XXVI

I turned 26 years old today.  The skies poured out an abundance of gentle and constant rain, and watching it from the large windows of my office building brought a settled sense of acceptance.  I love how life giving rain is, the way it draws out the vibrancy of foliage, clears and cools the air, and refuses to be impeded by any sort of barrier, especially those that are manmade.  Today it fell softly, yet without any sort of hesitancy, falling from the sky with a marked sense of purpose to join into small rivers throughout the city.  Lightning burst a few times, brilliantly flashing, and reinforcing its boldness without reserve in resounding thunder.

And I feel this first day of a new age fits me right now.  Gray, dim, subdued, all over the place, wet, constant, with instances of astoundingly powerful intensity, potential, somewhat uncomfortable if you are ill prepared, unavoidable.  Its a good start.  This birthday has been extremely minimal--no candles, no confections, no wrapping paper, no balloons--and the starkness of it has given me a lot of clarity and helped me think.  My life is so different from what I envisioned.  Ever.  Who I am is so different than who I thought I would become.  It is beautiful, the depth of it all, and I'm not sure what will happen next, but rain is restorative.  And this stage of my life is too.  Somehow.

I'm with Gerard Manley Hopkins.  SEND MY ROOTS RAIN.  Let these roots, these delicate yet resilient united fibers thirsting for nourishment, receive rain.  Let them find what they need and send those sustaining elements up through the rest of me to reorganize themselves into branches, shoots, leaves, buds, blossoms.  But before all of that can happen, send my roots rain.

'Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend'

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen 

justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c. 

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend 

With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. 

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must 

Disappointment all I endeavour end? 

    Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, 

How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost 

Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust 

Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, 

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes 

Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again 

With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes 

Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain, 

Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. 

Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.  

Nailed It

Today I heard a colleague mention the following letter from John Steinbeck to his son, Thom, about love and hungrily searched for it on Google.  He nailed it.  I haven't read too much of this man, but the more I read him, the more I am apt to agree with him, so there very well may be more from Steinbeck coming up.  Until then, please, rejoice in this letter with me.  You can find a helpful background description with more context here.

New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First -- if you are in love -- that's a good thing -- that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second -- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply -- of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it -- and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone -- there is no possible harm in saying so -- only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another -- but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens -- The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

Unexpected

My mind is a little all over the place these days, overwhelmed with decisions, doubts, and influences that I use to process those decisions and doubts including God's word; classical music, often of the melancholy variety; lyrics from Bruno Mars, Jack Johnson, the Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek, Guster, Ben Folds, Sondre Lerche, and others; poetry; Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison; this video; and some films.  You know the phrase "My head is swimming with thoughts"?  I feel kind of like that, except swimming implies that you are headed somewhere, that there is some direction and movement.  And I am NOT getting anywhere.  Maybe my head is treading water, that wonderfully exhausting exercise that leaves you spluttering and gasping...and in the exact same place the whole time.  Yeah, maybe that.    

Dear reader, I recently saw Wonder Woman and I'd like to tell you what I think about it, and share with you what reflections it spurred in me.  Its good, though it took me a while to come to that conclusion.  After hearing so many people that I respected sing its praises, my great uncle Craig and I decided on a whim to go and see the movie.  

To be honest, for about 3/4 of the film, I really disliked it.  Surprisingly and deeply disliked it.  It could be that I expected too much but when confronted with a somewhat slow moving beginning, characters who I didn't particularly connect with, and people treating one another poorly, I found myself upset, almost to the point of being livid.  Rage seems like a pretty strong description, but sitting in a cushy seat watching people make enemies of one another and act on that through war, I wrestled with some considerable indignation at the least.  Fist clenching, jaw tightening, brow furrowing, uncomfortable stomach knotting--you get the idea.  

That being said, the last few scenes unexpectedly reconciled it for me.  As Wonder Woman battles with her long-sought nemesis, Ares, she encounters some intense personal struggle, which he uses to try and dissuade her from her quest of ridding the world of him and delivering mankind from war.  His words could daunt anyone from believing in the goodness of humans, and he has specific examples of how they act in self-interest, with malicious intent, and cause pain as a result.  I loved Diana's response "They're everything you say, but so much more."  She does not discount the darkness and weakness in humanity; she acknowledges it, but also firmly holds to her belief that there is more to people than the bad in them.  

