When I typed the title of this post, I had to reconsider.  Really?  Marriage and aesthetic unity?   What I mean by aesthetic unity as in what emerges from a strong work of art or a successful theatre production, an attribute of a production’s ruling idea, metaphor, or concept, so that all the choices being made in the various aspects of design, directing, and acting are informed by that ruling idea, metaphor, or concept.  (Okay, some people will argue aesthetic unity is passe, certainly not a post-modern value, but I still think it holds…anyway…that’s another post.)

What does aesthetic unity have to do with marriage?

I’ve been married 31 years today.   It’s been a wonderful ride, with ups and downs, triumphs and failures, all the variety of feeling and action that you’d expect from a long journey together.   Achievements and set-backs, depressions and ecstasies, kids coming and going, families growing and changing and hearts breaking all over the place for reasons best kept private.    Moving forward day by day, first Year One, then it stretches into Years Three to Five, facing choices about what it will mean to be us, our togetherness, our love-making, our fighting, and yes, our economics, our possessions–houses and cars and the stuff that hangs on the walls.   There’s cooking and travel and parents, and it moves to Years Seven and Nine, the kids arriving just after Dad’s death, and it’s great, mournful, amazing, fun, expensive, and wistful.  Then come Years Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, and everyone’s hanging on for dear life because sometimes dear life has to be hung on to in the face of aching, doubt, temptation, more expense, melt-down, and rebuilding.   Then more openings and closing of days and weeks, and the Years get to Twenty, then Twenty-Five, and more death stops by, and costs spiral (economic and emotional) and new work shows up, work you hadn’t planned on, and you get to it, all the while watching marriages around you dropping like flies.  And then there’s the culture, the moral shifts, the battles in culture that send all your sensibilities reeling as you try and figure out along with the rest of the world what’s true, what’s good, and what’s real, especially about you and the person you’ve been waking up next to for all these years.    One thing you know, as all these scenes play out, the ruling metaphors are simple: God, faithfulness, oneness, loyalty, kindness.   The shared hand, the look across the pillow, the embrace at the window as the child flies away, the continuing interest in that ever-changing, never-changing face across the corner table in the bar.   Commitment, muscles bound together, the ongoing wedding of hope, cynicism, inquiry, faith, questioning, tears, and the simple shared ease of a long, red sunset.

And after 31 years, you think, is it possible that this production is still open, still running, still thriving, still finding the newness of moments, still finding the kind of meaning that holds the world together?

In the middle of all this, you have to know that our aesthetic sensibilities have places of intersection for sure, but by and large, Anjie and I are pretty different.   Different enough to make the “opposites attract” idea pretty applicable.   Different “tastes”, you might say; I like foreign films and slower, more atmospheric works, and she’s an action girl who likes music with a strong beat.   I enjoy jazz and classic rock; she likes country western (though not as much as she used to.)    Our relationship to foods and other sensual realities differs as well, but I think what we’ve learned over the years that an emphasis on the common ground can help guide creative choices much the way ruling metaphors or concepts can guide individual choices in a production.   Early production meetings (cups of coffee at JoJo’s in Austin, Texas, later Starbucks and the kitchen table) focused on common commitments to God, to kindness, to being for each other, to learning, to admitting to fault when we screwed up, and to actually verbalizing those classic words, “I’m sorry”, “I forgive you”, and “I love you” as often as needed, which is pretty much every day.  Humility, warmth, trying as best we can to move in “grace and peace” which has emerged more and more in mind as the thing I wanted all along from life, from family, from that great production called my marriage.

Finally, the idea is that if you look at any one moment of the marriage (or the production), it may not feel like a unified piece of the whole.    Sometimes ruling ideas fray, and you lose sight of them, and you veer off into territory that just doesn’t make any sense but you can’t go back, you have to invent on the fly, and hopefully find your back into the center of things.   Happens all the time in creative work.   Sometimes you think the piece you’re working on isn’t worth pursuing anymore.  But then you hang on, and hang on, and finally, days come when you can back up and understand something of how the ruling metaphor or concept was present even when you thought the whole thing was tanking.

