I take my coffee outside today to sit under the canopy of green that is the entrance to my house.  A woodpecker drums the trunk of the magnolia tree disturbing a squirrel that skitters across a branch and on to the roof.  Mostly, though, everything is still and green and softly lighted by the not yet risen sun.

I am tormented by the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and I have carried that anxiety for several days.  I only watched a few minutes of the debate and almost none of the commentary afterwards, only enough to confirm it was as big a disaster as I thought.  Over the next two days, I tried not to think about it, but this morning, I knew I had to sit with it.  My restlessness drove me outside, an instinct maybe, a good instinct.

As I sit in this slightly wobbly, well weathered Adirondack chair, the anxiety flushes from me.  I dissolve into the living green around me.  It is a sense of oneness and wholeness, a transformation of my awareness of myself as an object unto itself into an ineffable understanding of no self, no separation, only the ever present energy of creation.  Nature does this to me, and I wonder what it means, why it happens.  Should I tell someone?

I hold my favorite coffee mug enjoying the mysterious comfort of having something warm in my hands.  I cross my legs and lean back in my chair resisting the urge to close my eyes.  I do not want to disappear inside myself as I usually do in my meditations.  I want my eyes open to this morning, to the Japanese grass flowing elegantly on the border of the garden, to the green umbrella above my head, to the fertile dirt speckled with leaves and twigs, to the majestic sculpture of the twisted trunks of hundred year old rhododendrons.

If I close my eyes, the voices will begin, the efforts to make sense of what happened at that debate and what might happen because of it.  Noise.  The noise of humans.  The futile discourse of outrage, disgust, and contempt.  I prefer nature’s silence, its obliviousness, its quiet wisdom whispering, “I am”.  There is no separation between me and the life around me, no hierarchy.  Who can claim, especially after that debate, that humans are the pinnacle of evolution?  We are so full of ourselves.  For creatures gifted (or cursed) with this sense of self reflection, we do very little to enhance the beauty around us.  Would it be such a great loss if we succeeded in exterminating ourselves?  

I am not morose.  I am not angry or depressed.  I am filled with a quiet peace in which I find myself asking these questions, wondering, as I contemplate the small wonder of nature in this garden, what gifts do humans bring to this world?  Do we inspire the way nature inspires me?  Does it not seem that in the face of nature’s beauty we have been far better at destroying it than adding to it?  What do I bring to these plants surrounding me in their morning embrace, or if not an embrace, a warm acceptance?  What have I given to them that in any way compares to what they are now, at this moment, giving to me?

The unspoken questions linger loudly in the silence.

The outcome of the debate and the election will have enormous repercussions not only for the United States and the continuation of our democracy, but for every other country on the planet.  If Donald Trump wins, I have no doubt that life will become extremely difficult for many people, mostly those who have always been mistreated and marginalized.  I am aware that this election could result in the elimination of our Constitution as we know it, and, if he succeeds in naming himself a dictator, it is not unlikely that this country will, once again, erupt in violence.  I know these things, and I know that many other people know them as well.   I also know that by saying these things, I will incite some people (including some related to me) to anger and rage.  If this writing were more broadly circulated and read, it is not inconceivable that it could incite people to wish me violence or death.  And yet, it does not change the truth.

I will vote.  I will support candidates dedicated to preserving, protecting, and defending our Constitution and this democracy.  I may or may not succeed in defeating Donald Trump.  Creation has its own plan.  I will not, however, lose hope.  I will not succumb to my baser instincts or slather myself in outrage and disgust.  Rather, this morning I will bear witness to the gift of grace that creation offers even as it refuses to answer my questions or promise solutions.  

I am, as is everything, a reflection of the oneness of creation, a cell in the living body of the universe.  Whatever the outcome of the election, I will witness to this deeper truth even though I cannot fully grasp it.  If nothing else, creation is an unrelenting process of destruction and creation, of death and resurrection.  Today, I know, even if only for the briefest of moments, the limits of what I can do, and I am at peace.  

Retirement is a crap word because you are not retiring from anything, as if your work and career were a race and you suddenly pulled up short and said to hell with this; I’m done.  You’re not retiring or worse, celebrating retirement.  You are celebrating the completion of every goal and objective you ever set for yourself the day you sent out your first resume.  

Reimagine the meaning of the word “productive.”  

What would a day look like if you defined productivity in terms of: 

• The number of great conversations you had
• The number of times you did not lose your temper
• The number of times you greeted a barista or checker at the store with the phrase: “how are you doing,” and you paused long enough to let them answer
• The number of naps you took
• The number of times you thought, I should call that person, and you did
• The number of Mariner day games you saw
• The number of times your wife or kids said, do you have time to do this for me, and you said yes
• The number of books you finally had time to finish
• The number of insights you had
• The number of times you got up in the morning, jotted down a to do list and then decided to go hiking instead because you could
• The number of times when asked “so, what are you doing now that you are retired?” you answered, whatever I want
• The number of times you caught yourself thinking, I’m happy

This is a true story.  I swear.  It began on November 15, 2021, when, despite Covid, work schedules, and significant others, my three wonderful kids worked out their schedules to be in Telluride with Melissa and me for Christmas.  Meg had already accepted a job in Telluride and had relocated.  She was the easy part.  Melissa and I had already purchased our tickets for Telluride, so we were set.

Now, came the tricky part.  I had to get flights for Nick and Josh, and I wanted to get them on the same flight.  Booking the tickets was only half the issue.  The other half was coordinating Nick and Josh’s schedules and preferences.  Fortunately, thanks in no small part to planning our sabbatical, I have developed – if not quite an expertise – then at least a certain degree of competency with booking flights.  I have not, however, managed to tame my ticket-booking anxiety.  It’s the little pop-up messages on the web site that set my heart racing, the one that says, next to the cheapest and best flight option, “only 2 tickets left at this price.”  As if any U.S. airline had that kind of up-to-the-minute information about the thousands of seats on their flights.  The message would have been more believable if it said something like “Ignore the great price for this flight because we’ll probably cancel it anyway.”  Nonetheless, I see those little messages and my heart beats faster; I search frantically for my credit card; I imagine clicking on the flight and getting a tear-stained, laughing emoji with the message, “too bad, so sad, no more seats at that price.”  I kid myself that I am a rational being.  I am an emotional being with exactly enough intelligence to think I am a rational being. 

