I looked north…a beacon to me.  I looked south, to where I’d been… and considered my options.  There was only one, I knew.  There was always only one.

To keep walking.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed

Usually I don’t go see movies after I read the book.  It is always a disappointment.  But this time, I had no intention of reading the book. Well, at first.

I have always been interested in Appalachia.  The Appalachian Trail represents unrealistic imagining; the beauty and rigor, the will to keep going, leaving your “real life” behind with a clear vision of the trail before you. I hadn’t ever heard of the PCT- a trail from Mexico to Canada through the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountain ranges.

Wild, the movie, is adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of her walk.  Reece Witherspoon played Cheryl and of course the movie sensationalized a few events, but the steadiness of transformation permeated the pages.

I decided to check out an electronic copy of the book from my local library only to find I was 9th on the “hold” list.  With no sense of urgency, I’ve patiently waited.

In the meantime, another movie, A Walk in the Woods… the same tactic, different trail.  Mitch and I went to see the movie with Robert Redford and Nick Nolte.  The movie was entertaining and so I decided to read the book about the men’s walk on the Appalachian trail.  While this movie, in my humble opinion, was a departure from the book, the movie personas stayed with me while I read.  “I just walked…I was a walker again…” iterated that reassuring theme.  Just keep walking.

Both books, (I’ve read 91% of Wild), have been great evening companions.  Just keep walking.  I am at a sort of crossroads in my life again.  Just keep walking.  I’ve been asking questions with no answers. Don’t be afraid. Just keep walking.  Mmmm… Just keep walking?

What if I changed the questions?  Changed even a word or two?

In the course I teach, young people wrote six word memoirs inspired by Hemingway’s six word story:  “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”  An insightful young man’s work had at least one word bracketed in each of his attempts.  When I asked why the parentheses he replied, “Because I could change that word and it would have a different meaning.”

So, I’ve been pondering some big questions and decided to try this tactic myself.  Instead of my earlier question, What do I need to let go of, what if the question was What do I need to hold lightly?

For me right now that might mean I don’t have to let go of applying or considering another job in academia but I need to hold that possibility more loosely. For most of my life my professional job has defined me. That is a notion that I must let go of; so how does “holding my professional self” more loosely make that more possible?

Letting go of just that part– the part that I am defined by a job– that would be holding my profession more lightly.  Living that for me would mean not feeling such an urgency about getting things done or getting things right. It means living in a more casual relationship with accomplishment; to surrender the product in the service of the joy of engagement in work that evokes a sense of community and greater good.

When I hold things more loosely there is room for other people, ideas, possibilities, and newness to seep in.  I like the idea of seeping in.  I imagine the new that mingles in with what is already there to slowly transform into something else.

Seeping happens naturally, sort of by gravity, you know how a liquid like that juice from the over ripe tomato on the kitchen counter trickles toward the milk I spilled when filling my cereal bowl.   The  molecules of one substance have some kind of wild attraction for another substance and they don’t stay their separate selves in the process.

So I’m going to hold on for a bit longer, but very loosely.  And, pay attention to what  seeps in.

Rearranging the future, really cleaning things out, getting rid of “stuff” I no longer need; these are acts of renewal.  Not just physical acts, this kind of work requires  courageous visioning and many ideations of letting go.  

Last summer I came upon this poem by Sufi mystic Rumi.

The Guest House  

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning, a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

The part that most stands out to me today is the idea that I do entertain visitors and often I am more troubled than welcoming.  What would it look like to be grateful for whoever comes?

I’ve had plenty of times in my life when I am grateful…in hindsight.

When I first learned that the elementary school where I was teaching was being restructured, I thought this was a great opportunity for me to do something new.  I eagerly applied for the “design team” that would work together to create a new way of doing school.  I mean a design team?  That name in itself was pretty revolutionary in the world of public school, especially in our neighborhood.

Without going into all the painful details– I didn’t get the job.  Actually there were 5 positions and so my failure was quintupled.  And it felt like it was tenfold. Our school staff, students and the neighborhood community center were excluded from the planning, excitement, and promise of the “new” school.  I was very thankful then.

I’m feeling that my furniture is being metaphorically rearranged again or even emptied out. And it is never easy.  And the results are always life-giving.  And there is a new look.  I just can’t see that far ahead, yet.

Living the questions… the title of a video course I attended this week and also a sort of epiphany for me.  That is what Henri Nouwen’s words mean for me, now.  Living into a new way of thinking means living the questions that I wrestle with rather than just posing them.

Pondering “what do I need to let go of?” like I did last week has another side in the living of it.

The air where I live is crisper, cooler, and encouraging these days. There is just a hint in the air that the leaves are about to take on new color.  On closer examination, however, I notice other signs.  Squirrels with puffy cheeks carry fall’s bounty as they dash across the streets.  Green husks camouflage rich walnuts I step on walking through my back yard.  Leggy flowers and herbs are “going to seed” as the season for harvesting wanes.

Seeds?  That was the ah-ha moment.

