Two Christmases

I just celebrated Christmas, both of them. I think that we've all heard before the voices of people bemoaning the excesses and business of the Christmas season, glanced over article after article offering tips for de-stressing the holidays. I think a large percentage of people are coming to the conclusion that Christmas, as it is currently celebrated in America, is out of balance, somewhat out of control. But the conclusion that I have come to this Christmas is that there are actually two very distinct holidays that are taking place at the same time: Christian Christmas and secular Christmas.

After a year of sadly neglecting my spiritual disciplines, I decided that I would make a concerted effort to participate in this advent season. I resolved to pray and fast according to the practice of the Church. As part of my regular prayer time, I decided to read the Philokalia (a compilation of Orthodox monastic writings). As I read and prayed, one idea became more and more clear: the key to prayer is the abandonment of distractions, the discovery of silence. The writings emphasize a detachment from worldy cares of all sorts, all appetites, all possessions.

Meanwhile, I couldn't help but feel that secular Christmas is a daunting barrage of distractions.
And all this time, I have been attempting to participate in this advent season with quiet reverence and anticipation. I don't really have anything against secular Christmas per se; I just prefer Christian Christmas. I prefer the season of quiet contemplation and anticipation.

The Order and Chaos of Nature

I just stepped in from a hike through the Grand Forest on Bainbridge Island, Washington. The forest is quite nice, if you like all spongy and mossy (which I do). The dominant trees are douglas-fir and Western Red Cedar, but none of these are old growth trees, so there is a proliferation of smaller plant life under the moderate canopy: Sword Fern; Huckleberry; and a ton of other plants that I'm not familiar with. The relative density of plants creates a habitat for lots of small animals, various birds and squirrels.
Anyway, as I looked into the messy tangle of plants, I remembered a line from The Mission: referring to the jungle, Father Gabriel says, "It's a trifle overgrown." This, in turn, made me think of a comment that one of you had made to me privately, saying that left on its own, nature tends toward chaos. This comment reminded me of the Genesis passage in which God tells the people to subdue the earth.
This is all very fascinating to me because I have always been of the camp that views the natural world as balanced and ordered, self-balancing and self-ordering. Once again, you my friends are pushing me into more nuanced ways of viewing the world.
I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this topic.

An Old Analogy that I've always wanted to turn into a Drinking Game

I came up with the following analogy several years ago:

Each person is like a glass of alcohol (this is off to a good start already, isn't it?). So, you take three people; one is like a glass with Vodka; one is like a glass with Kahlua; one is like a glass with cream (OK, cream isn't alcohol, but I need it for the analogy). Each person-glass contains her own substance and some empty space. Each one brings something unique to the table. Still, each one alone is incomplete. However, together, they can become so much more than what they are alone: the Kahlua pours some of herself into Vodka; Vodka pours some of himself into Kahlua, and together they become Black Russians. They have given and taken, and as a result, each has become more complicated, more nuanced, more complete. Still, they each have empty room in the glass, so Cream pours some of herself into them, and they pour themselves into her, and they all become White Russians (this would be even more fun making Long Island Iced Tea).

Friendship is like this analogy: each person contains something unique to offer the world and some empty space to receive the world. When we give and receive from friends, we become more whole, more complete people. Conversely, when we fail to receive, we remain limited. When we fail to give, we deny others an opportunity to become more. I have allowed my friends to shape my life in various ways, and I am a better person thanks to all of you (seriously, I'd be even worse if it weren't for your influence).

Cheers

American Culture(s)

I recently read a book called Balthazar. It's book number two in a series called the Alexandrian Quartet -- four novels about a collection of characters who live in Alexandria. One of the central themes of the novels is that idea that the city makes the people who they are: in the first novel, Durrell (the author) goes as far as saying that it is not the characters who live but rather Alexandria that lives through them. In other words, the characters' personalities are the manifestation of the character of the city itself.
I have wondered about this a lot. To what extent is this idea real? Are we manifestations of the consciousness of our city or town? To what degree? We live in an incredibly mobil society. Most of us have lived in multiple places. In what ways are we conglomerations of the cultures that we have belonged to, or at least the cultures that have surrounded us?
On a related note, I think about the homogenization of America a lot. It seems to me that we are becoming less regional, in terms of cultural distinctions. We watch the same movies and TV shows; we shop at the same stores; eat at the same restaurants; listen to the same music; wear the same clothes. As we move around, our regional cultures blend. What have we lost in terms of regional character? What have we held onto? What have we gained?
I'll close this with the words of Jack Kerouac: "Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"