To cut to the chase, after clicking through multiple options, I bit the bullet and booked Josh’s flight for December 23.  Not the cheapest, but the best option.  I am a frequent flyer with United.  I have booked enough tickets online to know the routine.  I clicked through the outbound flight, then the inbound flight, chose the best seats I could find, plugged in Josh’s information, double checked the dates and times, plugged in my credit card, and hit purchase.  Within a few seconds, a new screen popped up with that all-important confirmation number.  You know the one I mean.  A random series of capital letters and a number.  The confirmation number you need if you want to look up your reservation at United.com, and the confirmation number you need when you check in online or at the kiosk at the airport.

Because I have been known to transpose dates and times, I diligently copy down the confirmation number and the itinerary in a notebook even though, as my kids and Melissa are quick to remind me, United sends that to you in a confirmation email.  I know this, but I am still a lawyer.  I like writing stuff down.  In any event, having purchased Josh’s ticket I went back online to get Nick’s.  Fascinatingly, the same exact itinerary, which only minutes earlier had only two seats remaining at that price, now had, apparently, unlimited seats available at that price.  I went through the exact same process and purchased Nick’s ticket.  Again, United gave me a confirmation number.  I wrote it down, MH8QTH.  I sent it to Nick.  Done.  Happy.  Blood pressure returning to normal.

Flash forward with me to December 23.  Meg and I have gone skiing.  It’s her birthday.  We’re excited that the whole family will be together later that night.  It’s a bit cold and cloudy, but who cares.  We’re on the mountain together.  As we hop off Chair 4, my phone rings and it’s Nick.  He’s standing at the United ticket counter in Seattle.  Josh is on his way to security.  The agent can’t find Nick’s eticket.  I say the one thing I have always believed in, “Do you have the confirmation number?”  We go back and forth on this several times.  I pull off my gloves so I can search my emails on my phone.  Time is running short.  I know back when I purchased his ticket there was the real possibility of a ticket shortage.  The web site was clear about this.  It’s Christmas, the lines are long.  He has only a few minutes to get through security and make the flight.  The coverage at the top of the lift leaves something to be desired.  I have Nick on speaker as I peel off my helmet and balaclava so my phone will recognize me.  My fingers have become too numb and fat to be of much help.  I hand by helmet and goggles to Meg who is being incredibly patient and trying to help.  I can’t find the United email with the confirmation number.  I find emails with Josh’s confirmation.  I find an email receipt for the upgraded economy plus seat I bought for Nick, but I can’t find the email from United with his confirmation number.  Finally, I find the email I wrote to Nick on the day I purchased his ticket with the confirmation number.  You see, I’m telling Melissa in the conversation in my head, you see how important it is to write this stuff down.  I am confident the issue will be resolved.  

I am dead wrong.

I am somewhat animated at the top of a chair lift two days before Christmas.  I have no choice and no more time to argue with the ticket agent. I cave in and buy a full-price ticket figuring I will sort the damn thing out later.  I am balancing a phone, a credit card and dealing with old eyes trying to read the card number, which anyone within twenty feet of me now has.  I get a text on my phone saying the purchase has been approved.  Nick is telling me the agent is saying the transaction has not gone through.  I may or may not have told Nick to tell the agent something I would later regret.  Nick sighs and says, “I’ll just go home.”

And then, at that proverbial darkest hour before dawn, the disembodied voice of the ticket agent says cheerily, “Oh, there it is.  You’re good to go.”

A few deep breaths later I look over at Meg, who magnanimously has not once told me to calm down or shoosh or stop being a jack ass, and I say, “Well what else could go wrong.”  At precisely that second, and I am not embellishing, my helmet and goggles slip out of Meg’s hand and, as if in mocking slow-motion, tumble endlessly down the side of the hill coming to a rest about 15 feet below us.

It is now January 10, 2022.  A new year.  I have been back and forth with several layers at United customer care, an oxymoron if ever there was one.  In my first foray, I got a young person, clearly not based in the U.S., who earnestly believed that refunding me $24.00 for the upgraded seat I purchased under the confirmation number no one could find, and that Nick never used was perhaps the single most generous thing United had ever bestowed on a disgruntled customer.  Think about that.  United charged me extra for a seat on an itinerary they claim I never purchased and felt like the king of Christmas when they refunded me the money they should never have taken in the first place.

In round two, I — and here’s my favorite word in this process – “escalated” to a senior customer care rep who convincingly told me that what had happened was a “blown locater.”  I have no idea what a blown locater is, but I loved the drama of it.  He explained to me in the near-perfect way in which we have come to accept that up is down that a confirmation number does not really mean that anything has been confirmed.  I marveled as his convictions, at his acceptance that United could use ordinary, well understood words in a completely contrary context.  I suppose, with everything else the airlines do these days, this is rather minor.  Despite his status and apparent insider knowledge, there was, in the end of this most extraordinary conversation, nothing he could do for me.  He suggested I put my facts in an email and send them to this address: customer.care@united.com.  You can see, I hope, how I might have wanted to engage in a conversation about the difference between the United customer care I was talking to on the phone, and the customer.care@united.com.  I held my tongue.  There is only so much fiction I can absorb in one phone call.

I have now written to customer.care@united.com a few times.  Ultimately, I received a response from a person named Mary.  We went back and forth, politely, several times with me explaining that I was seeking a refund of the difference between the price I thought I had paid on November 15, 2021 and the day-of fare I was forced to pay (dare I say under duress) on the day of Nick’s actual departure.  It is impossible to recount the delight I had in the exchanges with Mary.  I have transcribed the last two emails here.

Hi Donald, 

I thank you for contacting United Airlines Customer Care Department once again. 

I have spoken to our IT team to see if this is an isolated issue. They are requesting the copy of the original reservation under MH8QTH. I am working on your side to help this get rectified. If your are unable to provide the original itinerary that was sent to you for Nick’s ticket no one is willing to refund the difference in his ticket. They really need your itinerary.

I do have an option and hopefully you can accept it. Maybe your son is a college student and I am able to issue you an electronic travel certificate for the difference of $445.00. I look forward to your response and a copy of the original itinerary 

Regards,

Mary
Customer Care

Of particular concern to me in Mary’s email was the emphatic declaration that “no one” was willing to issue me a refund.  I pictured Mary in a huge call center with hundreds of IT folks berating her and chanting “no refund, no refund.”  This was my response to Mary.