Well, it’s pretty clear at this moment in our production that it’s not tanking.  Will it rise to the heights of great art, soaring as thrilled audiences are moved to weep and laugh, inspired to go out and take life on one more time?   Frankly, that’s not what we’re after.  We’re after more of a quiet poem of a life, a corner spot where a few folks can contemplate what love might look like if they decide to give it a shot.

Anyway, I’m not sure my metaphor works, but all I was trying to say is this:  you can enjoy a work of art in all it’s parts and/or as a long, beautiful whole.    Marriage is much like that.   Don’t miss the moments, sculpt them as best you can, holding the ruling idea in mind, body, and heart.   And don’t forget to look over the long arc of it all, and enjoy it’s fullness as a whole work.   It’s especially helpful to do that when the moments aren’t working as well as you’d like.   Sometimes you just forget your lines and stand there until you remember them.

Okay, enough.   You get the picture.   I’m still in the middle of the production, and my cues take me away from here just now.

The show must go on…loving it.   Planning on running for at least another 30 years….

Birthdays glow.    It’s silly, really.  Of course we had to get here through the passage of a particular day in time, at a particular moment.  For me it was 9:20 a.m. in a Lubbock hospital back in 1959, born to a young couple with a daughter and an uncertain future.  A half-century and more passes: the father dies, the mother finds her way among church and friends, the daughter’s dreams come sort of true and then they don’t, but then, how is that so different than the rest of us?   That calendar day approaches again, that day where we remember that we got here at a particular time, and that at least a few people not only noticed that we were born, but were actually glad it happened.

“Happy birthday.”   Funny little sentiment, that, but so wonderful to hear.   I have no idea why.   A wish that the day of remembering your beginning–no particulars, just that you began–be happy, joyful, that the activities of that day be symbolic of something innately divine and grand.   “You were given life all those years ago.   I hope you’re happy about that, and that all the moments of this day stand as small symbols of the overall happiness of your life.”   Something like that is hidden in that little phrase, “Happy Birthday.”

For me, the day glows.  May 4 sounds different to my ear than any other date.  So do the days marking the births of my family–my wife, my children, my mother, my sister, even my dead father.   And the dates of other beginnings and endings, anniversaries and moments of death, markers of life’s rhythms, the comings and goings of the simple and the profound.   I don’t know, maybe all days glow…but May 4 is just different.  It’s not that I deliberately try to make it glow…it simply does.  And most years, that glowing is irrelevant, it’s just a sense of awareness, as if the sun has a bit more shine, the rain a bit more coolness, a touch a bit more comfort.

For some, I know, there’s no glow at all.  And it seems selfish and pompous to write that my birthday glows.   “Rub it in,” I hear somewhere out there, a tone bitter and ugly from someone whose sour life is destroying them.   And its not their fault, not really…there are million legitimate sufferings to destroy any given day.   “Happy Birthday” can seem cruel, a bitter joke in the mouth of the naive and immature.    But just to be clear, the glow of the day has nothing to do with gifts or even the wishes of friends.   The day glows long before anything happens, any parties get planned, or any cakes get baked and candled.

I guess its just another way my amazement at things plays out.  I’m here.  You’re here.  We’re here.  The most normal thing in the world.  But I can barely take it in.    The human arrival was no given, and  there are those I will love with all my heart who have not yet been conceived, neither in body or in the mind of God.   How lucky we are to have at least a shot at life, at love, at experience, at giving.  Why it hurts like hell I don’t know.    Why the ache, why the evil, why the enemy, why the need for rescue…I don’t know.

