November 16 2023
Maybe the man who gave away his gold at too young an age, the man who lives with more than a modicum of fear, who lost something of his gravitas - maybe that man needs a push down a hill or a strong kick in the ass. Maybe he needs someone to say “show me what you got”.
Maybe that man needs to go dig a face-sized hole in the earth, lay down and scream into the great mother. Maybe he needs permission to say every word he has always been told not to say. Maybe he needs to go and break something beautiful or sacred, to get past that boundary in his mind and destroy what he knows should not be destroyed. Maybe that man needs to distinguish between bullshit machismo, the sort of living that stomps on others in an attempt to build oneself up, or a life that escapes into the brutality of sports where others suffer in play and battle while he sits on the couch safely screaming with potato chip crumbs on his shirt — distinguish between that machismo and what it means for him to be truly masculine, both safe and always in risk, reverent and irreverent, to know when to caress and know when to crush.
If a man cannot bring his intensity and strength in the daily then how will he ever be bloodthirsty against forces like mass incarceration or the killing of people groups or corporations who rape the earth or when his daughter or son is being taken advantage of?
Maybe you’re a man and you’re thinking “that’s not me” then oh boy, watch out. The man who does not think he needs it is the most dangerous one of all because passivity has wrapped itself around his neck and he has no idea that he can’t breathe.
The man who doesn’t need it — he doesn’t need it because he wants it and he finds it; he’s always looking for a little trouble.
But the man who needs it, maybe he gets pushed out or kicked out, he begins to start looking, and maybe that man will come back both softer and stronger, a wildness in his eyes, an energy you’ve never seen before because that man got a little bit of his gold back and he’s not giving it away to just anyone any longer.
November 15 2023
The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
November 8 2023
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
(Tired of Speaking Sweetly by Hafiz)
November 7 2023
Let go of the hours, the overtime, the fear of not having enough. Let go of the tools, the keyboard, the emails, the markets, the interest rates.
Let go of the bar, the bottle, the glass in one hand and the cigarette in the other, the needle, the joint, the bowl, the powder. Let go of the numbing and the escape, the avoidance, the cowardice.
Let go of the relationships, the dependence, the fear of being alone and the fear of being known.
Let go of the new and the old and the shiny and the dull. Let go of the appearances and the preoccupations and the racing mind. Let go of what you think they think and what you think you think you think you think.
Let go of what you thought you wanted, what you want, what you will want. Let go of success and failure. Let go of the car that won’t start, the job that won’t grow, the disappointments of what never will be.
Let go of the notion that everything will stop if you stop, that if you lie down then everything will fall apart.
Let go of your idea of God and Jesus and Mary and Allah and Mohammed and Buddha and Brahma and Vishnu and Shiva.
Let go of your children, who and what you need for them to become. Let go of your father and your mother who were there and were not there.
Let go, Joshua. You are connected to all, and all is connected to you, so even if it is not yours, it’s yours. You’re not alone. Hold on to that.
November 2 2023
I showed these photos to my pal Phil, who has three teenage sons.
He said, “I will miss the imprint of grubby little hands on white walls. It used to bother me, now I count myself blessed.”
I told Phil, “That’s funny - yesterday I cleaned off tons of handprints. Then this morning Waits was doing this and I said my man let’s keep our hands off the walls. Then I realized how safe and boring that is and I said fuck it - I’m wrong. Do it again and I’ll take some photos.”
October 27 2023
There's courage involved if you want
to become truth.
There is a broken-open place in a lover.
Where are those qualities of bravery and
sharp compassion in this group? What's the
use of old and frozen thought?
I want a howling hurt. This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change.
Lukewarm won't do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by? Not here.
-Rumi
October 25 2023
These moments are moments, seconds in front of seconds and behind seconds, ineffably valuable, no more or less valuable than others that have gone and others that will come.
They are walking side-by-side on a wet, fall morning. I am nearly brought to my knees in gratitude. I want to worship that moment, kiss its feet, take it to bed. The beauty is too much. Take off your shoes and let your feet sink into the holy ground.
