“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopia future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” — Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train
Interior, Wayfarers ChapelWayfarers Chapel, Los Angeles
As we drove along the Pacific Coast Highway, we glimpsed this glass church up in the trees. My brother-in-law said he had been there before, and it was worth a look, so we turned the car around and up the driveway to the Wayfarers Chapel. This chapel was sponsored by the Swedenborgian Church as a memorial to Emanuel Swedenborg. It was designed by Lloyd Wright, son of the more renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. His inspiration was the “cathedral-like majesty of the redwood trees of northern California.”
Unfortunately for us, the chapel was locked for maintenance, so I could only peek through the windows. I would have loved to sit inside for a few minutes. It looked like a meditative space and felt very open. It was about as outdoorsy as a building could get, with glass walls and ceilings giving views of trees, sky and ocean.
The colonnade of trees on the grounds echoed the cathedral-like structure. Awesome!
Rows of trees on the grounds of the Wayfarers Chapel
We are all wayfarers on this journey called life. And like all wayfarers, we occasionally get lost along the way. Being lost can bring its own rewards.
Cutting Loose by William Stafford
Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose from all else
and electing a world
where you go where you want to.
Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.
Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be
lost, learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.
This week I received an unexpected package in the mail. My sister sent me some old postcards that I had sent and received years ago when I was still in school and then later when I was recently married. We cherished mail in those days — as a kid, I didn’t receive many letters or postcards. Some of the postcards in this pile were sent to me by my Uncle Leo (a favorite bachelor uncle), my oldest sister when she was at her college job as a cook at a summer camp in Minnesota, and my brother when he was in army training before his stint in Vietnam. There are also a few postcards from three school friends — lines dropped about their summer vacations. I do not remember corresponding with my school friends, but here I am holding proof in my hands. Back then, we did not talk on the phone like everyone does now. Our phone was on a party line — we were wary of chatting with the risk of someone eavesdropping. And in our family, social talking on the phone was simply not done.
Several of the postcards were from people whose names are a complete blank for me now. Who were these people? Apparently large chunks of my past have simply disappeared — memories of people I used to know (well enough to send me a postcard!!) and things that happened to me. What does this say about life? I believe it shows how ephemeral our short lives are on this planet. Much of our lives will be forgotten while we are still alive. But certainly, in a generation or two, we will be mostly forgotten. For example, how often do I think about my grandparents (seldom) or my great-grandparents (never)? So what do we make of this gift of time on this Earth, knowing it is not meant to last? Maybe we shouldn’t fret so much about life’s challenges and uncertainties — take a long enough view and our worries will have faded regardless of the outcome.
One of the postcards was sent by me to my sister shortly after George and I arrived in Seattle to stay in November 1978. We moved in stages — I stayed to find a job and put down some roots while George returned to his job in the Midwest. By August of 1979 he had moved here, too, and we were settled in an apartment on Capitol Hill. Seattle was meant to be a temporary home for us, but here we still are nearly 40 years later! I was delighted to read my first impressions. (I called Puget Sound a “bay,” something the locals never do!): “Seattle is a very pretty city — very big, and much hillier than any city I had ever been in before. George and I have walked along the piers in the bay where there is a huge open market — fish, vegetables, fruit . . . On Wednesday we had lunch in the revolving restaurant atop the space needle. There are mountains, ships in the bay, and a huge city to look at.” A second postcard mentions our efforts to furnish our rented home: “This morning George and I are going shopping for a mattress and foundation. I just got a Sears card, so I may get a small b/w T.V., too. By next week we should be wallowing in comfort!” The postcards are artifacts from one of the defining adventures of our young lives.
The postcards reminded me how things have changed — we document so much of our daily lives these days with our phone cameras and almost instantaneous posts to our social media accounts or emails. The beginning lines of this poem say this so well:
“Before the age of doing
and photographing and filming
and texting what you did,
back when people simply did . . .”
— Wesley McNair, from “This Poem”
I am not very sentimental, and I don’t know whether I will save even a few of these postcards even longer. It makes me wonder how today’s deluge of documentation will be looked at forty years from now — will it be cherished like a few, hand-written postcards? Will the names to those faces have slipped from our memories? Will we be destined to be forgotten like our great-grandparents and forebears? What will become of all this digital information?
Howler monkey at Cahuita National Park, Costa Rica
I’ve started a new practice of meditating — just five minutes in the morning. Then at various points during the day, when I’m walking home from work, for example, or during a short lull between serving patrons at the library, I might pause and for a few moments return my mind to my in-breath and out-breath.
I look at it as consciously giving my mind a rest. We all know how important it is to give our bodies proper rest. I think it is perhaps at least as important to give our minds a rest, too. I trust that allowing some fallow time will be healthy and maybe even fruitful. Who knows?
All books about meditation talk about how impossible it is to actually empty the mind for even five minutes without thoughts intruding. Zen masters call this “monkey mind.” Of course, I experience this too. When I notice a thought has once again caught my attention, I just acknowledge it and let it go, returning my focus to my breath.
I trust that detaching myself from my thoughts will help me to see how much I am in the thrall of autopilot mind. And over time, perhaps I will become more thoughtful/less habitual in my resulting speech and actions.
One of the insights I’ve already noted is how very few of my thoughts, if any, are original. Mostly, the thoughts that cross my mind are things I’ve already thought before, maybe even hundreds of times. I’m ready to move on to something fresh and new! How can we train or invite our minds to think more original thoughts?
This blog is a continuation of my old blog at http://rosemarywashington.wordpress.com. I am calling it “Chapter Two,” and it will feature many of the same themes as my old one — my photographs, my explorations in drawing and watercolor painting, journals from my travels, recipes, and quotes from the books I read, etc.
I am still fine tuning the details and technical parts of this new setup. I am sending this out without knowing (yet) if the comments will work or if I can make it easy to follow or sign up for posts to go to your email. Let me know if there is anything I can do to make your reading experience better.
Rosemary Washington: Chapter Two 