But I for one am thankful.   Gratitude again, perhaps naive, perhaps not taking suffering into account nearly enough, but even so, I am grateful.  For my birth, which I had nothing to do with, and for all my life, which I have little to do with still, except that portion that God trusts me with, for better or worse.   And for all of you who stopped by to say Happy Birthday (face-to-face, notes, Facebook, however you went about it), all of you from so many different parts of my life, from different eras of the last 53 years, I can only say that I am grateful for how all our paths have crossed, and for the way those weavings have perhaps brought a bit more glow to all of us.

We’re still in Easter season.   Deep into the celebration of birth and rebirth, and I’m going to count these days not just as the one birthday of last week, but why not have a birthday season?   I’ll certainly celebrate tomorrow, because it’s the day Anjie and I started our journey together 31 years ago.

This year, when it rolls around, I hope your birthday glows, and I hope you party for a whole season.

How amazing that we’re here….  

So Friday night I got together with a few friends for intentional conversation, and the topic was…well, conversation.   We asked questions like, “If you’ve just had a great conversation with someone, what were the things that made for the greatness of the time?”  ”What are conversation killers?”  ”What do you expect when you enter into conversation?”  ”How do you keep a hospitable conversation going when opposing viewpoints are in play, especially about topics such as politics or religion?”   “What do you do when the person you’re talking to never asks you a question?”  ”What do you do when one person dominates a conversation between a roomful of people?”  ”How do you ensure that lesser voices get heard?”

We had this conversation as a sort of test run for an experiment I’m planning on dabbling with this year.   Along with a couple of dear, like-hearted friends, I’m going to be hosting a series of evenings during the year centered on intentional conversations between friends about things that simply need to be talked about.  The word “salon” comes to mind, but I doubt what we’ll be doing could be called a salon, but perhaps merely salon-esque.   I have a general list of topics going, but I want to stay alive to that new ideas that will present themselves as we go.  We’ll certainly talk art, music, and  theatre, and what else?   Maybe politics, or at least subjects with political implications, maybe faith and/or religion (I’ve been talking about those kinds of topics for years), and hopefully some science and sociology as well.   (After watching the Oscars last night, it would be great fun to unpack the meaning of celebrity, achievement, honoring of achievement, beauty, the state of racial justice in the U.S. film industry, etc.)

But I wanted to start with an evening about the art of talking.   My impression is that there’s fairly wide agreement that the tone of much public discourse is toxic, and for many people, that toxicity creates a barrier of entry into meaningful conversation.    Our need for dialogue and connection has perhaps never been greater, and the best that can be said about our skills for entering into those dialogues effectively is that we need work.    One thing we came away with in our conversation Friday night was the fact that we just don’t get the kind of opportunity we need to actually sit down and practice the skills that make for great questions, high quality listening, the considerate and humane exchange of ideas, and great conversation that nudges all toward better relationship and deeper truth.

There was nothing scientific about the discussion, and we weren’t really seeking to prove anything.   So we each walked away with different ideas ringing in our minds, and there was no “here’s the next step” sort of conclusions.   At best, we took some thoughts with us to mull over.   Here are a few of them:

1) Conversation and relationship has the best chance when we are working to discover, to remember, and to protect the other’s humanity.

2) Empathy and compassion are built across bridges of human likeness.   The very notion that we should be able to honor differences is a shared notion, one of the ways in which we are alike.

3) Authenticity is paramount.   At the same time, expression and restraint are in tension, and there are times when your authenticity of expression must give way to a wise use of restraint on behalf of the other.

4) “Winning” is a very different intention than “Building relationship.”

5) The quality of the questions asked determines much about the shape and quality of the conversation.

6) One-upmanship is a conversation killer.  ”I know, I felt the same way.  Here’s what happened to me (and it’s way more interesting that what happened to you!)   Sure, on the front end, it’s establishing connection, but by the third time, I’m just getting annoyed.

7)  Being slow to take offense is one way to keep a conversation going.

8)  The best questions open up possibilities instead of narrowing them.

9)  There’s far too much information for anyone to learn it all.  That means there will always been something to learn from the person you’re talking to.

