Mr. Rogers stepped out of a Manhattan subway train onto the platform. A group of people recognized him, including a young mother with her 6-year-old son. The boy brandished a Star Wars light saber, and was intent on whacking everything–and everyone–in his path. This included Mr. Rogers.

“They will say to me, ‘Zusia, there was only one thing that no power of heaven or earth could have prevented you from becoming.’ They will say, ‘Zusia, Zusia, why were you not Zusia?’”

View Article: Swords

In the town of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, there is a church named Lagniappe. It is an old Creole word that means “something extra.”
Pastor Jean Larroux explains, “Down here if you go into a seafood shop and order a pound of shrimp and they put in an extra handful, that’s the lagniappe. It’s something you can’t pay for. Something for nothing. Something for free.”
In an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Jean began this church, in his words, with people “primed for grace.”
Accustomed to teaching church people how to celebrate, Jean was surprised to find himself in a community of people who already knew. Even in the middle of their hardship.

Here’s the good part.
The celebration–from lagniappe–is not predicated on life as we expect it.
The party doesn’t start when our fear is gone.
Or when our beliefs are unadulterated.
Or when our circumstances make it feasible.
Most likely, if we wait for all that, we miss replenishment, comfort and healing every time.

(Jean Larroux story from Sin Boldly, Cathleen Falsani)

View Article: Lagniappe

Caroline was very sad. Caroline was only six years old and her father had just died. In fact, her father had been assassinated.
Sitting in the back of big black limousine, Caroline Kennedy didn’t quite know what to do with her sadness. On the seat next to her sat her nanny, Maud Shaw, and next to Maud, Caroline’s younger brother John.
Through the windshield Caroline could see her mother, Jackie, and her uncles, Robert and Ted, walking in front of the limousine as it slowly made it’s way down the Boulevard to St. Matthew’s Cathedral.

Looking out of her side of the car, Caroline recognized the friendly face of Secret Service agent, Robert Foster. She liked and trusted Robert Foster.
Not knowing what to do with her sadness, and on impulse, she rolled down the window and stuck out her six-year old hand. Agent Foster had a choice to make. Secret Service agents are not allowed to have their hands occupied, needing to be ready for any emergency. But Robert Foster didn’t even think twice. He held Caroline’s hand tightly the entire way to the cathedral.

Later, Agent Foster said it was all he could do to “fight back his own tears of sadness, for little Caroline Kennedy.”
When asked about his kindness, he seemed surprised, “All I did was hold a hand,” he answered.

We all know sadness. Life breaks for each one of us in different ways and in different places. And sometimes the sadness seems too much to carry.

It requires courage to roll down the window, to connect or ask or invite. For whatever reason, there is a knee-jerk need to deny any sadness, or dismiss it, or apologize for it. “I’m sorry,” people will say, wiping away their tears, as if their sadness is a violation of some tenet of propriety. Heaven forbid if any humanity is exposed.

So sometimes I am afraid to ask. Not sometimes; most times. I don’t want to appear weak. Asking for help is a hard pill to swallow.

I spent Saturday in Clearwater, Florida, with a group talking about intimacy and communication. (Yes, it is easier to talk about than to practice.)

Here’s what I told the group.
If we don’t bring it with us, we’re not going to find it there.
Which means intimacy–trust, vulnerability, authenticity, honesty–begins here.
With me.
With this me.

There’s the sticky wicket.  Life only has meaning in particularity.  With choices, commitments and necessary losses.  We may not like what we see, we may close our eyes and shudder, or we may indignantly walk out of the theater and demand our money back, but to no avail.  We begin here.  And maybe, just maybe, we have a far greater capacity than we have ever given ourselves credit for.

Remember Pinocchio, who, while pondering himself, founders in confusion about his self-worth.  Finally he turns to his maker Gepetto and in a pleading way says, “Pappa, I am not sure who I am.  But if I’m all right with you, then I guess I’m all right with me.”

I was raised in a religious environment that taught me to eradicate my messiness (to quash my sadness or grief or untidiness).
I now believe differently.
I now know that we find and express acceptance, love and grace (the place where we can be fully human), in our messy, imperfect, and fully thorny selves. In other words: We can embrace this life–without any need to photoshop it.

To be human is to be vulnerable.
I am capable of being wounded and cut and sad… which also means that I am capable of being kind and generous and present.

In such moments of heartache, I can have the courage to ask for a hand to hold.
In such moments of heartache, I can have the courage to hold a hand the needs to be held.

Robert Foster didn’t think twice about holding a hand that needed to be held. And he wasn’t posturing or amassing heavenly brownie points. He was doing what needed to be done.

Here’s the deal: we don’t need more remedies or advice. We need more touch. We become more human when we touch.
Why? Because when we touch, we are seen.
And when we are seen, we recognize that our value is not tied solely to our sorrow.

So. This week, be on the lookout for slow moving limousines. You never know when you will see a hand that needs to be held.