I appreciated that.  So often I feel that we look for people to be black and white, wholly depraved and beyond all hope of doing anything virtuous OR infallible and supremely good.  This expectation is unrealistic.  It limits our ability to connect with others because it denies the complexity of each individual.  We each are a blend of bad and good, weakness and strength, villain and hero.  I like how Lemony Snicket puts it "People aren't either wicked or noble.  They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."  I think that vinaigrette has a lot more than confusion and conflict to it, and I don't believe that we are salads to be compared with one another or consumed by anyone, but I do think that we are all a little mixed up with good and bad.  Sorting through that is a challenge, and we all struggle with it in ourselves and in those with whom we interact.   

So what?  What do we do?  You know, I'm still working on that one.  I think that acknowledging the good and bad in us is a start, and then being patient with that matters.  I also feel that Wonder Woman and her spy friend Steve have a good idea in stating "Its not about what you deserve.  Its about what you believe."  What you believe dictates how you act, and believing that people are more than the bad inside them can help us to be patient, generous, kind, forgiving, and a host of other qualities that facilitate connection between people and true beauty in this mortal world.  

I recently saw another film where characters were not so black and white and accepted themselves and one another as they were.  I'm not going to launch into another movie review, but allow me to share with you one scene from Howl's Moving Castle where accepting another person for who they are and believing in them with all their flaws made all the difference.  Here, the heroine Sophie defends Howl--the namesake of the castle--to a character bent on seeing one side of him, the heartless, dangerous side.  In response, Sophie radiates with courage, strength, and love, saying "He may be selfish and cowardly and sometimes he's hard to understand, but his intentions are good! He just wants to be free!”

I think one reason this stuck out to me so beautifully is that I believe that we all want to be free.  There is good and bad inside each one of us, light and darkness, strength and weakness, all woven together in our being.  We wrestle with our lowest and worst parts, feeling that they need to be gone in order rise to the highest and best that is in us.  However, I am learning that it is not strictly the removal of bad that makes the difference, because that which we lack is made sufficient through Jesus Christ.  We can trust that.  I feel that God sees us, with all of our mixed pieces, and accepts it.  He knows what is in us and what is in our hearts; He even gives us or has us remain with weakness!  Paul and Moroni give us excellent descriptions of their struggles with weakness in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 and Ether 12:23-28, respectively.  God accepts that we are without qualification, inviting us to come as we are, rather than depart from him (see 2 Nephi 26:23-33).   

Acceptance, both from ourselves and from others, facilitates freedom and is a huge part of love.  It is uncomfortable, in part because we assume that people will draw back, recoil, and leave us when they see us as we are.  We wonder whether or not we will really be enough as we truly are and not as we wish we were.  It is a HUGE risk to be seen this way, a risk that we hesitate to take because we expect it will lead to abandonment.  We often think that is what we deserve, and grimace whenever we let that part of us be known.  'Words Fail' from the the recent musical Dear Evan Hansen movingly demonstrates this fairly universal fear of rejection if we let ourselves be seen.  "I'd rather pretend I'm something better than these broken parts, Pretend I'm something other than this mess I am, 'Cause then I don't have to look at it, And no one gets to look at it, No, no on can really see...'cause what if everyone saw?  What if everyone knew?  Would they like what they saw?  Or would they hate it too?"  We so often hate the worst part of ourselves, wanting to run away from it, reject it, and have it be gone from us.  We feel such is the best course, denying the badness that is there by ignoring it or running away from it will allow us to escape the rejection that will surely come is we were to allow others to see and to know.  Surely, the rejection is what we deserve.  

Yet love enables us to move beyond what is deserved.  Wendell Berry shares that "love changes, and in change is true...the Christian gospel is a summons to peace, calling for justice beyond anger, mercy beyond justice, forgiveness beyond mercy, love beyond forgiveness."  I'm inclined to agree with him.  Christ calls us to go beyond what is expected or deserved or even beyond what is good to what is better and eventually best.  I often do not get this process; my brain balks at it, seizing up with an error message because the logic doesn't match up.  Robert Frost writes "Christ came to introduce a break with logic...'twas lovely and its origin was love."  With this logic-defying love Christ offers in mind, President Nelson's observations on the word for atonement in Hebrew and related words in Aramaic and Arabic that point us to the idea of an embrace make so much sense.  He is ready to embrace us, at every and any point, no matter how awkward or hesitant we may be.  Through who He is and the atonement He accomplished, He embraces us, unites with us, to always be with us, to give us peace that can be ours in every circumstance--because He loves us.  He just does.    