10) Conversations driven by hidden agendas are not relationship building conversations.

11) Genuine curiosity is a huge help.

12) So is humor.

What about you?  What do you value in conversation?

The truth is, New York gets a bit less daunting with every visit.  Watching my daughter Amy navigate the juggernaut that is NYC inspires me and humbles me, and at the same time makes the whole NY life seem much more doable, if not completely attractive.  I don’t have any great desire to live in New York…Seattle is fabulous, and we’re loving it here.  But when both your kids are living there and they’re constantly doing performances that you’d like to see…well, we’ll just have to see what the future holds.

The Cloisters, the Brooklyn Bridge, the 9-11 Memorial, great French food compliments of Marsailles in Midtown (Amy works there as a server), two Broadway plays (one starring Alan Rickman), two off-Broadway plays (one by Teresa Rebeck), the Whitney Museum (big disappointment because of all the floors closed), tons of walking, and some great time with my daughter.   The 75¢ coffee was a treat (because of price, not taste), and the constant barrage of languages was pretty wonderful.

Lots of energy on those streets, and lots of downcast eyes; I suppose those eyes strike me as much as anything.  It’s a city of tremendous bustle and life, but that’s not the same thing as saying it’s a city of joy.  I intentionally scanned the crowd constantly to see if anyone had their eyes up and shining, as if expecting something exciting to happen, something that would bring them substantial joy and fulfillment, even if just for a moment.   I’m sure there’s tons of that kind of expectancy in NY, but I didn’t see much.  At least not on the street.   We were more likely to run into that sort of thing in coffee shops and restaurants and audiences waiting for plays, though honestly, lots of people in those places look a bit haggard as well.    It’s a tough life; exciting, and tough.  I couldn’t be more proud of Amy and the way she’s taken it on.

Churches are all over the place, beautiful structures that have no doubt mostly seen fuller days.   I caught sight of a few lone souls wandering into a few of them as I passed by.    I wanted to go in and pray on a couple of occasions, but didn’t.  On the other hand, I prayed a lot wandering the streets.  Not really praying for anything (except perhaps, for my children, seeing as how they’re going to invest so much of their lives in this city), for God to do anything, as much as just trying to sense His presence on those streets.   He’s there all right, but from the once-in-a-while visitor’s perspective, the human presence is so thick, so celebrated, and so guarded that divinity seems to slip into hiding pretty easily.

The subway’s energy captures much of the tone of not only the city, but the general state of that old stand-by, the human condition.  The cars we ride in are moving, shuttling us about, but while we’re in the car, we sit, bundled up, controlling the borders around us, guarding personal space, minimizing personal contact with those squeezed in alongside.  Each stranger is a mystery to us, full of potential goodwill and malice, and everything in-between.   And it’s completely practical to manage ourselves this way, given what we know about the world around us.

But then strangeness begins.   A limping man with a cane rides from one stop to another listlessly preaching the gospel of Jesus, though much of what he said was undecipherable, even though he was standing right in front of us.   And there were the dancers, three young men who flew through the air in tight little spaces, spinning crazy circles, break dancing, delighting some, annoying others: I was glad to hear the applause at the end.  And a woman loudly, drunkenly digging through her suitcases for something, her pants not covering her very well as she bent over digging furiously.  The few of us in the car just then shared that all too familiar embarrassment when nutty stuff happens, and no one knows what to do, each one doing the car crash curiosity dance.  Don’t look, don’t look–oh, you looked, and it’s just too strange for words.

And then, there’s the Cloisters.  A branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to Medieval European art that opened to the general public back in the late 30′s, the Cloisters were a high point of the trip.  Dark, quiet and beautiful, the Cloisters combined with the clear, crisp day outside to make a strong counterpoint to the speed and density of Midtown.  The monk in me will never die, I suppose, and I could have stayed in the various chapels for hours.   As it was, I got a couple of beautiful pictures of Amy in quiet space, and given that she’s taking the acting road and all the difficulty that entails, I’m going to carve out that quiet space for her, and hold her there often.

