two people get credit for this “just shrug”: 20 (aka john) and justine. it was in the “old days” when i was at the graphic design studio what felt like all the time when i learned this mantra.
20 designed the first ten or so of my album jackets (and traycards, if you want to get specific.) i would spend time with him and justine (the person who made things happen at the office) idea-brainstorming or watching layout. i can’t tell you how many times deadlines would rapidly approach or the print shop would goof on a run or the computer would glitch or…. i would inwardly be freaking out (and maybe outwardly), but 20 and just would be even and relaxed (at least on the outside.) one or the other would look at me and say, “just shrug.” after about a zillion times, it stuck.
shrugging off the stuff that stresses us out is not a science. it’s most definitely an art form – approached and accomplished differently by each person who attempts it. everyone chooses different crayons out of the box, everyone paints with different size brushes, everyone chooses a different key on the piano, everyone sings a different song, everyone relaxes a different way, everyone re-centers differently. but people are able -and if they weren’t, we would all be a paralyzed-with-stress community of people- to slough it off, to let it roll off their shoulders, to move on, to shrug.
i once heard an interview with a woman who was about 95. she was happy, happy, happy and spoke of her life. the interviewer asked her, “to what do you attribute your happiness, your ease in the world?” she answered, “i don’t take anything personally.”
interrupting is an art form on long island. i know this. i grew up there. and, apparently, i carried this forward. it took d a while (read: a few years and meeting crunch) to realize i was paying attention, that i wasn’t ignoring what he was saying when i interrupted…i just knew where he was going with it and jumped ahead. now, i do realize that sounds pretty rude. it’s not my intention to ever be rude, so i have tried, in recent times, to w.a.i.t. before i speak…at least a little bit longer. if you are nearby when jen and i talk, you will think we are interrupting each other, talking in a circular path and arriving back at the point; carol and i have, for decades, conversed in short snippets of interrupted tangents. regardless of our intent, no one wants to be asked to “pay attention!”
yet, we have all these ways, nowadays (using this word makes me sound old), to not pay attention. how many videos have you seen where people are walking in a mall (or somewhere) texting or reading on their cellphone and fall into a fountain (or some other obstacle.) we sit with others and try to hold a conversation, but they are busy on their phone or some device checking facebook or texts or twitter or the news…so many ways to not pay attention, so many distractions. we see the tragic effects of split focus while people are driving cars.
we are no longer just giving our attention to the moment. we are interrupting conversation, our work, the activity we are involved in, each other’s safety. we would be well-served to pay just-a-little-more attention.
the hymn “it is well with my soul” makes me think of the hymn “be still, my soul” which makes me think of mama dear, my grandmother (my sweet momma’s momma.) (are you still keeping up?) these two strong women, so alike and yet so different – were both anchors in my world, quietly (and sometimes not-so-quietly) shaping my ability to walk in this world and have faith. my sweet momma, for my growing-up years, went to church most every sunday. she and my poppo got dressed up and we would go to christ lutheran church on burr road in east northport. i got to hang with my best friend sue and we went to youth group and sleepaway camp (cool as it was, those days i was never a really big fan of sleepaway camp) and, together, we memorized the books of the bible in order (i still have no idea what the purpose of this was.) i can’t remember mama dear going to church as much; she went on some weekends, on holidays with us or to special events. mama dear had bright red hair, taught me how to sew and adored going to las vegas to play the slot machines. she was obstinate and somewhat opinionated and one of the loves of my early life.
during the time i went to suffolk county community college, mama dear’s house was within reach and i would go there for lunch or tea. we’d eat rye-bread-toasted-with-melted-butter and i’d tell her everything that was going on in my life. she’d listen and, every now and again, she’d say a few words of wisdom. i could tell her anything. she let my soul breathe.
i’d come home from school during junior high and high school and my sweet momma and i would sit on the couch and have tea and chips ahoy chocolate chip cookies, my way-back-then favorite store-bought cookies. we’d talk about my day, the challenges that face girls in high school, cute boys who might have said a word or two, the kids smoking on the bus. she would listen and, every now and again, she’d say a few words of wisdom. i could tell her anything. she let my soul breathe. matter of fact, she let my soul breathe the whole time i had the privilege of having her physically in my life. she still does.
we need that. a place for our souls to breathe. people with whom we can let our souls breathe. a faith in this universe that opens us and simultaneously holds us gently and anchors us. then – we can say: it is well with my soul.
