Let me respectfully remind you:
– Evening Gatha
Life and Death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.
On this night, the days of our life are decreased by one.
Each of us should strive to awaken.
Awaken! Take heed! Do not squander your life.
Birthdays are akin to over-excited neighbors. You either appreciate their intrusions or avoid them like Homer Simpson does Ned Flanders. I treat birthdays like Flanders. I love a good party, cake, and sing-song version of ‘Happy Birthday’, but I am slow to allow the spotlight to turn squarely onto my face. A strange confession for a guy with a podcast. But I do love the birthday questions…
My favorite way to celebrate a friend on their birthday is to ask the birthday questions. They questions I learned from a colleague at a college I used to work at more than a decade ago. They are simple in form, but open endless possibilities for depth.
What did you learn this past year?
What do you hope to learn in this next year?
The reasons these questions trip out of my mouth so easily on a birthday is because, holy smokes we are celebrating the day a person left the warm cocoon of mama’s womb to wail their way into world waiting to wound you with love and hopefully…someday…gift you with a root beer float. The sheer fact that you are here, celebrating the day you entered the world is kinda magic. I never really understood folks who got rip-snorting drunk on their birthday because ‘its their birthday’. I’ve fallen for the birthday questions instead. You learn a lot by how a person responds to …what did you learn this past year? …do they share existential anguish or how they have grown…or a new skill they have been mastering.
So I’ll hum happy birthday to myself and then respond to his first birthday question…what did you learn this past year?
Ok…so it will be helpful for me to name a few things that happened this past year that year to serve as pillars along the journey. First and foremost, Laura and I had our second kid. A beautiful baby boy who shuns sleeps, smiles bigs and whose most comforting blanky is his mama’s hair. My body was ran amuck amidst the sleepless nights with that same beautiful baby boy. Tiredness ruled the day, and putting a foggy hue on my relationship to my self and reality. I walked down a Zen tunnel holding hands with Meister Eckhart for much of the summer. So diving into what I have learned with these pillars as guideposts for my spitfire responses
I have learned that there are layers to the love I am experiencing for my wife that I hadn’t previously thought possible. It is almost like I was scratching a ground floor of my love and broke through to a much deeper lover lay below. I don’t exactly when, but I fell ass over heels deeper in love with my wife again this year and it brings me to the edge of what I think I can bear. I have relearned the lesson that love if attended to can hold your attention in such a way to enlarge your heart to relate differentially in egoic fights, making love or simply watching her move across the house. May my love and gratitude for Laura in marriage and life always outweigh the decisions points, disagreements and stress of the absurdity of this life.
Secondly, I have relearned and relearned that ways in which dominant culture perpetuates racism, inequality, and violent fear. These barnacles of oppression are encrusted to the American vessel, but scapegoats are ways for me to be distracted. I had a number of experiences this past year that have taught me about how I unconsciously participate in white dominant culture. My seat at the head table of the American power structure because of my gender, sexuality, and skin color is a given. I have a long way to go in understanding this and embodying the question…how then shall I live? But I feel the shifts within, and the work is long and hard ahead…but it is something we can only do together
I have learned that I can’t shake ‘nothing’ from my being. I am called to nothing, out of nothing, and in that nothingness I am found. My brothers Thomas Merton and Meister Eckhart has been nurturing this call towards an empty pocket approach to God. And my Zen brothers and sisters are quick-witted enough to slap my attention to my face. As Roshi Jiyu Kennett said – “If you’re afraid of being grabbed by God, don’t look at a wall. Definitely don’t sit still.” In an age of chaotic busyness and clinging for meaning, becoming nothing may be the greatest act of all
And as I finish this bite of birthday cake, the second birthday question – what do I hope to learn in this next year?
My intentions for this next year appear mundane in practice, but have implications for slight carvings in the interior landscapes that I hope will allow a new flow to emerge. First up, I intend to learn how to better take care of this body of mine. Family and work life have filled my days to the brim. Until I am able to relent some other activities and stretch my running legs again, I’m going to lean into the space at hand. I feel sheepish even saying it aloud, but I am committing to 40 push-ups a day until I turn 40 next year.
I have a couple of recurring dreams that suddenly merged into the same dream this past week…it was very trippy and allusive, i know. And for the majority of you who immediately fall asleep upon hearing someone speak of their dreams, please, enjoy the nap or skip this yammering…The two dreams are in an entirely different color schemes, one is life with undue responsibility in muted gray and the other is in the wilds of the ocean with the brightest hues of orange and blue that I have ever seen. The drab scene is static like a comic strip that goes nowhere and the other is a blissful state of belonging. These dreams have shown up over the last year on their own, but have joined forces to grab my attention in their mysterious messages. As my ol pal Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I am currently living with the details of the sensation, connections and what-have-yous that accompany the dream. My soul seems to be ringing the bell of attention and I know not yet what it is calling me towards
The moments of my week that resonate most deeply are out in nature with my band of merrymakers. When our lil family finds its way to a wide open park, with towering trees shadowing us from the New Mexico sun, I feel free. I watch my daughter run, duck, skip and tumble and my baby boy crawl, dig, and taste whatever is in his path. Or when we dip into the bosque (basically what we call the forest habitat in the Rio Grande flood plains here in New Mexico) explore the terrain beneath the cottonwoods. And when the perfect moment aligns and we are hiking in the mesas or mountains, I see us relating to our habitat with the reckless joy and alignment of our natural creatureliness. I want more of that unbounded playfulness in the landscape around my home.
What does it mean to be a contemplative in climate crisis? This question burns my lips as I repeat it over and over again. I am haunted by this courageous invitation to live into an answe
I plan to do more musings on Contemplify. I know that I will continue to seek interviews with contemplatives in the world, and the personal explorations of the intersections of contemplation in the midst of daily family has helped clarify and shape the directions of my wandering journey. I’ve heard from so many folks that these types of musings allow them to reorient their own contemplative journey. And that is what excites me. The small, the appreciative, the difficult, the moments that are bursting forth through our lives that are quiet eruptions of God in the mundane. I know that commitment to offer further contemplative musings will fling open windows that I thought were painted shut. It also slightly terrifies me to share the unrefined musings of my heart, but the edge of my heart calls me on
I have other areas of growth that I look forward to tending to; like continued attention to life as a husband, father, friend and colleague. But I have a hunch you’ll hear a lot more about these roles in the light of the contemplative musings commitment here on Contemplify in future episodes. I hope that as your birthday rolls around or those nearest to you, that you relay and experiment with the birthday questions – what did you learn this past year? And what do you hope to learn this next year?
For me, it’s been a delightful way to take another step in vulnerability with myself, my soul, and my community. It also doesn’t hurt to have a hoppy IPA in the mix to refresh the memory and harness the spirit.
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