Wednesday's Word -- Miracle

I'm not really a die-hard, devoted user of Philosophy products, but I do like reading the product labels.  This miracle worker label caught my eye recently:  "find the miracle in every moment, the beauty in every day."  Good advice.

I've been thinking about how our lives are full of "miracles" if we are actually looking.  (My recent fire ant-scipade, for example.)

How fitting then that the word "miracle" means something that "excites admiring awe."  It comes from the Latin word miraculum, meaning "object of wonder."

But the best thing about the word?  Its indo-european root means "to laugh, smile."

Lately I've been thinking that sometimes the ability to laugh and smile in the face of the circumstances is a miracle in and of itself.  

Holding On To the Ticket

Dostoyevsky's notes for Chapter 5
of The Brothers Karamazov

It's been nearly a month since I finished reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  The novel has been on my mental to-read list for a long time, and I worked through its nearly 800 pages with determination.  I must admit that I let out at least a tiny sigh of relief when I reached the end, eager to move on to lighter fare.  But passages, images and themes from the book keep coming to my mind unbidden, sitting here and then there, trying out the rooms like a mental goldilocks.  Here is one.

I cannot sum up The Brothers Karamazov in this short post -- at least not in any manner that could do it justice.  The short of it is that there are three brothers, Dmitri (28), Ivan (24), and Alyosha (20).  All three share a father (Fyodor Pavlovich), but Dmitri is from Fyodor's first marriage, and Ivan and Alyosha are from his second marriage.  Both mothers are dead, Fyodor is a "scoundrel" (to use a word Dostoyevsky uses repeatedly throughout the book), and none of his sons really love him.  In fact, at least two of them (Dmitri and Ivan) would like to see him dead.  Dmitri, the oldest, is much like his father -- a sensualist and a scoundrel.  Ivan is an intelligent atheist.  And Alyosha (the "cherub") is a novice monk who believes fervently in God, but is not without chinks in the armor of his faith.  To make a very long story short (without spoiling all the twists and turns), someone murders the father, Fyodor, and Dmitri is arrested and tried for the crime.  I won't tell you how the book ends, because that's really not the point of this post (and you should slog through it yourself, in any event!).        

Plot aside, the book is about free will, God, faith, doubt, reason, sin, virtue, truth, deceit, guilt, love, and so much more.  But it is especially about suffering.  In one particulary gripping chapter (Book 5, Chapter 4 "Rebellion"), Ivan talks/rants to younger brother Alyosha about the inequity of the suffering in the world, speaking of the "tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its center."  (I like the way that sounds, don't you?  Can't you just picture it like a soggy loaf of bread?)  Ivan laments:  "Surely I haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else."  (Talk about metaphor.) 

He then asks his monk-brother:  "Do you understand why this infamy [suffering] must be and is permitted?  Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil.  Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much?"  Rejecting the world that God has created because it is built on a foundation of suffering, Ivan proclaims:  "Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it.  And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest many I am bound to give it back as soon as possible.  And that I am doing.  It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."

I am no atheist.  But, like Ivan, I too struggle to understand incomprehensible suffering -- in the world, in my circle of friends and acquaintances, and in my very own life.  Like Ivan, I can't help but think that the suffering costs too much -- at least when it sacrifices the innocent on the altar of another's sin.  Or when it hits, lottery-style in a randomness that confounds all understanding.  But, unlike Ivan, I can see the joy too -- a joy that is (despite what he says) sweetened and strengthened by opposition.  Perhaps what Ivan couldn't (or chose not to) believe, is this: 

"Joy and sorrow are inseparable.  Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed."  [Gibran, The Prophet]

That knowledge doesn't excuse the suffering, I suppose. But it at least grants me the perspective to hold on to my entrance ticket.

The Aging of Grief

I'm currently slogging through The Brothers Karamazov.  Yes, I do mean slogging.  It's not an easy read, but it does have moments of brilliance.  This morning, this line made me stop and ponder for some time:

"It's a great mystery of human life, 

that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy."  

I do think that's true.  And miraculous.  Even the sharpest of life's pains dull over time.  Thank goodness for joy, and that sorrow is only a periodic visitor.  But how "old" must the grief be before you can stop nurturing it like a sick child and kick it out of your house?  That's what I want to know.

