Seeing.

"The dogma of the Incarnation is the most dramatic thing about Christianity and indeed, the most dramatic thing that ever entered into the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they look at you in bewilderment.” Speaking to those who consider Christianity to be dull and irrelevant, “It is the dogma that is the drama – not beautiful phrases, not comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death – but the terrifying assertation that the same God who made the world, lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death.” 

-Dorothy Sayers

Living the questions.

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

-C.S. Lewis

I have made mistakes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=czFgKa7YcIQ

What is asking for acceptance?

Gratefulness is what makes the soul great.

So how do we ask for anything? 

 

Recognition.

With John Wesley.

 

Far down.

 

Bridges.

Looking for God, while he may be found...

Psalm 32

Of David. A maskil.[a]

1 Blessed is the one
    whose transgressions are forgiven,
    whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the one
    whose sin the Lord does not count against them
    and in whose spirit is no deceit.

3 When I kept silent,
    my bones wasted away
    through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night
    your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
    as in the heat of summer.[b]

5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
    and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
    my transgressions to the Lord.”
And you forgave
    the guilt of my sin.

6 Therefore let all the faithful pray to you
    while you may be found;
surely the rising of the mighty waters    will not reach them.
7 You are my hiding place;
    you will protect me from trouble    and surround me with songs of deliverance.

8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
    I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.
9 Do not be like the horse or the mule,
    which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
    or they will not come to you.
10 Many are the woes of the wicked,
    but the Lord’s unfailing love
    surrounds the one who trusts in him.

¹¹ Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous;
    sing, all you who are upright in heart!

A thousand masks.

“Unable to accept our brokenness, we wear a thousand masks to disguise the face of fear.”

-Manning, Brennan. “Ruthless Trust.” 

Take me to the place with no mirrors

That sacred hall in the heart of hearts.

Take me to the room that has no echo

That home I have been looking for.

Place me in the space with no cover,

But for the light that bathes the soul.

Place me down from this, my pedestal 

And let every scale fall, fall, fall.

A thousand masks I carry here with me,

To guard against the weather, the wind, it all.

A thousand masks I bare before you,

To mend my life unraveled hems recalled.

Here below is all I am, I have, I haven't,

That is, the broken, bitter, biting, damaged.

Here below is humanity, sin-soaked, mine,

That choice and chance for once-again.

These masks that blunt the day, I know, 

These burdens I cannot lay down.

These masks I make a wreck of, burned,

My weakness, my strength somehow.

Worn in.

Two things for today: 

The First.

“Having that sense of a person, that sense of a personality through their clothes, is part of what makes them desirable,” Waight Keller explains.

The Second.

"Since then I have traveled to different places in Europe four more times, twice with my wife and twice by myself. All of the trips have been fantastic, but the solo trips are special in their own way. When I travel by myself, I am making the most of my time, because I am seeing the things that are the most important to me. Sure, I don’t get to experience things with other people (aside from a few times when I hang out with people I know who live in those countries), which for me only means that I take in the experience more fully, because I, alone, am responsible for enjoying and remembering it.

People ask me a lot about traveling alone, especially as a woman. How is it for you? Are you scared? Do you get lonely? While I do occasionally get scared, I am getting used to being scared, which, over time, makes me less scared. During my latest solo trip to the South of France last month, I felt the least scared or intimated since my solo adventures began five years ago, and I don’t speak or understand a lick French beyond Bonjour! And Merci! and a few other words and phrases. I chalk that up to experience. Doing scary things over and over makes them less scary. And, no, I never get lonely.

It is not lost on me that traveling is a privilege. Travel costs money, even when you do it on the cheap. I am also very lucky to be married to someone who not only tolerates but encourages me to do the stuff I love and to pursue all of my passions, even if it means being away from home for periods of time. I think for many women, the idea of going off alone to travel is a much more complicated thing because the person they share their life with might not understand or support the idea. I also don’t have kids or a horribly expensive mortgage. Taking time away from work is the hard part for me."