A Few Thoughts on the Nature of Religion

I had the opportunity this weekend to spend a lot of time with a friend of mine here, driving to the outer banks to surf. We talked about faith, mostly Christianity, for a good solid seven hours. The two of us have some different ideas regarding the interactions between God and people. It was nice talking with him because it forced me to think and to articulate some things that I have come to believe in the last five years (maybe longer, really).

One thing stands out particularly to me. He asked me, "If we were to die in a car accident right now, do you know that you would go to heaven? What assurance do you have?" I was raised in the camp that asks this question, so I knew the question; I knew the philosophy that informed the question; and I knew the answer that would be considered the right answer. But that was not the answer that I gave. I found that I couldn't answer, "I know that I would go to heaven because I asked Jesus Christ into my heart, and I have faith that the saving blood of His sacrifice covers my sin and allows me into heaven." I could not give this answer, even though I hold much of it to be true. Instead, I fumbled about a bit, trying to articulate my experience that the closer I draw to God the more I become aware of my unworthiness. But this wasn't really at the heart of what I wanted to say.

Then, the answer I wanted came to me: going to heaven is not the goal -- loving God and becoming like Him is the goal. So I told my friend that I'm not really concerned about whether or not I get into heaven. What is religion? The word itself means the reunification of God and humans, a coming together. I find that I am much more moved by the love poetry in Song of Songs than I ever was in the past. True Christianity, true religion, is an intense love between a person and God. "I am my beloved's, and he is mine." Religion is not a legal contract -- it is a burning, passionate love, a desire to be near the One you love, and a desire to become like the One you love. That is all.

I cannot talk about this adequately at all. I'm sorry. I don't mean to preach, and I certainly don't mean to criticize anyone's philosophy. Love is not the stuff of essays; it is the stuff of poetry. Leave philosophy for the philosophers and love for the lovers.

The Thusness and Suchness of a Skinny Whiteboy

I have always been a skinny whiteboy. But there have been times when I've wanted to be something else (I've never minded the boy part; it's the skinny whiteness that I've had issues with). Over the years, I've tried at various times to be less skinny and less white. This is sounding ridiculous to me as I write it down -- good; it should sound ridiculous. I composed the following haiku about it:

Does the Walking Stick
Envy the Bumble Bee?
Utter foolishness

I watched a movie last night called The Painted Veil (starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts). It's the story of a married couple who do not love each other. It's the story of them learning to love each other. My favorite scene is one in which the couple are sitting and talking together for the first time in months: they discuss the incongruities of their relationship; she tells him how she loves games like tennis and golf -- "and I like men who play games." She laughs about the way he tried to interest her in the art and canals of Venice that were so moving to him. Then he says, "I suppose you're right. It was silly of us to look for qualities in each other which we never had." This sounds tragic, but it's actually the turning point in the film. Once they are finally able to see one another for who they truly are, they are able to begin to fall in love with a real person, rather than being frustrated by the illusions of an imagined lover who never materializes.

There is great liberation in learning to see the world as it truly is.

Poll Results

Well, the results are in for my first blog poll: as it turns out, my friends are a bunch of mama's boys and daddy's girls, just as I suspected.
Seriously, thanks to all of you who took time to answer the poll. I thought that it was a good question because I couldn't answer it myself: each of the factors that I listed have played such a crucial part in the formulation of my own identity that I would be different person than I am if any one element was removed. Apparently, it was a pretty good question because your answers were pretty evenly distributed too (although I will say I'm a little disappointed in my fellow "surfers", if you even call yourselves that -- geeze).
I do find it very interesting that the one answer that got the most response was 'parents'. It makes me think long and hard about the significance of parenthood: not only do our children become our world, we become theirs. I think we often underestimate the degree to which parents create the environment that shapes young people. It makes me think of my parents and the environment that they created for me. Specifically, it makes me think about ways in which all of the other person-shaping pieces of my past grew out of that environment: my parents raised me in a very religious home; they read to me a lot and gave me lots of books; they brought me up on a Minnesota fishing resort and in LA; my dad taught me to body-surf. I absorbed all of these things. They germinated somewhere deep inside. As an adult, I took several of these things in different directions, different from where my mom and dad have taken them, but it was they who planted the seeds.
It makes one consider the significance of parenting. Thanks y'all.