View Article: Slow moving limos

Two stories caught my eye yesterday… A

“I wanted to learn different ways of spreading kindness.  There are people sitting at home who might not have a great life.  Some people need kindness just to make their day.” – age 11

“I thought the class would be really interesting.  I learned that kindness is a chain reaction.”  – age 13

Speaking of chain reactions and smiles on people’s faces… this is from Ben Aaron (a posting for the NBC affiliate in New York)…

View Article: Kindness and dancing

The middle drawer of her mother’s dresser was filled with silk stockings, dozens of pairs in many exquisite colors, each wrapped in the store’s original package. They had never been worn. Rachel admired the stockings, imagining the texture and enjoying the array of colors.

Rachel tells how her father bought more locks for the door. He made certain every house after had at least three locks on the front door.
It is understandable.
It is our human instinct, once we’ve been harmed or hurt, to double-down on precaution. But this is not just a story about loss, or even about the need for more protection.
It is about whatever we keep wrapped inside of us… awaiting the right occasion.

It is as if there’s some kind of governor on our emotional life and we either don’t want to see, or haven’t been given the permission to see what is inside–what is ours to engage or contribute or value or spend?

What is it, exactly, that we are waiting for?
What experience will rise to the occasion, which will allow us to say, “Now… let life begin?”
And when did we swallow the notion that life begins some place other than where we are right now?

“Eventually I began to use everything I owned,” Rachel Remen writes in My Grandfather’s Blessings about the lessons she learned. “Perhaps the only way we get to keep anything may be to use it up. Perhaps we are all given many more blessings than we receive.”

Perhaps so. May we have eyes to see.

My good friend knows wine. Writes about it, appreciates it, savors it. He also knows wine people. People with grand and exceptional wine cellars. He told me the story of a couple with one such cellar, a collection to admire. Now mature in age, the couple knew that their years were numbered, and that many of their friends had died with full wine cellars, those rare bottles collected for a special occasion. (“You know,” he told my friend, “when we say we’ll drink it when the occasion is right. And, for some reason, the occasion is never quite right.”) So. They made a decision. They would collect no more wine. They would enjoy, take delight in and share the wine that they have. In their words, they decided to “drink their cellar.”

Okay. Count me in. Just tell me how. Isn’t that the magical question? HOW? Is there a way to do this? Is it something about our need to perform? If I’m going to embrace this present moment–especially in silk stockings–I might as well excel at it!

We need to cut ourselves some slack here, assuming that there is a big prize in spiritual well-being for people who have Aced the test on embracing-the-sacred-present technique. I do know this: Embracing the present isn’t a beauty pageant. And I have a hunch that people who really do love (enjoy, live, venture, give, risk, embrace) life are literally, non-self-conscious about method or practice or performance.

In Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s mind, it’s even more basic. “I would say an individual dies when he ceases to be surprised. What keeps me alive–spiritually, emotionally, intellectually–is my ability to be surprised. I say, I take nothing for granted. I am surprised every morning that I see the sun shine again.”

For 25 years in Invercargill at the south end of New Zealand, Burt Munro worked on increasing the speed of his motorcycle, a 1920 Indian Scout. He dreamed of taking it to the Bonneville Salt Flats to see how fast it could go. By the early 1960s, heart disease threatened his life, so he mortgaged his house and takes a boat to Los Angeles, buys an old car, builds a makeshift trailer, gets the Indian through customs, and heads for Utah. Along the way, people he meets are charmed by his open, direct friendliness. The uncertainty is still real… if he makes it to Bonneville, will they let an old coot race on the flats, with makeshift tires, no brakes, and no chute?
And yes, they did.  In 1967 Burt set the land-speed world record.

Before his trip, his young neighbor Tom (maybe aged 12) asks him why he’s going to all the trouble.
“You’ll live more in 5 minutes on that bike than some people live in a lifetime. And if you don’t follow through on your dream you might as well be a vegetable.”
“What kind of vegetable?” Tom asks.
“A cabbage.”

Well I don’t want to be a cabbage, so let the spiritual adventure begin. Except if I’m honest I will tell you that a spiritual adventure isn’t necessarily what I had in mind. I read GQ today and I was just hoping to dress for success.

Here’s the deal: At some point in our life, we give up who we are–the reservoir inside of us, filled with hopes, dreams, generosity and yearnings–for who we think we should be.
Or because we think our life will be safer.

I don’t know when that coaxing toward precaution started for you.
I do know that whatever was censored–however long ago–is still inside.
Live with regret if you wish, but it will only compound what is already lost.

The alternative?  In the words of poet Mary Oliver, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

I spent the day scrubbing my blue-stone patios. I’m on the back patio now, recuperating, enjoying the fruit of my labor. Eva Cassidy fills the air with her other-worldly voice. A goldfinch is at the feeder, the first this year. Fiddleheads–from our native Sword fern–unfurl ballerinaesque toward the sky. I raise a toast to the branches of ivory-white blooms on the native Elderberry, appearing like candelabras against the hunter green forest, poetry for the eye, seemingly ordinary episodes in natures’ repertoire evoking deep and unforgettable emotions.

View Article: Silk Stockings