"I am trying to get at something utterly heartbroken." - Van Gogh

Striving: I have been thinking a lot about climbing…

"I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all of my heart." - Van Gogh

Here is the story of my life: 

I am ten months old. I have just learned to walk. I am climbing out of my crib. My mother is sleeping outside of my bedroom door. The door is closed. There is a Christmas tree with twinkle lights on it next to my bed. 

I am two years old. I am climbing trees. I am fond of eating rocks. There are no pictures. I have two brothers I boss around the living room. 

I am five years old. I am holding a rake. I am raking leaves on a forest path. My parents find me and ask what I'm doing to which I respond: "I'm raking all the leaves in the forest."

I am seven years old. I am constructing the perfect tree-house. I am planning to make a bridge between the two olive trees and the fig tree, or at least a zip-line. 

I am nine years old. I live in a villa with a view of a volcano. Every morning I am out on this deck to feed my pet rabbit and smell the ashes that have fallen overnight. 

I am twelve years old. I have won the Naval Base Talent Show. I played and sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I am also first chair trumpet in my band. I have read every Nancy Drew book there ever was. 

I am thirteen years old. I am in Costa Rica with three-hundred teenage girls I have never met. A group of girls who are older than me have covered my room in toilet paper. 

I am sixteen years old. I am kissed for the first time. I go to Prom. I cry in corners so much. I get up early to do my hair every morning. 

I am twenty years old. I am in Oxford. I am sprinting through Christ Church Gardens before sunrise to the Rowing Houses on the Isis. I don't buy anything I don't need for a year. 

I am twenty-two years old. I decide that hospitals are cold and dark places. I start a gym with a friend. I make a lot of mistakes. I make a home for a lot of people. Eventually, it's just me. 

I was born to hope. I was born to claw at meaning. I was born to ambition. I was born to seek a summit state of being.

Shortly before leaving for this journey (I am now nearing the "end" of) I had a conversation with a friend. In our general community (world?!) it is unheard of that a person would not have an objective on any given day, no plan, no great imminent hope for the near future, no mountain to aim at on the horizon. 

"You always want us to be learning and improving - there is always some point we should be working toward," she said.

And I actually felt her declaration thud into the air between us. Was she right? Had I been saying this? Wanting this? Did I give this to others? 

Another time I was right in the middle of teaching a class to do pull-ups when a question was blurted out: "How is a pull-up functional for life?" I realized after thinking about this that this too was something I had never thought of as being foundational to everyday life.

As an infant my mother had to sleep outside my crib for a while because I loved to climb. I walked at ten months old, and set my sights on something higher than this thereafter. 

I was obsessed with tree-houses in grade school: making them, being in them, learning about them, and imagining how I might coddle together the scraps of that time to make something beyond my dreams. 

Things went much the same as I got older. There has always been something to win, something to better, something to feel, something to do to my utmost… before walking to something higher to achieve. I have filled my days with the sound of steps. 

To climb is human. 

To pull ourselves up is human. 

To seek higher ground is human. 

But we can also live so entrenched in our own lives and the story of our bound selves that we may ask one day, offhandedly, "How is a pull-up functional?" 

Have we forgot that we were made for higher places? 

Here is the rub though: where - exactly - is the end? What - exactly - is to be found at the heights? What - really - is it like to be in the place where we are aiming? Who - exactly - are we leaving behind? Taking with us? 

Is my ladder leaning against the right wall? 

The other day I had the pleasure of tackling one of the most mentally-challenging hikes of my life. Risk-wise, elevation-wise, time-wise, this hike was an exercise in ambition and striving. Dents-du-Midi ("teeth of noon") is a many-summited mountain located in the Chablais Alps of Switzerland. The highest peak is Le Haute Cime ("the high summit") which beckons from 10,696ft. or 3,257m.  It was first ascended in 1784 by one Jean-Maurice Clement, a man who may well have completed the climb just as I did, i.e. with little to no idea of what he was getting into at all. 

Upon reaching the view that I *thought* was the top, the rest of the crew wanted to climb to the final peak a couple 100ft. up. I wanted to take a nap - so I did. So why do I still feel that I missed out on something great even after telling myself that that first summit was more than "sufficient"? 

