Tag: life

Figuring out 18

Eighteen is a gut punch and a privilege. Anna is 18 today and it feels like time travel back to her birth as well as a look at my own white-bearded face in the mirror of mortality.

I don’t know what I thought life would look like when your oldest child turns 18, but I’m pretty sure whatever it was got derailed somewhere. There are sure a lot more tears, yelling, and questions than I thought there would be. Then again, I can attest to parenting karma being real, with fatherhood feeling both incredible and helpless at the same time.

We get pictures in our minds of what life will look like in the future and maybe how it’s supposed to look and feel now. When we want things for our children, they are often what we want versus what they might want at a given time.

Anna’s on her own timeline, with her own thoughts and feelings; I was (and am) the same way, so it shouldn’t surprise me. But letting that sink in goes against some of what we think we should be doing as parents.

If we’re lucky, we get to walk the road with our kids, we can’t walk it for them.

Over the past couple months, I’ve started to learn something experientially that has been a game-changer. Anna and I have had some deep conversations that made me stop and take stock. I was at a workshop recently where our group discussed, “moments of conversion:” those experiences that stop us, make us see differently, and change us. And that’s what listening to Anna gave me: I had to stop, realize I was completely missing things she was saying, and start from square one.

That being the case, we are still on the road of life and father-daughter relationship together. And reading James K.A. Smith’s “On the Road with St. Augustine,” I came across this line:

“Conversion doesn’t pluck you off the road, it just changes how you travel.”

James K.A. Smith

And I hope I can keep that up and make the most of it. Conversion is a day-to-day process and there is a lot of road still to travel. I have a lot to learn about 18 and beyond.

When Anna turned 16, I wrote her a letter of sorts. I wouldn’t change anything in it now, it all stands. But a couple years along, and maybe I see a few things. I am smitten by her gifts and her passions.

Anna is all about pets. She is the girl who disappears and turns up in anyone’s house with a cat or dog in her arms. And animals take to her (until she dresses them up). She’s looking to start volunteering at Talbot Humane this winter and I honestly wonder whether that might be the beginning of a calling of sorts. Dr. Doolitttle-in-training.

Kids are drawn to her. If it’s not animals, it wouldn’t surprise me to see her wrangling kids at a daycare or preschool. She is magnetic in a pied-piper kind of way and kids follow her. And it happens whenever she is around them.

When it comes to art and puzzles, Anna has a zen focus. I’ve never seen a teenager put together a 1,000 piece puzzle. Anna does them in an evening and can tune out whatever else is going on. She is the same way with coloring, doodling intricate patterns, or painting. They are things that brighten her days, and thereby brighten mine.

Anna is extroverted. This hit me like a rolled-up newspaper when she talked about it after a personality test in school. As an introvert raising a child similar to me in many ways, I just never thought about it, then hearing her say it, I looked back over her life with a giant “no duh” and it made sense. She recharges around people and looks for ways to be social.

She is fiercely protective of her sister. I know the older sibling protective thing, but this is something different. Anna has been with Ava step-by-step through month-long hospitalization, seizures, and her provoked epilepsy adventure. Anna frequently calls her mom or I out about making sure Ava is hydrated, not in the sun too long, and is getting enough sleep. This isn’t to say that teenage sisters don’t fight like wolverines (they do), but when push comes to punch, Anna hasn’t missed a neurology appoint, watches out for and over her sister, and worries about her constantly.

Anna feels deeply in a world where that can count against you. It’s a hard thing as a father to watch your child fall down, process, and struggle. It’s a wonderful thing when they get back up, learn, and try again or try something different. Anna has an empathetic heart (at times 🙂 where that isn’t frequently en vogue with teenagers. Sometimes it takes us a while to find our tribe and I know she’s working on hers.

If we’re lucky, we get to walk the road with our kids, we can’t walk it for them. We can’t speed them up and even if we point out rocky ground and potholes, strong-willed kids still find them on their own.

Anna has been my learning curve, my guinea pig as I try to figure out how to be a father. She has picked me up at times when I’ve failed and it’s been the biggest honor and adventure I’ve known to walk her road with her.

On her turning 18, I see next steps, new experiences, more tears and laughter, more dressed up pets, Starbucks runs, puzzles and artwork, and things even a Romper-Room magic looking glass can’t see coming. One of these days I might figure out how to be a parent. Until then, I’ll be happy when she smiles.

Choosing Joy

We choose what we give our time and energy to. We choose how we see situations. We choose what we will do with the time we have.