“…well, i will walk by faith, well, even when i cannot see, because this broken road prepares your will for me…” (lyrics from a really great 2002 song by jeremy camp called ‘walk by faith’)
trust. practice. faith. repeat. not necessarily in that order. through the ages, a common challenge – faith without seeing. ‘we’ are no different now than ‘they’ were ‘back then.’ faith. it’s ambiguous.
it’s funny. you might think that the most faith-reinforcing moments come during a service and this true for some. as a minister of music for three decades, i have always sought to create those moments for others…when all things come together: music, lyrics, emotion to amplify the words (and the word) spoken in the service and resonate within someone’s heart and reinforce their feelings of faith. it is a job i take seriously; sometimes you only have one chance to help connect a service with a person’s heart, one chance to reassure, one chance to raise awareness, one chance to have them ask questions within their faith, to challenge their assumptions for and otherwise.
for me, though, the most faith-reinforcing moments are outside of the faith-based venue, be it a church, temple, cathedral, mosque. they are the moments that i can feel the hugeness of this universe of God and my absolute tiny-ness within it: walking in the woods, standing in the sunlight, looking out on a mountain, holding hands, seeing the moon rise over the lake, watching the surf, seeing love pass between two people’s eyes, hearing my children’s voices, finding the right chord for a song, eating breakfast on the deck in the sun with cardinals, hearing music swell…
as a minister of music, i have heard a lot of sermons and been at an un-countable number of services. think about it. (and this is not counting all the years not spent in this position, nor does it count all the extra services at certain times of the year…you’re thinking, “ok, ok, ohmygosh, we get it!” ) so thirty years multiplied by 52 weeks multiplied by at least two services a sunday (sometimes three, but we will round it to two, as you roll your eyes.) that equals 3,120 services and sermons. and let me just mention, some have been…ummm…way better than others. so you would likely deduce that i would know all the stories of the old and new testaments pretty well by now. well, i beg to differ with you. for me, those stories are peripheral.
what really counts for me is the stuff you can’t see with your eyes, the things you can only experience: love, kindness, peace, generosity… simplicities. complexities. these are the foundations of my faith. faith in goodness. faith in being held. faith in grace. choosing actions that are life-giving. knowing that if i fail today, i can try again tomorrow. walking the broken road, faithfully believing that there is a higher power that i can’t see but i can experience. one that surrounds me in my joy and in my pain. ptom, in his lenten sermon the other evening, said, “God is for you.” it takes a little (read: a lot of) practice; it’s a new day every new day. but i believe.
more than once i have been in a moment when i thought, “this is a slice of heaven.” everyone has them. like this scene, it may be on the beach. it may be in the woods. it may be in the rocking chair with your tiny baby. it may be on the mountain in fresh powder. it may be listening to music while running (or sitting quietly) or reading poetry in an adirondack chair. it’s different for everyone. regardless of where it is, of when it is, of what it is, everything feels in balance and all feels well with the world, at least in your little piece of the world. we feel grateful and alive. and we wish for more of those moments.
what if we treated every breathing moment like that? like a slice of heaven.
i love design. and i love finding the small morsels of design hidden in each of david’s really exquisite paintings and, with my mind’s-eye-magnifying-glass creating products with them…my favorite new design challenges are – amazingly – leggings! but, regardless of the product i am designing, it makes me crazy how many stunning individual images are within the whole…i’m bowled over with my camera roll after i shoot a painting.
earth interrupted I, mixed media 48″x53″
it occurs to me that this is not far from something i should notice in all of life. quarter earth – a part of earth interrupted I – is no less a beautiful image because it is a smaller piece of a whole painting. ahhh. it’s not a stretch to see – that the individual daisy is no less a beautiful image because it is a small part of a field of daisies…this moment is no less a beautiful image because it is a small part of a life of moments…we are no less a beautiful image because we are are a small part of a whole world of people.
i hardly know where to start. eye to eye. i to i. dang.
it’s easy to look at this and think of my own daily-life-eye-to-eye challenges. but – i can’t look at this cartoon and stay away from the political climate in our country. whether you prefer blue or red – or even purple – you have to admit, we are not in a state of blissful co-existing. we have moved in together and have drawn lines down the middle of the virtual apartment, down the middle of the ever-increasingly important issues, down the middle of integrity, down the middle of people’s hearts. and, with such strong big-thick-font-lines drawn, there seems to be no meeting ground, no where to go. the “eyes” of wisdom and for-the-good-of-all-people have disappeared and the “i’s” have shown up, stronger and bigger and more powerful than before; superman without clark kent’s goodness.