Mary,

Once again, thank you for being an advocate for me and looking into this issue.  Please let me respond to your request for my itinerary.  

First, the issue here is that United’s system provided me with an itinerary confirmation number when I booked the ticket online.  The online screen at the end of the process, after I thought I had paid, said, as it always does, that your ticket has been purchased.  Your confirmation number is MH8QTH.  An email has been sent with your confirmation.  I wrote the confirmation number down, as I always do so that I can search for it in My United Flights later.  Then I clicked out of the page I was on and no email was sent.  Candidly, I did not even think about this at the time.  What I did do, is send my son, Nick, an email with his itinerary based on the notes I had written down when I booked the ticket.  I have attached to this email, a copy of that email I sent to my son.  You’ll note it is dated November 15, 2021.  

When you deal with your skeptical friends at IT, please suggest to them that their request that I send them a copy of the missing email itinerary is EXACTLY why I have the issue I have.  The itinerary was never sent even though United, on its web page for purchasing a ticket, confirmed the itinerary.  When they tell you I am making this up, ask them if they still think that the moon landing was a hoax.  Kidding.  Why would I make this up?  Also, I must be a freaking genius to make up a very specific confirmation number that matches exactly the format used by United for issuing confirmation numbers.  And, pause here for a breath, I did all this just to get approximately $400.00?  I hope you are both laughing and incredulous.  

Second, I have included a copy of the email from United refunding me $24.00 for my purchase of a premium seat for my son Nick on this supposedly illusory itinerary.  Again, please, ask the IT wonder kids why it is that United would have allowed me to purchase an upgraded seat if I had not already purchased a ticket?  Does United routinely accept random requests for upgraded seats from customers who have not actually purchased a ticket?  Again, I hope you are laughing and a bit disgusted.  

Finally, please remind the IT or financial geniuses, that I did purchase, on the day of his travel, a seat on the exact same Itinerary that I thought I had purchased weeks before.  I bring this up to emphasize that I am a paying customer.  I fly United regularly.  I have not engaged in some carefully orchestrated, mastermind scheme to get a few hundred dollars from a corporation that grosses billions.  

Mary, I don’t know anything about you other than the information we have so diligently exchanged about the Great American Airlines Heist.  Yet, I’m hoping (and confident) I am speaking to an actual human being with a beating heart and a working brain.  If so, please understand that this is not some raging battle for me.  In complete honesty, I am just a tad bit fed up with corporate greed and irrationality.  

I hope you will go to bat for me yet again.  And so you know, I am a living, breathing human being that really tries hard to believe in decency and kindness and honesty.  Although, I will admit, I fall short of my own expectations more often than I would like.  

In closing, I appreciate your offer to provide a voucher for Nick.  Unfortunately, I am unable to tell you that he is a college student.  He has graduated.  Of course, if it is easier for the powers that be to believe that Nick is still a student, I won’t deny it.  After all, we are all, in some sense, still students.

Good luck.  I have faith in you.

Don

An hour after I sent this email to Mary, she called me.  We chatted and laughed.  She assured me she had both a beating heart and a functioning brain.  She then issued me a voucher for the difference in the air fares.  She told me she had calculated the difference between the fares and it came to $444.37, but she was rounding that up to $445.00.  God love you, Mary.

Whether it is my natural circadian rhythm or the fact that I am getting older and do not sleep as late as I once did, I find myself up and making a pot of coffee at about the same time each morning, ten minutes or so before the sun gushes like a flash flood onto my tiny balcony, full of itself. It feels like the spontaneous, contagious laughter of a child. I no longer have that same energy I once did to leap from my chair and join the revelry, at least not until after my second cup of coffee. I am in a season of my life filled less with unabashed exuberance and more with inner stillness, which, in its unique way, is every bit as exuberant and intoxicating. These mornings painted in sunlight, stroked by cool breezes, soaked with the smell of wet earth, and speckled with the chirps and trills of birdsong, hold, without judgment or analysis, all the hopes and fears of past, present, and future. As I sit, eyes closed, listening to the momentary stillness of early morning, bathed in the joy of a rising sun, I understand without thought, this, this moment, this new day like every new day, like every moment of every new day, like life, is always and everywhere an invitation to love.

I am fortunate (or blessed) to have now the time and resources to sit still, to linger, to let go of my internal to do list and open myself to this playful invitation. Yet, retirement in itself is neither a prerequisite for nor an assurance of an ability to listen and hear and be still. In much the same way, the invitation to love is not conditioned on anything or anyone. The rising sun, but not only the rising sun, the clouds, the rain, the snow, the wind, every movement and sound and taste and touch of every speck of creation – both within and without – beckons, playfully with childlike innocence, without judgment or expectation. Love. In this moment, love. The invitation is not a request for attendance. In fact, it requests nothing from me. It is as all sincere invitations should be, an act of love itself, an unconditional gift of grace.

I confess that it has taken me all sixty-one of my years to learn this truth, and, even now, steeped in my freedom to linger, to pace myself, to put down, finally, the need (although, perhaps not yet the desire) to achieve something, I lose touch throughout the day with this early morning connection to creation’s invitation. A bad mood still twists my intestines, painfully warping my perception, shattering the stillness I need to remain awake to the invitation to love. Though the traumas of my life are now, gratefully, minor, I still have the capacity and, regrettably, at times, the annoying desire to make them the center of my fascination and focus. My misperceptions, my loss of stillness happen even though, in those very moments, I am aware on some level, that what I am doing is harmful to me. It is truly a kind of insanity, momentary or otherwise.

The sun is hot now. The back of my shirt is beginning to stick to the whicker chair. The morning stillness is lifting as the industrial sounds of cars and trucks, of hammers and voices chase away the birds. It’s as if the birds know timing is everything. Why compete with the discordant noises of the human race’s seemingly insatiable need to go forth and subdue the earth, to assert dominance over something they fail to understand. Do we really fail to understand, or have we chosen, deliberately, not to listen? Even the west’s sacred text, the core of its shared narrative, warns us, entreats us. Let those who have ears to hear, it cautions. One of my professors used this line whenever he wanted to signal to those of us who had drifted off to sit up and pay attention because whatever he said next would unquestionably be on our next exam.