This is oversimplifying things, but if it rains on a day off when I hoped to be outside, I can throw up my hands and give my day away to disappointment, or I can change plans, change course, and even notice flowers and plants getting what they need from the rain. We can look for, or try to create, small moments of joy, even when things don’t go how we wanted them.

Life hurts. It is full of war, sickness, death, anger, jealousy, hatred, injustice, suffering, and so many crappy things that it is an entirely justifiable and sane reaction to say, it’s too much, what can I do, I am insignificant, what I say or do won’t matter anyway. But it matters in your life. And it can matter for others.

Joy is a choice. In his book “Return of the Prodigal Son,” Henri Nouwen writes:

“once you choose to claim the joy hidden in the midst of all suffering, life becomes celebration. Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy.”

Henri Nouwen, “Return of the Prodigal Son”

Nouwen talks about the parables of the prodigal son, the lost sheep, and others, where God goes out of his way to reach the one lost or wayward soul who chooses to return, and to celebrate their return, not because He doesn’t love those already in the fold, but because He loves each of us uniquely, and it is a reason for joy.

“If that is God’s way, then I am challenged to let go of all the voices of doom and damnation that drag me into depression and allow the “small” joys to reveal the truth about the world I live in.”

Henri Nouwen

Allowing the small joys. That’s a thought worth sitting with and trying to live into. It could be a spring breeze coming through the window in the morning. The first sip of coffee. A Red-Bellied Woodpecker at the feeder. The smell of cutting the grass. A thought or phrase spurred from reading that hadn’t occurred to me in just that way before. Watching the dog bound through the back yard. And that’s all without leaving home.

Both Gandalf and Fr. Bill Ortt have pointed out that “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” That is a thought or a mantra that sticks with me. So does this thought from Tom Robbins, which is an all-time favorite:

“There are only two mantras: yum and yuck. Mine is yum.”

Tom Robbins, “Still Life with Woodpecker”

It was more than 20 years ago when I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, “Peace is Every Step. Nhat Hanh is known as a Zen master, peace activist, teacher, community leader. There is a ton that has stuck with me from that book, much of it on interconnectedness, cultivating inner peace, and daily wonder and miracles. He has a great section on doing the dishes and household chores and how, done mindfully, they can be sources of joy and happiness:

“The secret to happiness is happiness itself. Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, the wonder of our breathing. We don’t have to travel anywhere else to do so. We can be in touch with these things right now.”

It’s Monday evening. As I am at the desk, the dog lies on the stone path through the back yard, smelling the air, watching for birds or squirrels, or neighbor dogs to come to the fence. I’ve got box garden beds to weed, dinner to make, the work week to get into full swing and the girls back to school. There is some small joy in each of those things, but right now it is even more simple and immediate: the look on the dog’s face as she takes in the evening; pinwheels spinning in the breeze; birds carrying on conversations and being able to pick out one or two I recognize; and a grateful heart for just saying thank you for a moment.

In the scheme of things, all that’s wrong with the world, that is not much. But it matters for this moment. And it might help to make more moments like it. And it all starts with a choice.

Dreams and Song

2019 is a blank page with a big box of Crayola crayons spread out around it. I dig the above photo that Caroline Phillips took on one of the last days of December, on assignment for Shore Monthly Magazine. It’s sunrise, with friends doing something we love, up and outside early that let us catch a crisp, clear morning to laugh, skate, and reconnect.

2019 is a year I don’t have a clue about in many ways. And part of that not knowing is that the past four-plus years have been foundation building.

Life has a way of pulling the rug out from under us when we get comfortable. I like to think that happens because we are getting comfortable in a way that is keeping us from where we need to be; where we could be going; what we could be doing. But that perspective likely only comes with some distance when we’re looking back.

When we get displaced, we try to get our footing–spiritually, mentally, and physically. We try to put our pieces back together in a meaningful way. We look for that place where we can breathe deeply and be ourselves. We look for somewhere we can build, and re-build our lives.

Over the past four years, I’ve lived in three different places and I’m in the first house where it feels like home, where the girls and I can be for a while, put some roots down and figure out where life goes as Anna gets closer to graduating high school and Ava finishes middle school.

The thing about building a foundation or putting down roots (choose your metaphor) is that that’s the beginning work, the base. For that to amount to anything, you’ve got to build something awesome, grow or bloom into something that no one else can–that’s what each of us has in us. And that’s what 2019 feels like it’s calling for–personally, professionally, physically, creatively–it’s time to stretch, to grow, to build, to do something more; something cool, fun, inspiring. The stuff the God puts each of us here to do.