Such love changes us.  Accepting such love changes us and then seeking to reflect it deepens that change.  It goes beyond what we know and what makes sense.  I think that is one reason why the prophets emphasize love so much, stating that without it we are nothing (see 1 Corinthians 13, Moroni 7, or Thomas S. Monson's words).  I love what Marilynne Robinson has to say about love in her novel, Gilead.  She writes that "Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters...there is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse of a parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality.  It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal.  So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?"  Love, this "embracing, incomprehensible reality" often does not make sense to us, at least it doesn't to me.  It is generously given, even if it goes unreceived.  It is constant.  It is unwavering.  It is not deserved, earned, added to or taken away from us.  As President Monson says of God's love (which I believe is the truest love) "It is simply always there."  

I think such honest and true love is the love Sophie expressed in the aforementioned scene, the love that Diana chooses in her moment of testing, the love that Jesus Christ offers each of us, the love that we yearn for, and the love that I am trying to develop in myself.  Love, my friend.  It is powerful.  It is perfect.  As an imperfect being, I stumble and clumsily trip and fall as I practice this divine characteristic, but miraculously, even my being a klutz does not take away from the wholeness or completeness of love. 

Mkay, I think that is more than enough time spent treading water in my brain.  You have been patient, dear reader, and I thank you.  Maybe the exertion will produce something good, even if it is not movement in the water.  I hope it will, somehow.  

Restorative

“The soul is healed by being with children.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I spent a few hours with two children last night, and I couldn't agree more with my friend Dostoyevsky.  I don't think I've laughed that hard or been that silly for a long time; kids without adults around tend to bring out the most rambunctious in me, a side seldom seen by anyone really.  Yet it just sort of comes out when I am with little ones, particularly the two to five aged ones.  Between chasings, mock sword fighting with pool noodles and ridiculous accents, bedtime stories, facial lotion application by a toddler, and holdings, we had quite the time.  There is something so freeing about being with children, these fairly uninhibited little people learning to express what they feel in a way that others can understand.  Being with them reminds me to be genuine, resilient, expressive, and to not be so uptight about it all.  I appreciate them more than I can say.  

Overheard

Sometimes, especially when I'm alone in the office, I sing or hum.  

Sometimes its louder than I think it is.  

Sometimes people hear.  

Sometimes people listen. 

Sometimes they tell me about it. 

Sometimes, especially when they tell me, my face blushes bright red.  

Sometimes they tell me it sounds beautiful.  

Sometimes they ask me to do it more often.

Sometimes its nice to be overheard. 

And sometimes its nice to be told it.

Yesterday

This work astounded me.  The pianist, the conductor, the symphony, the composer, the piece, the feelings; A-STOUND-ING.  Such beauty for 48 minutes and 22 seconds.  Especially at marker 27:52, but all of it is glorious.

I love how music--particularly classical music--brings people together, uniting them across time, distance, varied histories and ideologies in a glorious shared experience.  Johannes Brahms, who wrote this piece, says that "without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind."  Well, Johannes, you had both.  My hat goes off to you and you have my deep thanks for what you created with both inspiration and craftsmanship.

Love

I have been thinking, dear reader.  Grief is still extremely present in my life and deeply painful.  I am broken, and have felt what it means to sorrow because of love.  Yet, grief is becoming less overwhelming and I have been thinking about love.  To me, these two are companions; you do not have one without the other.  "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.  If not so...righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one" (2 Nephi 2:11).

I love how holiness and misery are paired, and they struck me as sort of an odd match.  To think that holiness and misery could be the opposites of each other encouraged me to adopt the idea that love could have an opposite that was not hatred.  I feel that the opposite to love, sometimes, is grief.  And with that in mind, I wanted to write a companion piece to my thoughts on grief.  Both of these experiences are powerful and transformative, and together they make one.   