Creation calls to me in much the same way, my recently discovered professor.  It takes nothing more than a hike up through the spruce and aspens to the open expanse of the wildflower-explosion in the alpine meadow to hear that same call, to feel it rising from deep, deep within me.  For those who have ears to hear.  It is less a call than a sense of connectedness, a felt realization (as opposed to a thinking realization), that I vibrate with the same energy as everything around me, every tiny drop of condensation in the clouds speckling the piercing blue sky, every buzz of every bee inspecting the rolling carpet of green and red and yellow and lavender, every splash and spray of every stream, and every pebble, stone, boulder and soaring, jagged rock face puffing its chest to heaven.  Creation, I realize is not a thing.  It is an action, a force, ceaselessly, joyfully, playfully incarnating and animating existence.

Recently, Melissa and I joined a book club focused on Native American writers. I have heard in the two books we have read an invitation to love, specifically, to love the earth. I have heard less a warning or a critique and more an invitation to engage with a new narrative, which is to say, a new way of entering the sacred. Perhaps, it is time for those of us in the west to think more deeply and dispassionately about our narratives. It will require from us more than some of us may be willing to give. It is no small thing to sincerely entertain the possibility that what we believe gives our life meaning and purpose may be an illusion, may in fact have become, through misinterpretation and fear, an empty deception. I am not talking about questioning the existence of God. The idea of reducing this process of questioning and listening to a singular focus (most often defensively) on the binary question of whether God exists is to remain stuck in our western narratives. If we begin the process this way, we essentially start the dialogue by refusing to have a dialogue.

I have come to understand, with age and experience (in other words with the gift of wisdom) rather than through more traditional (and quintessentially western) empirically based pursuits of knowledge, that the process of listening begins with the process of emptying out, letting go of thoughts, desires, the need to know or to fix or to convince. Think of a child learning to dive into a swimming pool. Think of what it must take for that child to overcome every instinct and fear, to finally close her eyes and plunge headfirst into the unknown. I think it takes that kind of blind courage to step outside our narratives and entertain the possibility of others, and I believe the rewards for taking that leap of faith are immeasurable.

The garbage truck has arrived below my balcony. The crash and bang of steel on steel, the whirring hydraulics, and the nauseating smell of garbage punch me out of my interiority. It is comic (and all too necessary), this ebb and flow between the sublime and the ridiculous. What single, unchanging story could possibly and for all time express the infinite permeations of life? I hope to remain untethered to any such story, not out of judgment or criticism, but out of a need for the freedom in every changing moment to respond with authenticity and creativity to the relentless, unconditional invitation to love.

In what now seems like a different life in an alternative universe, I remember walking through the door of our house across the street from St. Joseph School after work to an unusual but foreboding quiet.  These were the years when our three kids were in elementary school.  No house is quiet during those years.  Melissa looked up from cooking dinner and, instantly, I knew the next thing that was going to happen was not going to be a kiss and a smile and a “how was your day?”  

Melissa: “Josh mooned his class today.”

It did not compute.  I heard the words moon and Josh and scrambled to remember if I was supposed to have helped him with one of those dreaded projects inflicted on parents by the St. Joseph teachers as a way to remind us of what they have to put up with every day corralling our kids.  Since Josh was the second child, I reviewed the list in my head having been through this once with Nick: the mousetrap, the solar system, the sewing project.  Nope.  No moon project.  Was this something new?  My stomach cramped.  

Melissa: “Did you hear me?  Josh mooned his entire class today.”

As the details spilled out, I discovered that Josh’s second grade class (at least the boys anyway) had one of their best days, and Josh ended up, as he often did in his first few years at St. Joseph, in Sheryl Sperry’s office.  

Josh and Ms. Sperry spent quite a bit of time with each other during Josh’s first few years at St. Joseph.  So much so, that Josh, I think, looked forward to being sent to the Vice Principal’s office.  We sent Josh to a different school for a few years, but he returned to St. Joseph and graduated with his eight-grade class.  Someone captured a picture of Josh and Ms. Sperry at graduation.  Josh is wearing his blue robe and Mortar Board, one of the shortest kids in his class.  Ms. Sperry, about eye level with Josh, has a hand on either side of Josh’s cheeks.  Ms. Sperry is staring into Josh’s eyes with love and joy, and possibly some relief.  

For those parents who have a high-energy child, you understand the relief and gratitude you feel when a teacher, a friend, or a coach understands your child and sees past the antics to the huge heart trying frantically to take everything in without exploding.  You whisper a prayer of thanks.  You feel the anxiety temporarily lift from your shoulders.  You want to hug them and cry.  

Ms. Sperry got Josh.  She got him the first time he showed up in her office and every time after that.  She had that rare ability to love someone into existence, into themself.  I know Josh is only one of hundreds of kids Ms. Sperry loved into existence, into the better angel of their nature.  Seattle is blooming with the seeds she fed and watered. 

I really don’t know Ms. Sperry well enough to say much more about her than what I have written.  But, yesterday, when I learned that she had died, my heart broke the way it does for someone who has been close to me all my life, and for that reason, I can say with absolute, heartfelt sincerity that I love Ms. Sperry. In the same way that she cradled the face of my child in his triumph, I send my love, gratitude and prayers for comfort, laughter, and joy to everyone who, like me, has a picture of Ms. Sperry permanently etched in their head.

I am standing on our tiny balcony this morning with a blanket wrapped around me, staring at the saddle between Mt. Ajax and Mt. Telluride, at least I think it is Mt. Telluride.  I know the nearer peak is Mt. Ajax because Melissa and I climbed it yesterday: six hours, 4,000 feet of elevation, and almost twelve miles.  Dragging our spent legs to the summit, we saw stones arranged in the dried brown grass like ancient hieroglyphics.  It took a moment to decipher the message: “Welcome to Ajax Peak.”   

On the balcony, I am waiting on the sunrise, staring at a spot dead center on the saddle between Ajax and Telluride, the lowest dip, the point where, yesterday, I said to Melissa through ragged breath and only half-joking, “now we make the final push through the death zone to the summit.”  She rolled her eyes and pushed past me, her water bottles nearly depleted.  Sometimes an attempt at humor lightens the mood.  That was not one of those times.