Field guides, existing colors in the box of Crayolas that we get to color our lives with, to help show us what is possible, what’s been drawn, and what we can do.

Writing about Jorge Luis Borges, introducing Borges’ book, “Dreamtigers,” Miguel Enguidanos talks about dreams and song. That it is our capacity to dream and sing that “makes the world bearable, habitable; they make the dark places bright… Dreams and song. About the whole and the parts. About the universe and about each of its separate creatures.” And that “in spite of incompetence, stumblings, and disillusionment,” that our dreams, played out in the song we choose to sing with our lives can connect and resonate with others.

I guess that’s my hope for 2019. To feel our dreams and find and sing our song in new, surprising, inspiring, and wonder-filled ways. And in doing so, to help others do the same with theirs.

Via Contemplative Monk and Mystic Prayers

It started with Stan Lee

“Stan Lee and Dr. Seuss and Ray Bradbury. That’s where it begins and ends with me.” That’s how Josh Brolin, who plays both Thanos and Cable in the current Marvel movies, began his remembrance of Marvel legend, founder, and storyteller extraordinaire, Stan Lee. Lee died yesterday at the age of 95.

I heard the news from my cousin, who works at the Miami Herald newspaper, which is fitting, because he is the same cousin that introduced me to comic books; the same cousin who I would spend hours with at Alternate Worlds Comic Book Store in Cockeysville, pouring over Stan Lee’s creations. The comics I collected and couldn’t stop reading were Daredevil, the Avengers, the X-Men, Black Panther–all first created by Lee and artist Jack Kirby, and all current Marvel movie blockbusters.

My teenage daughters don’t read. And I’m not overly worried because I didn’t read growing up. Except for Marvel comic books, something that started when I was 10 and went obsessively on through middle school and into high school (though it wasn’t something you wanted people to know back then). And then graphic novels found their way back onto my reading list in my 40s, again the same Marvel titles being the mainstay.

Stan Lee lived every writer’s dream: to see his characters become household names, loved across generations, spur imaginations, and touch people’s lives. And the coolest thing is that it wasn’t about him, it was and is about the stories and the characters–he passed them on to subsequent writers who try to build on and expand his vision. Here is what those who continue Lee’s stories (three of Marvel’s top writers and an actor) had to say on Lee’s passing:

Stan Lee made the word, “Excelsior!” his sign off and tagline. It’s generally translated to mean, “ever upward,” “higher,” or striving.  Chances are, if you hear it in today’s culture, it’s because of him.

Marvel does a nice job of giving the skeleton/chronology of Stan Lee’s career as a storyteller. It’s heartening to realize that Lee almost quit writing comics after 20 years and didn’t really breakthrough until he was 39.

When someone dies at 95 years old, having lived a life people dream about, it’s not tragic; it gives us a moment to remember and appreciate what they brought to our lives. For me, my love of stories, and my desire to read them, to consume them, look for them, think about the shape of them, the imagery of them, to get to know characters–started with Stan Lee. I remember paying $5 for Black Panther #4 in its clear, plastic bag and feeling like I had a small piece of a legacy in my hands. I would walk out of the store with hours of stoke and fuel for my imagination. And I smile now, when I pass on something to my nephew, who sits transfixed, shuts out the world around him, and dives into the Marvel universe.

And these same stories, Stan Lee’s creations, having hit the big screen in ways we didn’t know could happen back then–cinematic storytelling has caught up to what was being done on the page–I now share with my daughters, who have seen all the movies, and suggested Marvel marathons without prompting–always looking for Lee’s comedic cameo in each film.

When I picked 13-year-old Ava up from school yesterday, I told her that an older famous person who she knows died. The first guess out of her mouth was, “Stan Lee??”

And last night we watched “The Avengers.” Tonight we’ll pick another. The stories keep going. But it started with Stan Lee. “Excelsior!” is how he lived.

By the same spirit

There is freedom in getting away. There is friendship in breaking bread and eating together. There is awe in exploring Creation in the rolling hills in early fall. There is joy in worshiping together. There is peace in praying with and for each other. And when you bring close to 70 adults and youth together for a weekend away at The Claggett Center in Adamstown, Md., there is ever-present laughter waiting to bust loose.

