to him. 

He chuckled. And I chuckled.

While we dried our hands at the paper towel dispenser I pointed at his lapel.

“What’s that on your pin?” I asked.

“It’s a dragon,” he said.

“Oh, that’s awesome,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said. “My one true love gave it to me.” 

And he smiled and I smiled, and we parted ways.

God I love humans.

Back in October I got to see Yo-Yo Ma play with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I sat by a woman named Carrie who loved the orchestra. She had season tickets.

Carrie pointed things out to me in-between movements. She told me the name that she had made up for her favorite bassist, the one with the red sash who never used a stool. She told me about all of the percussionists, and that that guy who was seated in the row behind us was one of the percussionist’s dads. She told me the best place in New Orleans to get praline, and the best bars in Cambridge to get beers. She pointed out the prowess of the woman with the piccolo, which I had already noticed. (That woman could play the piccolo! How excellent of humans, that we invented the piccolo. And that someone came along—her, in particular—who has it in them to fill a hall with that pitch and passion.)

Carrie shared a full slate of her observations with me that evening. Then, at the very end, after the orchestra finished a concerto by Shostakovich, Carrie glanced over at me aglow, with a countenance of content and soulful longing, and said while clutching at her heart, with a deep sigh, “In a past life I really think I must have been a Russian peasant.”

I just love us. So sincere. So silly. So tender. So mighty. So creative and full of life.

Share this with a human you love!

Saint Iraenaus made this bold theological assertion: “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

I think that the glory of God—such as it is—is more vast and varied than man’s fullness alone. I think humans of all genders, and creatures of all sorts, and vegetables and minerals for that matter, all sing in their fullness to the glory of whatever continuous and creative genius vibrates behind the dynamic and evolving stuff of life. 

But I take Ira’s point, and these passing singular encounters back it up: God is glorified when you and I—and Carrie, and the man with the dragon pin, and the man who gave it to him, and Yo-Yo Ma, and the piccolo player, and every last peculiar and particular one of us—are fully alive.

And that full life goes by different names, wears different clothes, strums different tunes here and there and now and then. Maybe it peeks at you when you hear a time piece ticking, strumming the bass note of every second that backs up every moment of your full life. Maybe it’s the bit of eternity you hold when you touch the hands of someone you’re in love with. Maybe it’s composing or playing or reveling in ensemble music. Maybe it’s the light making the sky a color that feels, somehow, somewhy, important to notice. It's the beauty of simple things—or of complicated things given actual shape—these moments of aliveness.

It is a taste, a hint, a glimpse, a memory of something divine made immediate. For those who believe in God it is all the power and wonder of grace. And for those who don’t, I'm not sure that it's anything less than that anyway. 

That’s my favorite thing about the theology of Christmas (tucked in, cozy, over there in a corner of truth behind the hubbub, behind the carols, behind the tinsel, behind the Christmas morning breakfast casserole—which I am definitely behind—and all of the other traditions that tumble us along toward the end of a year):

Abstraction, when it comes to the divine, doesn’t quite cut it. 

Divinity, instead, is found in particularity. God dancing with us in the dusty constraints of the time-bound, material world. And us, dancing God back to God.

I’m going to go do some of that dancing now. Going to bask, for the rest of December, in music and family and true love and good light.

Merry Christmas, to those who observe. And happy solstice on the way.

I’ll see you again, back here, in the new year, eager to share some of the other creative contributions that I’ve been brewing for this world, so ripe with the divine.

I’m not sure what the most affirming and compelling thing would be that a friend or a reader might say to me. But my friend David got close when we sent me this on Monday: “I’ve been encouraged to see the wilderness more through your writings.”

And then he told me about one of his other wilderness guides, his two-year-old, Lina: 

One of the games she plays is called ‘bird’. We essentially just pretend there are birds on a walk, or in our basement, or wherever we are, and just say, 'Oh, look a bird!’ (There are no birds and we just point wherever.)

He continued:

I sometimes feel like there is no wilderness in the suburban jungle that is southeast Michigan but sometimes just pretending (and being excited about it) gives me a hint of the joy and playfulness that comes from running through the woods and being in wide open spaces.

John Muir begins chapter one of Our National Parks with this:

The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

That was 122 years ago.