Her exasperation with me was justified.  Before we turned off onto the actual trail that switch-backed up the slope of Mt. Ajax, we trudged for two and a half miles on what can be called, in only the most generous use of the word, a road.  This “road” climbs over the pass from Telluride to Silverton and is, astoundingly, open to off-road vehicles, a steady slow march of which squeezed past us as we hugged the uphill side of the road, holding our gasping breaths in case the four-wheeler slipped off the precipice or clipped us.  In our trail book, the author recounted an incident involving this same road, a jeep, and a young couple who fell to their death while trying to pass another jeep.  After this accident, the authorities declared the road one-way only, believing, I suppose, that this declaration would somehow mitigate the inherent dangers.  On this Labor Day weekend, dozens of off-road junkies believed, or at least were willing to trust, those authorities.

 As we approached the sixth or seventh hairpin turn on this boulder-infested, dust-caked road, one whole side of a jacked-up long bed truck elevated two feet off the ground trying to make the turn.  Melissa gripped my arm.  “How much farther on this road?” I didn’t answer.  For the last two miles I had told her we only had “about a hundred yards before the turn-off.”  If I had said that one more time, she would have pitched me off the edge.  As I said, her exasperation, as we made the final push to the summit, was justified.  Fortunately, we had packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which we ate with relish, sitting in the prickly brown grass on the top of the world.  Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at 12,000 feet with a 360-degree view of endless beauty have magical restorative powers, a superfood, an acai bowl with a vitamin boost.  

Staring from the balcony, at the lowest dip in the saddle, the pale-blue morning sky begins to melt into white, as if a flame is burning through paper.  Despite my deep breathing, my efforts to shut out the noise in my head, I am restless waiting for the sun to crest the line between earth and sky.  Thoughts spark across my frontal lobes the way lightning strikes these mineral-rich mountain peaks during summer thunderstorms.  Yesterday, we lingered on the exposed peak as the day faded into afternoon, me staring through binoculars at a distant lake, at the splintered ruins of mining shacks, at the bumper-to-bumper line of toy jeeps backed up on a road that should not exist.  Melissa reclined on her backpack, eyes closed, smiling, chastising me gently as I narrated everything I saw like a kid star-gazing for the first time.  “Shush, love.  Too many words.”  With autumn nipping the heels of summer, afternoon thunderstorms were no longer a threat.  Our biggest threat was finding enough energy to overcome the sweet inertia that rooted us to a place on the earth only inches from heaven.

My spirituality, my religion, if that is a word that still fits, boils down to three simple mantras.  Find God in all things.  Practice a faith that does justice.  Be a contemplative in action.  These are not original mantras.  They come from the wisdom of Jesuit Spirituality.  In the last several years, my travels with Melissa have both expanded the breath of these mantras to include the wisdom and spirituality of others and deepened and focused these mantras to sharpen their application to everything in my life.  God is now big enough to include the God of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  God is now a word, a signpost that points to something big enough to encompass Buddhism and even atheism, which sounds like a non sequitur, but truly is not.  The only thing that limits God is me, and I can no more deny or limit the felt reality of the transcendental, no matter what it is called, than I can deny or limit the love I feel for Melissa as we sit exhausted on the top of the world, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.   My faith is a willingness, because of or in spite of my myriad life experiences, to give my heart to something, something worthy of me, of my life, of this inexplicable gift I have been given.  That thought is only original in the sense that I have come to embrace it.  I first read it years ago in a book by the theologian, Marcus Borg.  I confess it takes me a few years to understand certain things I read.      

The tip of Ajax lights up like a struck match, and in an instant, that spot in the middle of the saddle bursts into brilliance too bright for my naked eyes.  Morning has broken, or crashed, or poured itself out, chasing night’s lingering shadows from the mountains.  The sun unhinges from the horizon lifting higher into its blue ocean.  I feel the warmth of a new day, a regeneration, a thin spot in the veil separating existence and infinity, a moment of bliss.  Something worth giving my heart to.

It’s a perfect morning here in Boise, Idaho, at 8:39 am, 72 degrees, not a cloud in the sky or a breath of wind.  More accurately, it is a perfect moment here in Boise because in thirty minutes the sun will climb high enough to start the mercury rising until it tops out around 100 degrees.  Still, other than the whine of the HVAC system a couple of stories below me, it is a nice slice of time.  From this two-foot by four-foot “balcony” (ten dollars more than the standard king room) I can see over the solar panels on the roof below to a greenbelt running along the river positively seducing me to leave off with the typing and take a morning stroll.  Despite the incessant motorized hum, I see no human activity.  It strikes me as a scene from a Twilight Zone episode.  It all looks normal at first glance, but where are the humans?

And with that thought, I am brought back to reality.  We are in the middle of a raging pandemic made so much worse than it should be by the raging incompetence of our President.  Before stopping in Boise for the night as part of our drive home from Telluride, Melissa and I pulled off the interstate in Twin Falls for lunch.  Following the recommendations of Yelp and the directions of Google, we found ourselves outside a local pub, a rectangular, one-story cinderblock building with no windows.  Masks on, we paused at the door, taken aback.  The place was full and no one, not even the staff, was wearing masks.  The Chill and Grill should have been renamed the Dread and Spread.  To her credit, the waitress who handed us our take-out order was perfectly polite even if some of the patrons seemed less than pleased with our KN95 coverings – Coneheads in the heartland.  Act normal.  Leave a good tip and get the hell out of there.

I confess I do not understand how our nation could take something as decent and neighborly as wearing a mask to prevent my sneeze from splashing on your face and turn it into a Bill of Rights issue.  It reminds me, in a good way, of that great Steve Martin line: “Mind if I smoke?  No, mind if I fart?”  The comedy drains from me, however, when I remember that Herman Cain died of Covid 19 after attending Trump’s Tulsa rally without wearing a mask, and still, so many Republican officials either stay silent or defiant in the face of reality.  If that response to Herman Cain’s death is not exhibit A in support of the argument that human existence hangs by a thread, I am not sure what is.