This is the fourth consecutive season that Christ Church Easton has run The Alpha Course on Saturday evenings. Alpha is billed as an adventure to explore life, faith, and meaning. It’s also an opportunity to come together with like-minded people and build friendships. In the middle of the course is a weekend away, a chance to take a break from everyday life and create space and intention to shift your focus; a time to connect with each other and with God in Christ. God works in our lives and in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and that’s what Alpha presents us with, a chance to better understand and personally connect with the Holy Spirit. That starts with making space:

“The greatest need in our time is to clear out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our mind.” – Thomas Merton

Stepping back from daily life to step more fully into it, centered and recharged. That’s the goal. It sounds high-minded, but it’s also frequently hilarious. Some of my deepest soul/belly laughs in recent years have come on these weekends. There is a lightness of being that emanates from everyone there.

“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.” – Jean Houston

That kind of laughter, the kind that floats from the soul out to others and out into the universe. The kind of laughter that when shared, connects people, binds them together.

There is something to the setting at Claggett, the chance to hike through the woods, or walk a labyrinth, or skateboard paved trails, that puts the adventure card on the table.

“Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He’s made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, ‘Let’s go do that together.'” -Bob Goff

 

That is part of what the weekend is about. Finding our own way, our own passion, making the most out of our lives by connecting, or re-connecting to our particular passions and gifts, despite what the world may say. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” Paul writes in his letter to the Romans. Renewing our minds and hearts.

But a funny thing happens, as we try to do that individually, as we follow our own hearts and passions: we realize we are connected to those around us.

“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” – 1 Corinthians, 4-6.

We are all of the same spirit. We are united by the love of God and through the Holy Spirit, a gift Christ left to all of us. The gift of time away together is the chance to realize that, to feel and see it in a community of people, who through worship, prayer, breaking bread, laughter, tears, shared experience, grace and the Holy Spirit, become the body of Christ, for a time.

And you may ask yourself…how did I get here?

We all reach a point in our lives when we look around and wonder how we got here. Maybe not all of us, but I definitely do. A friend recently described present life as feeling like, “I accidentally got dropped into this weird world.”

David Byrne gets it.

And you may find yourself
living in a shotgun shack.
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world.
And you may find yourself
behind the wheel of a large automobile.
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,
with a beautiful wife.
And you may ask yourself, well
how did I get here?

Sometimes I get the sense that part of that not knowing where we are is because we’ve forgotten we’re on a journey. We live life like it’s the same, day in and day out, then we look around not knowing where we stopped paying attention.

We were recently talking about faith–what is faith? How can you have faith? And when we talk about it in that way, when we frame the questions like that, what people often mean is faith as belief: how do I believe in something?  Faith is much bigger than belief, in the same way a mountain is much bigger than simply dirt and rock and a journey is more than crossing the street.

There’s plenty I don’t agree with theologian Marcus Borg about. But there is also a lot about what he has to say that excites me and gives me hope for what faith is and where it can lead. Borg, in a posthumously released book, “Days of Awe and Wonder,” asks what would happen if we look beyond our notion of faith as believing, and try to see Christian life as a journey:

“To be on a journey is to be in movement… A journey is a process that involves our feet as well as our minds and our heads. A journey involves following a path or a way. To be on a journey is not to be wandering aimlessly, though there are many times when it feels like that; people have gone on this journey before us, and there is a trail, a path, a way that we are called to. The journey image suggests that the Christian life is more like following a path than believing with our minds.”

If we allow that our life is a journey, it makes sense that the view is going to change along the way. And maybe if we walked looking through that lens, we’d key into when changes are taking place.

Borg digs back and looks at ancient meanings of the word faith as used in Scripture. He unpacks three: 1) Faith as trust (the opposite of which is anxiety), 2) Faith as fidelity (to our relationship with God), and 3) “Faith as a way of seeing the whole, the whole of that which we live and move and have our being.”

And he points out the different ways we can see the whole, the universe, in which we live and move and have our being: we can see it as hostile towards us, indifferent towards us, or we can “see the whole as gracious, nourishing, and supportive of life, to see it as that which has brought us into existence and continues to nourish us.” Let’s lean into the last option, gracious, nourishing, supportive.

And here’s a part I fully dig:

“Faith is thus about setting out on a journey in a posture of trust, seeking to be faithful to the relationship we are called into. We are invited to make that journey, that journey of faith, in which we learn to trust our relationship to God, learn to be faithful to that relationship, and learn to see it in a new way. We will be led in that journey into an ever more wondrous and compassionate understanding of our lives with God.”