where DO we start? pstacey said the other day that we have to start in our own little corner of the world. i agree. how hard is it sometimes to see eye to eye/i to i in our own relationships, our own families? ptom’s words “acts of radical kindness = building community”. i agree. in the middle of our own concentric circles, we make a teeny movement of goodness and the ripple spreads out. there is no where else to start. without our grounding in the breath-space we each take up in the world, we can’t make any progress, we can’t ripple out.
perhaps we all could work on seeing eye to eye (er, i to i) if we made conscious and generous life-giving decisions with every choice-we-are-faced-with that take into account a weighing-in of how it might impact others. we don’t have to agree. but we have to respect each other in the process, try to walk in another’s shoes, see another perspective, see what someone else’s eyes see. see i to i.
yes! there are two different product lines – each easily accessible by clicking on the “eye to eye merchandise” link OR the “i to i merchandise” link above.
i don’t have to look further than my two children for examples of being relentless.
The Boy decided, early in high school, that he wanted to change his attention from baseball to tennis. now, most of his classmates who were tennis players on the varsity team had played since earlier childhood. The Boy had only hit the ball around on the court a few times with his very-best-growing-up-friend-miles or pierre-who-hung-out-here-all-the-time-in-high-school but his decision was made and he pursued it with zeal. a part of the jv team, he practiced and took individual lessons, group lessons, worked with his coaches. i, on the sidelines, sweated and watched, trying hard to be quiet as he pushed himself. he, a natural athlete, was moved up to the varsity team and doubled-down on the hard work of tennis – a “game” possibly more psychological than physical….ridiculously tough on a mom. he went to a university that welcomed him on their tennis team and, for years, i spent the better part of tennis season (and tournament season) driving all over the state and beyond, proud to see his skill on the court, proud to see his drive and, mostly, that it paid off for him. now he applies the same strategic tennis-approach to his life, his career. he was – and is – relentless.
The Girl decided, upon moving to the high mountains of colorado, that she, having never been on skis or other propelling-downhill-snow-gear (other than a sled), wanted to snowboard. she was working in a professional (indoor office) position out there, but she spent every spare moment on the slopes, striving to learn. every now and then she’d report in about her experience on copper mountain or keystone or breck or vail or …. she broke her arm, she twisted limbs, she broke her helmet. she persisted. time passed and she traded up for better snowboards, more equipment; she asked more people for advice or pointers; she was a learner beyond compare. she boarded in aspen, in snowmass, in patagonia. she dropped off ledges and split-boarded up vast mountains. fast forward just a few short years and she, no longer in an inside office doing the piece-of-paper-from-the-university-of-minnesota-work-she-was-trained-for, has taken the learn how to learn, learn how to persevere, learn how to dream – from life, from college, from her own purposeful heart – and is a snowboard instructor and a snowboard coach for a team in aspen. she offers more than snowboarding to those around her; she is the picture of excited zealousness. she was – and is – relentless.
so i………who read to them as little ones and tucked them in and drove them to music lessons and sporting events and played with matchbox cars and dressed barbies and ran alongside two-wheelers and crossed my fingers as they sat behind the wheel of the car and tried to instill a little appreciation of beauty and respect, and helped with homework and stayed up all night while they worked on last-minute-projects and rocked them to sleep at night with a well-loved-tattered ‘goodnight moon’ falling off my lap……..now learn from them. to be relentless.
there is this adorable couple from mississippi on hgtv these days. erin and ben star in a show called Home Town and they are working to restore their tiny town of laurel one beautiful home at a time. my favorite moment, as they run commercials for this very popular show, is erin passionately looking into the camera saying, with the most charming southern drawl, “get up and DO it.” you can tell she means this about every single thing. and to her call to action, i just might add – and be relentless.
peace. the written word (or the symbol) punctuates the corners of our home. it’s suspended on doorknobs, off of old window frames, made of old copper or tin, in my studio handmade by the boy out of a scrap of wood, a necklace from the girl hanging on a mirror, a chunky silver ring on my right hand from david…
“may you be peace” would be my motto, if we all had mottos. i just feel like i can’t think of better places to lead from than kindness and peace. way back in high school, a long while ago, the-amazing-english-teacher-andrea made an impression on all of us – with her peace signs and her pay-it-forward-thinking; if my obsession with peace signs hadn’t already started by then, this indeed was its jump-start.