Muir describes the forays of those who delve deep into the wilderness “jumping from rock to rock, feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in whole-souled exercise, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of pure wildness.”

About those rock-jumping, soul-panting, long-drawn wilderness rejoicers, Muir says, “This is fine and natural and full of promise.” Then he says, “So also is the growing interest… in the half wild parks and gardens of towns.”

The half wild parks and gardens of town. I love that phrase. I love that sentiment. I love the way it makes room for wildness to crawl into even our most cultivated green spaces.

It gives me permission to do what Lina knows through pure instinct how to do. To make believe. More than permission. Inspiration. I’m inspired by Lina’s spirit of imagination, by her and Muir’s audacity of proclamation.

“Oh, look a bird!”

“Oh, look a park!”

“Oh, look…!”

More than permission—the weave of the wisdom from this two-year old in Detroit and this 122 year old turn of phrase—it’s a commission, to go out, seeking and naming every instance of half wild wonder that manages to stumble past whatever doldrums insulate us from being always completely taken with this wonderfully wild world.

I write that mouthful of a sentence, and then I check myself. “But Aram, everything in this world isn’t gorgeous and playful and light. What about the the gnarly, the severe, the shadows? Don’t bypass those.”

I listen to myself when I check myself. Good note. Good caution. Of course. But that’s not what we’re doing here, is it? 

It’s wildness that we’re talking about embracing, not a vapid outlook on life. The commission is not to bypass any of the world that we encounter, but to imagine it infused everywhere with the magic that we have already tasted elsewhere. 

The commission is to make believe, in a way that makes it so.

PS - Want to join me next spring in the practice of wildness and make believe?!

For eight weeks in April and May, I’m teaching an online course with the School of Global Citizenry. You’re invited. Read about it here: Spiritual Formation in the Wild.

When its spiritual growth that I’m after, a balance between consistency and flexibility serves best. If it’s too rigid, for instance, my morning routine breaks every few weeks. I need to keep it simple and supple and strong. Right now I have one commitment in the morning: That I engage in a morning practice. And I have a menu of morning practices that I pick from depending on what I feel that I need, and on the actual time at hand.

One of the things on my menu is a meditation in six movements. I made it up for when I need help at the threshold between days. It helps me move from the residue of what proceeded into the potential of what’s ahead.

My RTDB meditation goes like this:

Light a candle or put on some soft music, or don’t do either of those things. Close your eyes or stare at the corner or at your toes or at the branches of nearby trees. You can sit down, or lie down, or stand up, or stretch, or go for a walk. (If you go for a walk, make sure you’ve extinguished the candle.) Any of these postures, it doesn’t matter, just quiet yourself, and then, review the day before, by recalling these things…

Place notes

Make note in your mind of the places you occupied and moved through. Where were you throughout the day before? What were the place names? Were you in Massachusetts or Maine, or both? Were you near a mountain? Which mountain? Were you near a beach? Which ocean? Were you inside of the sanctuary of a big church in Cambridge? Were you, at some point during the day before, in a low-seated comfy chair in the living room of a house on Avon Hill? Was the weather in New England unseasonably warm? How did the light fall, just so, through the stained-glass windows? What did the room smell like? 

Bass notes

Make note in your heart of the ways that the day and its happenings occupied and moved through you. 

How did you feel throughout the day before? What were the undercurrents of your emotional experience? Did they shift after breakfast, or after that interaction with the barista, or after that phone call with your friend in Asheville? Or did they keep pretty steady through the day? Your feelings are a color. What colors colored your day? Your feelings are a genre. How did the day’s drama flow?

Moment of courage

When were you a hero? You did something brave yesterday, probably several somethings. I don’t have examples, because courage is incredibly personal. Be honest and generous. What was one brave thing? It’s not arrogant, it’s just you that’s cheering you on here. One simple brave thing. Hold it up like a trophy in your heart.

Moment of revision

Anne Lamott tells of three basic prayers: Help, thanks, and wow. Oops might be a fourth. When did you oops? Or get oops-ed upon? The idea here isn’t to wallow, or seethe. The idea is to notice that life is tinged with shadow and light; to notice that you can be brave (which you’ve just previously noticed) and imperfect; that life can be glorious and gnarly.