How Many People is Too Many?

I just got back from my local election place. I'm wearing my American-flag "I Voted" sticker on my lapel, as every true patriot would do. In Charlotte, all of the local issues really revolve around a central issue: growth. We are a city that is growing rapidly. People are drawn here from all over the country because, as far as cities go, Charlotte is clean and green, safe, aesthetically pleasing, and enormously community oriented. Collectively, everyone seems very enthusiastic about our growth. We are looking forward to all of the benefits that growth brings -- increased crime; increased pollution; increased congestion; loss of local character; a break-down of community. In short, it's an exciting time, kind of like watching a healthy, beautiful athlete destroy themself with steroids and human growth hormones.
So all of this has me thinking about growth, and the size limitations of a healthy human community. (Also, I've been reading some interesting essays on this topic, written by Edward Abbey in the early eighties.) When does a community outgrow itself? At what point do we say, 'This is too much. There are too many people here.'? What are the markers of healthy parameters? What factors must we consider? Natural resources seems like an obvious place to start, but what other quality-of-life issues do we look at as indicators?
I'm really looking for feedback here. Is there a fixed number of people beyond which true community as we think of it becomes, if not impossible, severely handicapped? Or do the numbers vary based on the nature of different locations?

Why I Watch Bull Riding

I tivo professional bull riding. Why? I love the psychology! Not man versus nature, or man versus beast, but man versus himself. Any of the cowboys are capable of riding any bull on any given day, physically capable. The question is whether or not the man is psychologically able to stay on the bull – can he control his own fears and his own movements for eight seconds?
Eight seconds – it’s not a long time, but it can be an eternity for a person who is in the midst of directly confronting fear.
There is something in bull riding that reminds me of surfing and kayaking. They share a fundamental element: in each sport, a person puts himself or herself in the hands of a force that is more powerful. A person cannot out-muscle a bull. A person cannot out-muscle a river. A person cannot out-muscle the ocean. There is no chance. All of these are forces beyond our control. And so each of these sports, or arts, becomes a microcosm for life – we ride along in the grips of forces more powerful than ourselves; all that we can do is learn to control our own minds and bodies so that we move with the force rather than being crushed by it.
The other thing is the absolute presence in the moment. Riding a bull, running rapids, or riding a wave, one cannot be anywhere else, cannot think of anything else; one is fully present in the moment in a very zen-like way.

“The play’s the thing”

Play is the essence of life. By ‘play’ I mean a couple of different things simultaneously. First, I mean ‘play’ in the sense that moving pieces are put into play. Life itself is composed of an endless collection of moving pieces, each one constantly at play, in flux: the ebb and flow of the tide, pulled by the orbit of the moon around our endlessly spinning planet; the rock cycle, slowly eroding, sinking below the surface, melting, being pushed upward once more; the water cycle, evaporating from the sea, raining on the mountains and plains, gathering into streams, creeks, and rivers, eventually rejoining the sea; the various life cycles of birth, reproduction and death.
Everything is moving, always, even if imperceptibly. Life is a constant flow. Yet, I think that there is something in human beings that makes us yearn to make things stable, constant, un-moving. I think that this may be a misguided desire based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the world: from a short-sighted perspective, things look solid, even permanent, things like rocks, mountains, and cities. We like permanence because it gives us a feeling of security. But perhaps we could find a more true security in learning to become part of the endless flow of life.
This is all more abstract than I was hoping for, so I’ll change directions a bit, probably into more abstraction: we need play in our lives. And here by ‘play’ I mean tension. Life is composed of one force working against another in a push and pull dance. We are accustomed to fearing tension, in relationships, in our own lives. We tend to hold harmony as an ideal, not realizing that tension is often the means to harmony. Tension – the expression of different forces engaged in honest conflict with one another. The rock directs the course of the river for years; the river smoothes the surface of the rock, changes the shape of the rock, moves the rock. In human relationships, I express myself openly and honestly, you express yourself openly and honestly; the result is tension, a tension which in turn leads to a better understanding of one another. The value of play in relationships.
The same principle applies to the conflicts inherent in the individual, conflicts of beliefs, and conflicts of desires. We long for a unity of self, a oneness of purpose and being (I think that’s a large part of the appeal of Mel Gibson’s movies, like Mad Max, in which all of the protagonists' thoughts, feelings, and desires are channeled into one unified sense of purpose – revenge). Maybe we suppress parts of our selves, block out some ideas because they conflict with our image of a cohesive identity. But maybe what we need in order to find our true identities is to allow our conflicting beliefs and desires to play against one another in order to find either resolution or harmony. Play.
The second meaning that I had in mind when I first said ‘play’ is playing, as in play time, or ‘go play outside.’ It seems to me that our increasingly competitive culture is losing the value of play. And what are we without play? We are reduced to mere functionality, servitude, mechanism. Without play, we don’t have life. Without play, we don’t have creativity (or at best, we have an anemic, stifled, pragmatic version of creativity). Without play, we don’t have joy. What are we without joy?

