11-12-18

WWGD? (What would Gandhi do?)

GANDHI

I briefly profiled Gandhi's life in South Africa in the weekly letter to the kids. I thought some details of his life there might hold some helpful clues to how we might face the difficult times we are living right now. I don't think the leadership of South Africa in the early 1900s is anything like Trump's administration. I don't think there is anything to compare to this, really. Still, there were some of the same social fault lines of prejudice, racism, oppression of religious and ethnic groups, and efforts made to eliminate the “other” from the society by deportation or forced mass migration. The numbers of Indians were small at the time compared to what we now see in the caravan of humanity making its way from Central America, through Mexico, to the US border, a threat Trump claims is fueled by ISIS or the Taliban or Democrats—whichever group he wants to target on any given day. Of course, this is to instill fear and hatred in the minds of those susceptible to them. There are a surprisingly large number of those people these days. The population of South Africa was small at the time but had its entrenched hierarchy of the haves and the have-nots. Of course, economics and moneyed interests were also in play as well as those who wanted a purer white society. The Indians and Chinese were hard workers and were willing to do the hard jobs of labor in order to move up in society. They were a threat to the white people economically as well as a threat to their preconceived ideas about a “pure” society, meaning a society without people of color.

The book by Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi Before India, is based on a context of contemporary reports and writings of the time, giving it a detailed flavor of the forces amassed against Gandhi in his efforts to bring equal opportunity and dignity to the colored communities. One of the things about his methodology and accounting for many of the pages of the long book was his incremental approach to his social justice work, his discipline, and, especially, his satyagraha, or love force enacted as nonviolent resistance. Often, this meant spending months or years in jail for many of the adherents. He had to actively resist calls for more dramatic and violent efforts to disrupt the social resistance, something we see in our own society today with the violent shootings of schools, night clubs, malls, and other public places. We see them as punctuations of what also seems like a current of fear, resentment, and hatred directed at individuals or groups in society with whom the perpetrators have some grievance. They are dramatic and horrific in their outcomes but do not seem to make change, for or against, appear more likely. There are those who want to connect them with the violent stands Trump himself has taken on these issues of migration and immigration with movement of federal troops, building gigantic walls at territorial borders, and winking at private citizens to defend themselves against these poor and starving migrants.

It seemed a tactic doomed to fail for Gandhi but he worked at it and eventually drew thousands to his efforts, including members of his own family. The complexities of his personality were also manifest in his relations with his wife and sons and his social actions reflected his personal biases and those he imposed on them. He was disciplined and often self-flagellating. He adopted vegetarianism and other health-related practices and declared his celibacy soon after the birth of his last child. He attempted to impose similar practices on his followers at his Tolstoy Farm, the site where he developed a small community of people willing to sacrifice for his cause of nonviolence. He imposed such practices on his family as well, rebuking one son who rebelled.

If one can borrow from history, then perhaps there is something in nonviolence that might be applicable to our social crises today. I don't know how it would work or if it would work at all. I think the people who followed Gandhi were impoverished in so many ways and willing to make sacrifices, even of their own lives. I don't know that we have that level of material and spiritual poverty in our lives to convince people of the efficacy of nonviolent actions. Even with the yawning gaps in economic advantage/disadvantage, it is not clear that people would see that as a reason to join a nonviolent movement. Perhaps the economic issue is too nebulous. In Gandhi's time, it was an edict for mandatory registration of foreigners and the levy of a registration tax on everyone that coalesced the forces that eventually made nonviolence a real tool against a repressive regime. There was much back and forth between South Africa and England. The Indians in South Africa were after all British citizens, as was the entire country of India. That never seemed to convince or dissuade the South African administration and so Gandhi had to use other techniques to bring about change.

I think the most impressive thing about the changes that were made was the persistent work necessary to move institutional injustice to a point of accommodation in the least terms and abolishment in the most. It took years and Gandhi was there for 20 years. It is clear from our experiences with Trump that wreckage can occur over a very short time frame and reconstruction of the old or construction of something newer and better will take a very long time. But it is also apparent to me that as Gandhi changed South African policies, he was also changed. So I think about Bruno Latour and his “actor-network” theory of contingent social change and its relevance to science, but also to broader landscapes of human behavior. It will take a much deeper and more committed investigation to discern the factors that need to be considered in the changes occurring in our society (and culture, too) today. It is complex but can't be understood without some broad and deep thinking about the forces at work and the actors involved in them. It is clear to me that we won't be returning to anything that we once thought was stable in our ideas of governance and institutional structures. The ground has been disturbed and we will need to find ways to cultivate stronger institutions and a more humane approach to the needs of all citizens, just as the Founders did several hundred years ago when they were faced with lacing together a social fabric from mere threads.