There is a confusing paradox at work here. In mindfulness practice there is generally this idea that anytime you are reaching or striving towards a mode of being in meditation this takes you out of the allotted time to being in the present. However the future is what pushes us to appreciate the present. We look ahead to death - to the death of anything and anytime - and we are driven to grasp at the present. We even look behind us at the past and remorsefully burden ourselves by those memories to appreciate what is "now". So - this is the interplay: we sit between two poles, trying to balance on an axis of being. 

But - as I have heard in my travels, "Balance is bull-shit. There is only integration." We are never done with the climb. The moment can never really stand alone. Our lives are less like lines and more like circles. This is the way of the world. This is a way of being. Around and around we go. The summit is only ever a stop along the way. How much of what we believe is kept high on the summit, has been with us all along? 

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world

I am may not complete this one

but I give myself to it. 

I circle around God, around the ancient* tower. 

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: 

am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? 

-Rainier Marie Rilke

*translation here my own from Arrus, who has been reading Rilke with me in German. 

I forgot how much music can breathe life back into your days.

Just one example of this. 

"You hem me in behind and before."

"In the spirit of Judaism, our quest for God is a return to God; our thinking of Him is a recall, an attempt to draw out the depth of our suppressed attachment. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah (I've been OBSESSED with this word lately...) means 'return'. Yet it also means answer. Return to God is an answer to Him. For God is not silent. 'Return, O faithless, children says the Lord.' (Jer 3:14) According to the understanding of the Rabbis, daily, at all times, 'A voice cries: in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God' (Isaiah 40:3)... The most precious gifts come to us unawares and remain un-noted. God's grace resounds in our lives like a staccato. Only by retaining the seemingly disconnected notes do we acquire the ability to grasp the theme."

-Abraham Joshua Heschel 

I definitely just ordered this photograph (my favorite of him) blown up for my office. I just love his face here. It's like he knows something... and he so freaking often DOES. 

Courage.

"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us." - Pema Chondron

I met a Girl named Courage

She is not large

But spritely

Hair every which way

Held up by her spirit.

She is not loud

But appears

"I am Courage,

I am 5 years old."

She is not alone

But trails a sibling

Gripping her leg,

Peering from behind her.

She is not proud

But pink.

Heart fluttering. 

Smile bustling.

She is not aware

But sure - 

That we are here.

That this is a good day to be alive.

She is not a picture

But the realest real

Like the itch of a sweater 

Like all the possibilities the world can hold.

If I ever got a tattoo...

I've known for the last 10 years what it would be. 

But if I ever got an image put on my body - I think it would have to be this: 

Resonate.

res·o·nate

ˈreznˌāt/

verb

1. 1.

   produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound.

   "the sound of the siren resonated across the harbor"

   • 
     

     
     
   • 
     

     
     
2. 2.

   technical

   produce electrical or mechanical resonance.

   "the crystal resonates at 16 MHz"

Lately, this is a word that has been rumbling around in my head. I feel like there are moments when we know deeper than words can say, that something is merging between two people (and sometimes more).  

The physics here says that our electrons can get this close. Even the composition of every atom is about balance - none of us is fully fused together; we are continually falling apart and being put back together again. 

Resonation. 

When I was younger, I learned to play the classical guitar first. I received my first guitar on my 10th birthday. I can remember the smell of the finish - Italian wood and a cavernous sound that echoed through it as I unwrapped it. I can remember running my finger along the rosetta, along the bridge and strings. "This will be a voice for me", I thought. 

I named her Isabel. Mostly because it felt right, and I was 10. 

Before you play the guitar, you tune it. And this, was one of my favorite parts of learning to play. I took a tiny tuning fork, slung it against my knee and gently tapped the cold end of it to the belly of my guitar. Immediately a sound from nowhere would reverberate. This was a shy, but sure, sound - an 'A'. 