Heroes and Men

The following is an excerpt from a story I'm writing:

Heroes and Men
One day, the two remaining couples were in the fields harvesting squash. The hot, back-straining work went easier with good conversation, so the friends talked. Not looking up from his picking, Gray asked, “So Joshua, who are your heroes?”
“My what?”
“Who are your heroes? Who do you look up to, who do you want to be like?”
“I don’t have any heroes, Gray.”
“What do you mean you don’t have any heroes?”
“In this day and age, how can you have any heroes?”
“Especially in this day and age, man! You’ve got to have heroes!”
“How can you think of anyone as a hero? I mean who do you look to? Athletes? I’m not ten years old anymore. Politicians? They’re all corrupt as shit. Religious leaders? I don’t trust any of the living ones, and the dead ones are all dead, ya know what I mean? So who does that leave? Maybe people in books, but they’re not real. You take fiction as the obvious starting point: the characters are made up people. They may be beautiful; they may be admirable, brave, strong, whatever, but they aren’t real. At best, they’re the human imagination creating images of all the things we wish we could be but are not. Maybe we can learn some things from them, but it would be pretending to call them heroes.
Even non-fiction is fiction. I mean, non-fiction may be based on reality or based on real people, but it’s not real. It’s edited. It’s designed to show certain things and hide others. Take Jesus for example. Who was he really? For a fleeting second, the image of Father Eli flashed through Joshua’s mind, but he continued: all we have to go on is what his friends wrote about him thirty years after his death. How much of his life was filtered, not even consciously but subconsciously by his disciples. You know how it is – our memories render events and people down to a few simple ideas or images. How badly did the disciples want someone to believe in? The Jewish people had been waiting for a messiah for six hundred years. Then Jesus came along. He was a good man, an honest man, and he spoke freely. He pulled his disciples out of meaningless, mundane lives and made them into heroes, like Robin Hood’s band of merry men. So, how badly did the disciples need Jesus to be a hero? Their very identities relied on Jesus’ deification.”
“Sounds like Jesus is your hero.”
“Are you listening to me at all? What I’m saying is that we manufacture heroes out of mere men because we need to believe in something bigger than ourselves. We need to believe that we can become something bigger than ourselves. But the truth is we can’t. Men and women are merely men and women. We’re all imperfect; we’re all corrupt in some ways. And so, to say that I have a hero is to make a hero out of someone who is no better and no worse than myself. I would rather just be myself and let everyone else be themselves, no judging, no pretending. If I have a hero, I stop being myself and I become instead a bad copy of my hero.”
“I don’t think so. I think that just the opposite is true: it’s our heroes that teach us how to become ourselves. The giants that walk among us show us what it really means to be a human being. People like Ghandi and Jesus and Buddha show us the potential that each of us has inside. Are they perfect? I don’t know, maybe. But I do know that they are more real than most people. They are more evolved, more enlightened, more fully developed, however you want to put it. They show us what we can become and how to get there.”
“So who are your heroes, Gray?”
“Gary Snyder, the Buddha.”
“Gary Snyder?”
“Yeah, Kerouac’s friend. He’s a poet and a Buddhist and an individualist. His poetry taught me about Buddhism and about the importance of living a simple life, living off of the land. You have to live with the land, in harmony with the land. You become a part of it, and it becomes a part of you. You don’t take more than you need, and the land doesn’t give you less than you need. It’s a matter of faith.”
“Alright, I can see how you can be inspired by people, and how you can learn from people, but I still think you’re ultimately barking up the wrong tree if you look for yourself in someone else’s branches. You know what I mean?”
Gray looked at the plant between his fingers: “you need a spiritual practice if you want to get anywhere.”
“Spirituality is what you experience at the core of your individual identity,” Joshua said; “my life is my spiritual practice. Everything that I do and see and touch is my spiritual practice. Pulling these weeds is a spiritual exercise. Kissing Shasta is a spiritual ecstacy. Making dinner and eating dinner, and doing the dishes afterwords, is a spiritual discipline. It’s all here,” he said pointing to his heart, “and here, and here,” pointing to his eyes and his fingers.
Gray nodded his approval. “Have you ever tried any Buddhist breathing techniques?”
“Nope. Why do you think I need that?”
“Because you think that you don’t need it.”
“I’d like to try,” Shasta cut in.
“What about you, girl? You got any heroes?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Joshua looked surprised, and he turned to her curiously.
“I guess I’m supposed to have some sort of intellectual answer. You’re all talking about religious heroes and book characters and writers, so you’ll probably be disappointed with my answer, but it’s true. My hero in Olivia Walton.”
“Who?”
“From the TV show The Waltons. She was the mom. I used to watch the re-runs when I was a kid and I was staying at my mom’s house. Mom would just leave me in my room with the TV while she and her friends smoked out, or when she would leave for a few hours to spange on the corner. I used to pretend that Olivia was my real mom because she was always so strong and loving. She was the real backbone of her family. She never asked for anything for herself. She just took care of John and all their kids. She never needed anything for herself; she just needed to love her family. When I was little, I always thought, ‘I want a mom like that,’ then when I got bigger, I started to think, ‘I want to be like that.’”
Gina smiled as she looked at Shasta and Joshua. “You two are perfect for eachother. You know, you both gave the same answer to Gray’s question.” . . .