Much of the initial work of construction has to do with changing the framework of expectations and knowledge in order to create something more stable and long-lasting than what we presently see in our government. Being led by a lunatic like Trump (my use of the term “lunatic” is a diagnosis of serious mental illness and isn't a judgment of personality) isn't the way to enlist the best thinkers in these efforts. He is random, narcissistic, and vindictive, serving his own interests and the interests of his plutocrat family members and friends. We are seeing signs of the corruption that run deep within the government and are challenged to meet them where they surface. Gandhi met every turn and twist of South African efforts to deny him and his followers any equal treatment and that was the secret of his incrementalism. We don't have that same instinct now with Trump. I think most are still befuddled about what can be done and are blinded by his random outrages. But it is just this daily vile behavior that calls for daily responses based on a moral code that incorporates the ethics and virtues that most of us believe have made America the country it is. How those are expressed will change with time and different actors on the stage. But without a moral code we will be adrift for a long time.

So, I relate our present difficulties to those Gandhi faced many years ago but whose moral code and nonviolent tactics we could adopt for starters today in our efforts to construct a more just and compassionate social fabric. We have the capacity and the history, but do we have the intention and will? Change is difficult and transformation is even more elusive. But it can't happen without communities participating and without a revised vocabulary that renews courage and discipline, values Gandhi knew and of which he can remind us once again. We have a duty to all citizens to work for greater freedom and equality.

It is also important to point out that most of anyone's life is composed of thousands and thousands of incremental moments. Yes, we are physiologically constructed to react to threats and trauma, but over time (and in an evolutionary perspective) those events are fewer and farther separated from daily experience. When there is something catastrophic headlined in the media, we tend to activate those same instincts our early upright ancestors had and we translate the isolated catastrophe into a trend or current of occurrence when, in fact, they are dramatic single points on a graph and have only thin connections to anything we can imagine. They, too, are contingent upon many other factors singular to the event and the actors involved but it is hard to discern their connections to what we have come to expect from 21^st century human behavior.

Gandhi's challenge was to demonstrate sufficiently his own moral code and how it translated into social activism of nonviolence. He was noted for leading the way in nonviolent demonstrations and the consequences that led to jail. He didn't expect anyone to sacrifice what he wasn't willing to sacrifice. Perhaps this says something about the universal aspect of human aspirations for freedom and dignity that transcend political, religious, and cultural boundaries. He was joined in his efforts by other people of color as well as adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Do we have the same conviction of common cause with people now considered “other” in our society? Have we lost some of the vocabulary that can energize citizens of all persuasions to join together to make real the blessings of democracy and freedom? Can the words of past times be revived? Can we borrow from those who spoke forcefully in times of greater spiritual awareness? Can we explore the words of America's founding fathers to see how concerns about fair governance can be backed by religion, spirituality, and faith? If those backings were the contingent forces propelling politicians and statesmen in distant times to construct what they saw as a fair and just superstructure of government, then could we use some of those same contingencies to work changes in the reconstruction of what has been damaged over the past two years? Can we learn from history and its actors? Can we make use of ideas that have universal applications? What would Gandhi do today? Would anyone pay any attention to him?

11-5-18

What Bruno Latour Has To Tell Us

No one will read this. I am too far under the radar to count in the blizzard of voices and words. I am too old to be adding my foolish ideas to a web of entanglements. The wizards of politics are hoping to capture the 18 to 29 year old demographic because they are such lazy voters. Yet, here I am, adding my voice and words to the blizzard, as if I had not heard that seniors were supposed to be hitting the couches and watching TV. As I look back on the few blog posts I have on this site from two years ago, it was just at election time that I took up the keyboard to write. It seems even more important today that I do the same thing, on the cusp of another "crucial" election in our long history of them. I am not certain I agree with the pundits that this is an election that will change everything. It seems to me that history writes that sort of story and we only know where we have been by looking back. I think it is safe to say that something will change as a result of the voting tomorrow. This brings me to reflect a bit on what little I know of the work of the philosopher of science, Bruno Latour, whose work was briefly outlined in a recent article.

