A Contemplative Life

November 8, 2016November 8, 2016

To My Son, On Election Day

The sun waits to rise on James Street
hiding behind buildings, peeking up from
under the edge of the world. The shadows
in the alley still have something of the night
about them, heavy and deep, but light has
begun to spread, running
like spring water, leaking up from underground
wells. Then I hear the creaking floorboards
above me, the sound of your small steps
on the stairs, the scraping of your socks
on the carpet, the tiny breaths.
The tiny breaths.
We are all so fragile.

“I must have coffee,” I tell you, but you squeak
for pancakes, so pancakes it is, and I measure out
the flour, pour the milk, melt the butter. Vanilla.
Soda and powder. The batter is thin and golden and
it sizzles on the griddle. “We are so rich,” I tell
you. Your eyes watch. You want to help mix. You sit
on the counter, the best of me, the best
this world has to offer.
The best of me.
Suffer little children
and forbid them not from
mixing the pancake batter.

I walk three blocks to the polling station and stand
in line. I am only one, and on days like this, that is sweet
relief. My vote is only my vote. I do not hold the weight
of the world on my shoulders. Walking home, past
the hospital parking garage and the Lutheran church
and the corner store that sells milk on the edge of
expiration, I breath in the autumn. Today
is today. I wave to my friend across the street, the one
waiting for a kidney. He waves
back and smiles.

I decide that in the afternoon I will take you and the rest
to the park, help you into the swing, chase you through
the tube slide. You will shock me when you get to the bottom,
the fall and the cold clinging to you like a lightning bolt.
“No matter what happens, we must
love our neighbors. Even if they vote for you-know-
who,” I whisper in your small ear, holding you tight,
because you are the only
person in the world
who will listen. You smell of colorful, dead
leaves and new things.

We walk home as the nation chooses. We stop
at the crosswalks and look both ways. The darkness comes
earlier these days. The shadows are fast and we race
them, their outstretched hands reaching for us all the way
along that last length of sidewalk, all the way to the front
door. Tomorrow, I will wave to my friend again. Tomorrow,
I will make you pancakes, if you
like. Tomorrow, we can wake early and watch
the light spread into the world.

October 20, 2016October 19, 2016

What We Leave Behind

It’s strange, driving down a back road through farm country in October when the corn has been harvested and the trees are changing color. And it’s 85 degrees. My mind and body are connected to this land, and after 39 autumns, most of them spent in this part of the world, I recognize that something is different. Something doesn’t feel right.

The three of us drive along the eastern edge of the valley, our windows wide open. He tells me to turn off of the road. We drive slowly along a tractor lane that separates two fields, the car heaving up and down like a trawling boat.

“Turn here,” he says in a quiet, gravelly voice. Soon we are out in the middle of the field, approaching a quiet grove of trees. We follow the tree line, bend around the back, and he tells me to park where the ground sags like the bottom of a wave, that last glorious moment before the ocean picks you up, lifts you towards the blue.

It is a beautiful day. From here, we walk.

A narrow path splits the trees, then navigates the space between the wood and the 10-foot-high drying corn stalks. They are tan and brittle, and when a breeze blows they rattle like bones.

“The deer must be using this trail this year,” his wife says, and then I notice the corn, some of the cobs gnawed off.

“There it is,” he says, and we stop and the wind is all around us. We stare at a cross pounded deep into the ground just inside the woods. It is a metal sapling, rusting the color of fall. It is a marker that serves as a reminder of forgiveness, a reminder of a past that the current generations have vowed not to repeat.

“There it is,” he says again.

* * * * *

What will we leave behind, when we are gone? I thought of this the other day when I met with someone who told me the story of how her father died when he was only 46 years old. He passed in the middle of the night, cause unknown. I will be 46 in six years. If I would die then, what would I leave behind? What metal crosses have I pounded into this existence? What will the stainless steel letters say about me?

* * * * *

The three of us stand there for a bit, the way you do when you are standing in the presence of something holy. She talks about how well the cross is holding up. He grabs the top of it and, by the firm way it holds to the Earth, I can tell it has been pounded deep. He talks about adding a date to the back, in case anyone stumbles on it in the future.

I wonder about that. I imagine someone crossing through the field, stumbling over the rows, picking their way through the thick undergrowth in that grove of trees, putting their hand up against something that doesn’t move. They take another look. They see a cross with the words “Generations” and “Forgiven.” They see a year.

How are we marking these battles? What will future generations stumble across on their way from here to there?