Strange, however, how the earth doesn’t care, doesn’t pause or shift in her cycles.  The birds still flit from tree to balcony.  The bees still buzz around my laptop, the air smells green and warm.  We humans, in our self-absorbed arrogance, forget that Nature feels no obligation to treat us with any greater respect than any other organism, any other speck in her web of creation.  She grants us no greater or lesser right to existence than the dinosaurs, the spotted owl, or the white rhino.  In the fertile soil of our cherished self-determination, our arrogance fertilizes the noxious weeds of our self-destruction.  Nature has no opinion on mask-wearing, only consequences.  Embraced as I am by this gentle dawn, an embrace that contains both a healing beauty and an invisible threat, the fate of humanity feels more like a jump ball than a preordained right. 

I have, like many people, moved past outrage and indignation only to find myself stuck, like my laptop caught in an infinite loop searching for a logical explanation for this anger, fear and resentment over wearing a mask.  I don’t have an answer, but I believe insufferable arrogance like that of Trump hides a debilitating fear.  Behind the rage and defiance of the Republicans opposed to masks, the defiance of the people who believe the virus is a Democratic hoax, and the self-righteous indignation of the evangelical ministers who refuse to close their Sunday palaces, is that same debilitating fear.  Despite our great achievements, despite our remarkable and singular self-awareness, we cannot escape the fact that we do not control the course of our lives, much less the course of human events.  Even the strongest, most devoted faith cannot excise the threat of our mortality, the threat of meaninglessness.

Sometime after my father died, my uncle Varney sent me an email.  I don’t remember what prompted that particular exchange, but I think it may have been something I wrote, and he read.  I never set out to be provocative when I write.  My only rule is to be honest.  I try to leave off the sentimental horse manure and steer clear of empty clichés.  I am not always successful.  Sometimes, however, I surprise myself by writing something that strikes people oddly, even stirs up some unpleasant emotions, although, at the time I wrote it, I did not see it doing that.  I think this may have happened with my uncle.  I may have said something about my father that struck him as nihilistic or hopeless.  In response, Varney told me about a conversation he had with my father.  As I recall, Varney, in a deliberate attempt to be provocative – something my uncle loves to do and can get away with because he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body – asked my  father what he would do if it turned out that there was no God.  My father, a practicing Catholic until the day he died, said, without hesitation, “I wouldn’t live my life any differently.”

If human existence is precariously balanced on a knife’s edge, I find my father’s philosophy courageous.  It takes a fair amount of humble courage to admit that you do not know something, but it takes an altogether different level of humility and courage to admit that you do not know whether God exists and still act as if God does.  We have no right to existence, but we do have the right and privilege to choose how we will live.  My father had the courage to acknowledge that his faith was no guarantee that God existed, and still he chose not to let the fear of meaninglessness lead him to despair or loud, arrogant irrationality.

Faith in anything – ourselves, love, God – is ultimately hollow unless we struggle with it, unless we humbly admit that the universe may not care whether the human race continues or not, and then courageously choose to love in the face of that reality.  To those who refuse to wear a mask, I’ll still wear mine to protect your right to live and turn my cheek to absorb your angry slap in the face.  Maybe then, you’ll find the courage to let go of your anger and overcome your fears.

My father suffered from alcoholism, and, consequently, my family suffered as well.  The single most painful thing about living in a family with a father who suffers from alcoholism is the denial, and that is quite a statement as anyone who has lived with an alcoholic knows.  Until he became compromised by a stroke and eventually died, my father, a rational, well-respected Professor of Physiology, a kind and decent man, denied he suffered from alcoholism.  His denial was not simply a matter of disagreeing with me; it required a trained and focused ability to either ignore or rationalize away incontrovertible, empirical facts, like the bruises he left on my mother, or the way he slammed my brother into the kitchen cabinets, or the time he held me under the water in the bathtub because I complained about cleaning it.    

I have witnessed the kind of reaction statements like the one I just wrote elicit from third parties.  We do not like it when people air their dirty laundry in public.  The communal reaction to dark, personal matters that come to light is to cringe, to change the subject, to hold up a hand and say “TMI.” 

Our reaction is not necessarily malicious or immoral.  It is human.  We feel helpless, awkward, and embarrassed.  Nevertheless, through our silence, we participate in the denial.  Looking away makes it easier for someone like my father to deny the evidence of his abuse.  Worse, it makes it possible for a well-educated scientist to override his years of training and not only selectively reject the empirical data in front of him, but to take the next step and actually believe his own alternative reality.  My father’s rejection of my reality in favor of his alternative reality caused me as much emotional trauma as his violence.  Compound his denial with a communal conspiracy of silence and it is as if I was, for parts of my childhood, the haunted character in Edvard Munch’s famous painting “The Scream.” 

Watching Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd while three trained police officers stood by as witnesses without intervening brought back that same silent scream.  One Princeton professor, trying to explain how he felt, stumbled before saying, “I couldn’t process it.  It broke me.”  Of all the horrors embedded in that video, the image that haunts me most is the nonchalant way the murderer had his hands in his pocket oblivious to the pleas of Mr. Floyd, as if instead of slowly crushing the life from another person, the officer was waiting on his lunch order.  

My father’s denial was a symptom of alcoholism, as was his anger and abuse.  As a trained lawyer, I understand and agree that the element of intent or willfulness is important in assessing culpability.  A “cold-blooded,” carefully planned murder is, both legally and morally, more depraved than a so-called crime of passion.  Indeed, most states’ criminal codes distinguish between these degrees of murder with jail sentences tailored accordingly.  Nonetheless, all homicides, from involuntary manslaughter to murder, are acts of violence that cause suffering to innocent people.  So too, my father’s acts of violence caused harm.  He was not, however, a morally corrupt person.  To make this statement is neither a rationalization nor a defense of my father’s conduct.  Believing an alcoholic has control over his addiction and can simply stop drinking is a failure to understand the addiction.  A common misconception, however, is to think that blaming my father’s conduct on his disease somehow excuses my father’s abuse.  It does not, but it does bring some comfort knowing that his abuse did not originate from hatred or depravity.  He loved me.  Understanding that fact took many years. 