In a previous post I alluded to Carrie Newcomer’s song, Leaves Don’t Drop They Just Let Go (click on this link and enjoy).  The refrain of her song:

‘Cause leaves don’t drop they just let go
And make a space for seeds to grow
And every season brings a change
A tree is what a seed contains
To die and live is life’s refrain

The other question… the one that is lived along with letting go.  What new thing is being redeemed inside of me?  What new thing will be able to grow now?

What do I need to let go of at this point in my life?

Can I let go of the things that make me feel useful and significant?

The second question is one I probably copied eight years ago, when the elementary school where I had invested a great deal of myself was closing.  That job teaching second and third graders; the incredible young people, families, neighborhood and colleagues with whom I shared community did make me feel useful and significant despite the institutional and political view of us as less than capable.

Now, with much greater educational accomplishments, I’m wondering the same thing.

One thing I know.  I could let go of the thing that makes be feel insignificant and inadequate; comparing myself to others, like I did yesterday, reliving what I intended to do and what I haven’t accomplished. However, that wasn’t the question.

Henri Nouwen and Parker Palmer are two people I perceive as having struggled with these questions and maybe answered them with a life.  In the forward to Palmer’s first book, The Promise of Paradox, Henri Nouwen wrote:

Parker has shown me how true it is that you don’t think your way into a new kind of living but live your way into a new kind of thinking.

I haven’t read this Parker Palmer book, but I have read many of his others and know much of his story of struggle.  I have read Nouwen’s The Road to Daybreak that chronicled his journey from the world of academie to his life in the Daybreak community for children and adults with physical and mental challenges.  These men lived the paradox of letting go of what seems to be of value in the world to find a new self.

I know how they answered the question with courage and uncertainty.  The thing is– I know the end of their story.

Can I let go of the things that make me feel useful and significant?

 The answer involves living with a new kind of attention.

Letting Go.   I read this piece by Frederick Buechner yesterday.  While it seems extravagant to just quote someone else, I need Buechner’s wisdom to tell my own story.

I quickly read this I might add; I needed to get on with my work for the day.  I did, however, feel that the words were serendipitous or synchronicity or some kind of miraculous coincidence that these were the words I just needed to ponder for the day.

WE FIND BY LOSING. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old. This seems to be close to the heart of that mystery. I know no more now than I ever did about the far side of death as the last letting-go of all, but I begin to know that I do not need to know and that I do not need to be afraid of not knowing. God knows. That is all that matters. Out of Nothing he creates Something. Out of the End he creates the Beginning. Out of selfness we grow, by his grace, toward selflessness, and out of that final selflessness, which is the loss of self altogether, “eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man” what new marvels he will bring to pass next. All’s lost. All’s found. And if such words sound childish, so be it. Out of each old self that dies some precious essence is preserved for the new self that is born; and with in the child-self that is part of us all, there is perhaps nothing more precious than the fathomless capacity to trust.

– Frederick Buechner, Originally published in A Room Called Remember

My thoughts for the day rested on the last few words “the fathomless capacity to trust.”  But I re-read the words today and that wasn’t truly where I needed to land.  It was this part: I do not need to know and that I do not need to be afraid of not knowing.

Part of my own letting go means letting go of an “expected” unfolding of my life now. Letting go of what I thought and think is possible.  Letting go of how I see myself as valuable that is usually tied to a job or professional life.  Letting go to be faithful to what I know to do each day that may not make sense or “get me” anywhere.

Another paradox– paying too much attention to one thing obscures the one thing we need… to let go.

I have a heaviness about my work that should not be.  Instead of couching this fact in vague generalizations about my life, or anyone’s live in general, I need to reveal my own insecurity about my adequacy as a scholar whose feet are on the ground; my desire to be perfect– to not have to dance between other’s expectations and my own evolving abilities and my deep desire to tell the story– the story buried in the academic writing I am trying to do.

I just read an email stashed in an old journal from someone, a colleague at the time, encouraging me to apply for a particular job. I did not hesitate in my reply.  While deeply flattered that she “can see [me] fitting well into the position… you would be so good.” I knew that this job would not be so good for me.  I would have been frustrated because inherently my beliefs did not match with those whom I would work for and with, and I had no doubts.

Of course there is always the hidden notion that I could challenge those beliefs, but I had already been swimming upstream so to speak.  My neighborhood elementary school where I taught had been closed because it was a failure according to political and institutional accountability measures. The failure I saw was that people (generalized of course) did not value or work alongside that school community; it was easier to restructure as a magnet school that divided and diluted the neighborhood. Policies and procedures and philosophies of the new magnet school excluded rather than included our neighborhood– the children usually referred to in statements like “all children can learn.” However, from my perspective, these young people had much to say and do of value– just not in the ways that easily counted in the political construction of school learning.

The point of telling this story is that now I am meeting another kind of challenge, similar at the core, but I am not confident about what to do- to continue or let go; to say “no thank you” again or try again; to know if I am compromising what I believe or just learning through struggle how to say what needs to be considered in my world?

I’m looking for my own burning bush– I know the place I am standing is holy ground.

Writing is thinking.  No question about that for me.  When I begin to write on any given day I don’t always know where the words will take me.  Even when I have a clear intention or a vague drift.