* * * * *

I do not know who turns away first. I know it is not me. I follow them back to the car and we retrace our bouncing steps, finally back on the smooth road, the sky blue overhead, the warm wind denying fall has ever been here or will ever come back.

October 13, 2016October 13, 2016

A Normal Night Here, a Normal Night There

Sometimes you have to roll down your window, pull up your hood, and take in the eye-watering freshness of fall.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve written here. The days are shorter now, and the mornings are cold. There’s a still-new baby in the house, random diapers lying in the hallway, soft cries in the middle of the night. Leaves from the sycamore tree scuttle down the sidewalk, running away from who knows what. The moon, maybe, or tomorrow.

The world is at its uproarious best, and Lord knows there’s plenty to be uproaring about, but sometimes I wonder if we’re creating so much noise that we can’t really hear any of the soft cries for help anymore. Every time Donald Trump breathes there are headlines; meanwhile, Aleppo burns, Haiti drowns, and the same homeless guy wanders up and down Queen Street, cheeks rusted an alcohol red, eyes lost.

But what will we do? What can we do? To be honest, our family is up to our ears in activities and school and always something next on the schedule. We’re under-rested and over-indulged. Every minute of every day is already scheduled so thank you very much but you’ll have to knock on someone else’s door.

Really?

What will it take to break us from this rut we’re in?

* * * * *

My wonderful editor at Revell starting working with me through the edits of The Day the Angels Fell, and it’s a beautiful thing, to spend so much time making something into what it really is. I worked on it for the better part of a week, revisited Deen. I was there, I tell you! On the farm again, wandering the dark passageways at the fair.

I wonder if that’s part of the problem, if we’re all moving so fast we never get to revise our lives. I wonder if we ever took the time to pull back and wait, would we actually see what’s steaming at us from around the bend?

* * * * *

It’s okay, though. You’re okay. You’re doing okay, I promise, the best you can do. I know I am.

Tonight, I’ll administer the sacrament of the bedtime snack, and the spiritual discipline of the brushing of the teeth, and the ministry of herding six children off to bed. Tonight, I’ll read to Leo, the same old lineup of “Let’s Go!” and “The Runaway Bunny” and “How Much Do I Love You?” I’ll go up and sing to Sam and Abra, and Lucy will kiss me on my rough, getting-older, bearded cheek, and I’ll think to myself she’d better not be kissing anyone else like that unless they’re prepared to love her at least a tenth of what I do.

I’ll stop by Cade’s bedroom and say goodnight, and I’ll leave him there, reading in the halo of lamplight, and I’ll sigh the sigh of years that move far too fast. If I’m lucky, Poppy will fall asleep on my chest.

I turn 40 this year. Maybe that’s what this is all about.

Maile and I will collapse into bed and chat about the kids, who is doing what the next day, who is on our minds the most, who needs some direction. We’ll turn out the light and talk some more and one of us might even fall asleep while the other is still pontificating – that’s how these days go, and you can’t take offense because you’re stretched thin, too, and sleep is the only pause.

These are those days, the ones that tumble over and over on each other, like the numbered balls in the lottery drawing.

* * * * *

Outside the house, the politicians will rage, the homeless will pull a piece of cardboard or a coat or an old blanket closer around them, and a cat will pause on the roof, staring wide-eyed at the moon. The lights will be on at Saint James, and a police car will pause for a moment outside the barber shop.

Leo calls out in the middle of the night and immediately falls back to sleep. Poppy cries and dreams whatever it is that babies dream about. I wake the next morning. Make some coffee. Watch the lines in between the blinds start to glow as the sun drifts up over James Street.

* * * * *

I watched this video today. These are my children, bleeding quietly. This is my doctor, going from patient to patient. This is my wife, under the body bag. These are our people.

When will we see it? When will we recognize that this is us?

August 25, 2016August 25, 2016

When I Slept Under the Bed (Or, The Importance of “Hiddenness”)

From the time I was six years old until I was around ten, my family lived in a great, sprawling farmhouse with a covered front porch and two huge oak trees in the front yard. There was a garden and barns made for exploring. If you read The Day the Angels Fell, it’s basically the setting for that novel. Every autumn, my father raked all the beautiful, brittle leaves into piles and we ran the path his rake made and we laughed and threw colors around. As the sun set in similar fashion somewhere over the hill, he lit the piles on fire, and the flames danced like savages.