And the moments when the boys are fighting with each other, with me, when I am flooded with the uuuugggghhhh please please for the love of everything forever just stop that noise stop that fighting stop that whining – those hold the same weight of infinity as the ones when they were walking to school.
Take off your shoes, Joshua.
October 18 2023
There’s always been an intensity in me, around me, as if I have canvas sails that only catch hurricane winds and ignore the passing gentle breeze. This is one of those characteristics that is equal blessing and curse.
Blessing — I pick things up quickly and can excel with some ease. I want to learn how to do woodworking or motorcycle maintenance or baking bread, so I buy the tools, read the books, watch the videos, and go after it until I can do it well. I have German and French heritage, engineering and poet energies, problem-solving and abstraction. Mastery of any one thing isn’t interesting. Breadth of skills and experience is alluring.
Curse — All or nothing mentality. It’s difficult to go slowly. Overbearing, overwhelming, overeverything. Addiction knocks at the door, and addiction isn’t concerned with the typical substances; it’ll take anything for a ride — work, relationships, media, exercise, food.
The work is learning how to befriend intensity, to know when to ask it to lead, when to ask it to walk beside me, and when to tell it to stay a few steps behind. It’s in my being, so there’s no destroying it — if I attempt to crush it then it merely chuckles then intensifies. The task is to learn to converse and listen. Negotiation with intensity is a skill.
I was laying on the couch the other night and I hear Murphy from across the room. “Dad! Can I have this book?” He walks up beside me holding my journal, on which he had drawn on the front and back covers with pencil and marker.
Here’s a glimpse into how I tend to go about things. When I decide to buy a journal, for instance, I spend a couple weeks looking around and saving ones I like. When I find one that really tickles me I’ll look into who makes it, maybe find info, if it’s out there, on the origin of the company, what species of trees are used to make the paper, how they produce it, as far as I can go. Sometimes the rabbit hole tunnels so deep that I can find the machinery that makes the paper, where THAT is made, where those machines tend to fail, and how to fix them.
I know.
None of this is necessary. I don’t do this sort of excavation for every purchase, but I do get a kick out of it.
Back to Murphy.
“Dad! “Can I have this book?”
“Oh - that’s my journal!”
The ! at the end of that sentence does not signify the volume of my voice, but maybe the energy. Murphy felt it right away. I saw his eyes widen, possibly some fear, his chin dropping down to his chest. Shame ran down him like a steam from his head to his feet. My heart hurt in an instant. I needed to dam that river.
Sometimes I don’t catch myself in these moments. Thank God I did this time.
“That’s so good pal. Can you draw some more on the inside?”
He looked up, smiled so, so bigly (that’s the exact word for it), and wrapped his little arms around my waist. That shame didn’t stay with him at all. Kids can recover in miraculous ways. I’ll hold onto shame for a week before I can release it.
The notebook does not matter (Midori MD A5 notebook, in case you are a similar notebook weirdo). The words in the notebook do not matter. What matters is Murphy. His drawings are valuable because he is valuable. I shift (not curse) of my intensity towards Murphy in love and away from anger or frustration. Often I monumentally get it wrong, and sometimes I catch myself and get it right. He will never remember that he drew in my notebook, but he will remember a father that turned towards him more than he turned away from him.
And now I’ve got these great drawings, a gift I did not know I wanted. I mean, he’s not good at drawing at all — you could even say terrible, but how great are these?
October 15 2023
The Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister.
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers' sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
October 5 2023
Murphy woke up at 6:30am. I saw his round silhouette in the doorframe of the kitchen. No pants, no shirt, his underwear riding up everywhere it could up itself.
He’s got heavy feet when he walks, and he doesn’t know that he’s terrible at sneaking into the kitchen to steal a forbidden-without-permission-because-we-cannot-afford-5-gallons-a-week swig of orange juice straight from the carton. (It is frustrating that fruit has sugar. I so want to give them something that is both always delicious *to them* and always good for them. Sorry boys - you can only drink water and iceberg lettuce tears.)
Waits, his older brother, floats instead of walks. He sneaks around about 10% as much as Murph, so when he actually does sneak to get orange juice and I see it from afar I don’t do anything. It’s fun to watch him test the rules.