mining for good: the act of adaptation

"The Buddha can be found in the machine too" -- my favorite line from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author is responding to the popular sentiment that whatever is spiritual in the world is only found in nature and that the creations of man crudely cover over and destroy all that is good and holy in this world. I found the statement above particularly appealing because it challenged the perspective that I had held for as long as I could remember.

When I was nine years old, my family moved from the woods of northern Minnesota to a bungalow in a Los Angeles suburb. I wasn't happy about the move. All I wanted was to go back home to the trees and the lake, and my grandparents and my cousins and aunts and uncles. But we didn't go back; I stayed in LA for the next ten years. The entire time, I pined for what I had lost, looking back, looking back. The pain of this memory was made more accute by vacations back to the place that I always considered home and my natural habitat. I never felt like I belonged to the city of angels in any way, nor that it belonged to me in any way. We remained strangers, and I must admit, I felt oppressed by this alien world.

Still, Los Angeles was not hell, and I looked, unconsciously, for the Buddha in the machine. What I found was surfing, the church, and some good friends. The surfing that is undeniably a part of Los Angeles became not only a refuge and a joy for me; it became a lifestyle, a force that would shape my identity for years to come. I was no longer an alien in a world of asphalt and smog, displaced from distant forest lands -- I was a surfer. The smell of surf wax and salt water and the posters that covered my walls soothed me more than I even realized at the time. In churches I found idealism that resonated with me; I found community; and I found people who were kind and gentle and genuinely trying to be good human beings. Finally, I had the great joy of close friendships all through those years -- I always had people close to me to sustain me and share life with me. I will always be greatful for that.

LA is not home for me, has never been home for me, never could be home for me, yet I found much there that was good. It is this goodness amidst that which I find undesirable that makes me want to explore the idea of adaptation. I vaguely recall reading somewhere a definition of intelligence that said that its mark is the ability to adapt to new situations. I like this. We adapt; we evolve; discomfort forces us to grow, not only by surviving hardship, but by discovering beauty in places that we never would have thought to look. In doing this, we find parts of ourselves that we would not have otherwise found. We have to dig for good sometimes, to mine it out of even harsh environments, because it is there.