What I think I understand Bruno to be saying is that causes and conditions are always at work in the lives of human beings. What results from them at any given moment or period in history depends on the context in which they occurred. It depends on the relationships among all the parts in play. We get accustomed to thinking that what has happened was destined to happen and was always so. Latour is focused on science and the scientific establishment and so he has some plaudits and some criticisms to hand out, as one might expect from a philosopher who is called to look at all causes and conditions. He believes that once science uncovers one of nature's secrets, it becomes a fixed entity in our minds and attached to the scientist involved. It is as if the scientist had invented the unlocked secret. In fact, says Latour, what the scientist has unlocked is the next piece of a puzzle that seems to have no end. There is nothing fixed about the data point reported in a scientific journal. The scientific evidence is the momentary piece in a complex web of what he calls an "actor-network" process of discovery. In a rather unfortunate choice of a term, he refers to this as the result of a "social" matrix. Of course, in these times of hard-edged and  politicized language, connecting something scientific with something social plays to the far conservative agenda that denies climate change, opposes vaccinations, and claims scientific facts as malleable and adjustable and perhaps false efforts to fool the public. Latour defends his position by saying that the "robust architecture" of his investigations will withstand any effort to dismantle the science itself.

I am not smart enough to wade into the intricacies of political thinking and manipulations, but there is something about Latour's approach that is appealing to me. As I have gotten older, I have become more aware of how complex the world is and how daunting that can be. But if one takes Latour's approach to understanding how the world works, then emphasizing process over product makes sense and makes the work of understanding anything very hard. We aren't used to thinking deeply about the world and asking all the questions that would help us in our understanding. It is my contention that how we think about the world might change what we think. If we are willing to entertain the idea that the issues and objects of our thoughts are the results of a very long and intricately woven narrative, then we might give up some of our prejudices and biases, our fixed ideas about what the world should be. We might then appreciate how contingent all of our thoughts and actions are. For instance, instead of being convinced that a straggling and starving band of immigrants headed for the Mexican-US border are terrorists, we might look more closely at the circumstances they are escaping in their native country and that might lead us to wonder about their poverty, their own fears for their children, their desire for freedom, and what they are willing to sacrifice to find safety and the fulfillment of basic needs. Are they wearing shoes that fit? Where do they find food and water? How are they able to carry small children on their backs for so many hundreds of miles? Where do they go to the bathroom along the way? Do they sleep? Do they have dreams of a better future and is this what drives them onward?

The basic instincts that I think most of us have about freedom, equal chances, hopes for the future, the dignity of every individual, have been politicized almost beyond recognition and picked apart to suit one side of the partisan divide or the other. It is takes hard work and more of an open heart and mind to understand how refugees and all who suffer resemble us more than they differ. I think Bruno Latour's process of discernment asks us to give up ownership of the easy answers and the group-think that pervade our society today. We are challenged to turn away from the demagogue and his rhetoric, bombast, and outrages in order to reclaim our own souls and to integrate what we think we know with what we can understand more deeply by exercising love and compassion for others. In this way we are able to offer ourselves the love and compassion that unite us.

11-12-16

The Light of My Life

I don't know enough about politics or political demographics to ruminate about what happened this past Tuesday that made Donald Trump the next President of the United States and Hillary Clinton a historical figure. I know more about the longings of the human heart and that is what I want to write about today.

It seems the shock of Trump's victory was as startling to some of his supporters as to his opponents. The bewilderment was evenly spread among us and stemmed from the fact that someone so little schooled in history and the mechanics of governance and someone so personally and openly crude and cruel could ascend to the highest office in our land. We had, indeed, become numb to his bombast and vitriol over so many months and as a result had not really considered what it would mean if he became the 45th President.

When it was clear that he had won the presidency, emotional turmoil and trauma were visible among those whom he had mocked and demeaned for so long and for many others whose perceptions of stability had been shattered.  If it is true that those who thought of themselves as voiceless found a champion in Trump, it is equally true that millions of others in different minority categories whom Trump demonized have been voiceless in their opposition to what he stands for. Why should that be when the stakes for remaining silent are so high? How much fear does it take to draw back and hide? I don't think it takes much fear at all. Fear is a human emotional default. It takes energy and will to be courageous. A little fear of exposure goes a long way in how we respond to confrontation or criticism. We do have experience with resistance built into our history. Our nation was born from the throes of resistance to perceived wrongs. We have had demonstrations and movements associated with some of the most important social experiments in our history. While many of them have been in the spirit of minority causes, such as women's suffrage and civil rights, all of us have benefited from their ultimate absorption into our national character. The sacrifices of others have cemented rights and benefits for all of us. We are in debt to those whose vision of a better future for everyone drove them to the sacrifices they made.