In many ways, I was hidden from the world in those years, living so removed from other people. I went to a tiny school that had tiny problems. My closest friends were, for the most part, my cousins, or the three boys I met in first grade. Whenever I could sneak away from the house, I’d be down at the creek or riding my bike on back-country roads, not a soul in sight.

It was about that time in my life when I took to sleeping under the bed. I’m sure this gives you some kind of psychological magnifying glass with which to view my life. There were three doors in my room: one went into my parents’ room; one opened into a huge closet that didn’t seem to have a back; the third led into the neighboring house (the farmhouse we lived in was split into two separate dwellings). Maybe it was the confluence of all these doors, or the wide windows that opened up onto the porch roof, or the deep-red carpet, but something caused me to crave security, and I found it in the tight space beneath my bed.

I hid away down there, blocking myself in with boxes and pillows and an old blanket I had since my birth. I slept well in that sealed off darkness. I breathed easier.

* * * * *

One of the reasons that hiddenness is such an important aspect of the spiritual life is that it keeps us focused on God. In hiddenness we do not receive human acclamation, admiration, support, or encouragement. In hiddenness we have to go to God with our sorrows and joys and trust that God will give us what we most need.

In our society we are inclined to avoid hiddenness. We want to be seen and acknowledged. We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events. But as we become visible and popular, we quickly grow dependent on people and their responses and easily lose touch with God, the true source of our being. Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.

Henri Nouwen

This piece by Henri Nouwen has upended me, as good writing often does. I think about how much of my writing life is spent seeking acclamation, admiration, support, or encouragement. And while I do not believe those things are negative in and of themselves, I do believe that there is also something blessed to receive when we live in the lack of them, when we are forced to find our approval and identity somewhere deeper.

Do I ever leave room for hiddenness? Or must all of my joys and heartaches immediately be shared with the world?

Nouwen talks about the dependency these things create within us. What at first feels like encouragement or support can all too quickly turn into that which my creativity depends on. What does it look like when a writer begins trying to please everyone in an attempt to relive, over and over again, those moments of acclamation? How can one possibly navigate the minefield that is the approval or disapproval of hundreds or thousands of people?

And what, then, will we do with a rush that craves more and more, is never satisfied? How far will we go in our pursuit of the like and the share?

Hiddenness, it seems, in some form, is the answer. But I’m left with more questions than answers.

What does it mean for me, a writer in this particular age, to seek out hiddenness? My word processor underlines “hiddenness” in a scribbly red, as if to negate it, as if encouraging me to delete it from my vocabulary.

“This is not a word,” It says. “Hiddenness is not a thing. Where you do find it, delete it. Replace it with something else. Something in our culture’s vocabulary.”

But hiddenness is a thing, no matter what spell check says. I experienced it sleeping under the bed when I was a child, and it was glorious, that sense of security, of safety. That sense that no one else in the entire world knew where I was or what I was about. Hiddenness is a safe space. It is a place full of truth, a place where God dwells, waiting to commune with us. And while it may be empty of certain, valuable things, I’m quite sure it is full of many others.

Maybe that’s what I’m looking for: a new set of values.

Can we find the courage to hide in a world that only values that which has been found?

August 8, 2016August 8, 2016

Like Breath Over Still Water: The Arrival of a Baby

I drive the truck faster, weaving past cars on the city streets. I nearly pull out in front of someone and hit my brakes. We are 35 minutes from the birth center, and Maile’s labor has started. I stop at a red light just as another contraction builds inside her.

This is our sixth child. I know in an intimate way the process my wife’s body goes through when the baby has decided to come. For example: Maile hums through her contractions. It’s quiet at first, barely a breath, but as the contractions get stronger and closer together her voice swells into a loud kind of almost-singing. It’s a prehistoric chant, something in her DNA. But as we sit at the red light, and the contraction swells, that particular pressure transforms her humming into a guttural grunt. I also know what that means.

“Do you have to push?” I ask, looking over at her. This is not a good time to push. We are too far away.

Her lips are pursed and white around the edges. She’s still exhaling the remnants of the last contraction. She nods.

“I wanted to that time.”

The traffic is slow. We hit every light red. Another contraction comes in, tides back out. Another. All those people we pass in their cars, living their normal evenings. Going out to eat. Going home from work. Talking with friends on their phones. Can’t they see there is a miracle in our truck, barely waiting to break forth?

“Play that song again,” Maile whispers. The song is “Born” by Over the Rhine.

I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh though my tears
I was born to love
I’m gonna learn to love without fear

“You should probably drive faster,” she says in a flat, calm voice, but there is a trace of urgency, like a small, red thread on a white carpet.

