Terry Hershey

In This Issue:

• Paying Attention
• New Audio & Video
• Terry Hershey Podcast
• Words to Live By
• Side Bars For Spiritual Rx
• Books to Nurture the Soul
• Parable / Sabbath Thought
• Letters / Poem

FEATURE ARTICLE
by Terry Hershey

Paying Attention

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
Henry David Thoreau

Each of us possesses five fundamental, enthralling maps to the natural world: sight, touch, taste, hearing, smell. As we unravel the threads that bind us to nature, as denizens of data and artifice, amid crowds and clutter, we become miserly with these loyal and exquisite guides, we numb our sensory intelligence. This failure of attention will make orphans of us all.
Ellen Meloy

A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love, has roused him in vain.
The Quaker Reader

What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world by loses his soul.
Jesus

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Henry Miller

Paying attention is the only game in town.
Jim Harrison

It's not about time. It's not about reliability and predictability. Commitment is about depth. It's about effort. It's about passion. It's about wanting to be in a certain place, and not somewhere else. . .commitment is best measured not by the time one is willing to give up but, more accurately, by the energy one wants to put in, by how present one is.
Eugene O'Kelly

Silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go.
Anon

Today I have a choice. To live—to enter into, to be present in—this life, or to wait for a life yet to be.
Terry Hershey

I was going to write about the Inner Rebel. Before I began to put my thoughts on the page, I decided to finish my coffee and go through the mail. I received a brochure advertising a workshop. (I do read all my junk mail. It makes me feel wanted.) The brochure promises that the workshop “will change the way I see the world.” Now there's a guarantee worth considering. The good hearted people leading the workshop want me to lead a meaningful life (I can't argue with that), and the brochure tells me that I can lead a meaningful life if I “practice time management.” For $300, I can spend a day at a Time Management Workshop.

The brochure tells me that less than one in five people begins the day with a plan. Which made me wonder about my own plan for this day, and I couldn't come up with one.

But I have an excuse. There's a wagon load of stuff swirling around my head that's begging to be worried about. Did you know, for example, that this month, July, is BioTerrorism/Disaster Education Month? It is also Cell Phone Courtesy Month. And National Blueberries Month. National Hot Dog Month. National Recreation and Parks Month. And Social Wellness Month. Apparently, this is the month set aside for us to improve social and communication skills and learn how to act properly to create a positive and lasting first impression. However—and here's where the plot thickens—since I didn't have a plan, I didn't know which one to focus on.

The truth is, today I'm in no mood to give any energy to bioterrorism education. But the blueberries got me thinking about an ice cream Sunday. So I went to Vashon (our island town) with my family. It is our Island Festival weekend. We sat on the lawn in Ober Park and listened to “Bob's Your Uncle.”This is one of our home-grown bands (all teachers during the day, banjo and mandolin and guitar pickers by weekend or night). Zach and his friends rolled down the grassy hills. I'm lost in the music, until I remember that I still don't have a plan for the day, so during a break, I walked to the local pizza parlor for something to eat, something to give me the energy to think, and concoct a plan.

“I have your book,”the pizza parlor owner tells me. “My mother-in-law, in California, called me and said, 'you've got to read this book,'so she sent me a copy, and I looked on the back and saw your picture and said, 'oh my god, I know him.'”

“Thank you,”I say, not sure if this is a compliment, “I'll have a pizza and a beer.”

“I like the fact that you can read it in little parts,”she tells me enthusiastically.

“Yes,”her husband adds, “I think it's the perfect bathroom book.”

Oh. My. Lord. I have to tell you that there are some compliments which truly bring tears to the eyes. This is one of those moments.

“Thank you,”I say. “Better make that two beers.”

Where was I? Oh yes, the need to have a plan for my day.

But now I was thinking, why do I need a plan if I have already written the perfect bathroom book? (I can't wait until Ave Maria—my publisher—begins to use this fact in future advertising. . .)

Walking back to the park, my mind has taken (hook, line and sinker) the brochure's bait, and now I'm worried. . .So where does my day—this day—stack up? You know, as a building block to a meaningful life? Without a plan, I've already conceded that I am a disappointment to the folks leading the seminar. But you've got to admit, we live in a culture with very odd measurements for success. All of it meted out in the slings and arrows of advertising. Just last week I stood in a bookstore, in front of a section named “success library.”A whole passel of books guaranteed to give me a meaningful life. Next to it, you guessed it, was the “financial library.”(It is not, I was sad to see, next to the “great bathroom book”section.)