Mining for good has not been an easy lesson for me. I have spent much of my life looking back over my shoulder to places and circumstances that I have liked better than whatever circumstances I may have found myself in at the time. One mistake I've made repeatedly is trying to force a new environment into the shape of another environment. I still wanted to be a surfer in Arkansas. The closest I got was skimboarding a flooded golf course. The tragedy is that in stubbornly clinging to the treasured pieces of past environments, I missed some of the beauty and opportunities of Arkansas. I remember now a friend inviting me to try whitewater kayaking with him. I wasn't interested -- it wasn't surfing. I regret that now.

Years later, when I moved to North Carolina, I took up whitewater kayaking, precisely because I can kayak here -- it's an inherent part of this geographical environment, whereas surfing is three hours away and terribly inconsistent. I love kayaking; it meets some sort of primal need that is close to my soul. Through kayaking, I connect with my new environment intimately. Kayaking also opens up much of the country to me: before, I never wanted to live anywhere where I couldn't surf; now, I could live anywhere where I could surf or kayak.

The examples of surfing and kayaking are subjective, very personal to me, but I believe that there is a more universal principle underlying all of this. Namely, there is joy and light and goodness in every environment. Sometimes it is all around us; other times it is difficult to find, but if we actively dig for good, I cannot help but believe that we will discover positive adaptation.

Immediate Lessons from Nature

What is our relationship with the natural world today? I fear that many of us don't have much of a relationship to our natural environment anymore. Collectively, we seem to know so little about the geography, geology, topography, flora, fauna, and history of the places in which we live. Some of us let the natural world slip by largely un-noticed, a vague prettiness to be visited on occasion. Others have lost contact amidst the great business of daily existence. Many have never really had a chance to know the land because they have been raised in large, urban environments.
Please excuse the long preamble -- what I want to get to is this: what lessons has nature taught you? For me, the great presence of the natural world has always been water. Lakes, oceans, and rivers have been places that I have loved deeply. Lately, I think about water all the time. I think about whitewater. I live near the largest man-made whitewater course in the world (class II - IV rapids). The course is made of poured concrete and deliberately placed rocks and gates, yet the water that flows through the course is as alive and natural as water anywhere else, so I am learning from the water.
One of the great gifts that the water is giving me is the joy of failure: it is teaching me to embrace failure as more than an unfortunate necessity. The water has taught me that the most sure and direct way to find what I want is through failure. In concrete terms, when I paddle the course trying to avoid getting flipped, I am paddling in fear, hoping to avoid failure (and possible injury). When I do this, I progress very slowly, and ironically, the stiffness of fear makes me more vulnerable to getting flipped. Other days, I paddle with the intention of getting mauled by the waves -- on the best days, this is something devoid of fear; it is instead an opportunity for a kind of intimacy with the movement of the water. On those days when I embrace failure, I work through weaknesses and progress very quickly. By embracing failure, one side-steps fear.

religion and higher education

Here's a theory I've been kicking around for a few weeks:

Religion and university education play enormous roles in shaping individuals. A strong religious background tends to create a certain type of person. A university education tends to create a different type of person. A combination of the two seems to create a third type of person. Finally, the absence of either tends to create yet another type of person.

How strong do you think these factors are in shaping a person's identity? If you believe that there is any truth to the basic idea, how would you characterize each of the categories I listed above -- I'm interested in seeing how other people's perceptions compare with my own.

I know this is very clumsy, but I just wanted to throw something out there to get the ball rolling.

how deep the rabbit hole goes

Welcome, friends. This is an experiment that I'm starting. What I'm envisioning is a kind of cyber-tea, a place where we can post serious ideas that we find in books or films or in our heads and talk about them. I just finished reading a novel called Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell. One of the central themes of the novel is the idea that we can only come close to reality by laying our personal perspectives side by side with those of others, because reality is complex and layered. That's what I would like to do here.

I would like to talk about God, politics, literature, psychology, and whatever else may pertain to the human experience and the search for truth. I'm inviting a select few friends to start this to see how it goes.

So, what's on your mind?