The actions of Derek Chauvin did originate from hatred and depravity.  To say otherwise is to deny the reality starkly captured on that video.  Hatred and depravity are as easily evident in the nonchalance exhibited by Chauvin’s cold, slow-motion murder as they are in a violent stabbing.  In fact, Chauvin’s actions are all the more depraved precisely because of his utter indifference for almost eight minutes to the suffering and cries for help from Mr. Floyd.  Chauvin is entitled under our system of justice to due process and a fair trial.  He is entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.  Those entitlements, however, are in place to protect the criminal justice system, to make sure, for example, that when Chauvin is brought into court, all the proper procedures are followed.  For example, twelve impartial jurors need to be selected, and the video has to be authenticated before being entered as evidence.  These are necessary procedural matters, and Chauvin’s defense attorney has a duty to make sure these procedures are followed.  Protecting the judicial process, however, does not mean that those of us who have seen the video are required to deny what we saw, or to interpret it in some alternative way.  The judicial process is not harmed by the truth, nor does it require us to deny the truth.  It only requires us to refrain from retaliatory violence in favor of allowing the judicial process to work.

But what if facts and history have demonstrated that the judicial process does not work?  What happens when the judicial process becomes part of the systematic denial of our reality?

I was eighteen years old when my mother showed me the melon-sized bruise on her thigh.  I remember her sitting on her bed and raising her skirt to show me.  She has no memory of this happening.  I remember my father slamming my younger brother into the kitchen cabinets because he was not helping to clean up the dishes.  He called my brother a “feather-loose” and forced him through his tears to say his new name.  Some of my siblings do not recall this happening, but they do remember the name “feather-loose.”

I do not think the violence over the past several days in cities across the United States is either a productive or morally appropriate response to the killing of George Floyd.  I know his family has said the same thing.  But I understand the outrage, the silent scream that cannot be processed, that erupts in madness and violence.  The murder of George Floyd breaks us.  The denial of what happened and what, because of the denial, continues to happen will destroy us. 

Don’t look away.  Cringe, be embarrassed, feel helpless, but don’t look away. 

Say his name: George Floyd.  Say what happened: he was murdered.        

I went to the grocery store yesterday, only this time I wore a face covering.  Minutes before leaving the house, I caught a short segment on CNN in which Dr. Fauci, the new GOAT of GOATs, explained that researchers now understand that the virus can be transmitted between short distances simply by breathing.  While balancing on that razor’s edge of diplomacy so as not to incur the mad-king’s insane anger, Dr. Fauci endorsed the idea of everyone wearing something over their nose and mouth when in a closed space, like a grocery store.  First I tried a wool scarf, but quickly concluded that I couldn’t figure out how to get it to stay in place.  Besides, even here in Seattle, it is getting a bit warm for a scarf.  Next, I tried a bandana, black with white paisleys.  It stayed in place, but I looked like I was pretending to be Steve Martin pretending to be a bandit.  I didn’t think I could pull it off.  Out of options, I suddenly remembered my buff, a many-Christmases-ago gift from one of the kids, an ironic way of telling me I was a cool dad.

A buff is the twenty-first century’s answer to the bandana.  For those of you who ski, it’s a lighter weight version of a neck warmer.  The great thing about a buff is its versatility.  Like a scarf, it can be tied into multiple shapes and worn around the neck, on the head, or pulled up over the nose and mouth.  I wore mine this last way, looking like a cross between a bald bandit and a tree-hugging, Seattle grunge throwback.  Whatever, I never was one to care too much about making a fashion statement.  At the store, I noticed several people also wearing face coverings, including masks, scarves and bandanas.  I was among my people.  And, to be honest, it felt a little empowering to walk around the produce section feeling like a little kid covering his face and pretending no one could see me: the avocado outlaw.  

As you probably know, Seattle holds the infamous distinction of having the first case of Covid 19 in the United States, as well as the first death from Covid 19.  Our state was the first to institute stay-at-home orders.  Reading now about what is happening across the rest of the country, it feels as if we are a few weeks ahead of others, both in implementing stringent social distancing policies and, praise God, in seeing some easing of the infection rate – a bit of light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel.  It also feels like we are a few weeks ahead of the rest of the country in the emotional response to the virus.  We’ve been through the disbelief, the “this can’t possibly be as bad as they say” stage, moved through the gut-punched, toilet paper purchasing panic, the pissed off reversion to our ten-year-old selves throwing a tantrum in public, and arrived at a precariously balanced state of acceptance.  We have toilet paper on the shelves most days.  We don’t panic (too much) when the one item we need at the store is temporarily out of stock, or we have to wait in line to get into the store, standing on an “X” taped to the sidewalk, and we are beginning to laugh more than scream at social distancing.  I would say we are at that “it sucks; deal with it” stage. 

At the store, I wheeled my cart down an aisle and almost bumped into an older woman who was even shorter than my mom.  In other words, I could barely see her full face over her shopping cart.  She was staring at the top shelf with a look of exasperation and despair on her face.  When she saw me, the avocado outlaw, bearing down on her in my National Geographic- themed hipster buff, she didn’t even bat an eye.  Instead, she asked me to reach a box of Grape Nuts off the top shelf as if she thought my devilishly handsome costume was just one more ridiculous outfit those young people were wearing.  I don’t know if I was more surprised by her lack of reaction to me or the fact that she was buying Grape Nuts, or for that matter, that the store still carried Grape Nuts.  We had a polite exchange while I retrieved the cereal and handed it to her, maintaining my social distance.  She was not wearing a mask.

  I felt awkward and discourteous interacting with this delightful woman while wearing a mask and obviously trying to stay as far away from her as possible.  I understand that for most of us, this is a public health issue, not a personal health issue.  Our cherished, deeply held, personal rights only exist so long as we acknowledge and protect those same rights in others.  Still, wearing a mask or crossing the street when out for a walk so as not to get too close to another person cuts uncomfortably against the grain of my social norms.  

Later that day, I saw a segment on the PBS News Hour about all the people making homemade masks to supplement the shortages among our front-line heroes in the medical profession. (Shout out to Margaret McClatchey who is one of these mask-makers.) It was a touching story of American ingenuity and grit, but nothing that should have brought mist to my eyes.  I think the interaction with my Grape Nuts grandmother, mixed with the heartwarming story of people putting their own serious problems to the side to help others, shifted my perspective.  Wearing a mask, whether a scarf, buff, or homemade covering, is, at this time, the perfect way to say “Namaste,” to say “I see you, and honor your right to be.” It is a gentle, selfless expression of love. You matter to me.  