Speaking of books, aren't these book sculptures (what the artist, Brian Dettmer, calls "altered" books) clever? (discovered via Omnivoracious)

Surprised By Joy?

Surprised by joy -- impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport -- Oh!  with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind --
But how could I forget thee?  Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?  That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn 
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
~William Wordsworth

Today has me pondering on the age old question of "how could such a thing happen?"  Over the weekend, I read a novel about a man and a woman who are friends for nearly 20 years and eventually get married, only to have the woman die, completely unexpectedly, at the age of 37, leaving the man to go on without her, trying to find joy in the days stretching ahead.  With this fiction on my mind, I was going about my morning, still wallowing a bit in the sadness of it all, when I got the news that the husband of a good friend died yesterday of heart problems.  He was 36.  His wife is weeks away from giving birth to their fourth child.  What a sickening blow.

So the thought I have had throughout the day is how and when will this friend, now a thirty-something widow with soon-to-be-four children find joy again?  And this Wordsworth poem came to mind.

Wordsworth was grappling with his own grief when he wrote it.  His youngest daughter, Catherine, died in 1812 when she was only three years old.  This poem describes the double grief that goes along with the loss of someone dear -- the death itself, and then (almost worse) the memory pangs that grip and cramp like some sort of cruel after-birth, long after the fact.  Wordsworth seems to berate himself for slipping up, forgetting for a moment, and feeling joyful -- chiding, "But how could I forget thee?"

But I've always considered the poem a hopeful one.  The human spirit is a resilient one.  Joy finds a way to creep in -- even if (for a time) only in bits and pieces.  

Advice to Self

Today, I found myself thinking about this clipping on my bulletin board at work.  It's been hanging there for 10 years now, and I don't think I've looked at it in maybe 5.  I found it underneath other notes, quotes, and cartoons I've tacked up over the years.  

This bulletin board reminder to myself is particularly sweet, though, because of the words from the newspaper "In Memoriam" piece, and because a friend (Mariette) (a) was thoughtful enough to photocopy the article and give it to me with her handwritten note (so faded it's hard to read now); and (b) because she thought (based on what she knew of me) that these "principles of life" would resonate with me.

I'm particularly fond of #2:  "Don't take yourself or your problems too seriously.  If you do this, instead of being the 'specter at the feast,' you'll be constantly sought out even as you're passing away."  What I like is that image of a "specter at the feast."  A specter (sometimes spelled "spectre") is an apparition, a ghost.  The specter at the feast is "something or someone that spoils your enjoyment by making you remember something unpleasant."  In two words:  stop complaining.  

Here are a couple of questions for you to think about (because I'm thinking about these questions myself):  (1) Do you act like the specter at the feast of life?  Are you spoiling your own joy or the joy of others?  (2) When was the last time you were thoughtful enough to clip out an article and send it to someone because you thought that person would appreciate it or because reading it made you think of that person?  

Mariette's birthday is this week.  I haven't seen or talked to her in years, but I think I'll clip something she might like and send it along.  Maybe it will add some joy to her feast.       

Nifty Items I'm Eyeing and Would Like to Be Buying

1.  These colorful cups from Rice, available from Huset.  (My kids currently drink out of an assortment of cracked cups from Pump It Up and the San Diego Zoo, with some old Halloween cups thrown in for good measure.)

2.  Raising Happiness:  10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents, by Christine Carter.

3.  Flower Drip, by Mel Kadel.

Have a great weekend!

Wednesday's Word -- Deliberately

I left home at the age of sixteen.  My family was away that day at a church Memorial Day picnic that I refused to attend.  I packed some food and left a note that simply said:  “I’ve gone to the woods to live deliberately.”*  (I had been reading Thoreau’s Walden and was enamored then (as I am now) with the idea of “living deliberately.”)  It wasn’t difficult to find the woods.  I grew up in northeastern Ohio, and the trees were everywhere.  The challenge was living deliberately—or living on my own at all for that matter.  I did go to the woods, but of course I came back.  I think I stayed away for a whole eight hours.  


Upon my return, did they kill the fatted calf to celebrate the return of the prodigal daughter?  (See, I still insist on misusing this word a bit.)  No.  Were they wringing their hands with worry?  No.  I found my note on the counter with my mother’s simple retort:  “Don’t be so cryptic.”  I had to look “cryptic” up in the dictionary.  I clearly wasn’t ready to live on my own.  Grown ups don’t have to come home for dinner, and they certainly don’t have to look up words like “cryptic” in the dictionary.  