By this 'A' I would then lean my ear to the body of the guitar over and over, reach up, and gently creak the strings into sharper, or flatter pitches. I'd match the 'A' of the tuning fork to the 'A' of the string, then match the 'A' of the string to the 'A' I could play on the next string. 

And so and so forth - down the frets you go. Always going back to match the 'A'. Always strumming two strings together to see if they were dissonant. Always perceiving, listening, leaning in to hear more closely. 

Dissonant strings create a sound that sends two separate pieces. Played together the pieces just don't fit. Strings that are tuned play out a kind of hum that pulses together. It's so very clear when it happens but only when you play the two together, never when they are apart. 

I am taking 6 weeks to hear my heart and to begin to know what does and doesn't resonate. And I'm ok with anyone who thinks that sounds too mushy to make sense. As Rob Bell says, "Some things you do for you, and you alone." 

This is one of them. 

Why begin with mindfulness? Because mindfulness (among many other things in the last few months) has allowed me to be awake in my life for maybe the first time in 8 years. For all the time I have spent accidentally sleeping in meditation, practicing mindfulness has allowed me to really see what's in front of me. 

Honestly, this is a daunting task for me. Big picture-wise, I'm not used to asking for what I want, or knowing what that is. Most of the last 8 years has really just happened to me. I've been like an ant following the trail come hell or high water. I spent a lot of time flicking ants like these off their trails on the floor of my tent just to see how they'd react when thrown off course. 

I don't know what to say about the fact that they generally scramble back on their previous trajectories but with greater resolve. 

Right now - I'm embracing the not knowing part of this entire journey - but I'm hitting the tuning fork repeatedly and holding it to my chest.

"In the end, it's about what you want to be, not what you want to have. When you sign up to run a marathon, you don't want a taxi to take you to the finish line." - Derek Sivers 

Real Talk.

(Internal) Walls are a big thing for me lately. Noticing them. Touching them. Seeing what happens if I take them down. Put them back up.

This past week I was encouraged to pick a few phrases to say to myself upon waking in the morning. I thought of a lot of really popular and basic options. I thought of writing my own.

In the end, my heart kept coming back to the same line from a poem by John O'Donohue:

May you never place walls between the light and yourself. 

Day 2 Training at Shambala Mountain Center

This Time Tomorrow.

Once upon a time my Mom listened to Fleetwood Mac records on the carpeted floor of my Great Grandmother's house in Johnstown, a house that was lopsided and virtually growing out of the side of a valley. She won't admit to it - or at least to liking it - but I know from my cousin that she loved to do this. So I made this mix to make me feel like that. And I think it's perfect. 

"I don't know where I am going, but I know it won't be boring." -David Bowie

"You can't plan on the heart."

My Heart by Frank O’Hara

I’m not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don’t prefer one “strain” to another.
I’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says “That’s
not like Frank!”, all to the good! I
don’t wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart–
you can’t plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

-Dallas Clayton

Pushing.

I think I may start posting a bit more about what I am thinking about my training here. Other mediums are for every everyone else, and for the biz. This medium is for me. 💃🏻

The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.

The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.

The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry. 

The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival. 

A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that's all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain. 

The only correct answer to 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' is 'Because it's lizard brain told it to.' Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain 

The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It's real, and it's living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.

The lizard brain is the reason you're afraid, the reason you don't do all the art you can, the reason you don't ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance. 

 - Seth Godin, Linchpin

"You are most yourself when you are alone."

How to be a Poet (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down. 
Sit down. Be quiet. 
You must depend upon 
affection, reading, knowledge, 
skill—more of each 
than you have—inspiration 
work, growing older, patience, 
for patience joins time 
to eternity… 

Breathe with unconditional breath 
the unconditioned air. 
Shun electric wire. 
Communicate slowly. Live 
a three-dimensional life; 
stay away from screens. 
Stay away from anything 
that obscures the place it is in. 
There are no unsacred places; 
there are only sacred places 
and desecrated places. 

Accept what comes from silence. 
Make the best you can of it. 
Of the little words that come 
out of the silence, like prayers 
prayed back to the one who prays, 
make a poem that does not disturb 
the silence from which it came.