These times of turmoil and trauma will be no different. What is happening today is a response to the descent of a darkening veil of intolerance, racism, sexism, misogyny, and violence as political coercion. There haven't been voices of opposition heard until now because the presumption of civility and common decency was part of what we thought of as the foundation of our civic conversation. We thought we had fought important battles and were prepared to go forward with the social progress all of us enjoyed, building on what we shared, albeit facing difficult issues and extremes of persuasion.  The campaign and the election have uncovered festering sores of complaint, disaffection, suspicion, bigotry, and outright hate. While some may claim a political victory, all of us have before us a torn civic fabric. No one wins when hate and violence are accepted forms of personal interactions upon which our nation depends for stability.

The gaps in our national community are wider today than before the election. It is my impression that what will happen now is that small communities will be formed and energized by common bonds of affection. These communities might be book clubs, breast cancer support groups, congregations of the faithful, even family gatherings. All of us will discover that our communities overlap and that our voices are heard among several or many of them. We will begin to listen better to one another because we will trust the support we find in them. We will feel safe in ways we don't now because we will have joined in a union of support. The accumulation of support and trust will build over time, but it will always be based on how safe we feel inside ourselves. Gandhi said: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Personal change sets the stage for other transformations large and small.

In these past several post-election days, a campaign (another campaign?) has arisen from the grass roots to reach out to one another to offer safety. The symbol of that support is the simple safety pin. It holds things together and it can bring ragged edges of the social fabric into juxtaposition until more permanent mending can occur. When worn, it signifies to the "other" that s/he is in the presence of one who offers safety. I believe that this simple sign has the potential to lift a corner of the darkening veil. Of what uses can we make of such a simple thing? Isn't this what they used to use to diaper babies? Isn't this, plus duct tape, what can hold and repair just about everything? Is this what they mean when they refer to "underpinnings"?

Leonard Cohen died just after the election. He was someone who experienced the darkening veils of his own life and yet was able to make music because of and in spite of them. In his oft-quoted lyrics he says:

   "Ring the bells that still can ring.
   Forget your perfect offering.
   There is a crack in everything.
   That's how the light gets in."

They echo my own experience with darkness. There always seems to be a crack in the darkness through which a splinter of light can escape. This seems especially poignant this week with all its disappointing surprises. My late adulthood has been suffused with the world and the work of compassion. For a while it seemed to have served me well. I have had light shine through cracks I didn't recognize at first. For someone who has never been comfortable in the front lines of social action and demonstrations, I have been happy with the quieter and more subtle forms of compassion. But the events of these past many months and the past week have made it clearer that compassion is necessary for social cohesion and intimate care, but it isn't sufficient. What I hear now is a call to compassionate advocacy. Feeling compassionate is not the same as acting compassionately. When one abandons one's own closeted security and steps into dark corners, then the slivers of light can be seen. The dark corners of cancer care, of hospice, of oppressive places of work, of abusive households, of complaint and unearned privilege, are all places where the creative experimental work and practice of compassionate advocacy can come alive. If the lowly safety pin can point us out to one another, then let us wear the pins on our tattered fabrics. Let us see if millions of safety pins can hold the worn and stressed fabric of our Republic together. Let us see if one safety pin can bring us into closer relationships of tolerance and understanding.

Strong women, people of color, immigrants, disabled, other-gendered, and the strong among those in minorities cried openly the past few days for a reason. They felt the loss of dignity and safety. The safety pin is for them and for all of us who hope for a greater unity of purpose and acceptance. I am wearing a safety pin and walking into darker corners. Let us walk towards the light together. Let us not forget Donald Trump for who he is and let us not forget Leonard Cohen for who he was. Let us think that we can learn from everyone. Let us know ourselves better, the better we will be at loving ourselves and each other. Let us celebrate our differences and the resistances that empower us in causes for the greater good. Let our intention be compassionate advocacy. May kindness and patience be the lights of our lives.