*As Thoreau put it:  “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”  I know, I was a melodramatic teenager.  

So, the word for today is one of my all-time favorites:

Deliberately

Deliberate comes from the Latin delibero, which means "I consider, weigh well."  It is related to libra, which is a balance.  I just discovered this link through my research today and think it fitting that I was born with the astrological sign of Libra, with the zodiac symbol of the scales.  I'm not one to pay much attention to astrology, but this somehow pleases me.  (I also happen to be a lawyer and have always liked the symbol of the scales of justice.)

If you do something deliberately, you do it on purpose.  You consider.  You ponder.  You ponder some more.  You carefully weigh the consequences before you act.  If you are deliberate, you are not sudden or rash.  Like a jury deliberating to reach a verdict, you consider the evidence and try to do the right thing.

This word describes both my best and worst tendencies.  A desire to be more observant of the details in my life rather than living on autopilot, paired with a desire to stop measuring my life in coffee spoons.

But back to Thoreau.  A web search for deliberate living mostly pulls up information about people trying to recreate Thoreau's experience at Walden Pond to some extent.  These people tend to grow their own food and make their own clothing, and often seem to shun modern conveniences.  Don't get me wrong.  I respect that lifestyle and ingenuity.  But personally, I think I should be able to live deliberately and still shop at Nordstrom (or wherever).  Deliberate is not sequestered.  Deliberate is not impoverished.  Deliberate does not require woods.

Deliberate pays attention to the drive to work, 

rather than pulling out of the driveway and then suddenly finding herself in the parking garage.

Deliberate takes time to read and think and write things that are not required,

instead of spending all her time on things that may be required but bring no joy.

Deliberate pays attention to people she cares about,

rather than hoping they just know.

Deliberate counts her blessings,

instead of her challenges.                  

So, here's to learning what life has to teach.

Acquisitions and Dispositions

I spent several hours cleaning and purging my bedroom closet over the weekend.  Here are some of the cast-off offerings, all bagged up and ready to clutter up Goodwill instead of my closet.  

Since the "purge," I find myself making frequent visits to the closet just to take in the order and liberation of it all.  

Isn't it ironic that both acquiring and disposing of possessions brings such joy and satisfaction?  My father recently told me that he would be happy if all that he owns could be contained in a single suitcase.   I don't know if I could quite say the same at this point in my life, but I do feel so inexplicably pleased when, for example, I can use up the remainders of a bottle of shampoo and throw it away, reducing the total number of bottles taking up space in my shower.  Or throw tupperware container after container of food away to restore orderly emptiness to my refrigerator shelves.  Why is that?  The silly part, of course, is that I buy more clothes, more shampoo and more food, and the cycle begins again. 

My life is one endless round of subtraction and addition, ebbing and flowing, cleaning out and cluttering back, removing and replacing.  Can you relate?

Thoreau (who, as much as I love him, was a bit of a spartan -- the man did write "beware of all enterprises that require new clothes" after all . . . .) had this to say about possessions:

"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind."  [Walden, "Economy"]

Studies show that acquiring possessions does in fact bring happiness.  But that happiness is fleeting.  We adjust to our things, and they lose their magic.  One interesting finding (that completely meshes with my own personal experience) is that giving our possessions away, on the other hand, brings more lasting joy.

Perhaps the solution is to enjoy something for a short time and then gift it to someone else who will get the same joy and can then gift it along to another?  Or we could periodically swap possessions with each other?  The lovely handbag that I just had to have for the kitchen gadget that called your name and then sat on your counter?

Well, for now, I'm going to enjoy my gutted closet.  But, truth be told, I will enjoy filling it back up again -- even if (apologies to Thoreau) it hinders my "elevation" to some degree.

Post Script:  Isn't this Everything I Have Poster cool?  Doesn't it make you want to throw things out?

Post Post Script:  Some time ago, my sister Becky told me about a great children's book called The Girl Who Wore Too Much.  I would highly recommend it!  How many of us (myself included) are carrying around too many layers?  It's no wonder we can't climb the hill.  Elevation hindered.  Indeed.