At the same time, thinking is a problem.  Writing might bring clarity and on the way there pass through layers of confusion that obscure that buried idea.  This summer I attended a workshop at Princeton Theological Seminary — a Writer’s Workshop that foregrounded writing as a spiritual practice and the work of writer Frederick Buechner.

Often, particularly when faced with too much thinking that only complicates any intention I might have, I reread my notebook from previous months or years to see where I’ve been with the hope that I might move toward where I might be going.

Today I was lamenting my lack.  Lack of skill as an academic writer.  Lack of clarity that results from overthinking and my lack of confidence.  Lack of proofreading skill that lets grammatical errors, unintended fragments, and sentences that just don’t make any sense disguise themselves as productive.  I usually don’t reread these blog posts for fear of finding the same thing here.  I did and I did.

So this morning I opened my notebook from the Writer’s Workshop and found this:

Writing as sacrament

• visible sign of individual reality
• outward sign of inward grace
• sacrament needs: matter, form, intention
• holy mystery
• grace in the everyday

At the bottom of the notebook page “mystery” is defined as presence of more meaning than you can comprehend.

Mmmmm.  Why do I continue to write?  Writing makes visible what I’m thinking, doing, feeling, being and how I interpret a world in that moment.  Those thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentional awareness become material when captured in words; by the very act of being named.  The paradoxical mystery is that at the same time those words hold more meaning than I can comprehend.  The words alone don’t just represent; they are an action, a form of participation in the world that matters.

As Buechner says the deepest part of who you are is speaking to the deepest part of yourself.  And occasionally, someone else might be listening in.

My choices daily

seem so casual and small;

I spend so little time deciding how I live–

yet step by step,

and choice by choice,

I build a pattern

by which I

myself am known:

a lifetime choosing either death or life!

My friend, Dan Bagby wrote these words over thirty years ago.  I’ve keep them all this time.  And again I return to the realization that I think more about what I want to be and do rather than making daily choices that get me there.

Ten years ago I wrote these words: What do I do with feeling restless, wanting change?  Is that God or do I just want a dream and I need to make the best of what I have?  Do I just focus on the good that I have or do I actively seek change?

The answer to my questions is not an either – or proposition.  Like many questions I have, the sense making comes in the struggle and that struggling isn’t a one time occurrence.

Considering again Dan’s words, I am choosing– with each small moment that I live– even when the choices are not conscious. I do spend time thinking about how I want to live.  Deciding happens in the casual choices I make daily.

Ten years ago I also wrote three “to do’s:”

• Rejoice always
• Pray constantly
• Give thanks in all circumstances

Again, it seems simple, but an affective stance that is difficult for me to maintain. The swing between hope and despair lately is a short ride.

Scott Russel Sanders in his book Hunting for Hope says

Hope is not prognostication.  It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

My choices daily, casual or calculated or small or great, determine that orientation of my heart.  I like the idea of “muscle memory” here.  The notion that as you practice a certain movement you develop a physiological memory — a feedback loop that envelopes brain and body so that your brain tells your body knowingly, from memory,  what to do even after lapses in such activity.

So what will I be and do in this fine day that develops that pattern or orientation of joyful hope?

The idea of the spiritual, another realm of existence that is intricately woven into where I live my everyday life, is about surrender, rather than control.  I hold too tightly to trying to “figure it out.”  It is  true that I want to push, to find, to search, to strive to see; to be in the metaphoric light, to see what is in front of me.  I’m already forgetting what is. I have relationships that sustain me. I’ve always had a job and a place to live.  There is always meaningful work to do. However, like yesterday, I am derailed by comparisons to “others” named and unnamed who seemingly have, do, or are ….. and expecting — it doesn’t even matter what– to meet my constructed standard.

The real dilemma is that I want to belong, to have a place to stand– that is valued by the world.That is what seems to be elusive, no matter where I am.

In the book whose title I borrowed, longing and belonging, Allison Pugh considers how children and parents in particular interpret and use the ubiquitous consumer culture to construct belonging. I do that too, I consider the whacked out hierarchy that my academic world holds up as true, even though I can pay attention to another way of seeing.

Much like the hunger that Marjorie Thompson likens to “an empty stomach aching beneath the sleek coat of a seemingly well-fed creature, it reveals that something is missing from the diet of our rational, secular, and affluent culture.”

What am I missing?  Frederick Buechner in The Longing for Home ends with the notion that

The danger is that we hold on only to the moments that one way or another heal us and bless us and neglect the others… Woe to all of us if we stay only in the bright uplands of the Gospels and avoid like death, avoid like life, the dark ravines, the cave under the hill.

Bad things and even not so bad things that seem discouraging happen.  What do I do with those?  Underneath, above, around and through the dark and unknown places there is another, a Source, a Presence that blesses my struggle. There are moments and even many days when I don’t think the “right” thing; when I ponder the worst case scenarios and wallow around in the dark ravines.

I wonder, if like some others, will I always be on this journey?  Is there a promised land or is this it– what I can see but don’t continually live in.  I wonder and yet do see glimmers of hope in now.  Buechner’s piece ends with this ineffable mystery; that we know the divine presence in our experience of unknowing.