You can't help but walk away from those shelves thinking, “If only I could digest one of those books. . .my life would be better. . .”And it hits me, on the way back to the park, how much mental energy goes into navigating this bombardment. And how little mental energy is left. . .

. . .for sitting still,

. . .for listening,

. . .for giving,

. . .for making music,

. . .for sharing,

. . .for savoring the moment,

. . .for laughing with friends.

All of this “advice,”oddly, is meant to speed up our life. To take shortcuts. To save time. To get us there sooner. And (my friend Kathleen Kastilaan at the Lutheran Magazine says) we spend our days in hermetically sealed offices which prevent us from the smells of the day.

“A person will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than to push it.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein

It reminds me that when I do stop—when I literally stop, and pay attention—when I enter into this moment, this life, sitting in a park with my family, there will always be someone to tell me this isn't enough. (This world view is eerily similar to way most American's viewed World Cup soccer. “Why watch it,”I heard one man say, “nothing happens.”)

To be honest, I have nothing against time management. There's something to be said for not giving in to the urgent at the expense of the important. But I know a lot of people with their “schedule, calendar and blackberry ducks”in a row, beginning each day with a plan and a list, but that doesn't mean that they are paying attention. Or that they are present. It just might mean that they're anal-retentive-tidy-people. And I'm not so sure that's a good career goal.

There was an exhausted woodcutter who kept wasting time and energy chopping wood with a blunt ax because he did not have the time, he said, to stop and sharpen the blade.

I'm a sucker for these junk mail brochures, because whatever our life, there are many times we wish it was different. But I'm not so sure that a seminar will make the difference. Or “change the way I see the world.”

Maybe it is enough. . .to sit still, long enough, and celebrate the day listening to “Bob's Your Uncle,”watching your son roll down the hill with his friends, while eating bacon and garlic piazza.

Flannery O'Connor story, A good man is hard to find, the main character, a contemptuous old woman, is shot dead by a drifter. Her mind opens to grace only once, and only at that moment. For the first, and unfortunately, the last time, she suddenly sees things clearly. As she dies, the killer says, “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

It's late afternoon. Truth be told, I still don't have a plan.

So, Zach and Judy and I leave Ober Park and walk to the town Center (two blocks away). It's time for the Festival Street Dance. Portage Fil Harmonic (another local band) is sating the summer air with 30s and 40s big band swing music. On trumpet, our local tow-truck operator, on tenor sax a ferry worker, and on drums a local artist. Couples, all ages, cut the rug (or in this case, the asphalt), and a spirit of good will and comradery resonates and mingles with the music and the warm summer evening.

My mind goes back two days. I was with an Island friend in his small plane. We were flying north. Remnants of morning fog hangs in the folds of the Cascades. I can see Canada. I can see the Olympic Mountain range.

We hear a conversation on the radio.

Pilot, “Three Triple four Charlie, requesting instruction.”

Tower, “Do you want a pilot's report?”(That's when the tower gives altitude, wind speed, weather, etc.)

Pilot, “Yes.”

Tower, after a beat, “Well, it doesn't get any better than this.”

It is not a surprise that I decided to pass on the seminar.

As far as changing the way I see the world? Well, I'll go with the wisdom of Jesus, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world by loses his soul.”Buddha had it right, “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.”Or, as Jim Harrison wrote, “Paying Attention is the only game in town.”

Not long ago, a man stood to give the eulogy at his father's funeral. “What I remember about my dad,” he tells those gathered, “is that he never finished anything. He always had projects he started. And projects he never finished. I used to think he lacked gumption or motivation. But now I see it differently. My dad never finished those projects because he used that time for something else. He spent that time with us. His children. When we needed him or his time, he was always there. Now, I see it.”

Paying attention is about moments. But not just the good moments. It's about all the moments. The sad and the jubilant. The joys and the griefs. The mundane and the bustling.

Our Island Festival Day is over. Zach is ready for bed. I stick my head in the door of his bedroom to say good night.

“Dad,”he says to me, “next time you take a bath, try Celtic Bagpipe music. It is soooo relaxing. Really Dad, it is soooo relaxing.”

I smile. I can't hide my laugh.

The good news, he gets it. And he never attended the seminar. I guess there's no need to ask him what his plan was for the day.

* * * * *

I have a plan. Today I am going to pay attention.

"At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor,
Here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds.
I stare and stare. It seems I was called for this:
To glorify things just because they are."

"Blacksmith Shop," Provinces, Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass

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