Reaping

Van Gogh, Reaper, 1889

I've been thinking all day about Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.  I read it this past summer, mostly because it seemed to me that it should be read, and not because I had any particular burning desire to read it.  For one thing, it spans some 800 pages and does drag in parts.  While I had to persevere through some portions, there are certain images and impressions that stick and come to my mind unexpectedly.

There are many characters in the book (and so many of them have names that end in -sky and -vich, it seems), but the two main protagonists are Anna Karenina and Konstantin Levin.  My purpose here is not to provide a summary or analysis of the book, so I'll get to my point.

Anna Karenina irritates me.  She is beautiful, passionate, elegant, cultivated, educated, determined, creative -- and completely irresponsible and selfish.  You might disagree.  She lives by the guiding principle that love is stronger than anything else -- even when her actions fly in the face of duty.  She insists on following her heart at any cost.  (I suppose part of my problem with Anna is that at the time I was reading the book, the wife of a good friend decided to up and leave her husband after nearly two decades of marriage, in the name of following her heart and passion . . . .  I kept thinking over and over, "You are Anna Karenina.  And you should know what happened to her.  It involved a train.  It was not good.")

Konstantin Levin, on the other hand, is the character I have thought the most about after finishing the last page.  He really isn't a very interesting man, and he has his irritating characteristics as well.  But his search for self-definition and happiness resonates with me.  My favorite scene in the book describes Levin (who has his own Russian estate with many peasants working the land for him) spending an entire day mowing the hay alongside the peasants.  The exertion and rhythm of it is pure bliss.  Here's how Tolstoy describes it:

The longer Levin mowed the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed that the scythe was mowing by itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and precise by itself.  These were the most blissful moments.  

As I go about my days -- so often feeling overwhelmed by the seemingly mundane repetitiveness of my existence -- I sometimes find myself thinking about Levin, scythe in hand, struggling to keep pace, fighting with the tool and tearing at the grass with such energy that he nearly collapses at the end of each row.  It's rapture.

And that's what I love about Levin and about this scene.  Even the completely ordinary moments of our days contain goodness and joy.  As we struggle with our tasks, there is satisfaction in an evenly mowed length behind us.  There is satisfaction in children that are scrubbed clean, fed, and tucked into bed.  There is satisfaction in a gleaming kitchen floor.  There is satisfaction in work (of any variety) well done.  

Like Thoreau, I so want to "cut a broad swath* and shave close."  But what I am thinking tonight is that you need not be Anna Karenina in order to do it.  You can "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life" and be more Konstantin than Anna.  As much as I would love to throw caution to the wind, do something drastic and go live deliberately in some remote corner of the world, I'll keep mowing my field, finding bliss in the rhythm of the scythe.  

*Isn't "swath" a lovely word?  It means the width of a scythe stroke or a mowing-machine blade.  A swath is a path made in mowing.  I like to think of myself swinging that sickle as well as I can, cutting a path as I go.

On Joy and Sorrow and a Living House

Just a short post today to share a poem from the Lebanese artist, philosopher and writer, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet.  My mom sent me this little book many years ago when I was going through a difficult time.  My copy is now well-worn with use and tends to fall open to this passage "On Joy and Sorrow" automatically.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your hear and you shall find
it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

. . .

[Joy and sorrow] are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board,
remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Isn't this so true?  The things--and people--that  make us feel the happiest are the same things--and people--that make us feel the most sorrowful.  When I am at a struggling point, I like to think of myself as a cup burned in a kiln.  Without the burn, I'd be useless.  Just clay that can be smashed easily.  I'm so much more useful as a cup than as unfinished clay.  I like to think of myself as a piece of wood, turned musical instrument.  Even if the knives that do the hollowing hurt at the time.  

To finish, let me share a favorite quote from C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.  Another metaphor.  The same point.

Imagine yourself as a living house.  

God comes in to rebuild that house.  At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing.  

He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: 

you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.

But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably 

and does not seem to make sense.  What on earth is he up to?  

The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of -- 

throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards.

You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: 

but he is building up a palace.  

He intends to come and live in it himself.

So consider it food for thought.  If you are joyful, accept that sorrow may be sitting on your bed, biding its time.  If you are sorrowful, believe that joy is just around the corner.  If you are feeling stretched and pounded, be excited about the improvements in store.  Or at least you can try to feel that way!

Fulfilling the Measure of Your Creation -- and Then Some

My last post left me a bit sad, reflecting on the loss of my cat, the loss of my grandpa and the loss of opportunities that time won't give back.