Pour me a glass of wine
Talk deep into the night
Who knows what we’ll find

I look both ways and pull hesitantly through the red light, then drive the rest of the highway in the center lane, my four-ways flashing. We are 20 minutes from the birth center. But we are finally out of the city. We are fleeing into the country shadows, the sun setting behind us.

* * * * *

This I’ve also seen: when Maile begins labor, when the contractions start to come closer together, she withdraws inside of herself. There is a labyrinth she follows to the deepest parts, and when she’s there, when she’s in active labor, I can’t find her anymore. She wouldn’t recognize me if we passed in the street.

Intuition, deja-vu
The Holy Ghost haunting you
Whatever you got
I don’t mind

At 7:30pm on Saturday night, one hour before we raced down the turn lane of Route 30, she said she wanted to go for a walk, so she and I set out along with Leo and Cade. We went west on James and turned north on Prince and as we walked down the long hill, the sun was setting off to our left, its light dripping into a vacant parking lot. A cool breeze swept by with the traffic. The air felt lighter somehow, as if August had persuaded October to come and take over the evening duties.

We turned east onto Frederick Street. Cade walked ahead. Leo said hello to a little girl playing on the sidewalk. Maile slowed down. She breathed deep, and I could see it beginning to happen: the withdrawal, the searching. She was looking for a way into the labyrinth.

“You okay?” I asked her. There was some fear in her eyes.

“That was a strong one,” she said, walking with one hand supporting her back. “I’m scared. You’re going to have to help me with this baby.”

I nodded quietly.

“You got it, babe,” I said. “One at a time.”

We walked all the way to Duke, turned south, then doubled back on Prince towards home. A homeless man pointed at her stomach.

“I saw another one of you over on Lime,” he said, practically shouting. Indescribable joy was etched on his face. We smiled and nodded.

“Over on Lime!” he insisted. “Pregnant ladies everywhere.” Then he turned and walked away.

We got to the last crosswalk. Soon we would be home. The sign was orange, don’t walk. Maile bent over then arched her back, breathed deep again, hummed. That was the first hum I’d heard. The contractions were serious. She stood up, looked like she might throw up. Her eyes were far away. She was entering the labyrinth.

“Maybe we should head into the birth center,” I said, not expecting her to take me up on the suggestion. She doesn’t like to go in until it’s time. But she surprised me, there on the corner of Queen and James, just opposite the Greek restaurant we love. She didn’t even make eye contact with me. Only nodded.

“That’s a good idea. We should probably hurry a little bit.”

I wondered what it would be like to deliver a baby in the Suburban. I turned to Cade.

“Hey, buddy,” I said. “Why don’t you run ahead and tell Mimi we need to go? Now. Tell her we need to get moving, fast.”

Cade stared at his phone.

“Hey, you,” I said, half laughing. “Get moving.”

“Dad,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “I’ve got an awesome Pokemon on the line.”

“What?” I exclaimed. He paused, swiped his fingers up and down his phone, then took off in a sprint.

“I got him!” he shouted joyfully over his shoulder. Maile and I shook our heads. We both laughed.

Put your elbows on the table
I’ll listen long as I am able
There’s nowhere I’d rather be

That’s when we drove out of the city. That’s when I weaved in and out of city traffic. That’s when Maile started to feel an urge to push.

* * * * *

We slip away from the setting sun, now 15 minutes from the birth center. With every contraction I ask her if she needs to push. Sometimes she says yes, sometimes no.

These are the hills where I grew up, the sprawling, green fields with July corn as tall as a man. These are the summer nights I cut my teeth on. This is the land inside me, the place I will someday go home to when my life is over, my far, green country. I am not afraid of helping my wife deliver a baby in the truck, if I have to – not with those fields as witnesses. It almost seems fitting, that a child of mine would spring into being in the midst of the corn and the tobacco, the trees and the fireflies, the quiet, curving roads and the distant storm clouds.

But we make it. There will be no Suburban birth. We pull into the birth center and the nurse lets us in after hours and we go into the same room where Leo was born. The same room. The same bed, the same tub. I remember when Leo was born. I remember texting everyone the news, including our friend Alise who had recently had a stillborn son. I wanted her to know we were thinking of her. There is such joy and sorrow as I get older. Joy inextricably mixed with sorrow. They’re a tangled mess.