― Wendell Berry, Given

Mt. Zion, Israel, 2006

Soothing.

She said, "What do you do to comfort yourself?"

1. Move

2. Eat

3. Sleep

4. Create

5. Listen

...not necessarily in that order. 

"Live through this, and you won't look back."

"I have created myself a soul, big as the world, that leaks all over, and I have to keep calling for the plumber. I have to be rent and pulled apart and live according to the demons and the imagination in me. I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.” 
― Anaïs Nin, Fire: From A Journal of Love - The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

I was 22.

I was 22 when I started my own training business. I had no business really beginning. I started my business to survive. I started my business to be with a person who didn't love me. I started my business to help people, and to help myself.

That is, simply, how it all began.

I looked like this when I sat on my front stoop:

I wrote this then:

http://cbs3.com/topstories/Welch.Accident.Fatal.2.607116.html

Parle come magni. "Speak the way you eat", they say. 

So I will.

It seems it's my lot in the world to be around those who are grieving, to grieve myself when no one near me seems to be particularly bothered by a thing.  I'm sulky, what can I say? But I have always been this way: dreadfully happy, because life is so light when you allow it to be, and terribly broken, because life is simply, so hard.

And I still say, anyone left standing after the sun's gone down is brave. VERY BRAVE.  

I remember being small and attending prayer services with my mother that would last for hours.  Korean mothers lining the aisles weeping.  The sound rings in my ears.  

When I was 12, I watched my grandfather's life slip away from his face, like water running through your fingers, so tangible, but nothing you could grasp.  And I remember being fascinated by grief, by the absence of what was just there, by the finality.

And when I was older, I spent my weeks in music, in singing sappy songs crafted to bring forth emotion and allow people to feel that some greater being knew why.  And I would make people cry.  They would come up to me, eyes gleaming, hands shaking, faces pink with the glow of feeling: "The Spirit moves in you."

And how could I help but believe them?

My time in other countries plots me with roommates who have been sexually and physically abused, and those who bear the scars of abusing themselves through their insecurities, their need to see the wounds they cry about.  And I have seen real poverty. Social, psychological, economic poverty. Miles of waste down beautiful hillsides, the vibrations of bombs felt through sand on beaches, and addiction everywhere and to just about every thing.  My year as an RA was nothing short of one tragedy after another.  Rapes, suicides, deaths.  And on and on it goes.

And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have those wounds as well.

I'm not saying I've a magnet for sorrow and suffering so much as I'd just like to say that I'm awed by the prevalence of such things.  Because I forget just how horrible it can all be.

I've thought about this, an old Buddhist teaching: "The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world."

And yet, there is a time for everything in the book of Ecclesiastes.  I have not learned to be wise, so much as patient.  

The terms of this world are that we can only ever do as much as is humanly possible.  And even if the Universe is a manifestation of loving Will, the truth of this place is the old cliche: death is a part of life.  How death comes, is brutal, unpartial.  Death is a blind judge as he should be.  As Life is.

And you say it over and over again to yourself until you realize that the particularly frustrating thing is that some part of you will never believe you're mortal.  Not really.  Because mortality is not a thing you are acquainted with.  We're led to believe in life from the moment we're born.

You're not given the terms of life before you walk into it.  You're thrust through like the rest of us and you learn the terms.  You learn just how bad it can get, just how little you must learn to appreciate, just how beautiful something so simple as time can be.

And so I'll say it like I eat it: I'd like to live life deeply.  I'd like to love my friends more, and continue to believe in the good, in spite-in spite-in spite of all the horrid things in myself, in people, in the world.  I'd like to be less afraid, and more brave about things that actually matter.  I'd like to fuck the terms of the world and be where I am as long as I can.  I'd like to create and wonder at creations.  And I can't say I'll ever stop searching for God like a man looks for water with his head on fire.  Because it matters.  THIS is it.

"Life's too short to make things last." -Haley Bonar

^^^^^^^^^^^
Who WAS this person?