Then, out of the blue, the image from a book popped into my head and I went on the hunt in the bookshelves that are placed in many rooms throughout my house (as well as in book bins under beds and stacks in corners and populating everywhere else throughout my house like breeding bunnies) to find that book.  It has been over a decade since I pulled it out, but it came to me in a flash of inspiration as just what I needed to put some joy in my heart and a laugh in my throat.

I found it tucked away on a shelf, spine not even facing out.  All I had to do was look at the cover, and I was already smiling -- no, more like grinning.  Here it is:

The truly fabulous thing is that this cat on the cover looks JUST like my Minino, and that's what first drew my attention to Why Cats Paint  when browsing the Barnes & Noble shelves so many years ago (my copy was published in 1995, but I see that the book was republished in 2006).  Then when I flipped through the pages of the book, I was actually laughing out loud and simply had to have the book.  For me, the effect is just as joyful today as it was back when I discovered the book in the mid-1990s. I rarely "lol" as they say, but this book makes me "lol."

Take the description of "Bootsie," one of the feline painters featured in the book.  Here is his photograph, so you can properly visualize him while you read the description of his style (notice the paint on his furry paws):

Bootsie is a Trans-Expressionist who "uses a vigorous, sometimes aggressive style to explore his inner feelings and perceptions."

"To watch him paint is pure delight.  As soon as the easel is put up on the lawn and the paints are laid out next to it, any hint of feline disdain, any trace of detached hauteur, vanishes completely.  He almost pounces on the paint as if he must trap its fleeting vibrance before it escapes, and the moment it is on his paw he springs up to apply it.  Consideration appears minimized, while concentration is intense and the strokes are vigorously rhythmical."

Bootsie's owner, though, described him as "liking to leap about and put different colors all over the place without much caring how he does it."

And here is the photo of Bootsie that makes my heart happy:

Bootsie in full flight during painting of Hands Up!  Mr. Rooster, which sold for $15,000.  Note the rough sketch he made for this work on the back of the canvas.

Ha!  Doesn't just looking at the photo make you want to make something more of your life?!  As Thoreau put it, to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life"?  (Thoreau, Walden, "Where I Lived and What I Lived For.")  Now, that Bootsie is a creature who is magnifying his allotment (even granting that this Why Cats Paint  is pure crazy nonsense)!  (I must also tell you, as an aside, that the same authors have published Why Paint Cats and Dancing With Cats.  I have not reviewed either one, but they appear to take crazy to a new level.)

And to close, I just have to share Bootsie's Cocking for Cockatoos, 1993, "in which a long-nosed green dog attempts to urinate (yellow), on a small flock of low-flying cockatoos (white)."

Are you smiling?  What makes you feel as alive as Bootsie twirling through the air, paint dripping from paws, trapping the "fleeting vibrance" before it escapes?  Have a great day!

Yielding to Their Separation

Let me start with a poem. If you know me, you know I often do. In Robert Frost's "Two Tramps in Mud Time," a man is chopping wood in a forest and enjoying it. As he puts it:

The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Along come two lumberjacks who recognize that he doesn't really know how to handle the ax and clearly want to take over the job for pay. The man isn't having it, and this is what he says to himself:

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

So here's the question. What to do when you spend your days on vocation (what you "must" do) rather than avocation (what you "love" to do)? After all, as Thoreau put it, most of us do in fact "lead lives of quiet desperation." We can't ditch "must" for "love." Instead, so many of us (myself included) yield to their separation. Double-vision. Eyes anything but one in sight.

The word "vocation" comes from a Latin word meaning "to call." Not surprisingly, the word "avocation" means "to call away." It's a tug of war. (Incidentally, the word "vacation" -- identical to the word "vocation" but for one important letter -- comes from a root meaning to "give up" or "leave." Vocation calls you to task, and vacation sets you free. But I digress. At least kind of.)

My thought is that there is "avocation" all around us if we look and listen. While our tasks call and claim us, our passions can at least interrupt for a minute. There are moments for each of us -- in every day if we are paying attention -- when we are swinging the ax in a grove of wooded trees. I for one am going to try harder to find and recognize those moments. And that, in truth, is why I'm starting this blog. Because when I'm thinking and writing about the lessons and insights around me, I can feel my ax swinging. And it feels good. What makes you feel that way?