Love is white. Pure, endless, ubiquitous but often unassuming and unnoticed.  Ordinary and yet transcendent.  As one writer puts it, "it makes no sense because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal".  It is earthy and holy at the same time.  It blends with any color, because love is not exclusive; it is the most inclusive gift, infinitely, graciously giving and endless in supply.  

Love is just as ubiquitous as grief.  But while grief is slippery and amorphous, love is steady and constant.  Its effects are just as varied as grief's, and just as intense.  They match each other.  Love sometimes brings such lightness that I feel I have lost touch with the world.  Other times it is grounding, giving such security and hope that I feel anything is possible.  Carrying love is difficult because it often carries me.  

Sometimes love impels me to run, but not to escape.  It impels me to run for joy, for thrill, and for others.  To be close to others, to be there for others.  Sometimes love still brings my heart to where it pleads to burst, only to be able to carry and share and hold and express and enact more love for others.  Oh, how it is achingly beautiful.  

I am not sure if I have ever been rendered immovable by love.  Surely it is a fixating point, but it enlivens and ennobles and emboldens to such a degree that standing still hardly seems like a possibility.  Yet, I imagine there are times where love requires us to stand still, to be witness more than participant and to rejoice in what we see and experience.  

Love can be all encompassing, all consuming.  Yet rather than empty me in its consumption, it motivates me to give, to withhold nothing, and to do the impossible.  It keeps me present, though perhaps sometimes distracts me with its force.  

Love is not without tears.  Tears given from love are often quiet ones that make our eyes glisten and communicate our hearts when words cannot.    

Love is tingly, fizzy like soda, bubbling through my body with excitement.  Love engenders smiles and laughter, glances and gazes, blushes and gasps.  It requires honesty to grow and thrives with vulnerable exposure.  

Love is sweet, though gently so.  Like grief, it is not overpowering.  Love graces all that I smell and taste and see and hear and touch, clarifying and lending beauty to it all.  Love is radiant and clear.  

Love sounds glorious.  At times it is silent, at times boisterous in words and laughter, and all the time present.  One poet says that "Attention is the beginning of devotion".  Love pays attention, dear one, and is always in the present moment.  

So though choosing love means choosing grief, I choose love.  It is such a gift, dear reader.  To choose to carry love with you is to be unafraid, to rejoice, to hope.  That choice is also one to grieve, to weep, and to mourn.  It is wonderfully simple and gloriously complex all at once.  Experiencing both gives substance to our existence and while I would not choose both, I am glad that we cannot have one without the other.  

Different One

The multitude awed, fed, and dispersed,
A collection of friends took leave of each other.
One to the mountains and the rest to a ship,
trusting to meet each other soon.

Distress, unrest, uneasy turbulence
felt by both the water and those on its surface.
Most let it permeate them, stirring up fears and anxieties.
Prolonged exposure to contrary winds swelling doubt.

Except in one, almost two.

This One felt the same unsettledness,
Yet carried Himself with gentle confidence and assured peace.
A time before, he had invited the elements to do the same
and they hearkened, choosing stillness.

Yearning, his companion queried and with the word "Come" ventured,
Heart lurching as his feet met the lake where he stood, stepped, stopped, surveyed and
sunk until saved by an immediately stretched forth hand, filled with resolution and strength,
There without hesitation but with an observant question graced with tenderness.

"O ye of little faith, wherefore dist thou doubt?"

Grief

Grief is definitely grey.  A sometimes beautiful, silvery, grey; clouds when the sun is gone or ashes when the fire has died.  It is what remains when light and heat, life and love, are gone.  It is somewhat transparent too, a veil that exposes me to the world whilst tinging all I see.  

It is amorphous, slippery, ubiquitous.  Sometimes a deadening heaviness in my heart, sometimes a pulsating force that makes it race without hope of relief, sometimes a weight on my shoulders, sometimes a wrenching in my gut, sometimes a constricting wrap around my legs, sometimes a prickling in every hair follicle on the back of my head, sometimes a feverish energy in every cell.

Sometimes it impels me to run, desperately, in an attempt to escape, with arms and hands grasping at the empty air, legs and feet tearing at the concrete, lungs gasping for breath, and heart pleading to burst.