If we look beyond faith as being as simple as belief, and we see it as trusting God, setting out on a journey to learn how to be in relationship with Him and with each other, and building that relationship over a continuing journey into more wonder, more compassion, more understanding; that’s a journey, an adventure I want to wake up to, dig into, and live into every day.

Off the Map

Sometimes we end up off the map. Life was going along at a predictable, comfortable pace, or toward a place we could see, and then it isn’t. We’re left scrambling, confused, things are different. We don’t know how we got where we are and maybe we don’t know what to do or where to go from here.

This was part of conversation from a couple days ago. Being off the map is not a bad thing, it’s just different, and unexpected. It’s new territory. In many cases, it can be necessary. Because when we depend too much on maps and plans and where we are going, we lose the ability to see what is in front of us. We think we know what’s coming, so we don’t focus on what’s here. Being off the map can mean the freedom to be present.

Meister Eckhart is a Christian mystic I come back to again and again. He sees the beauty of beginnings, “And suddenly you know: it’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.” Add to that his, “be willing to be a beginner every single morning.” He echoes Christ telling us that unless we are willing to give up our old lives and be born again of water and the spirit, we are missing out. Both are pushing us off the map of what we thought life was going to be and into the possibility, the unknown of what life could be.

It’s more than a little unnerving to let go of what we (think we) know. And it’s a process, getting to a place to embrace beginnings, to let go. Sometimes one we didn’t ask to be a part of. But it’s also a process that starts before we realize it:

In the out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

That’s John O’Donohue, walking us into new territory in “For a New Beginning.” I get where he is coming from. I’ve used the term “restless leg syndrome for the soul,” where you have this feeling where you can’t settle, but can’t fully identify or articulate. But you know something is up. Let me turn it back over to O’Donohue:

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Maybe when we focus on the map, we lose ourselves. Maybe the map we thought we were looking at, no longer describes where we are or where we want to go. Maybe it limits us, and it is in looking up, looking around us, and seeing in a new way, that we open ourselves up to possibility.

Because We Can

He wasn’t the real Mark Twain. But he was to us, sitting in an elementary school gym, white suit and mustache, telling stories. And we sat spellbound listening to a man who looked and sounded like Twain. We laughed til our sides hurt, leaned forward to hear what happened next, and teared up as he talked about the power, terror, and finality of the atomic bomb.

Almost 40 years later, I feel like I am sitting in that gym again, reading Neruda’s, “Ode to the Atom:”

Infinitesimal
star,
you seemed
forever
buried
in metal, hidden,
your diabolic
fire.
One day
someone knocked
at your tiny
door:
it was man.
With one
explosion
he unchained you,
you saw the world,
you came out
into the daylight,
you traveled through
cities,
your great brilliance
illuminated lives,
you were a
terrible fruit
of electric beauty

Neruda goes on to describe the horror at Hiroshima, the ordinary day and ordinary lives that were no more.

He uses the phrase, “terrible fruit,” which is meant to send us back to the garden and another fruit with consequences.

“That’s why we can’t have nice things,” is a phrase I like to use; it makes me smile while at the same time shaking my head. It applies to so aptly to so much of the world right now. We do things because we can. If we are able to do something, we must be meant to do it, right? We can take remarkable scientific discoveries and twist and turn them in ways that can destroy the planet; we can take absolutely stunning sweeps of land and landscape, and see it as a resource to be used, rather than creation to be enjoyed and appreciated. We can look at one another as competition, or as enemies not be trusted, rather than with kindness and cooperation. We can, we have the ability, to do all those things.

But what we end up with–war, pollution, a culture of outrage and hate–is a result of that view and those actions. How we see things and how we act, give us what we get.

At different points in our lives, I think each of us has seen, felt, or understood that things could be different than that. That life could be different. That the world could be different. We get to choose.

Whether you read the Bible, history books, or study psychology, we have read about and can understand other ways of living. At some point in our lives, maybe we can point to times, moments, people, when life felt incredible, our thoughts and hearts were elevated, and we got this feeling that we were on the verge of understanding  or being something more. Maybe it’s the feeling of being on vacation, or for a child, the feeling of Christmas morning. But then it fades and we are back to real life, our world of bills, deadlines, heartbreak, and sickness.

What if life, what if God was continually giving us clues how to bridge the gap–to make both lives the same? What if God knows we can do whatever we want, “because we can,” but is pulling for us to see things differently, and to make a life, and help make a world, where there is order, peace, and love, rather than everything running unchecked because it can?