11-6-16

Everyone should write a book

That is not to say that everyone should publish a book. There was a time when I thought I should write a book of my own. Then, I thought about all the books that have been written and the books that are published every week and I became weak in my resolve to write. Who needs another book of memoirs or a second-rate novel?  I have written a journal for many years and many letters of some length and it has been a meaningful practice for me. In an age of short text messaging, I thought I was maintaining the ancient arts of communication by actually taking time to write with reflection. I think that is still the case for anyone who takes time to think about the written word and then writes. When I got to the point of worrying about what my writing had to offer the bigger world, I began to write less. I had lost some of my confidence that had me underpinning preservation of the ancient arts. The truth is that I had conflated publishing with writing.

It didn't take long for me to get back to writing because I couldn't not write. My journal writing arose out of a basic need to interact with the events of my life and the ideas in my head during a time of faltering personal resolve. It began in Philadelphia during the Vietnam War. I was a medical student at a time of great social turmoil and tensions. The undergraduate campus of the university was restless with demonstrations against the war and there were "actions" and confrontations every day. It was hard to concentrate on classwork and especially so as I had a very low draft number and stood a chance of being taken from a career path to feed the maw of an expanding beast. These details of life lived then were examples in specificity and not in kind with the tensions and contradictions that occur to all of us over the course of a lifetime. We weigh the burdens of privilege with the gifts of commonly shared experiences. We are faced with financial worries and at the same time know that money is a tool only and not the key to happiness. We find ourselves conflicted in many many ways and often push into our subconscious what is too difficult to cipher. We actually postpone and ignore what continues to fester.

I got into the habit of opening my life to my journal writing during those early times of turmoil. It was a way for me to record and explore my pains as well as my joys. It was truly cathartic. I was often able to wash off the sludge of dread from something worth saving and polishing. This process of looking deeply and cleansing proceeds today. It has become especially important for me as I have aged. Age drags one into a phase of life that is barely perceptible when one is living through the 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's. It isn't until one turns around and discovers all the children gone from the house and one's career at an end that it becomes a solid reality. We know that we age every day but we don't "feel" old until mid-life has moved behind us into the past. Writing inevitably gets us in touch with this feeling of being someone who is experiencing a life moving from one present moment to the next. Writing slows us down in our lives and asks us to look, to notice where we are in the ever-changing landscape of what we are experiencing. In the aging process, it is an aid in understanding death's encroaching presence in life.

Writing exposes us to ourselves. It makes us curious about who we are on a regular basis. Who we are is one of the most complicated and fraught questions we can ask ourselves. "Who am I?" "What am I here for?" "How shall I live my life?" These are the questions that arise for us in our writing. One could think of them as the pivotal questions in everything written. They are the questions we address directly or indirectly in all formats. Name any category of writing and those questions will be looking at you or lurking within the structures of the writing. Your own writing will emerge from them. Others' writing will challenge you to address them in what they have written. All writing is about the human experience, whether draped in fictional dress, philosophical pomp, or historical fires still burning. We know ourselves and others by the writing we do and the writing we read.

It has never been enough for me to just write and walk away. It has been important for me to digest the experiences of loss, sorrows, and delight to find the light for the path ahead. It is in writing that I have found the resolve to attempt what I cowered from or to see that my cowering has a useful reality for me. It is in writing that my most frightful demons have lost some of their power. It is in writing that I am challenged to find new words for emotions and it is in writing that my fingers untwist and my brain becomes less tangled. I find new ways to appreciate how embodied I am in my own life. I find connections and overlapping spheres of shared energy. I become aware that I do not stand alone but share vulnerabilities and difficulties with a larger community. Writing helps us feel less alone in a world all too fragmented and disconnected.

My journal writing has gone on for many decades now but I still find myself saying "I should write a book." The noble effort of writing a book consolidates one's accumulated experiences and insights. It synthesizes and concentrates one's mental life on a deeper task of understanding and being understood. I believe all writing is autobiographical in the way the writer picks the subject, the actors, the actors' names, the circumstances of architecture and landscape, and the timeline of action. The elements of a work might not be the same as the writer's life, but they are products of his/her mental life. It is the exploration of the mental life that brings a work to life. How does the work reflect the mind of the writer and how do we reflect the work in our lives? The shared experience of writer and reader grows into a larger community of like-minded souls. Isn't this why we write? Isn't it to explore our own humanity and see how it synchronizes with that of every soul on the planet? Isn't it to find the universal in personal experience? Isn't it to feel less alone and isolated in a universe of cold limitlessness?

Everyone should write a book. Or, maybe, just a journal entry when life's puzzles are too puzzling.