Sometimes it renders such movement impossible.  It is almost as though I have forgotten how to walk, taking halting steps, shuffling rather than striding.  Newton's laws of physics have intensified and I resist changing my direction or state.  Both going to sleep and getting out of bed are herculean endeavors.

Oftentimes, laugher and smiles are foreign; sometimes talking with anyone at all feels like torture.  Processing thoughts in my brain, formulating a response, trying to connect the appropriate response to the situation exhausts me.  Sometimes I am disengaged, disembodied, a ghost.  But alas!  Not a ghost, for I am still here and feeling and facing what is before me.

Tears are welcome and ever present.  Grief mimics the slick streams that fall from my eyes.  Yet, unlike tears, it does not dry to a crust nor can it be wiped away.  It settles like a film on my skin and my heart and my senses, and I take it with me everywhere I go.  Smooth and heavy, it is difficult to carry.  I am constantly, clumsily adjusting to accommodate this burden, ever breaking, but never dropping.

A subtle bitterness or blandness accompanies all that I smell and taste.  It is not overpowering, but ever present.  Grief tends to like that way. 

The sound of grief transforms, just as its placement and influence on my body do.  It wanders from silence and whimpers to wails and outcries and back again.  Mostly it is sighing, the relinquishing of life giving breath.

And so, grief is now my companion. With grief, I break bread, though with no appetite. By grief, I am tucked in bed, though I become sleepless. Grief listens to my every thought, touches my every surface, and witnesses all my tears. She does not wipe them away, but encourages them to flow, and how I need that acceptance.  The impression grief leaves on my heart is deeper than the ocean, endless as space, and wider than the sky. It is so heavy and yet permeates all of me, an emptiness and a weight all at once.   

One friend says this pain is the breaking the shell of my understanding.  Another advises me to take care of grief, and if that means pay attention to her, I will certainly agree.  Ignoring does no good and neglect only intensifies my dislike of her.  Yet acceptance of her helps her to become beautiful to me, to teach me in ways that I did not understand before.  Difficult as she may be, I am grateful for my grief.

Sacred Exchange

I came with distress, ensnared in thoughts
I left with peace, gently freed from the web.
I came with trepidation, encased by much fear,
I left with hope, light filtering gently.
I came with frustration, enclosed by resistance
I left with a soft heart, one open to counsel.
I came with remorse, engulfed by sorrow,
I left with forgiveness, my heart singing praise.
I came with joy, enveloped with gratitude,
I left with it doubled, connection reinforced.
I came on my knees, arms folded, head bowed,
I left with courage from God's unrelenting love.

Joy

"A feeling of great pleasure or happiness"  Its roots include "rejoice" "hope" and "bliss" in different languages.

Dear reader, I don't know if it is because the sun is shining, birds are singing, green is springing up to embrace both the freely falling raindrops and gentle warmth of the sun, an abundance of truly good and dear friends in my life, or a combination of all of these, but I have felt this particular emotion a whole lot lately.  I think that I've let myself feel it a lot more often and that has made so much difference.  As I was thinking this one day, I came across this message chalked on the sidewalk and loved it.

Joy has come to me as I've felt the sun on my back, watched a bird or a bug make its way in the world, laughed with friends, tasted something wonderful, moved my body into a tough balancing pose or pushed it harder than I thought I could or simply let it relax, listened to the voice of dear ones,  and smelled the freshness of air outside.  Sometimes it sneaks up on me, surprising me with its intensity and suddenness.  Other times it settles on me, growing gradually until I realize its there.  Emotions are like that--sometimes unpredictable, usually powerful, and gradually understandable.

Truly, "men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25).  I know that all of life is not joy, and trust me, there are moments when I struggle with the emotions and thoughts.  Often times I try to flee them rather than struggle with them actually.  I've learned that I am not very swift when it comes to outpacing these thoughts and feelings.  They catch up to me eventually and then I have less strength to wrestle them, with their sneers and persistence.  Still, the opportunities to feel and receive joy abound.  They really do.

I love this poem.  Mary Oliver has captured my admiration as of late, and I felt to share something that she penned about joy.

"If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb."  

I hope you find a feast of joy wherever you are, dear reader.  I know its there for you.  Perhaps not spread out on a table, but deliberately placed in your path by someone who loves you dearly and is excited for you to find it and relish it when you do.