david’s painting MAY YOU wraps a buddhist prayer around you and is astoundingly beautiful. as i photographed it for his gallery site, i found myself concentrating also on morsels of the painting, each stunning in their own right. this is one of the morsels. may you be peace is simple and complex, beckoning you to be both of this world and beyond this world. wishing you, today and every single day, this peace.
every summer i break one of my two little baby toes. every single summer. last summer alone i logged tons of miles on my $2 old navy flipflops as a result. i even talked about it on this blog. what did i learn? in particular, what did i learn THIS time as opposed to all the other times? i learned to either 1. slow down a little 2. watch where i’m going a tad bit more 3. never go barefoot. the thing is, i’m pretty sure it will happen again. i’m still learning.
i haven’t fallen off my bike in quite some time (and hope not to cause these days it will hurt much more than it used to) but i can relate in countless ways to our chicken marsala monday in the melange this week. i can distinctly remember taking off the training wheels and teaching the children to ride their two-wheelers, running down the sidewalk next to them. for that matter, i can totally -and (yougetthis) viscerally- remember teaching them how to drive.
we’ve been watching the olympics. athletes of inordinate ability who had to start somewhere – and, for sure, who fell in the process. not afraid of failing, but keeping on keeping on. being an ace anything is far off. do any of us ever really get there?
as an adult (ugh, i guess 58 qualifies me if for no other reason than sheer number) there are a lot of things i still want to learn. a few years ago i wanted to throw pots. i spent more than i bargained on for clay and lessons and studio time and more clay and ended up with the most wonderful tea light holder. (ok, i also threw a cereal-size-bowl and a few other assorted incredibly-shrinking-bowls as i struggled to center them and not have the clay collapse on the wheel.) let’s just say i was not gifted at this. but it did (and still does) make me laugh. and i know that i will someday try it again and i will add to my assortment of teenytinyclayobjects in which i can store paperclips.
when we see my amazing son and his boyfriend, we seem to be developing this tradition of bowling together. now, even though i live in wisconsin – and it is practically a law to be a good bowler here – i am pretty bad at bowling. every now and then i do something (like pick up a spare or get a strike) and am shocked, but most of the time i am aghast at how the ball creates splits in the pins and i find myself leaning while watching it careen (generous term) down the alley. the thing i must say, though, is that each time i do a little better. and the reallybadscores will, if i dedicate any time at all to practice, perhaps improve. mostly, i laugh. and i wish i could bring that to ANY thing i am learning – be it a new sport, an artform, a study of some philosophy or political issue, or – a big one – relationship. we fall. we get up, brush ourselves off, ask for grace and try again.
even though there are so many venues of crashing, the recording studio is a prime place to watch yourself fall down. you’ve written music, lyrics. you’ve practiced and practiced – there’s muscle memory in each measure. you’re ready, water and coffee by your side. (for me, not so much water once in the studio as it ….toomuchinformationalert…makes throat noises i can’t avoid.) and then you start. there’s so much riding on the line. and some days? some days you can’t get through a track. something is amiss; something is wrong. the first track of my first album was recorded in a studio in evanston. ken, my producer, was a stranger to me and i drove down with a posse of friends. i felt a little nervous, but mostly felt confident i was prepared. hours later, i had recorded the solo piano track for galena (the album released from the heart) and ken gave me a cassette tape (how funny is that?!) to listen to. i put it in the cassette deck of my old chrysler blue minivan and turned it on. and was appalled. rigid playing met my ears. it sounded nothing like me or my playing, or my piece of music, for that matter. all that confidence translated to a coldness, an unemotional-ness instead of a good track. i called ken (who i barely knew then, but now the same brilliant producer who has produced 14 of my 15 albums) and he suggested that, “maybe you should just write the music and have someone else play it on the recording FOR you.” what???!!! uhhh, i didn’t even know what to answer that would sound in the least bit polite.
and so i painfully listened to the recording again and sat back down at home on my bench. and i realized i needed to be ready -at any moment- to fall. THAT is what would make the piece sound like me and sound like, well, music. the rawness, the every-moment-ness, the vulnerability to mistakes and moving beyond them. that is what would make it shine as a learning. preparation is wise, flexibility is a must, a sense of humor is required, confidence is irrelevant, perseverance is utmost.
two people get credit for this “just shrug”: 20 (aka john) and justine. it was in the “old days” when i was at the graphic design studio what felt like all the time when i learned this mantra.
reverse threading 