10-27-16

Sashiko and Inner Space

Sashiko is an old mending technique for recycling cloth. Its ancient traditions were meant to patch worn clothing, usually with material died with indigo. Its evolution from Japan has brought it to our present time as a craft with some prescribed stitches and patterns of revealed white thread. The equipment consists of stronger twisted thread and needles milled to slip easily through heavier material. While there is often an emphasis on precise regularity of patterns and stitch distances, its appeal to me is its imperfect possibilities. It is an example of a wabi-sabi aesthetic in its simplicity, impermanence, roughness, economy, asymmetry, and its implied personal care. At a time when there appears to be a resurgence of interest in textile crafts and design, sashiko offers a wonderful metaphor for perfect imperfection.

Sashiko and other rough crafts circumscribe a new vision of beauty. So often we think of something as beautiful because it fits our ideas of perfection. Beautiful connotes flawlessness, symmetrical contours, rigid spacing, and precise engineering or, in human terms, someone with features defined by the social lottery.  Something or someone beautiful may have some or all of these characteristics, but re-thinking beauty encompasses the less-than-perfect. Perfection is an ideal in all circumstances and what is left behind must then be imperfect. But, if we think of imperfect as less-than, then what have we said about the world in which we live? What have we said about ourselves?

The beautiful ideal seems permanent and immutable. In fact, our ideas about what or who is beautiful are subject to changes we often don't appreciate because of their subtlety. If something we think of as beautiful changes, then are we still so certain that it is beautiful? And doesn't that insight change what beautiful means? If we think of the imperfection of beauty, then we have a way of seeing the world that doesn't lock us into a rigid mindset and imprison us in some concept of what is desirable. If we think of ourselves as beautifully imperfect, then we are open to infinite possibilities of self expression. We can begin to love ourselves in our many dimensions. We can move through our lives with greater ease and freedom. We can age without the stigmas of what it means to be old or sick or dying.

When we talk about sashiko and its metaphorical possibilities, we are talking about being "cut from the same cloth." We are talking about patching our lives together in individual ways that make us stronger for the mending. If we are all imperfect and torn in one way or another, then mending with patches is how we are healed. Even if we think of ourselves as torn, we don't often think of how we might be repaired or mended. We accept the idea that we will always be torn and frayed. When we find patches that make us stronger and whole, we discover that we can wear our mending on the outside or on the inside. When we wear it on the outside, we show others the patches and the stitching. We are free to say how we have been wounded and then restored. We are saying that we are vulnerable and we are exposing our damaged selves. We are inviting others to show their patches and encouraging them to see their imperfect beauty.

When we wear our patches on the inside, we are free to own our woundedness and to begin the process of growth that healing entails. In the quiet of inner space we find our sacred ground.

When I was studying for chaplaincy at a Zen Buddhist center, we sewed our own rakusus. A rakusu is an apron-like vestment worn by those who commit to the precepts established by the Buddha centuries ago. Buddhist monks sewed their robes from cloth used to tend to the sick, washed of the blood and pus that soaked them. The cloth was intended to be washed, patched, and recycled as a symbol of the care, commitment, and compassion towards those aging, sick, and dying.  Because of the blindness of societal prejudice and oppression, the full robes of the committed shrank into a form that could be worn underneath common garments. This is the form of the rakusu today. Our rakusus were sewn from pieces of fabric donated by family members and friends as a way of celebrating our personal lineages and a way of symbolizing that our common apron could assume a sacred identity. We made every stitch with the determination to make the apron strong and durable. Every stitch was a silent prayer for peace. When we entered the inner space, we joined the inner and outer spaces of our lives. Most of us students were novices at sewing and so our aprons were imperfect in most dimensions. The stitches weren't even and the patches were sometimes akimbo. Yet, because we had imbued them with a sacred meaning that dwelt within us, they were imperfectly perfect.

When I think about my life, I think about how it resembles sashiko stitching and I think that what I present to the world through my life is something resembling a sacred commitment. I had always thought that it was important to achieve a seamless joining of inner and outer spaces, integrating who I am with what I do. I think all of us achieve just such an integration of self, but I am more inclined now to think it is a product of many overlying patches and it is hardly seamless. It is no longer important to hide the stitches or the frayed edges. There is freedom and creativity in thinking that our lives evolve not in spite of the patches but because of them. We are imperfectly perfect and beautiful. We grow and outgrow. We tear and wear out parts. We mend and we heal. We are in a process of being and becoming.