The contractions come closer together now, and Maile is far away. She is lost in the labyrinth, trying to find her way to the elusive center. She hums through contractions. She strips down and climbs into the warm bath, facing the corner, squatting down as far as she can, her arms out in front of her. In yoga, it is close to the child’s pose.

She whispers prayers into the water when the pain becomes unbearable. Her breath scatters shallow ripples over the thin surface. Or maybe it is the Spirit. She wants me to push deep into her back, and I press with the heels of my hands. I feel her spine and the deep muscles of her lower back, her ribs.

Bone from my bone. Flesh from my flesh.

She presses herself down until I think she might melt into the water or split in two. She wants help out of the tub, so we move her to the bed. She hums through the contractions and the humming turns louder and louder, rises up over itself until she sounds like a muezzin calling us all to prayer. Her powerful voice gives me chills. She moans and cries out and pushes.

Secret fears, the supernatural
Thank God for this new laughter
Thank God the joke’s on me
We’ve seen the landfill rainbow
We’ve seen the junkyard of love
Baby it’s no place for you and me

The way a child comes into being from a woman is the birth of a galaxy. It is searing pain and numbing joy; it will break you into interstellar pieces. A bundle of powder-coated limbs slips and jumbles its way into the world, still attached to the source. A squirming heap of carbon and water covered in blood and a ghostly vernix. Believe in miracles. They are born every day, attached to their mothers.

When Maile realizes the baby is a girl, she raises her face towards the ceiling. Her smile is like those clear shafts of light that break through storm clouds.

I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I’m gonna learn to love without fear

“What a gift,” she kept whispering over and over again. “What a gift.”

Later, in the quiet, the labyrinth far behind (or perhaps all around, with us finally residing in the perfect center), we name her Poppy Lynne Louella.

Poppy for the ruby red fields in England we often hiked through, gazed at.

Lynne for my Aunt Linda who died a month ago, who rose through a bright pink sunset and fireworks that split the sky.

Louella for Maile’s grandmother, homeless and alone at a young age with only her sister, married at age 16, one of the strongest women we ever knew.

Poppy Lynne Louella.

What a gift.

Italicized lines are from the song “Born” by Over the Rhine, my favorite band. You can purchase the album, “Drunkard’s Prayer,” or listen to more of their songs, HERE.

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016

Regarding the Long Days Before the Baby Comes

There is the tedious movement of the last few days of a pregnancy. The summer days well up like drips from a faucet, slowly gathering mass, then hanging there much longer than you thought possible. Maile’s stomach drops as the baby seeks out more space. At night she reaches over and grabs my hand, places it on her stomach in a particular spot, like the placing of a stethoscope. Like someone divining water. She doesn’t even say anything, and we sit there quietly, her eyes closed, my hand feeling the heel, the bottom, the bulging movements.

A sharp kick. She glances at me. Her eyes ask, “Did you feel that?”

I smile. After seventeen years you can have an entire conversation without saying a word. She rolls onto her side. I start reading again. I leave my hand on her stomach until she falls asleep.

* * * * *

The older I get, the more tempered my celebrations. I don’t know if this is good or not. It simply is.

When Cade was born thirteen summers ago, in a small hospital thirty miles outside of London, I basked in the joy of having a son. I could barely comprehend the wonder. My world revolved around the three of us, my small family, my insular world. There was no one else.

Now, five children later, my joy is touched by sadness. When our child is born, I will cry happy tears, yes. But I will also remember my friend’s son Eliot who was not born into life but into death. I will think of our friends for whom another month has come and gone without the pregnancy they so desperately want. I will think of my cousin’s child, born with complications.

I think the older we get, the more mixed up our grief and joy become. I supposed I could sit there, try to pull away all the beads of oil from the water. But there it is. Instead of separating it, I will swirl it around, watch the colors spread.

* * * * *

Sammy pushes on Maile’s stomach.

“Careful, you’ll break her waters!” Maile’s mom says, and we smile. Sammy’s intrigue passes from Maile’s belly to his own. He explores his belly button.

“Can boys break their waters?” he asks, deadly serious. We laugh until our sides hurt. Sam is rather pleased with himself.

* * * * *

Maybe we’re not meant to separate the joy from the sorrow. During Jesus’ long monologue in John about love, he interrupts himself to say that if we remain in his love, our joy will be full. Not pure joy. Not unadulterated joy. Full.

Which begs the question, “Full of what?”

Maybe full joy is a joy full of sorrow and grief and happiness and satisfaction and love and everything else, whatever it takes. Maybe full joy is like the movement of a baby still inside or the movement of summer days just before the labor begins.