What if by paying attention, by looking inside ourselves, and looking to God, we can rewrite our lives in ways we’ve only dreamed about?

Those are questions worth asking, conversations worth having, and a life and love to explore.

Everyday People, Everyday Grace

give me
the daily
struggle,
because these things are my song,
and so we will go together
shoulder to shoulder
– Pablo Neruda, “Invisible Man”

Neruda saw the universe in an artichoke, birds, tomatoes, socks, seaweed, and stamps. And in the people he encountered everyday: a bricklayer, a woman gardening, or a couple on the street.

My first double-take at Neruda was in the late 1990s, out of college, trying to figure out what should occupy my thoughts, where life was going to go, how to put things together. Funny, I’m still wondering those same things. A friend brought “Elemental Odes” around and Neruda takes the time to look at the everyday world around us, to really look at it, and see deeply into it. He elevates the humble. Everything is full of stories and we are connected to all of them. In the same poem, “Invisible Man,” he feels everything around him:

but I smile,
because when I walk through the streets
… life flows around me
like rivers

When my head gets stuck in the clouds, I often turn to Neruda’s odes as a way to reconnect. Sipping coffee in the morning, listening to birds in the yard, watching the dog bum-rush the bird feeder, or being in a church full of 700 people–pouring out into the parish hall and under a tent, rain coming down–brought together by the love of one person who connected us all. Each of these things, from the simple, to the profound can be an act of everyday grace, connecting everyday people, if we choose to look at them that way.

I know “Everyday People” is a Sly and the Family Stone song, but the version I hear in my head with that phrase is the Arrested Development hip hop version, “People Everyday.”

We are all people everyday and that’s what we’ve got to work with. Through struggle, uncertainty, celebration, and joy, we get up and we go. Anything we are going to come to know, we are only going to find through our everyday lives. When we find and feel grace in those moments, we find something more. I dig what Anne Lamott has to say about grace in “Traveling Mercies:”

“It’s unearned love–the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually as grateful as you are to be there.”

I wake up, let the dog out, put coffee on. I walk through the yard, hearing traffic from the highway, I look at the tomatoes growing, and I sit down to read, to pray, to remember, to be grateful. And I hope to find, to connect with, to be everyday people living into everyday grace.

Frosting or Fountainhead

Imagination and creativity are the mind’s stepchildren when it comes to priorities in society. When we call someone imaginative or creative, it sounds like a pat on the head. Art is something we indulge when we have time, when the important things are taken care of. What if we have things upside down?

“What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?” – Rollo May

I miss artist Joe Mayer being in town. I got to know Joe when he was living in Easton, teaching art workshops, getting businesses to hang art by local artists, and philosophizing at Coffee East just about every morning. Joe was painting abstract watercolors and we talked art, writing, and life a good bit. Joe did a quick warm-up painting and wrote the above Rollo May quote on it. It has hung in my house ever since. May wondered what would happen if we looked at imagination and creativity differently. What if we gave them a spot at the head of the table?

What if our lives are our canvas? What if the decisions we make every day as to how to spend our time, what to focus on–what if we looked at those choices as creative acts?

Mike Vallely is constantly creating things. Mike V. is a professional skateboarder, who founded, owns and runs a company called Street Plant Brand. I met him in Ocean City when I was a teenager. His life, his company, his passion, his art are all creative acts.  He sings and plays music in bands, he has helped create what we think of as street skateboarding, works with and promotes artists, and makes his life about sharing his passion with other people. His motto is “Skate. Create. Enjoy.”

Author Bob Goff thinks of Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland as his office. He does some of his best thinking there and meets with people there. Why? From his book, “Love Does:”

“We all want to have a place where we can dream and escape anything that wraps steel bands around our imagination and creativity. Tom Sawyer Island is a place where I conspire with people, where immense capers have been launched, and where whimsy runs wild.”

Bob G. and Mike V. dream different dreams for their lives, but each of them have made their lives about following and achieving those dreams. They put their imagination into practice. It’s not art in the sense of learning to paint, it’s art in the sense of learning to live.

God’s created each of us to be unique–with our own dreams, loves, fears, passions, and imaginations. And we each have our own lives. When we set out to align our dreams and our lives, and use our imagination and creativity to build them into one, we move toward the life God intended us to live–based on wiring us that way. I think that’s what Rollo May is talking about. What if art and imagination aren’t the frosting or the fringe, but the focus or the fountainhead?

What can we create, or make of our lives? What do we have to say?