Once we recognize ourselves in our mended state, we can better appreciate the imperfect beauty of those around us. We can look closely at the mendedness of our neighbors and see that the cloth from which we are cut is the same as theirs. Their stitched patches are also sacred. May all of us be covered with sacred cloth. May all of us be protected and comforted by the stitching in our inner and outer spaces.

10-6-16

The Perfect Pen

Someone who does quantities of writing might have had the same dilemma I have experienced. All of the documentation required of me in my professional life was done by hand. I suppose that now such documentation for most jobs is recorded into a computer. I, too, have experimented with a keyboard in my own writing and have become almost paralyzed at times trying to decide how best to do it: should I drag a pen along a piece of paper or should I sit before a screen and watch all the words flow silently onto the blank page? Should I use a computer (we still refer to keyboarding as writing) to divulge to my secret journals all the longings and disappointments of my heart or should I hover over the page with pen in hand and let the tears drip and warp? If I am convinced that what I write should last for a very long time, then what pen should I pick to do that? If the paper is too thick and the pen point too fine, then the words will fade or appear anemic. If the paper is thin and the ink in the fountain pen is too copious, then every word on the page will spread and the backside of the paper will become a palimpsest of sorts and useless for recording additional thoughts.

So it is that a dedicated writer finds many excuses for not actually sitting down and beginning the process of writing. All the same, there are some considerations about writing and the tools that make that happen that reflect how one views writing in general. A pen is simply a tool that, like all tools, allows us to produce something else. And, like all tools, there isn't a single tool that does everything we want to do. So, it makes good sense to match the right pen with the paper, to pick the ink that suits the pen, to pick the nib that matches how the pen slides over the surface of the paper, and to have a pen that fits into one's hand like the handshake one hopes to get from an old friend.

In some cases, the pen selected is the one that forms the crispest letters and allows words to be compacted or spread out along the line. Ball point pens ask for a firmer grip and heavier leaning onto the paper. Ball point pens are easily rotated or held unconventionally by the hand with a uniform line emerging from the tip. Fountain pens, on the other hand, are notoriously finicky about their loyalty to their original master, having been formed by an individual's hand pressure and angle of writing. The nibs on fountain pens inherited by sons from their fathers (or daughters from their mothers) are sharpened in a way that may tear at the paper in the next generation and (who knows?) revive resentments of a difficult childhood. Managing such a great burden may mean that perfectly good tools may get discarded along with fond memories of an otherwise demanding dad.

The choice of ink may also be how one expresses the deepest thoughts and the most felicitous sentiments. What do brown or green ink connote? Should one take a chance on "cocoa" or "indigo" or "sage"? Writing snobs say that a bottle of ink should be discarded after a year so as not to clog the point of the pen. On the other hand, ball point refills never seem to run out, leaving one with the difficult decision about whether to replace early (how do you know?) when a writing project requires consistency. And, if one is conservation minded, should refills be thrown out before they have run out, just because one now wants black instead of blue?

I don't suppose it needs to be a matter of either/or but could be both/and when it comes to choosing a writing tool. One could prefer a fountain pen for those rare thank-you notes or for the letter that sails from the heart and binds one soul to another. The ball point pen might be the best tool for a father when writing his homesick daughter away from home for the first time, hoping that his nearly illegible writing will comfort her and not deepen her loneliness. The keyboard might serve better for the note that says you don't want to talk about it. In these rushed and frantic times, the fountain pen is the best reminder to slow down thinking and reacting and to foster slower responses. Writing in general is the antidote to prolonged screen times that so many of us now indulge. Writing one another forms bridges and useful connections. Handwriting implies slower and deeper reading. There are more lines to read between and greater space for it. Writing carries intention and thoughtful writing pulls from us our better selves as we make gestures of connection with others.

Perhaps these considerations are more than necessary when all we are trying to do is communicate. I would suggest, however, that the thoughts we put into when and how we write are important to a communication that supersedes the present trends toward clipped and compressed writing. Who are we when we write? Where do we find our inspirations? How does what we choose to write affect our relationships with the recipients? How are we changed by our writing? How does our writing allow for creativity in ourselves and how does it coax creativity from others? If we can stand back and in a detached way observe ourselves writing, how do we appear? Are we hunched or open? Do we pause often to think our way into our writing? Do we edit or cross out? How many other ways do we bring ourselves to our writing? And how do we invite writing companions?