We have to carry the quiet with us…inside…

Infographics and wordmapping have caught my eye lately.   So when I found Inkscape, I decided to start fiddling around with it.   Here’s a first attempt at beginning to think visually about things running around in my head.

The biggest objection will probably be the “I” being in the middle, but I put it there simply because it’s our perceptual center, and we can’t escape that position.  We can imagine and rethink and reposition ourselves in our mind’s eye so that we know that we are not the center of things…and we do that from the place of our own centeredness, looking out.   All the information, images, and ideas that come through our processes of thinking have to pass through that center we call the self, so I leave that I-ness in the center of things.

There are a world of things to think about when it comes to the way we are ordered in mind, body, spirit, and soul–and who knows if there is an ontologically correct way of referring to them or ordering them.   But how we map it out is part of the (largely unseen and unnoticed) daily task.

So if you happen by and have a look at this thing, I’m wondering what you think I left out or misplaced.   It’s an interesting tool to talk about the way we see our lives.

Obviously, it’s a Christian viewpoint, though I’ll bet many of my Christian friends will have a thing to say about how all things Christian enter the picture.

Another note:  at this point, I’m not trying to really make things clear, nor am I trying to simplify.  At least not yet.

I will keep tweaking this, I’m sure, but at least you can’t say you didn’t have anything to think about today.

How do you map things…?    

When I got the word that Wes had slipped over to the other side of things  (one of the ways I like to think of death), the force with which my stomach leapt into my throat surprised me.  I haven’t talked to him in so long, but the tears came immediately, and I instantly remembered how much I cherished this man.

I remember so much of the kind of man he was: his spirit, his heart, his passion, his courage, his sense of humor, and his humility and kindness.   But the first thing that comes to mind is his infectious laugh.   Wes, my old friend, teacher, and mentor (though he probably didn’t know I still think of him that way) from Abilene, died last Friday, and as always in these kinds of moments, I’m just amazed that he’s gone.   I’ll miss him, though we weren’t close over the last decade.   Life has a way of moving on, and Wes and I fell had fallen out of contact, but as I said, when I got the news, his presence flooded into my awareness all over again.

Wes had passion, and open-heartedness that mixed with a crinkly, ever-bearded smile.   Witty, bawdy at times, and effervescent with mischief and good humor sure enough, “Mr. Odell” could be tough, anger flashing, backbone strong.   It was a good mix for a teacher, and as I read through his obituary this morning, it’s obvious that those skills kept serving young people in more recent years.   I took some sort of humanities class in high school from Mr. Odell, and I remember him encouraging and challenging us, somehow making room for us to do the work we were capable of.   Laughing one minute, fuming the next, it was obvious how deeply he cared about his students.

Later, I went to work for Wes at Child’s Play, an upscale children’s toy store with all sorts of educational and progressive goodies, and we got to know each better.  He moved from teacher to boss and then on to friend, and I increasingly began to look forward to the time we’d spend together stocking or doing inventory, putting together a swing-set at a customer’s home, setting up a large scale train around the base of a customer’s Christmas tree, or playing nerf basketball when customers weren’t around.   He told me jokes I remember to this day (one in particular that I just can’t bring myself to repeat out loud, but if I let Wes tell me again in my mind’s eye, I bust out laughing just like I did the first time he told it), but it wasn’t the jokes that struck me—it was always the delight he got in telling them.  (In my mind’s eye, we laugh together.)  I remember his remarkably small hands making the Baylor Bear claw, and the giggle that came right after the growl.   I remember his eyebrows rising when he became frustrated or angry—maybe sales were off for that month or one of the suppliers hadn’t delivered on time, and I remember so well the light that would come chasing back into those eyes the minute LeMoyne (his wife) or Ketrin or Lauren (his daughters) come through the door.   I came to cherish Wes enough that when it came time for Anjie and I to marry, I asked Wes to be one of my groomsmen, and he graciously accepted.   I was thrilled to have him standing with me that day.