Murphy doesn’t believe in rules, philosophically, conceptually. He also doesn’t give a kid’s poopie if he has to go in “time-out” or whatever form of discipline I’m test-driving that week. It always feels impossible. I took the classes, read the books, and I don’t know what I’m doing.
Some days I feel like I’m on a good path. Some days I can’t seem to even find the path, and I doubt there is a path. My lizard brain starts swirling like a flushing toilet, and all I can see is failure and futility. It’s so difficult to have belief and to trust, most pointedly when the self-critical voices are yelling at me. I want to numb and fill the void. I used to do it with booze, and currently I do it with ice cream, which makes me gassy and bloated. Cookies, same. I used to do it with ice cream and cookies as well as booze, but I didn’t realize it was all performing the same function. I am an addict and so I don’t go into anything with moderation — I want all of it and I want it now.
The space I’m addressing in my body, the part I want to numb, is scarred over with fear. I’m so scared. I’m a 12 year old boy that doesn’t know what to do, looking around for the adults, only to discover that their eyes are also fear-filled. Alcohol doesn’t heal it, nor does sugar. Little nicotine pouches are better than cigarettes, but both are coping agents that prevent me from caring for the wounds.
Murphy sleep-thuds his little body across the room into my lap. I wrap my arms around him and place my right hand across his entire chest. I love you I love you I love you, I say.
I love you too, dad.
October 2 2023
The wind prays through fabric for me, over me, around me. I don’t know this one says. Doesn’t matter. I could look it up but the mystery is more enticing than the knowledge. I like how prayer does not keep to one form. I like how something or someone can pray on my behalf when I am unable or unwilling. I like it that prayer is not codependent; it happens with us, without us. Sometimes I like the wonder of it and sometimes I hate it, when it feels futile and meaningless. Enough of this, I say. What’s the point.
I like that silence is prayer — so can words and work and walking and a glance and a mountain. I like it that John the Baptizer taught his followers to pray with words and that Jesus was so unconcerned with it that he had to be asked. Would he have even talked about praying with language had he not been questioned? But boy did we ever run with that. “Let us pray” and then someone says words that hold no surprise. Maybe he was hesitant to tell the people the Our Father ‘cause he knew, “Well this will be that now. What a bummer.”
So my boys ask what is prayer? And I say what makes your heart sing? And they say the leaves shaking in the wind. And I say bowing. And they say dancing. And I say an ant carrying a stick. And they say bubble baths. And I say long hugs. And they say tickle fights. And I say silence. And they say shouting. And I say thank yous.
The wind blows through the fabric and around a photo of my boys on my bench. The photo flaps its own prayer.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
September 20 2023
Saturday is the equinox, the threshold of autumn. The leaves are changing color and beginning to let go of their branches, after which they fall to provide cover, protection, and eventual nourishment for ground in the winter months and beyond.
To join with the leaves, here is an offering: a practice for the first two weeks of fall, our own letting go so that something may fall away, potentially nourish something else, and create space for something new.
I wrote this prayer of letting go, vamping off of a prayer from Thomas Keating, which I plan to read and pray every morning for at least the first two weeks of fall.
••••••••
I give up my desire for affection.
I give up my desire for security.
I give up my desire for affirmation.
I give up my desire to get there faster.
I give up my desire to get there.
I give up my desire for acclamation.
I give up my desire for success.
I give up my desire to numb.
I give up my desire for control.
All this space that is now opened up by letting go, I offer it to God as a gift.
••••••••
The invitation is for you to write your own version, using that repeating framework, and offer it out every day for 14 days. If you don’t believe in a god, or you aren’t a prayer person, then maybe you can, like me and my friends in recovery, offer up that energy and space in yourself to any power greater than yourself.
And in regards to recovery, a central tenant is that you are not alone. It is communal work. We believe, we admit, we made a decision, and so on. In this fall practice you are not alone. The trees join in with you, and so do I and others.
This is hard work. Giving up desire for security, for control — awful. But holding onto those desires, a the anxieties they induce, is worse by far.
Who knows what will come to life when we let these things die. Thank you, desire for security, but you are no longer needed. It’s time for something new to be birthed.