I think of how daunting other writers have found the blank page. It is less a potential space with limitless possibilities than it is a millstone. Perhaps one has selected the wrong tool for this writing. Perhaps the writer hasn't considered how we can be completed by what we write. Marrying intention with acceptance of one's own small efforts can often lead to a process of growth and maturation. Perhaps we are too afraid of trusting ourselves to create new and lasting ideas. Yes, mindfulness can center us in our deepest and most noble thoughts.

It is worth considering all of these things when writing. One needn't become paralyzed attempting to make writing a perfect effort. One only needs to want to connect the inner life with ordinary life. And it is possible that the most perfect pen for you is actually a pencil.

9-25-16

Infrastructure

I believe in infrastructure. I believe that almost anything one could name could be considered infrastructure, as everything depends on something else. In some cases, there is building and in other cases there is borrowing and sharing. But almost every process one could name refers back to a dependence on infrastructure. Most of the time we think of infrastructure as hard metal and wiring or stonework used in the construction of bridges and buildings. Indeed, these objects are what we think of when we talk about the invisibility of that which sustains our way of life. We take for granted that there always has been and always will be an interstate highway system and railroads, semi-trucks and trains to haul all the other objects we take for granted, as well as the buildings in which we are treated for disease and into which we go to worship or take refuge from storms. There are the bridges that connect us to land out of reach of our swimming capacities and landing strips that catch us when we come back to earth from our flights. 

Books and ideas are also infrastructure, as is the educational system that allows us access to them. Teachers are part of our infrastructure and so are our lineages of ancestors. In a special way, we humans are the infrastructure for the next generation of humans and our own DNA is an infrastructure for the growth and development of who we are and who we become. We are the substrates for viruses and bacteria. Our gut linings (our microbiome) harbor and entertain billions of microbes that are doing things for and to us that we are just now beginning to uncover. The science that is being enlisted for this new frontier is the latest iteration of scientific concepts and sophisticated technology that are themselves infrastructure for future discoveries. Infrastructure implies process and change and growth, even though our first-pass thoughts consider it fixed and finished. 

When my hiking partner and I were trudging along the crest of the hill behind the house, we were attracted by the beautiful lichen structures inhabiting the stones tossed up by the millennial-long heaving of the earth. It had rained very recently and that made the lichen colors much more vibrant and beautiful. In researching lichens, I found out that the world of lichens, a symbiotic cluster of algae and fungi, is a very complex world indeed. Even the taxonomic classification of the 20,000 species is complicated and packed with names that won't ever enter the common lexicon. It is believed that lichen cover about 6% of the surface of the planet and species are found in all ecological systems from alpine to hot lava beds. Some species never land and reproduce but travel around the world on air currents. While lichens are not our preferred food, they are the food source for some animals in harsh climates. They, too, are infrastructure, just as the stones and other surfaces onto which they cling. 

It is humbling to think that a lowly lichen plant has a longer life-span than I do. It is so common to think of humans as the center of the universe and to think of our own infrastructures as permanent and precious that we don't consider how impermanent we really are. Perhaps, thinking of humans as dispensable is threatening. Perhaps, the thought depresses us. It is not easy to think that sometime in the future (the future begins tomorrow or the next moment) we will no longer be here to take our lives for granted. We live our lives under the illusion that we will live forever. The truth is that we won't live forever, but we will last forever. If one accepts the idea that matter is neither created nor destroyed, then what becomes of us when we die? It is an age-old question that bedevils us even today. 

One needn't subscribe to a religious tradition or philosophical dogma to participate in the conversation about what death means to us humans. From the perspective of lichen infrastructure, it may be that some of our atoms will be incorporated into one of those species that floats in and out of clouds and circles the world, much as we once dreamt when we were young and wondered what it would be like to fly so high. Perhaps, we will become part of a smaller community attached to a rock somewhere on a hillside, only to be discovered and admired by some hikers out for a Sunday walk on a beautiful fall day. Who knows? 

The idea of becoming something other than what we see in other humans around us is a mentally challenging exercise. But if we take the challenge and think more broadly and deeply about what life means and what interdependence means, then perhaps the idea might become one of freedom rather than one in which we are imprisoned by our limited concepts of birth and death. Perhaps we will be able to see how beautiful the present moment is and how beautiful the world is from the perspective of a bipedal and upright being. Perhaps we will begin to comprehend how beautiful it is that the world is changing with us in it in all our forms. I believe in infrastructure. I am infrastructure.