Recall something from the day before that you would change if you could. You can not, of course, return to the day before and actually edit what you did or what happened. You can, however, gather up, like water from the spigot of your own lived experience, the happenings of a day—no matter the extent to which they approached and approximated your idea of your best day or your best version of you—and pour that water into the potted plant that is today’s experiment at life. Recall one small moment of revision, and then, move on.

Moment of making

What did you make? Just one thing. Sure, no doubt, you made lots of things. But right now just punctuate your heart with pride over one of your day’s creations. Maybe you made a friend. Maybe you made a painting or an actual sculpture or a delicious sandwich. Maybe you made love. One moment of creative expression and collaboration with the spirit of genius. One moment of offering, of contribution to the world.

Moment of more

Which moment, among all the rest of the day’s moments, would you have loved to stretch out, to have paused time, to have lingered in?

All of that happened. Now, let the day suffice. Take six deep breaths, one for each of the movements in this meditation. And on the sixth exhale step—or leap or tiptoe or front flip or belly flop—into the day ahead.

I was born on this day in 1982. Here are 41 things that I have learned since then.

* There is so much world.

* When kindling a fire: Start small and build slow.

* Do the same when kindling any new practice, aim, or intention.

* In politics and personality assessments it’s seldom beneficial to paint with a wide brush.

* Blank pages are invitations, not enemies.

* Imperfect action is necessary, and most of the time enough.

* Carry a notebook and a pencil pretty much everywhere all the time.

* Blackwing pencils are the best pencils.

* Any religious idea can be a dangerous religious idea. Most of them can be redemptive. Whether the ideas manifest in the world as one or the other is totally up to us.

* Trees make good friends and good teachers. 

* Oak, pine, cedar, and birch each have a personality and intelligence all their own.

* The call of the wild; the calm of the hearth. The thrill of the dark; the bliss of illumination. The quest; the retreat. We need it all.

* Solvitur ambulando.

* The quality of a meal is directly proportional to how far into the backcountry you’ve gone to eat it.

* A good bit of stand up comedy has more prophetic thrust than a well reasoned argument.

* Blessed are those who are in on the joke.

* If you are paddling upstream in a yellow canoe and you get to a bit of swift water, it is best to get out and walk around.

* Hope is useful when it’s also honest.

* The wisest among us are seldom in a hurry.

* Along with Audre Lorde, I think it’s true, “In order to win the aggressors must conquer, but resisters need only survive.”

* With Jay Griffiths, I think it’s true, “We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators, but for thunder and mud.”

* With Aristotle (or whoever misattributed it to Aristotle), I think it’s true: “The most intelligent minds are those that can entertain an idea without necessarily believing it.”

* With Ita speaking to Finn in Frederick Buechner’s Brendan, I think it’s true, “Smirchy and holy is all one.”

* Per the letter I wrote to Grampy the year he turned 100 years, I think it’s true that a man needs little more in life than companionship, nourishment, some sturdy shelter, and a good bottle of mustard.

* Speaking of the palantir in The Two Towers, Gandalf says, “Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.” That’s true also of hammers, of smartphones, and of biblical hermeneutics.

* With a little improvisation and an eye for opportune moments, the three card tricks that you learned when you were 12 years old will “wow” pretty well any crowd.

* There’s always someone who’s got better tricks than you.

* Earth weighs what earth weighs. 

* And spirituality is a muscle.

* The best way to speak truth to power is to confront ignorance with inquiry.

* And it’s seldom useful to speak in absolutes.

* What stuck people need perhaps more than anything, is permission. Permission to slow down. Permission to step back. Permission to lean in. Permission to experiment and to fail. Permission to play. Permission to take up the them-sized space in the world.

* The best thing about being a grownup: You get to write your own permission slips.

* If you’re willing, there’s as much truth in Lancelot’s sword fighting lesson, from the opening scene of First Knight, as there is in any other great excerpt of sacred text.

* It matters what metaphors you filter your life through.

* Selfishness is rooted in a lack of imagination.

* It’s not a competition, but love wins.

* It’s possible to simultaneously be open to feedback and careful with your heart.

* At 14, at the summit of Ben Nevis in a bluster of snow, dad told me: “Interest comes and goes, but commitment gets to the top.” I still think that’s true.

* Also true: The top isn’t always the best place to be.

* It can be both.