This pandemic will teach us new ways of seeing each other, new ways of expressing affection.  It will help us let go of the form of our rituals and practices and remember the substance beyond them.  It might even loosen our stranglehold on those ultimately empty markers of our identity, like red or blue, and help us remember that different customs and beliefs do not have to lead to conflict, anger or fear.  The underlying substance of this pandemic is that we are all connected and interdependent.  My life depends on you, and your life depends on me.

From Seattle, the avocado outlaw sends his love. Namaste.        

In a normal March in Seattle with daylight silently creeping over darkness like Ivy taking over a hillside, I would be up at first light.  This morning, I could not pull myself from beneath the covers even after Melissa, trying to drag me from my lethargy, wrapped herself around me.  Instead of sweet nothings, she began whispering in my ear, “go make me some coffee, please!”  Today is her birthday, a thought that finally pierced the sleepy shell of my brain igniting motion in my calcified limbs.  

This is not a normal March, a flair for the obvious, I know.  The challenge with the obvious is that its ubiquitousness hides it in plain sight.  In other words, even the most unusual, abnormal things can become unnoticed or normalized with time.  This may be another way of saying humans have an uncanny knack for adapting to their environment.  Amidst the turmoil of the current events, we are adapting to social distancing.  Melissa and I, via zoom, had a “quarantini” with some friends the other day.  On a walk, Melissa saw two women enjoying each other’s company while holding the end of a six-foot long rope to ensure a contagion-free space between them.  Via the Internet, Meg has spent as much time with her friends as she would have in a normal situation, with the added bonus of spending time with different friend groups from different stages of life (high school, college, study abroad) all in the same day.  

Still, some things, even with time, do not disappear into the ether of the obvious or blend into yet another shade of beige.  I have known Melissa longer and more intimately than any other human on the planet – more than my parents, my siblings, even my first, best friend, Tom Furbish, from whom I was inseparable until the seventh grade when he moved to a different school.  Melissa has become so much a part of my reality that it is now difficult to understand myself apart from her.  It is not that I have lost myself in another person.  I still love listening to Neil Diamond at high volume while cooking, and she still thinks it is cheesy as hell.  She cannot resist birthday cake while I prefer (and will devour) an entire plate of chocolate chip cookies.  I will spend hours reading a good fantasy novel despite her almost contemptuous reproach, and she will veg-out on Grey’s Anatomy, or This is Us while I huff away in disgust.

Even our differences operate as part of the life-force holding us in each other’s orbit.  It is precisely that intangible, complex, beautifully choreographed interplay of forces that has created our shared reality, our aurora, our Northern Lights. We collide. The collision excites energy.  We give off light.  Something new blooms in the thin air between us.  It is perhaps more appropriate to describe ourselves less in terms of two interacting physical bodies and more in terms of the forces, like laws of physics, that define our perpetual motion, our gravitational pull, our relationship.  Many modern physicists feel the same way about our universe.  It is less about the physical objects we see in a telescope, and more about the way those objects relate to one another.  

Yesterday, I spent the morning reacquainting myself with Paul Tillich, a brilliant theologian I studied at Seattle University.  I stumbled across this wonderful definition of a wonderful word.  “Ecstasy is the ability to stand outside of oneself without ceasing to be oneself.”  Although I am not suggesting that our married life has been one long moment of ecstasy, it has produced in me the ability to stand outside of myself without ceasing to be myself.  Side note: when I first met Melissa in Atlanta way back in 1988, I was so smitten that one of my work colleagues, both done with my giddiness and worried for my state of mind, said, “Don, you need to knock this off or it’s going to kill you.”  About five years later, as proof of his wisdom, my colleague gave up his lucrative career in the law firm, moved his wife and child to Texas, and became a Texas Ranger.  

Reading Tillich, it occurred to me — in that way that the most obvious thing in your life can suddenly and without explanation take on a whole new depth of meaning — that I have been twisted and warped by my relationship to Trump in the exact opposite way I have been renewed and energized by my relationship with Melissa.  Sometimes I am filled with pure, unvarnished hate for Trump and his supporters.  Justified or not, it is a state I do not want to be in.  It robs me of a sense of who I am.  If ecstasy allows me to stand outside of myself without losing myself, Trumpian rage does the opposite.  I lose myself in some place disconnected from anything familiar, anything I love, anything that brings meaning and purpose to my life.  Rather than stand outside of myself without losing myself, I fall endlessly into nothingness until even my sense of self becomes as thin and fragile as morning mist rising from the dew.  

More than fifty years ago, in a time defined by the atrocities of Nazism and southern lynchings, Tillich asked: “Have the people of our time still a feeling of the meaning of sin? Do they, and do we, still realize that sin does not mean an immoral act, that ‘sin’ should never be used in the plural, and that not our sins, but rather our sin is the great, all-pervading problem of our life?”  As Tillich recognized, “sin” has lost its meaning, partly because of its ubiquitousness.  He suggested we substitute the word “separation” for “sin.”  We all experience separation: separation from ourselves, from each other, and from whatever it is we call the touchstone that gives meaning and purpose to our lives. 

I am tired of being spiritually shredded by a relationship with someone who represents everything I do not want to be or become.  It has absolutely nothing to do with my politics, with fiscal policy, with capitalism or socialism, with political parties.  It has everything to do with the recognition that sin or separation is a real, menacing, destructive force in the myriad forces that define our universe.  

 Fortunately, grace is also a force that defines our universe.  As Tillich says, “In grace something is overcome; grace occurs in spite of something; grace occurs in spite of separation and estrangement. Grace is the reunion of life with life, the reconciliation of the self with itself. Grace is the acceptance of that which is rejected. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful destiny; it changes guilt into confidence and courage. There is something triumphant in the word grace: in spite of the abounding of sin grace abounds much more.”

Today is Melissa’s birthday.  Today, I will view the world from that perch of ecstasy even as the number of those infected with Covid 19 increases.  Today, I will allow grace to overcome my anger and guilt and keep me connected to myself, to others, to purpose and meaning.  Today, I will make coffee for Melissa and eat birthday cake.  Today, I will affirm that grace abounds much more. 

Footnote: the phrase “grace abounds much more” is from Romans 5:20. The quotes from Tillich are from his essay/sermon called “You Are Accepted.”