And then there was his beautiful wife LeMoyne.   To this day, LeMoyne remains one of the most singularly delightful people I have ever known.    I loved her forthrightness, her doggedness, and her great energy and spirit, and from the few times we’ve spoken over the years since the days at Child’s Play, that spirit seems so resilient still.   These have no doubt been hard, hard days for LeMoyne (and Ketrin and Lauren), and that great spirit of hers is leaning in grief just now.   All of us who knew Wes are leaning under the weight of that grief alongside her.  The memorial service was this morning, and seeing that I was a couple of thousand miles away, I thought, I’ll just have my own little time of remembering, and write a bit about my friend Wes, and what he brought to my life.

The world will miss him.   We will miss what I call his Wes-ness.   That would make him laugh.  I can hear him now.

I trust the grace of God in these moments.  It’s’ all I know to do.   Trust.

Go in grace and peace, Wes.   Rest…

I love conversation.  The exchange of experiences and ideas borders on the miraculous when you consider how specific our lives are to ourselves.  How to explain this thing going on inside my head?   This dance of images and ideas, memories and dreams, each of them presenting themselves for my further consideration constantly, falling into my mind like so many snowflakes.   But then I want to offer them to you as well, and say, “Look at that” or “listen to this” or “Help me understand why that thought just flittered in.”

Dallas Willard thinks our life is our thought-life.  I’m not willing to go that far, but he’s pretty close.  And to unpack these lives of ours seems to be one of the things we are built to help each other with.   It’s so strange that we have to pay people to be friend enough to sit and listen and ask the provocative kinds of questions that help us re-imagine our lives.   They’re called therapists, and they’re so helpful, but why can’t we just get more skilled at listening and asking wall-breaking questions?

I think one of the keys to opening the locked doors inside each other is to follow the advice of Jesus that St. Matthew records.   It’s simple really…”Do not judge.”   There’s the whole conversation about discerning and knowing right from wrong, blah, blah, blah, but it’s very profound to simple be present with the person you’re listening to, and create a space whereby they can speak their lives.   How strange that we want to control and comment and instruct and fix and otherwise really miss the person trying to offer us something.   Listening is a rare thing.   Listening because someone’s actually interested is even rarer.   Listening without judgment is a great, great gift.     It not only spurs conversation, but it fosters the kinds of connections people long for, that a Facebook post just can’t deliver.

Stay tuned.  I’m looking for ways to initiate and sustain great conversations.    I’ve got some ideas that will require intentionality and effort, but who knows.  Maybe this will be the year I’ll hear the world truly speak, and for the first time, listen…

Create a space for someone to speak their life today… 

by Czeslaw Milosz

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

————

Breakthrough is like that…

I’m sitting in the middle of an experience that’s hard to describe, and yet, it couldn’t be simpler.  To put it into words seems ridiculous.

It reminds me of the day my first child was born.

It’s trying to turn a key in a lock in a door for over 30 years, and suddenly there’s a click, and the doorknob is freed.

It’s realizing the full weight of your own foolishness, and shaking it off like an old, well-loved, but too long worn shirt.

It’s realizing that God knew exactly what He was up to when He made a human being.

It’s mystery begetting mystery, and being overwhelmed with gratitude that you don’t control much of anything.

It’s realizing that all the stuff you thought you were…you’re not.

It’s free-fall into freedom.

It’s realizing that like the Apostle John explained about the Christ (John’s Gospel, Chapter 13)…you come from God, and you’re on your way back.  What else in the world is there to do but serve?

It’s realizing that when God created humans “in his image”, he didn’t leave out the “I am” part.

It’s detachment, like I’ve read about for years, but in experience, is nothing like what I thought those writings meant.

It’s a future opening like a heretofore unseen flower, petals in colors and textures I’d didn’t know were possible.

It’s gut-laughter in the middle of the night, connected to the long ache that’s always been there, but that is just now eased into friendly hope.

It’s wondering if you’ve lost your mind, but the coherence is too clear and sharp, like bright stars in dark, cold, midnight country sky.

It’s just an idea, a collision of thoughts, and an understanding that gives up all pretense of understanding.

It’s finding that faith, indeed, is what justifies life, and that the faith you thought you were on your way to losing has been powering up deep in the hidden places to await it’s  appointed emergence.

It’s realizing that indeed, “All is well.”

It’s weeping for love unrecognized and unknown.

It’s running toward home, where love and welcome waits, but it’s new, it’s surprising, and it’s enough.

It’s now, it’s here, it’s presence.

It’s also beyond words.   So enough.

A glimpse into Pascal’s fire?   

I was thinking about “thriving” on my way home from the gym yesterday, wondering about how to even begin talking about it.  What in the world is thriving?   The dictionary says this: “to grow or develop well or vigorously.”   That resonates, mostly because of my recent adaptation of the word “grow”, exchanging it for the words “change” and “transformation.”  (But that’s another blog post.)  Okay, to grow, I thought, but the notion of life’s hardness kept raising its head, that war (of art, of life, of spirituality)  that St. Paul and Stephen Pressfield remind us of.

What is human thriving anyway?

On the Christian side of things, the two great commandments are the primary orientation:  Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Love you neighbor as yourself.   Christ said not to worry too much about the bottom layer of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs triangle, that God would come through with all that stuff if we just chased after his kingdom first.  And the study of what many Christians might call “Kingdom living” is a massive study in itself, and the faith is, that following along behind the Christ, acting as he did for his reasons, is the foundation of human thriving.

On the psychological and sociological side, lots of study continues about just what it is that makes human being and personhood, and what thriving means.  Back to Maslow’s hierarchy…looking at that triangle again, it looks pretty solid.   Survival is need, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and that famous “self-actualization.”   I also love the list of “capacities” of the human person found in Christian Smith’s What is a Person?  (Existence capacities, Primary and Secondary Experience capacities, Creating capacities, and what he calls Highest Order capacities.)   Thriving in that world would seem to be the growth and “vigorous development” of these various capacities according to our “core gifts”, which is another idea I encountered somewhere on the web yesterday.

Well, truth is, I don’t know that I know just what thriving is, but yesterday, on that drive home, somewhere on 5th Avenue between Northgate and NE 80th, the word “now” presented itself, and it occurred to me that the possibility of thriving inevitably presents itself not in the past or the future, but in the present.   In the now.  This very now.

This one.

Lots of spiritual writing these days focuses on the idea of “Mindfulness” and “Presence.”   (“Presence” is another big word for me, but more about that later, too.)   The past is gone.  Strange to say it, but the river from yesterday has moved on.  Memory and remembrance is so vital for living, but it’s easy to get lost in images of memory that may or may not be all that accurate anyway.  And who knows why our minds are so fond of the destroying memories, the ones where we failed, were humiliated, were lost, confused, abused, and made to feel so much less valuable than we are.   Our brains seem to be bent that way, and it takes grit and vigilance and a strong faith in God and grace (or something far bigger than that gnarly, negative brain) “to grow and vigorously develop” in the face of the onslaught of memory.

And the future…it’s coming, sure enough.  But very little of what I project into it has anything to do with reality.   My best shot and growing and developing vigorously is to take on what’s in front of me.   This moment, choose to act in faith.   This moment, choose to push back the dark.  This moment, choose to follow-through, keep the promise, make the best start I know how to, finish with the best “kick” I’ve got, and in this moment, do what I know to pour courage into those next to me in this now.   This moment, take the plank out, pray the secret prayer, seek the next step in kingdom life.   This moment, serve.  This moment, walk.  This moment, make some beauty.

Every now matters.  Every now is a chance.   Every now is dense with life waiting to be lived.

Now…